"By a deluge of water from this volcano in 1527, the original city of Guatemala was overwhelmed; and the next built, called the Old City, _La Antiqua_, was ruined by an earthquake in 1773. The present capital is situated at a distance of eight leagues from the mountain." Another volcano in this part of the country is described by Daubeny as follows: "Massaya, near the lake of that name, was one of the most active vents at the time of the first discovery of the country. Its flames were visible twenty-five miles off. Its crater was only twenty or thirty paces in diameter; but the melted lava 'seethed and rolled in waves as high as towers.' A story is told of a Dominican who imagined the fluid lava was melted gold, and descended into the crater with an iron ladle to carry some away; but the ladle, it is said, melted, and the monk escaped with difficulty." CHAPTER IX THE VOLCANIC MOUNTAINS OF SOUTH AMERICA The volcanoes of South America are limited to the Andes Mountain System that stretches like a huge wall along the entire western side of the continent. The names of the more important of these volcanoes are marked on the map of South America, shown in Fig. 17. As will be seen, this huge mountain wall reaches from Patagonia on the south to the Isthmus of Panama on the north. The arrangement of the volcanoes in South America is of the linear type. The craters follow one another in more or less straight lines, or are situated along the lines of great fissures that lie near the ocean. You must not, however, suppose that there is a continuous chain of active volcanic mountains from the Isthmus of Panama to the southern part of the continent. According to Lyell, from lat. 2° N., or from the north of Quito, to lat. 43° S. or south of Chile, a total distance including 45° of latitude, there is a succession of districts with active and extinct volcanoes, or at least with volcanoes that have been quiet during the last three centuries. [Illustration: FIG. 17. SOUTH AMERICA] Lyell traces the volcanoes of South America as follows: