ALFRED MAUDSLAY (1850-1931)
Volcán de Fuego (3,763 m - 12,346 ft)
Guatemala
In The Firepeak and Meseta, A glimpse of Guatemala, 1889
Volcán de Fuego (3,763 m - 12,346 ft) is an active stratovolcano in Guatemala, on the borders of Chimaltenango, Escuintla and Sacatepéquez departments. It sits about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of Antigua, one of Guatemala's most famous cities and a tourist destination.
It has erupted frequently since the Spanish conquest, most recently in June and November 2018.
Fuego is famous for being almost constantly active at a low level. Small gas and ash eruptions occur every 15 to 20 minutes, but larger eruptions are rare. Andesite and basalt lava types dominate, and recent eruptions have tended to be more mafic than older ones.
The volcano is joined with Acatenango and collectively the complex is known as La Horqueta.e greater Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve).
In 1881, French writer Eugenio Dussaussay climbed the volcano, then practically unexplored.
The strongest earthquakes experienced by the city of Santiago de los Caballeros before its final move in 1776 were the San Miguel earthquakes in 1717. In the city, people also believed that the proximity of the Volcán de Fuego (English: Volcano of Fire) was the cause of earthquakes; the great architect Diego de Porres even said that all the earthquakes were caused by volcano explosions.On 3 June 2018, the volcano suddenly produced its most powerful eruption since 1974. Large pyroclastic density currents were produced that over-topped the barranca boundaries they had previously been confined to and unexpectedly hit El Rodeo, Las Lajas, San Miguel Los Lotes, and La Reunión villages in Escuintla, which buried the towns and killed many of the surprised residents. Later, 18 bodies were found in the village of San Miguel Los Lotes.
The photographer
The British diplomat, explorer and archaeologist Alfred Percival Maudslay was also a photographer... and rather a good one according to the numerous photographs on dry plate he left. He was one of the first Europeans to study Maya ruins.
After leaving Medical School, he moved to Trinidad, becoming private secretary to Governor William Cairns, and transferred with Cairns to Queensland. He subsequently moved to Fiji to work with Sir Arthur Gordon, its governor. Later he served as British consul in Tonga and Samoa. In February 1880, Maudslay resigned from the colonial service to pursue his own interests, having spent six years in the British Pacific colonies. He then joined his siblings in Calcutta during their round-the-world trip, returned to Britain in December, and then set out for Guatemala via British Honduras.
In Guatemala, Maudslay began the major archaeological work for which he is now best remembered. He started at the Maya ruins of Quirigua and Copan where, with the help of Frank Sarg, he hired labourers to help clear and survey the remaining structures and artefacts. Sarg also introduced Maudslay to the newly found ruins in Tikal and to a reliable guide Gorgonio López. Maudslay was the first to describe the site of Yaxchilán. With Teobert Maler, Alfred Maudslay explored Chichén in the 1880s and both spent several weeks at the site and took extensive photographs. Maudslay published the first long-form description of Chichen Itza in his book, "Biologia Centrali-Americana".
In the course of his surveys, Maudslay pioneered many of the later archaeological techniques. He hired Italian expert Lorenzo Giuntini and technicians to make plaster casts of the carvings, while Gorgonio López made casts of papier-mâché. Artist Annie Hunter drew impressions of the casts before they were shipped to museums in England and the United States. Maudslay also took numerous detailed photographs – dry plate photography was then a new technique – and made copies of the inscriptions.
All told, Maudslay made a total of six expeditions to Maya ruins. After 13 years of preparation, he published his findings in 1902 as a 5-volume compendium entitled Biologia Centrali-Americana, which contained numerous excellent drawings and photographs of Maya ruins, Maudslay's commentary, and an appendix on archaic calendars by Joseph Thompson Goodman.
In 1907 the Maudslays moved permanently back to Britain. Maudslay become a President of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1911–12. He also chaired the 18th International Congress of Americanists in London in 1912.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
