he hat around. After they have visited the whole of their own
country, they cross into the neighboring state, where they are also
assured of a profitable tour. Thus for more than a year Honduras and
Nicaragua were visited by bands of homeless victims, chanting in
monotone the eruption of Lake Criba and the terrible catastrophe of
San Jose.

The western half of Nicaragua, including the basin in which lie Lakes
Managua and Nicaragua, is a volcanic center, including some of the
largest of the twenty-five active cones and craters of Central
America. Stretching from northwest to southeast, the string of craters
beginning with Coseguina and Viejo reaches well into the lake basin.
At the northern end of Lake Managua stands Momotombo, while from the
lake itself rises Momotombito. On the northwestern shore of Lake
Nicaragua lies the volcano Mombocho, while between the two lakes is
the volcano Masaya. Near the center of Lake Nicaragua are the two
volcanoes of Madera and Omotepe.

Since 1835 there have been six eruptions in Nicaragua, one of them, in
1883, being an outbreak in the crater of Omotepe in Lake Nicaragua,
the route of the proposed Nicaraguan canal. The Coseguina eruption,
the uproar of which was heard more than 1,000 miles away, threw the
headland upon which it stands 787 feet out into the sea, and rained
ashes and pumice-stone over an area estimated at 1,200,000 square
miles.

Like all Spanish towns in America, San Salvador, capital of the
republic of that name, covers a large area in proportion to its
population. The houses are low, none of them having more than one
story, while the walls are very thick in order to be capable of
resisting earthquakes. Inside each house of the better class is a
courtyard, planted with trees, generally having a fountain in the
center. It was to these spacious courtyards that, in 1854, many of the
inhabitants of San Salvador owed their lives, as they found in them a
refuge from their falling houses. On the night of April 16, the city
was reduced to a heap of ruins, only a single public building and very
few private ones having been left standing. Nearly 5,000 of the
inhabitants were buried in the ruins. There was a premonitory shock
before the great one, and many took heed of its warning and escaped to
places of safety, otherwise the loss of life would have been even more
terrible.

Guatemala was visited with a series of almost daily tremors from the
middle of April to the middle