The Indians affirmed that they saw flames issue from the ground throughout an extent of more than half a square league, while fragments of burning rocks were thrown to enormous heights. Thick clouds of ashes rose into the air, illuminated by glowing fires beneath; and the surface of the ground seemed to swell into billows, like those of a tempestuous sea. Into the vast burning chasms, whence these ejections were thrown, two rivers plunged in cataracts; but the water only increased the violence of the eruption. It was thrown into steam with explosive force, and great quantities of mud and balls of basalt were ejected. On the surface of the swollen mound there were formed thousands of small cones, from six to ten feet in height, and sending forth steam to heights varying from twenty to thirty feet. Out of a chasm in the midst of these cones, or ovens, as the natives call them, there rose six large masses, the highest of which is sixteen hundred feet in height, and constitutes the volcano of Jorullo. The eruptions of this central volcano continued till February 1760 with extreme violence--the crater throwing out large quantities of lava; but in the succeeding years it became less turbulent in its activity. It still, however, continues to burn; and the mountain emits from the wide crater at its summit several jets of vapour. The foregoing woodcut gives a view of this volcano, and of the little steaming ovens which stud the whole ground around it, giving it at a distance the appearance of the sea in a storm. And now confess that Mr. Jorullo's monument is far grander than the pyramid of Cheops. Surely the loss of his farm was amply compensated to him, by the perpetuation of his memory and his name, through the rearing of such a marvellous cenotaph. For a long time after the first eruption, the ground for a great distance round the volcano was too hot to be habitable or capable of cultivation. It is now, however, so much cooled down, that it is once more covered with vegetation; and even some small portions of the raised ground containing the ovens have been again brought under culture. Besides this volcano, so recent in its origin, Mexico contains other five--Orizaba, Toluca, Tuxtla, Popocatepetl, and Colima. What is rather remarkable, these five, together with Jorullo, all lie nearly in a straight line running east and west. The tracts of country which these volcanoes have desolated with their lavas are called by the Mexicans the "Malpays." The most remarkable of these mountains is Popocatepetl. Although it has long remained in comparative quiet, it was very active at the time of the Spanish invasion under Cortés. Of the first approach of the Spaniards to this volcano, and of the attempts made by some of them to climb to the top, Mr. Prescott, in his history of the conquest of Mexico, gives the following graphic account:--