"The noise of the explosions was heard nearly as far" (1,500 miles). "And the Superintendent of Belize, eight hundred miles distant, mustered his troops, under the impression that there was a naval action off the harbor. All nature seemed overawed; the birds deserted the air, and the wild beasts their fastnesses, crouching, terror-stricken and harmless, in the dwellings of men. The people for a hundred leagues grouped, dumb with terror, amidst the thick darkness, bearing crosses on their shoulders and stones on their heads in penitential abasement and dismay. Many believed that the day of doom had come, and crowded in the tottering churches, where, in the pauses of the explosions, the voices of the priests were heard in solemn invocation to Heaven. The brightest lights were invisible at the distance of a few feet; and to heighten the terror of the scene, occasional lightnings traversed the darkness, shedding a lurid glare over the earth. This continued for forty-three hours, and then gradually passed away." It appears that the eruption of Coseguina was followed by violent earthquake shocks and other evidences of volcanic energy over extended regions. For example, there were fearful earthquakes along the Andes, the worst of which occurred on February 20th, and continued at the rate of three or four a day up to March 6th, and, less frequently, to March 17th. It was during one of these earthquakes that the city of Concepcion, Chile, was so completely destroyed, that but a single house remained. The same brilliant sunsets and sunrises occurred in different parts of the world after the eruption of Coseguina, due to the presence of large quantities of volcanic dust that followed the great eruption of Krakatoa. The cause of this great explosive eruption of Coseguina was most probably the same as that which is believed to have caused the eruption of Krakatoa, namely, a large volume of water suddenly gaining access to a mass of liquid lava. Volcán del Fuego is another of the many volcanoes of Central America. It is situated as one of a group of volcanoes on the highest summit of the Isthmus. This volcanic mountain has a regular cone with regular slopes on all sides, except on the north, where a table-like projection, about 1,000 feet below the summit, is all that remains of a vast cone, the summit of which was blown away, according to Russell, in prehistoric times, just as was the crater of Somma on Vesuvius. There have been in Central America, since the time of the Spanish conquest, some fifty volcanic eruptions sufficiently great to have been recorded. Some idea of the activity of Fuego during this time may be had from the fact that of all these eruptions some twenty were those of Fuego. At the present time, however, the volcano is dormant and apparently almost extinct.