HUNTING A PASS:
A SKETCH OF TROPICAL ADVENTURE.
PRELIMINARY.
Reader, take down your map, and, starting at the now well-known Isthmus
of Panama, run your finger northward along the coast of the Pacific,
until, in latitude 13 deg. north, it shall rest on a fine body of water, or
rather the "counterfeit presentment" thereof, which projects far into
the land, and is designated as the Bay of Fonseca. If your map be of
sufficient scale and moderately exact, you will find represented there
two gigantic volcanoes, standing like warders at the entrance of this
magnificent bay. That on the south is called Coseguina, memorable for
its fearful eruption in 1835; that on the north is named Conchagua or
Amapala, taller than Coseguina, but long extinct, and covered to its
top with verdure. It is remarkable for its regularity of outline and
the narrowness of its apex. On this apex, a mere sugar-loaf crown, are
a _vigia_ or look-out station, and a signal-staff, whence the approach
of vessels is telegraphed to the port of La Union, at the base of the
volcano. A rude hut, half-buried in the earth, and loaded down with
heavy stones, to prevent it from being blown clean away, or sent
rattling down the slopes of the mountain, is occupied by the look-out
man,--an old Indian muffled up to his nose; for it is often bitter cold
at this elevation, and there is no wood wherewith to make a fire.
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