power from an unbelieving people, while the blind, the halt, the lame, the palsied, and the diseased crowd around her shrine, not to obtain her healing mercy, but to solicit charity. The saints, also, have ceased to stir up the elements, so that volcanic fires have ceased throughout the whole limits of the republic, and earthquakes have almost forgotten to perform their annual duty of shaking the earth.
The last volcanic eruption in Mexico was one of the most astounding of which the record has come down to us, whether in Mexico or in any other country. Fortunately, we have reliable evidence in relation to this event, for Humboldt not only surveyed the volcano as it appeared in his day, but, from eye-witnesses of the first eruption, learned the incidents that fill out the history, and also the miraculous cause which is assigned for this mighty convulsion of nature. His story I shall follow in preference to the popular tradition of the awful consequences that succeeded the curse pronounced by two Capuchin friars upon the estate of Jorullo.
Just one hundred years ago, which was fifty years before the time of the visit of Humboldt, two Capuchin friars came to preach at the estate which occupied the beautiful valley of Jorullo. This valley was situated between two basaltic ridges, and was watered by two small streams of limpid water, the San Pedro and the Cuitamba. These small parallel rivers furnished an abundant supply of water, which was well employed in irrigating flourishing sugar and indigo plantations. These Capuchins, not having met with a favorable reception at the estate of San Pedro, poured out the most horrible imprecations against the beautiful and fertile plains, foretelling that, as the first consequences of their curse, the plantation would be swallowed up by flames rising out of the earth, and that afterward the neighboring mountains would forever remain covered with snow and ice. After denouncing the curse, the two holy men went on their way.