VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4, 5 January 1903, Page 5

VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS.

OUTBREAKS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. THREE VOLCANOES ACTIVE. GREAT HAVOC CAUSED. (By Cable.—Press Association.) Copyright.) (Received 5.41 a.m.) < 4 NEW YOE,K, January 4. Further alarming volcanic outbreaks in Central America are reported. The volcano of Momotombo, on the shores of Lake Managua, another crater near the town of Granada, in Nicaragua, and a third at Izalco, in San Salvador, are belching forth fire and lava. The people of the country surrounding each of these volcanoes are in a state of extreme terror. Great destruction of property has been caused by the How of lava and the showers of ashes and stones. Loss of life is also reported.

Guatemala was recently the scene of devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, whose terrible energies are now evidently transferred to the neighbouring countries of Central America. San Salvador, which borders Guatemala on the soxith, is a small strip of country bounded b3' the Pacific, the smallest, but by far the most thickly populated of the Central American Republics. The volcanoes in the country range from 4900 to 6000 feet in height. Many are extinct, others active. Except for a narrow- seaboard of low alluvial plains Salvador consists of a plateau some 2000 feet above the sea, furrowed by river valleys and broken by numerous volcanic cones. The State of Nicaragua is also in an active volcanic zone. The lake of Managua, mentioned in the cable, is thirty-five miles long and 43 broad, and is very shallow. Volcanic- cones, most of them quiescent, surround the lake, their heights ranging from 3SOO to G§DO feet. Granada, which is threatened by one of the volcanoes, has'-a population of about 10,000, and is the capital of a Nicaragua Department. It was founded in 1522 and stands on the north-west side of Lake Nicaragua.