Info De Galapagos

What is probably the first description of an eruption in the Galápagos is found in Delano´s Narrative:
¨The most extraordinary phenomenonhappened while we were riding in Jame´s Bay in the year 1800 that I ever witnessed in my life; and as I do not remember to have ever heard or read ofanything like it either before or since, I will here insert an extract from the ship´s Journal, describing it:
¨. . . As our boat was comingfrom the watering place on the evening of the 21st of August between sunset and dark, with a load of water, we saw a large black cloud gatheringover the highest mountain on Albemarle Island, which was the same place where one of the men board our ship had asserted that he had seen a volcanoburning in 1797; soon after the cloud gathered, it formed a spire or piked end similar to that of a cloud when about to meet a water-spout. Itdescended to the top of the mountain, with a body of fire following it apparently of the size of the largest part of the steeple of ameeting-house. Its illumination was so great that it attracted the attention of all the people in the boat although they were at the time rowing with theirbacks toward it. After the fire had descended to the top of the mountain it continued some seconds, when it broke like a water-spout, and left astreak where it had passed, which appeared as brilliant as a column of fire and continued for nearly an hour before it wholly disappeared-´¨