[Footnote 49: Their favorite musical instrument is the rondador, a number of reeds of different lengths tied in a row. The "plaintive national songs" which Markham heard at Cuzco are not sung in Ecuador.]

The civilization of South America three centuries ago was nearly confined to this Andean family, though they had attained only to the bronze period. In the milder character of their ancient religion and gentleness of disposition they are strongly distinguished from the nations that encircled the vale of Anahuac, the centre of civilization on the northern continent. But little of this former glory is now apparent. The Incas reached an astronomical knowledge which astonished the Spaniards, but the Quichuans of to-day count vaguely by moons and rains. Great is the contrast between the architecture of this century and that in the days of Huayna-Capac. There are few Incarial relics, however, in the Valley of Quito, for the Incas ruled there only half a century. The chief monuments are the tolas or mounds (mostly at Cuenca), containing earthen vessels and bronze hatchets and earrings; the Inga-pirrca, or oval fortress, and the Intihuaicu, or temple of the sun, near Canar; the Inga-chungana, a massive stone resembling a sofa, where the Inca reposed to enjoy the delightful prospect over the Valley of Gulan; and remnants of causeways and roads.



CHAPTER VII.

Geological History of South America.—Rise of the Andes.—Creation of the Amazon.—Characteristic Features of the Continent.—Andean Chain.—The Equatorial Volcanoes.

Three cycles ago an island rose from the sea where now expands the vast continent of South America. It was the culminating point of the highlands of Guiana. For ages this granite peak was the solo representative of dry land in our hemisphere south of the Canada hills. In process of time, a cluster of islands rose above the thermal waters. They were the small beginnings of the future mountains of Brazil, holding in their laps the diamonds which now sparkle in the crown of Dom Pedro II. Long protracted eons elapsed without adding a page to the geology of South America. The Creator seems to have been busy elsewhere. Decorating the north with the gorgeous flora of the carboniferous period, till, in the language of Hugh Miller, "to distant planets our earth must have shone with a green and delicate ray," he rubbed the picture out, and ushered in the hideous reptilian age, when monstrous saurians, footed, paddled, and winged, were the lords of this lower world. All the great mountain chains were at this time slumbering beneath the ocean. The city of New York was sure of its site; but huge dinotheria wallowed in the mire where now stand the palaces of Paris, London, and Vienna.

At length the morning breaks upon the last day of creation, and the fiat goes forth that the proud waves of the Pacific, which have so long washed the table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, shall be stayed. Far away toward the setting sun the white surf beats in long lines of foam against a low, winding archipelago—the western outline of the coming continent. Fierce is the fight for the mastery between sea and land, between the denuding power of the waves and the volcanic forces underneath. But slowly—very slowly, yet surely—rises the long chain of islands by a double process; the submarine crust of the earth is cooling, and the rocks are folded up as it shrivels, while the molten material within, pressed out through the crevices, overflows and helps to build up the sea-defiant wall. A man's life would be too short to count even the centuries consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru has risen eighty feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro: supposing the Andes to have risen at this rate uniformly and without interruption, seventy thousand years must have elapsed before they reached their present altitude. But when we consider that, in fact, it was an intermittent movement—alternate upheaval and subsidence—we must add an unknown number of millennia.

Three times the Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath the ocean level, and again were slowly brought up to their present height. The suns of uncounted ages have risen and set upon these sculptured forms, though geologically recent, casting the same line of shadows century after century. A long succession of brute races roamed over the mountains and plains of South America, and died out ages ere man was created. In those pre-Adamite times, long before the Incas ruled, the mastodon and megatherium, the horse and the tapir, dwelt in the high valley of Quito; yet all these passed away before the arrival of the aborigines: the wild horses now feeding on the pampas of Buenos Ayres were imported from Europe three hundred and thirty-three years ago.[50]

[Footnote 50: At Paita, the most western point of South America, there is a raised beach three hundred feet high. The basal slate and sandstone rocks, dipping S. of E., are covered by conglomerate, sand, and a gypseous formation, containing shells of living species. Additional to those described by D'Orbigny we found here Cerithium laeviuscula, Ostrea gallus, and Ampullina Ortoni, as determined by W.M. Gabb, Esq., of Philadelphia. Darwin found shells in Chile 1300 feet above the sea, covered with marine mud. President Loomis, of Lewisburg University, Pa., informs the writer, that in 1853, after nearly a day's ride from Iquique, he came to a former sea-beach. "It furnished abundant specimens of Patellae and other shells, still perfect, and identical with others that I had that morning obtained at Iquique with the living animal inhabiting them." This beach is elevated 2500 feet above the Pacific. The same observer says that near Potosi there is one uninterrupted mass of lava, having a columnar structure, not less than one hundred miles in length, fifty miles wide, and eight hundred feet thick. It overlies a bed of saliferous sandstone which has been worked for salt. Fifty feet within a mine, and in the undisturbed rock which forms its roof, the doctor found fragments of dicotyledonous trees with the bark on, undecomposed, uncharred, and fibrous.]

And now the Andes[51] stand complete in their present gigantic proportions, one of the grandest and most symmetrical mountain chains in the world. Starting from the Land of Fire, it stretches northward and mounts upward until it enters the Isthmus of Panama, where it bows gracefully to either ocean, but soon resumes, under another name, its former majesty, and loses its magnificence only where the trappers chase the fur-bearing animals over the Arctic plains. Nowhere else does Nature present such a continuous and lofty chain of mountains, unbroken for eight thousand miles, save where it is rent asunder by the Magellanic Straits, and proudly tossing up a thousand pinnacles into the region of eternal snow. Nowhere in the Old World do we see a single well-defined mountain chain, only a broad belt of mountainous country traversing the heart of the continent.

[Footnote 51: The name Andes is often derived from anta, an old Peruvian word signifying metal. But Humboldt says: "There are no means of interpreting it by connecting it with any signification or idea; if such connection exist, it is buried in the obscurity of the past." According to Col. Tod, the northern Hindoos apply the name Andes to the Himalayan Mountains.]

The moment the Andes arose, the great continental valley of the Amazon was sketched out and moulded in its lap. The tidal waves of the Atlantic were dashing against the Cordilleras, and a legion of rivulets were busily plowing up the sides into deep ravines; the sediment produced by this incessant wear and tear was carried eastward, and spread out stratum by stratum, till the shallow sea between the Andes and the islands of Guiana and Brazil was filled up with sand and clay. Huge glaciers (thinks Agassiz), afterward descending, moved over the inclined plane, and ground the loose rock to powder.[52] Eddies and currents, throwing up sand-banks as they do now, gradually defined the limits of the tributary streams, and directed them into one main trunk, which worked for itself a wide, deep bed, capable of containing its accumulated flood. Then and thus was created the Amazon.

[Footnote 52: On this point see Chapter XVII.]

In South America Nature has framed her works on a gigantic scale. Where else combined do we see such a series of towering mountains, such a volume of river-water, and such wide-spreading plains? We have no proper conception of Andine grandeur till we learn that the top of the tallest mountain in North America is nearly a mile beneath the untrodden dome of Chimborazo; nor any just view of the vast dimensions of the Amazonian Valley till we find that all the United States could be packed in it without touching its boundaries; nor any adequate idea of the Amazon itself till we ascertain that it drains a million square miles more than the Mississippi.

South America is a triangular continent, with its axis, the Andes, not central, as in Europe, but lying on its extreme western edge, and in harmony with the well-known law that the highest mountains and the grandest volcanoes face the broadest ocean. The highlands of Brazil and Guiana have neither volcanic nor snow-clad peaks.[53] Like all the dry land which first appeared, these primitive mountains on the Atlantic border trend east and west. The result of this position is a triple river system—the Orinoco, Amazon, and La Plata, draining three immense plains—the llanos of Venezuela, the sylvas of Brazil, and the pampas of the Argentine Republic. The continuity and extent of these vast depressions are more remarkable even than the height and length of the mountain chains.[54]

[Footnote 53: "The interior plateau of Brazil (says Dr. Lund) is composed of horizontal strata of the transition period, which are nowhere covered with the secondary or tertiary formations." The highest point in Brazil is 5755 feet. Darwin speaks of "some ancient submarine volcanic rocks (in the province of La Plata) worth mentioning, from their rarity on this eastern side of the continent." With the exception of the coast of Venezuela, the eastern system is little exposed to earthquakes.]

[Footnote 54: These three plains constitute four fifths of all South America east of the Andes. The west slope of the Ecuadorian Andes is about 275 feet per mile; on the east it is 125 feet.]

Such are the characteristic features of South America; they are not repeated in any other continent.[55] Not one feature could be changed without destroying those peculiarities of soil and climate which so remarkably distinguish South America. Its position on the equator places it in the path of the vapory trade winds, which continually sweep over it westward till they strike the Andes, which, like a great condenser, roll a thousand streams eastward again to feed the mighty Amazon. So effectual is that barrier, not a drop of moisture passes it, and the trade wind is not felt again on the Pacific till you are one hundred and fifty miles from the coast. Were the Andes on the Atlantic side, South America would be turned into a vast Sahara. As it is, the interest which attaches to this continent, save a few relics of the Incas, is exclusively that of pure nature. Nowhere does Nature affect us more deeply with the feeling of her grandeur; nowhere does she exhibit wilder freaks or more startling contrasts; nowhere do we find such a theatre for the free development of vegetable and animal life.

[Footnote 55: There is, however, a striking coincidence between the mountain and river systems of the northern and southern continents of this hemisphere. Thus,

The Andes represent the Rocky Mountains, " Highland of Guiana represent the Canadian Mountains. " " Brazil " Appalachian " " Amazon " Saskatchewan. " La Plata " Mississippi. " Orinoco " Mackenzie.

]

The long and lofty chain of the Andes is certainly one of the grandest results of the plications and uplifts of the earth's crust. While the waves of the Pacific, from Panama to Patagonia, submissively kiss the feet of the Andes, and the showers that swell the Amazon fall within sight of the mariner on that peaceful ocean, the Rocky Mountains are situated five hundred miles from the sea. The space west of the Andes does not contain 20,000 square leagues, while the country east of it equals 424,600. While the compact Andes have an average width of only sixty miles,[56] the straggling mountain system beyond the Mississippi has the breadth of the Empire State; but the mean elevation of the latter would scarcely reach the bottom of the Quito Valley. The mountains of Asia may surpass the Cordilleras in height, but, situated beyond the tropics, and destitute of volcanoes, they do not present that inexhaustible variety of phenomena which characterizes the latter. The outbursts of porphyry and trachytic domes, so characteristic of the high crests of the Cordilleras, impart a physiognomy quite distinct from that presented by the mountains of Europe. The Andes offer, in the least space, the greatest possible variety of impressions.[57] There is near Huanca, Peru, a coal-bed lifted up to the enormous height of 14,700 feet, and on the side of Chimborazo there is a salt spring 13,000 feet above the sea. Marine shells have not been found in Europe above the summit of the Pyrenees, or 11,700 feet; but the Andes can show some a thousand feet higher. A strange sight, to see shells once crawling on the bottom of the ocean now resting at an elevation twice the height of Mount Washington!

[Footnote 56: The width of the chain south of the equator varies with that of the continent.]

[Footnote 57: "No mountains which I have seen in Hungary, Saxony, or the Pyrenees are as irregular as the Andes, or broken into such alternate substances, manifesting such prodigious revolutions of nature."—Helms. "More sublime than the Alps by their ensemble, the Andes lack those curious and charming details of which Nature has been so lavish in the old continent."—Holinski.]

Beneath the Southern Cross, out of a sea perpetually swept by fearful gales, rise the rocky hills of Terra del Fuego. It is the starting-point of that granite chain which winds around the earth in a majestic curve, first northwesterly to the Arctic Sea, thence by the Aleutian and Japanese Isles to Asia, crossing the Old World southwesterly from China to South Africa.

Skirting the bleak shores of Patagonia in a single narrow sierra, the Andes enter Chile, rising higher and higher till they culminate in the gigantic porphyritic peak of Aconcagua. At the boundary-line of Bolivia, the chain, which has so far followed a precise meridional direction, turns to the northwest, and, at the same time, separates into two Cordilleras, inclosing the great table-land of Desaguadero. This wonderful valley, the Thibet of the New World, has four times the area of New York State, and five times the elevation of the Catskill Mountain House. At one end of the valley, perched above the clouds, is silvery Potosi, the highest city in the world; at the other stands the once golden capital of Cuzco. Between them is Lake Titicaca[58] (probably an ancient crater), within which is an island celebrated as the cradle of the strange empire of Peru, which, though crushed by Pizarro in its budding civilization, ranks as the most extraordinary and extensive empire in the annals of American history. The Cordillera, of which Sahama, Sorata, and Illimani are the pinnacles, so completely inclose this high valley that not a drop of water can escape except by evaporation. At the silver mines of Pasco the Andes throw off a third cordillera, and with this triple arrangement and a lower altitude, enter the republic of Ecuador. There they resume the double line, and surpass their former magnificence. Twenty volcanoes, presided over by the princely Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, rise out of a sublime congregation of mountains surrounding the famous valley of Quito. In New Granada there is a final and unique display of Andine grandeur: the Cordilleras combine just above the equator into one dizzy ridge, and then spread out like a fan, or, rather, like the graceful branches of the palm. One sierra bends to the east, holding in its lap the city of Bogota, and, rolling off a thousand streams to swell the Orinoco, terminates in the beautiful mountains of Caracas; the central range culminates in the volcanic Tolima,[59] but is soon lost in the Caribbean Sea; the western chain turns to the left, humbling itself as it threads the narrow isthmus, and expands into the level table-land of Mexico. You may cross Mexico from ocean to ocean in a carriage, but no wheeled vehicle ever crossed South America.

[Footnote 58: This lake is the largest fresh-water accumulation in South America. It has diminished within the historic period. Its surface is 12,795 feet above the Pacific, or higher than the highest peaks of the Pyrenees.]

[Footnote 59: This is the loftiest summit of the Andes in the northern hemisphere, being 18,200 feet. It is also remarkable for being situated farther from the sea (120 miles) than any other active volcano.]



We will now speak more particularly of the Andes of the equator. The mountain chain is built up of granite, gneissoid, and schistose rocks, often in vertical position, and capped with trachyte and porphyry.[60] Large masses of solid rock are rarely seen; every thing is cracked, calcined, or triturated. While in Bolivia the Eastern Cordillera shows a succession of sharp, ragged peaks, in contrast with the conical summits of the Cordillera of the coast, there is no such distinction in the Andes of the equator.[61] The Eastern Cordillera has a greater mean height, and it displays more volcanic activity. Twenty volcanic mountains surround the valley, of which twelve are in the oriental chain. Three of the twenty are now active (Cotopaxi, Sangai, and Pichincha), and five others are known to have erupted since the Conquest (Chiles, Imbabura, Guamani, Tunguragua, and Quirotoa). The truncated cone of Cotopaxi, the jagged, Alpine crest of ruined Altar, and the dome of Chimborazo, are the representative forms of the volcanic summits. The extinct volcanoes usually have double domes or peaks, while the active peaks are slender cones. Antisana and Cayambi are fashioned after Chimborazo, though the latter is table-topped rather than convex; Caraguairazo, Quirotoa, Iliniza, Sincholagua, Ruminagui, and Corazon, resemble Altar; Tunguragua, Sangai, Llanganati, Cotocachi, Chiles, and Imbabura, imitate Cotopaxi; Pichincha, Atacatzo, and Guamani are irregular. The Ecuadorian volcanoes have rarely ejected liquid lava, but chiefly water, mud, ashes, and fragments of trachyte and porphyry. Cotopaxi alone produces pure, foam-like pumice, and glossy, translucent obsidian.[62] The paucity of quartz, and the absence of basalt, are remarkable. Some of the porphyroids are conglomerate, but the majority are true porphyries, having a homogeneous base. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt calls them porphyroid trachytes. They have a black, rarely reddish, vitreous, or impalpable base, approaching obsidian, with a specific gravity of 2.59 in pure specimens, and holding crystals or crystalline grains of glassy feldspar, and sometimes of pyroxene and hematite. They differ from the Old World porphyries in containing no quartz, and seldom mica.[63] D'Orbigny considers the porphyries of the Andes to have been ejected at the close of the cretaceous period, and formed the first relief of the Cordillera. The prevalence of trachyte shows that the products have cooled under feeble pressure.

[Footnote 60: "As a general rule, whenever the mass of mountains rises much above the limit of perpetual snow, the primitive rocks disappear, and the summits are trachyte or trappean porphyry."—Humboldt. In general, "the great Cordilleras are formed of innumerable varieties of granites, gneiss, schists, hornblende, chloritic slates, porphyries, etc., and these rocks alternate with each other in meridional bands, which in the ridges frequently present the appearance of a radiated or fan-shaped structure, and under the plains are more or less vertical."—Evan Hopkins, F.G.S.]

[Footnote 61: Von Tschudi makes the incorrect statement that "throughout the whole extent of South America there is not a single instance of the Western Cordillera being intersected by a river." Witness the Esmeraldas.]

[Footnote 62: It is a singular fact that true trachyte, pumice, and obsidian are wanting in the volcanic Galapagos Islands, only 700 miles west of Pichincha.]

[Footnote 63: As many of the crystals are partly fused, or have round angles, the porphyries were probably formed by the melting of a crystalline rock, the base becoming fused into a homogeneous material, while the less fusible crystals remain imbedded.—Dr. Hunt.]

From the deluges of water lately thrown out have resulted deep furrows in the sides; and from the prevalence of the east wind, which is always met by the traveler on the crest of either Cordillera, there is a greater accumulation of ashes, and less snow on the west slope. Cotopaxi is a fine example of this. In Pichincha, Altar, and Ruminagua, however, the western wall is lowest, apparently broken down.[64] There is no synchronism in the eruptions of Cotopaxi and Pichincha. These volcanoes must have independent reservoirs, for the former is 3000 feet higher than the latter, and only thirty miles distant. The reputed eruptions of Pichincha are dated 1534, 1539, 1566, 1575, 1588, and 1660; that of 1534 resting on the assertions of Checa, Garcilazo, and Herrera, indorsed by Humboldt. Excepting the traditional eruption in 1534, which probably is confounded with that of Pichincha, Cotopaxi did not open till 1742; then followed the eruptions of 1743, 1744, 1746, 1766, 1768, 1803, 1851, and 1855. We must mention, however, that, since the recent awakening of Pichincha, Cotopaxi has been unusually silent. There is also a remarkable coincidence (which may not be wholly accidental) in the renewed activity of Pichincha, and the great eruption of Mauna Loa, both occurring in March, 1868. It is generally believed by the natives that Cotopaxi and Tunguragua are sympathetic.

[Footnote 64: In the Galapagos volcanoes the south wall is lowest, while the craters in Mexico and Sandwich Islands are lowest on the northeast.]

There are fifty-one volcanoes in the Andean chain. Of these, twenty girdle the Valley of Quito, three active, five dormant, and twelve extinct.[65] Besides these are numerous mountain peaks not properly volcanic. Nowhere on the face of the earth is there such a grand assemblage of mountains. Twenty-two summits are covered with perpetual snow, and fifty are over ten thousand feet high.[66]

[Footnote 65: The altitudes of the most important Ecuadorian volcanoes are:

WESTERN CHAIN. Chimborazo, 21,420 feet (Humboldt). Caraguairazo, 19,183 feet (Humboldt). It is variously estimated from 15,673 feet to 19,720 feet; 18,000 feet is not far from the truth. Iliniza, 17,370 feet (Wisse); 16,300 (Hall). Cotocachi, 16,440 feet (Humboldt); 16,409 (Wisse). Pichincha, 15,922 feet (Humboldt); 15,827 (Orton).

EASTERN CHAIN. Cayambi, 19,648 feet (Humboldt); 19,358 (Wisse). Antisana, 19,148 feet (Humboldt); 19,279 (Wisse). Cotopaxi, 18,880 feet (Humboldt); 18,862 (Wisse). Altar, 17,400 feet. Sangai, 17,120 feet (Wisse). Tunguragua, 16,579 feet (Humboldt). Sincholagua, 16,434 feet (Humboldt).

]

[Footnote 66: The snow limit at the equator is 15,800 feet. No living creature, save the condor, passes this limit; naked rocks, fogs, and eternal snows mark the reign of uninterrupted solitude. The following is the approximate limit of perpetual snow in different latitudes:

0 deg. 15,800 feet. 27 deg. 18,800 " 33 deg. 12,780 " 40 deg. 8,300 feet. 54 deg. 3,700 " 70 deg. 3,300 "

The limit appears to descend more rapidly going south of the equator than in going north.]

All of these would be visible from a single stand-point—the summit of Cotopaxi. The lofty peaks shoot up with so much method as almost to provoke the theory that the Incas, in the zenith of their power, planted them as signal monuments along the royal road to Cuzco. The eastern series is called the Cordillera real, because along its flank are the remnants of the splendid highway which once connected Quito and the Peruvian capital.[67] It can also boast of such tremendous volcanoes as Cotopaxi and Sangai. The Western Cordillera contains but one active volcano; but then it can point to peerless Chimborazo and the deep crater of Pichincha. These twenty volcanic mountains rise within a space only two hundred miles long and thirty miles wide. It makes one tremble to think of the awful crevice over which they are placed.[68]

[Footnote 67: We traveled over a portion of this ancient road in going from Riobamba to Cajabamba. It is well paved with cut blocks of dark porphyry. It is not graded, but partakes of the irregularity of the country. Designed, not for carriages, but for troops and llamas, there are steps when the ascent is steep.]

[Footnote 68: Grand as the Andes are, how insignificant in a general view! How slightly they cause our globe to differ from a perfect sphere! Cotopaxi constitutes only 1/1100 of the earth's radius; and on a globe six feet in diameter, Chimborazo would be represented by a grain of sand less than 1/20 of an inch in thickness.]



CHAPTER VIII.

The Volcanoes of Ecuador.—Western Cordillera.—Chimborazo.—Iliniza.—Corazon.—Pichincha.—Descent into its Crater.

Coming up from Peru through the cinchona forests of Loja, and over the barren hills of Assuay, the traveler reaches Riobamba, seated on the threshold of magnificence—like Damascus, an oasis in a sandy plain, but, unlike the Queen of the East, surrounded with a splendid retinue of snowy peaks that look like icebergs floating in a sea of clouds.

On our left is the most sublime spectacle in the New World. It is a majestic pile of snow, its clear outline on the deep blue sky describing the profile of a lion in repose. At noon the vertical sun, and the profusion of light reflected from the glittering surface, will not allow a shadow to be cast on any part, so that you can easily fancy the figure is cut out of a mountain of spotless marble. This is Chimborazo—yet not the whole of it—you see but a third of the great giant. His feet are as eternally green as his head is everlastingly white; but they are far away beneath the bananas and cocoa-palms of the Pacific coast.

Rousseau was disappointed when he first saw the sea; and the first glimpse of Niagara often fails to meet one's expectations. But Chimborazo is sure of a worshiper the moment its overwhelming grandeur breaks upon the traveler. You feel that you are in the presence-chamber of the monarch of the Andes. There is sublimity in his kingly look, of which the ocean might be proud.

"All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gathers around this summit, as if to show How earth may pierce to heaven, yet leave vain man below."

Well do we remember our disappointment as we stood before that wonder of the world—St. Peter's. We mounted the pyramid of steps and looked up, but were not overcome by the magnificence. We read in our guide-book that the edifice covers eight acres, and to the tip-top of the cross is almost five hundred feet; that it took three hundred and fifty years and twelve successive artists to finish it, and an expenditure of $50,000,000, and now costs $30,000 per annum to keep it in repair; still we did not appreciate its greatness. We pushed aside the curtain and walked in—walked a day's journey across the transept and up and down the everlasting nave, and yet continued heterodox. We tried hard to believe it was very vast and sublime, and knew we ought to feel its grandeur, but somehow we did not. Then we sat down by the Holy of Holies, and there we were startled into a better judgment by the astounding fact that the Cathedral of St. Paul—the largest edifice in Great Britain—could stand upright, spire, dome, body, and all, inside of St. Peter's! that the letters of the inscription which run around the base of the dome, though apparently but an inch, are in reality six feet high! Then, for the first time, the scales fell from our eyes; the giant building began to grow; higher and higher still it rose, longer and deeper it expanded, yet in perfect proportions; the colossal structure, now a living temple, put on its beautiful garments and the robe of majesty. And that dome! the longer we looked at it the vaster it grew, till finally it seemed to be a temple not made with hands; the spacious canopy became the firmament; the mosaic figures of cherubim and seraphim were endowed with life; and as we fixed our eyes on the zenith where the Almighty is represented in glory, we thought we had the vision of Stephen. Long we gazed upward into this heaven of man's creation, and gazed again till we were lost in wonder.

But the traveler needs no such steps to lift him up to the grand conception of the divine Architect as he beholds the great white dome of Chimborazo. It looks lofty from the very first. Now and then an expanse of thin, sky-like vapor would cut the mountain in twain, and the dome, islanded in the deep blue of the upper regions, seemed to belong more to heaven than to earth. We knew that Chimborazo was more than twice the altitude of Etna. We could almost see the great Humboldt struggling up the mountain's side till he looked like a black speck moving over the mighty white, but giving up in despair four thousand feet below the summit. We see the intrepid Bolivar mounting still higher; but the hero of Spanish-American independence returns a defeated man. Last of all comes the philosophic Boussingault, and attains the prodigious elevation of nineteen thousand six hundred feet—the highest point reached by man without the aid of a balloon; but the dome remains unsullied by his foot. Yet none of these facts increase our admiration. The mountain has a tongue which speaks louder than all mathematical calculations.

There must be something singularly sublime about Chimborazo, for the spectator at Riobamba is already nine thousand feet high, and the mountain is not so elevated above him as Mont Blanc above the vale of Chamouni, when, in reality, that culminating point of Europe would not reach up even to the snow-limit of Chimborazo by two thousand feet.[69] It is only while sailing on the Pacific that one sees Chimborazo in its complete proportions. Its very magnitude diminishes the impression of awe and wonder, for the Andes on which it rests are heaved to such a vast altitude above the sea, that the relative elevation of its summit becomes reduced by comparison with the surrounding mountains. Its altitude is 21,420 feet, or forty-five times the height of Strasburg Cathedral; or, to state it otherwise, the fall of one pound from the top of Chimborazo would raise the temperature of water 30 deg.. One fourth of this is perpetually covered with snow, so that its ancient name, Chimpurazu—the mountain of snow—is very appropriate.[70] It is a stirring thought that this mountain, now mantled with snow, once gleamed with volcanic fires. There is a hot spring on the north side, and an immense amount of debris covers the slope below the snow-limit, consisting chiefly of fine-grained, iron-stained trachyte and coarse porphyroid gray trachyte; very rarely a dark vitreous trachyte. Chimborazo is very likely not a solid mountain: trachytic volcanoes are supposed to be full of cavities. Bouguer found it made the plumb-line deviate 7" or 8".

[Footnote 69: But Chimborazo is steeper than the Alp-king; and steepness is a quality more quickly appreciated than mere massiveness. "Mont Blanc (says a writer in Frazer's Magazine) is scarcely admired, because he is built with a certain regard to stability; but the apparently reckless architecture of the Matterhorn brings the traveler fairly on his knees, with a respect akin to that felt for the leaning tower of Pisa, or the soaring pinnacles of Antwerp."]

[Footnote 70: "White Mountain" is the natural and almost uniform name of the highest mountains in all countries: thus Himalaya, Mont Blanc, Hocmus, Sierra Nevada, Ben Nevis, Snowdon, Lebanon, White Mountains of United States, Chimborazo, and Illimani.]

The valleys which furrow the flank of Chimborazo are in keeping with its colossal size. Narrower, but deeper than those of the Alps, the mind swoons and sinks in the effort to comprehend their grim majesty. The mountain appears to have been broken to pieces like so much thin crust, and the strata thrown on their vertical edges, revealing deep, dark chasms, that seem to lead to the confines of the lower world. The deepest valley in Europe, that of the Ordesa in the Pyrenees, is 3200 feet deep; but here are rents in the side of Chimborazo in which Vesuvius could be put away out of sight. As you look down into the fathomless fissure, you see a white fleck rising out of the gulf, and expanding as it mounts, till the wings of the condor, fifteen feet in spread, glitter in the sun as the proud bird fearlessly wheels over the dizzy chasm, and then, ascending above your head, sails over the dome of Chimborazo.[71] Could the condor speak, what a glowing description could he give of the landscape beneath him when his horizon is a thousand miles in diameter. If

"Twelve fair counties saw the blaze from Malvern's lonely height,"

what must be the panorama from a height fifteen times higher!

[Footnote 71: Humboldt's statement that the condor flies higher than Chimborazo has been questioned; but we have seen numbers hovering at least a thousand feet above the summit of Pichincha. Baron Mueller, in his ascent of Orizaba, saw two falcons flying at the height of full 18,000 feet; Dr. Hooker found crows and ravens on the Himalayas at 16,500 feet; and flocks of wild geese are said to fly over the peak of Kintschinghow, 22,756 feet.]

Chimborazo was long supposed to be the tallest mountain on the globe, but its supremacy has been supplanted by Mount Everest in Asia, and Aconcagua in Chile.[72] In mountain gloom and glory, however, it still stands unrivaled. The Alps have the avalanche, "the thunderbolt of snow," and the glaciers, those icy Niagaras so beautiful and grand. Here they are wanting.[73] The monarch of the Andes sits motionless in calm serenity and unbroken silence. The silence is absolute and actually oppressive. The road from Guayaquil to Quito crosses Chimborazo at the elevation of fourteen thousand feet. Save the rush of the trade wind in the afternoon, as it sweeps over the Andes, not a sound is audible; not the hum of an insect, nor the chirp of a bird, nor the roar of the puma, nor the music of running waters. Mid-ocean is never so silent. You can almost hear the globe turning on its axis. There was a time when the monarch deigned to speak, and spoke with a voice of thunder, for the lava on its sides is an evidence of volcanic activity. But ever since the morning stars sang together over man's creation, Chimbo has sat in sullen silence, satisfied to look "from his throne of clouds o'er half the world." There is something very suggestive in this silence of Chimborazo. It was once full of noise and fury; it is now a completed mountain, and thunders no more. How silent was Jesus, a completed character! The reason we are so noisy is that we are so full of wants; we are unfinished characters. Had we perfect fullness of all things, the beatitude of being without a want, we should lapse into the eternal silence of God.

[Footnote 72: Mount Everest is 29,000 feet, and Aconcagua 23,200. Schlagintweit enumerates thirteen Himalayan summits over 25,000 feet, and forty-six above 20,000. We have little confidence in the estimates of the Bolivian mountains. Chimborazo has nearly the same latitude and altitude as the loftiest peak in Africa, Kilima Njaro.]

[Footnote 73: Humboldt ascribes the absence of glaciers in the Andes to the extreme steepness of the sides, and the excessive dryness of the air. Dr. Loomis, above quoted, mentions indications of glacial action—moraines, and polished and striated rocks—on the crest of the Cordillera, between Peru and Bolivia, lat. 21 deg. S.]

Chimborazo is a leader of a long train of ambitious crags and peaks; but as he who comes after the king must not expect to be noticed, we will only take a glimpse of these lesser lights as we pass up the Western Cordillera, and then down the Eastern.

The first after leaving the monarch is Caraguairazo. The Indians call it "the wife of Chimborazo." They are separated only by a very narrow valley. One hundred and seventy years ago the top of this mountain fell in, and torrents of mud flowed out containing multitudes of fishes. It is now over seventeen thousand feet high, and is one of the most Alpine of the Quitonian volcanoes, having sharp pinnacles instead of the smooth trachytic domes—usually double domes—so characteristic of the Andean summits. And now we pass in rapid succession numerous picturesque mountains, some of them extinct volcanoes, as Iliniza, presenting two pyramidal peaks, the highest seventeen thousand feet above the sea, and Corazon, so named from its heart-shaped summit, till we reach Pichincha, whose smoking crater is only five miles distant in a straight line from the city of Quito, or eleven by the traveled route.

The crown of this mountain presents three groups of rocky peaks. The most westerly one is called Rucu-Pichincha, and alone manifests activity. To the northeast of Rucu is Guagua-Pichincha, a ruined flue of the same fiery furnace; and between the two is Cundur-guachana.[74] Pichincha is the only volcano in Ecuador which has not a true cone-crater. Some violent eruption beyond the reach of history or tradition has formed an enormous funnel-shaped basin 2500 feet deep,[75] 1500 in diameter at the bottom, and expanding upward to a width of three fourths of a mile. It is the deepest crater on the globe. That of Kilauea is 600 feet; Orizaba, 500; Etna, 300; Hecla, 100. Vesuvius is a portable furnace in comparison. The abyss is girt with a ragged wall of dark trachyte, which rises on the inside at various angles between 45 deg. and perpendicularity. As we know of but one American besides the members of our expedition (Mr. Farrand, a photographer) who has succeeded in entering the crater of this interesting volcano, we will give a brief sketch of our visit.

[Footnote 74: Pichincha, in the Inca language, signifies "the boiling mountain;" Rucu means old; Guagua, young; and Cundur-guachana, the condor's nest.]

[Footnote 75: More accurately, 2527 feet; Wisse and Moreno made it 2460.]



Leaving Quito in the afternoon by the old arched gateway at the foot of Panecillo, and crossing a spur of the mountain, we stopped for the night at the Jesuit hacienda, situated in the beautiful valley of Lloa, but nearly ruined by the earthquake of 1859. On the damp walls of this monastery, perched 10,268 feet above the ocean, we found several old paintings, among them a copy of the Visitation by Rubens. The sunset views in this heart of the Andes were surpassingly beautiful. Mounting our horses at break of day, and taking an Indian guide, we ascended rapidly, by a narrow and difficult path, through the forest that belts the volcano, up to the height of 12,000 feet, emerging gradually into a thicket of stunted bushes, and then entered the dreary paramo. Splendid was the view of the Eastern Cordillera. At least six dazzling white volcanoes were in sight just across the Valley of Quito, among them table-topped Cayambi, majestic Antisana, and princely Cotopaxi, whose tapering summit is a mile above the clouds. Toiling upward, we reached the base of the cone, where vegetation ceased entirely; and, tying our horses to some huge rocks that had fallen from the mural cliff above, started off on hands and feet for the crater. The cone is deeply covered with sand and cinders for about two hundred feet, and the sides are inclined at an angle of about 35 deg.. At ten o'clock we reached the brim of the crater, and the great gulf burst suddenly into view. We can never forget the impression made upon us by the sight. We speak of many things here below as awful, but that word has its full meaning when carried to the top of Pichincha. There you see a frightful opening in the earth's crust nearly a mile in width and half a mile deep, and from the dark abyss comes rolling up a cloud of sulphurous vapors. Monte Somma in the time of Strabo was a miniature; but this crater is on the top of a mountain four times the height of the Italian volcano. Imagination finds it difficult to conceive a spectacle of more fearful grandeur or such solemn magnificence. It well accords with Milton's picture of the bottomless pit. The united effect of the silence and solitude of the place, the great depth of the cavity, the dark precipitous sides, and the column of smoke standing over an unseen crevice, was to us more impressive than thundering Cotopaxi or fiery Vesuvius. Humboldt, after standing on this same brink, exclaimed, "I have never beheld a grander or more remarkable picture than that presented by this volcano;" and La Condamine compared it to "the Chaos of the poets." Below us are the smouldering fires which may any moment spring forth into a conflagration; around us are black, ragged cliffs—fit boundary for this gateway to the infernal regions. They look as if they had just been dragged up from the central furnace of the earth. Life seems to have fled in terror from the vicinity; even lichens, the children of the bare rocks, refuse to clothe the scathed and beetling crags. For some moments, made mute by the dreadful sight, we stood like statues on the rim of the mighty caldron, with our eyes riveted on the abyss below, lost in contemplating that which can not be described. The panorama from this lofty summit is more pleasing, but equally sublime. Toward the rising sun is the long range of the Eastern Cordillera, hiding from our view the great valley of the Amazon. To right and left are the peaks of another procession of august mountains from Cotocachi to Chimborazo. We are surrounded by the great patriarchs of the Andes, and their speaker, Cotopaxi, ever and anon sends his muttering voice over the land. The view westward is like looking down from a balloon. Those parallel ridges of the mountain chain, dropping one behind the other, are the gigantic staircase by which the ice-crowned Chimborazo steps down to the sea. A white sea of clouds covers the peaceful Pacific and the lower parts of the coast. But the vapory ocean, curling into the ravines, beautifully represents little coves and bays, leaving islands and promontories like a true ocean on a broken shore. We seem raised above the earth, which lies like an opened map below us; we can look down on the upper surface of the clouds, and, were it night, down too upon the lightnings.

The crater of Pichincha has a sharp, serrated edge, which, happily for Quito, is broken down on the west side, so that in the next eruption the volcano will doubtless pour its contents into the wilds of Esmeraldas. The highest pinnacle is 15,827 feet; so that the mountain just enters the region of perpetual winter. Water boils at 185 deg.. The summit is generally bare, though snow is always found in the clefts of the rocks. It is not compact or crystalline, but resembles a conglomerate of little hailstones.[76] Out of the mingled snow and pumice-dust rise a few delicate flowers, particularly the violet Sida Pichinchensis, the same which we had observed on the side of Chimborazo. Think of gay flowers a thousand feet higher than the top of Mont Blanc!

[Footnote 76: The snow on the top of Mont Blanc is like dry dust; in Lapland, in open places, it consists of hexagonal crystals, and is called by the inhabitants "sand-snow." The French and Spanish mathematicians, Bouguer, La Condamine, and Ulloa, in their story of ascending Pichincha, give a long and dreadful account of their sufferings from cold and rarefied air: "whilst eating, every one was obliged to keep his plate over a chafing-dish of coals, to prevent his food from freezing." The traveler nowadays finds only a chilling wind. This rise of temperature, coupled with the fact that La Condamine (1745), Humboldt (1802), Boussingault (1831), and Wisse (1863) give to Quito a decreasing altitude, inclines us to believe, with Boussingault, that the Andes are sinking. Since the activity of the volcano in 1868, the summit has been so warm that the snow has totally disappeared. Ice-cream has in consequence risen in price in Quito, as snow must be brought from Sincholagua, four days' journey.]

The first to reach the brink of the crater were the French Academicians in 1742. Sixty years after, Humboldt stood on the summit. But it was not till 1844 that any one dared to enter the crater. This was accomplished by Garcia Moreno, now President of Ecuador, and Sebastian Wisse, a French engineer. Humboldt pronounced the bottom of the crater "inaccessible, from its great depth and precipitous descent." We found it accessible, but exceedingly perilous. The moment we prepared to descend our guide ran away. We went on without him, but when halfway down were stopped by a precipice.

On the 22d of October, 1867, we returned to Pichincha with another guide, and entered the crater by a different route. Manuel, our Indian, led us to the south side, and over the brink we went. We were not long in realizing the danger of the undertaking. Here the snow concealed an ugly fissure or covered a treacherous rock (for nearly all the rocks are crumbling); there we must cross a mass of loose sand moving like a glacier down the almost vertical side of the crater; and on every hand rocks were giving way, and, gathering momentum at each revolution, went thundering down, leaping over precipices, and jostling other rocks, which joined in the race, till they all struck the bottom with a deep rumbling sound, shivered like so many bombshells into a thousand pieces, and telling us what would be our fate it we made a single misstep. We followed our Indian in single file, keeping close together, that the stones set free by those in the rear might not dash those below from their feet; feeling our way with the greatest caution, clinging with our hands to snow, sand, rock, tufts of grass, or any thing that would hold for a moment; now leaping over a chasm, now letting ourselves down from rock to rock; at times paralyzed with fear, and always with death staring us in the face; thus we scrambled for two hours and a half, till we reached the bottom of the crater.

Here we found a deeply-furrowed plain, strewn with ragged rocks, and containing a few patches of vegetation, with half a dozen species of flowers. In the centre is an irregular heap of stones, two hundred and sixty feet high by eight hundred in diameter. This is the cone of eruption—its sides and summit covered with an imposing group of vents, seventy in number, all lined with sulphur and exhaling steam, black smoke, and sulphurous gas. The temperature of the vapor just within the fumarole is 184 deg., water boiling beside it at 189 deg.. The central vent, or chimney, gives forth a sound like the violent bubbling of boiling water. As we sat on this fiery mount, surrounded by a circular rampart of rocks, and looked up at the immense towers of dark dolerite which ran up almost vertically to the height of twenty-five hundred feet above us, musing over the tremendous force which fashioned this awful amphitheatre—spacious enough for all the gods of Tartarus to hold high carnival—the clouds which hung in the thin air around the crest of the crater pealed forth thunder after thunder, which, reverberating from precipice to precipice, were answered by the crash of rocks let loose by the storm, till the whole mountain seemed to tremble like a leaf. Such acoustics, mingled with the flash of lightning and the smell of brimstone, made us believe that we had fairly got into the realm of Pluto. It is the spot where Dante's Inferno ought to be read.

Finishing our observations, and warming our dinner over the steaming crevices, we prepared to ascend. The escape from this horrid hole was more perilous than the entrance, and on reaching the top we sang, with grateful hearts, to the tune of "Old Hundred,"

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."

We doubt whether that famous tune and glorious doxology were ever sung so near to heaven.

The second line,

"Praise him all creatures here below,"

had a strange meaning fifteen thousand feet high.

There have been five eruptions of Pichincha since the Conquest. The last was in 1660; that of 1566 covered Quito three feet deep with ashes and stones, while boiling water and bitumen descended in torrents. In 1867 the column of smoke did not rise above the crest of the crater, but the volcano has lately been showing signs of activity, such as it has not exhibited since the last grand eruption two centuries ago. On the 19th of March, 1868, detonations were audible at Quito, and three days after there were more thunderings, with a great column of vapor visible from Chillo, twelve miles to the east. These phenomena were accompanied by an unusual fall of rain. Since the great earthquake of August 16th, Pichincha has continued to send forth dense columns of black smoke, and so much fine sand that it is not possible to reach the crater. The solid products of Pichincha since the Conquest have been chiefly pumice, coarse-grained and granular trachyte, and reddish porphyroid trachyte. The roads leading to Quito cut through hills of pumice-dust. On the plain of Inaquito and in the valley of Esmeraldas are vast erratic blocks of trachyte, some containing twenty-five cubic yards, having sharp angles, and in some cases a polished, unstriated surface. M. Wisse does not consider them to have been thrown out of Pichincha, as La Condamine and others have judged. It is true, as he says, that they could not have come out of the present cone at a less angle than 45 deg., for they would have hit the sides of the high rocky rampart and rolled back again; and at a higher angle they would not have reached their present location. But we see no reason why they could not be the upper portion of the solid trachyte cone blown into the air at the great eruption which cleared out this enormous crater. There is a rumipamba, or "field of stones," around each of the Quitonian volcanoes.

Leaving Pichincha, we travel northward along the battlemented Andes, passing by the conical mountains of Yana-urcu and Cotocachi. Yana-urcu, or "black mountain," is a mass of calcined rocks. Cotocachi (from cota? and cachi, salt) is always snow-clad. On its side is Cuycocha, one of the highest lakes in the world (10,200 feet), and formed by the subsidence of a part of the volcano.



CHAPTER IX.

The Volcanoes of Ecuador.—Eastern Cordillera.—Imbabura.—Cayambi.—Antisana.—Cotopaxi.—Llanganati. —Tunguragua.—Altar.—Sangai.

Near the once busy city of Otovalo, utterly destroyed in the late earthquake, the two Cordilleras join, and, turning to the right, we go down the eastern range. The first in order is Imbabura,[77] which poured forth a large quantity of mud, with thousands of fishes, seven years before the similar eruption of Caraguairazo. At its feet is the beautiful lake of San Pablo, five miles in circumference, and very deep. It contains the little black fish (Pimelodes cyclopum) already referred to as the only species in the valley, and the same that was cast out by Imbabura and Caraguairazo. Next comes the square-topped Cayambi—the loftiest mountain in this Cordillera, being nineteen thousand five hundred feet. It stands exactly on the equator, a colossal monument placed by the hand of Nature to mark the grand division of the globe. It is the only snowy spot, says Humboldt, which is crossed by the equator. Beautiful is the view of Cayambi from Quito, as its enormous mass of snow and ice glows with crimson splendor in the farewell rays of the setting sun. No painter's brush could do justice to the prismatic tints which hover around the higher peaks. But this flood of glory is soon followed by the pure whiteness of death. "Like a gigantic ghost shrouded in sepulchral sheets, the mountain now hovers in the background of the landscape, towering ghastly through the twilight until darkness closes upon the scene."

[Footnote 77: From imba (fish), and bura, to produce. Its name can not be older than 1691, unless the mountain made similar eruptions before. It has frequently ejected water.]

Ten miles farther south is the bare-headed Guamani range, over which passes the road to the wild Napo country.[78] The view from the crest is magnificent; but, like every grand panorama, eludes description. As we look eastward over the beginnings of the mighty forest which stretches unbroken to the Atlantic, the vast ridges, trending north and south, and decreasing in height as they increase in distance, seem like the waves of a great ocean rolling toward the mountains.

[Footnote 78: The culminating point of Guamani is Sara-urcu, a volcano which threw out a vast quantity of ashes in 1843 and 1856.]

Near by stands Antisana in his snowy robe. This volcano ranks next to Chimborazo in dignity. It has a double dome, and an elevation of 19,000 feet. Snow of Dian purity covers it for over 3000 feet; but, judging from the enormous streams of lava on its sides, it must have been a fierce volcano in ages past. The lava streams are worthy of the great mountain from which they flowed. One of them (called "Volcan d'Ansango") is ten miles long and five hundred feet deep, with an average slope of 15 deg.. It is a magnificent sight, as seen from the surrounding paramo—a stream of dark, ragged rocks coming down out of the clouds and snows which cover the summit. The representative products of Antisana are a black, cellular, vitreous trachyte, a fine-grained, tough porphyroid trachyte, and a coarse reddish porphyroid trachyte. An eruption, as late as 1590, is recorded in Johnston's Phys. Atlas. Humboldt saw smoke issuing from several openings in March, 1802.

We ascended this volcano to the height of sixteen thousand feet. On its side is the celebrated hacienda of Antisana, which, more than sixty years ago, sheltered the great Humboldt from the sleet and rain and blast of this lofty region. It was a welcome refuge to us, for we had well nigh perished with cold on the dreary paramo. It is one of the highest human habitations in the world, being thirteen thousand three hundred feet above the sea, or a thousand feet higher than the Peak of Teneriffe.[79] The mean temperature is the same as that of Quebec, so that thirteen thousand feet in elevation at the equator is equal to 47 deg. in latitude.[80] Here is an extensive corral, inclosing thousands of cattle, owned by a rheumatic old gentleman, Senor Valdevieso, who supplies the beef-market of Quito.[81] A desire for beef has alone brought man and his beast to this chilly altitude. It is difficult to get a quart of milk, and impossible to find a pound of butter at this hacienda. The predominant colors of the cattle are red and black. They feed on the wild paramo grass, and the beef is not only remarkably cheap, but superior in quality. The lasso is used in catching the animals, but not so skillfully as by the Gauchos of Rio Plata. It is a singular fact that cattle have followed men over the whole earth, from the coast of Africa to the highlands of Antisana. The same species is attacked by crocodiles and condors.

[Footnote 79: M. d'Abbadie professes to have visited a village in Abyssinia (Arquiage) which is 12,450 feet above the sea. Potosi stands 13,500 feet.]

[Footnote 80: This agrees with Humboldt's calculation that a difference of elevation of 278 feet produces the same effect on the annual temperature as a change of one degree of latitude. According to the experiments of Captain Pullen, the minimum temperature of the great depths of the ocean 35 deg., and it commences soon after passing 12,000 feet.]

[Footnote 81: The great depots of cattle in Ecuador are at the two extremes of elevation, the lowlands of St. Elena and the highlands of Antisana. On the slope of Cayambi is another extensive cattle estate.]

The atmospheric pressure is here so small that they frequently bleed at the nose and mouth when hunted. We have already given our experience in ascending high altitudes. We may add that while the pulse of Boussingault beat 106 pulsations at the height of 18,600 feet on Chimborazo, ours was 87 at 16,000 feet on Antisana. De Saussure says that a draught of liquor which would inebriate in the lowlands no longer has that effect on Mont Blanc. This appears to be true on the Andes; indeed, there is very little drunkenness in Quito. So the higher we perch our inebriate asylums, the better for the patients.

Near the hacienda is a little lake called Mica, on which we found a species of grebe, with wings so short it could not fly. Its legs, also, seem fitted only for paddling, and it goes ashore only to lay its eggs. It peeps like a gosling. Associated with them were penguins (in appearance); they were so shy we could not secure one. The query is, How came they there? Was this a centre of creation, or were the fowls upheaved with the Andes? They could not have flown or walked to this lofty lake, and there are no water-courses leading to it; it is surrounded with a dry, rolling waste, where only the condor lives. We turn to Darwin for an answer.[82]

[Footnote 82: The grebe is considered by Messrs. Cassin and Lawrence to be the Podiceps occipitalis, Lisson (P. calipareus et Chilensis of Garnot), which occurs in large flocks on the coast of Chile and in the Straits of Magellan. It is quite different from the P. micropterus of Lake Titicaca. At Morococha, Peru, 15,600 feet above the sea, Herndon found snipes and ducks.]

The ragged Sincholagua[83] and romantic Ruminagui follow Antisana, and then we find ourselves looking up at the most beautiful and most terrible of volcanoes. This is the far-famed Cotopaxi, or more properly Cutu-pacsi, meaning "a brilliant mass." Humboldt calls it the most regular and most picturesque of volcanic cones. It looks like a huge truncated cone rising out of the Valley of Quito, its sides deeply furrowed by the rivers of mud and water which have so often flowed out. The cone itself is about six thousand feet high. The east side is covered with snow, but the west is nearly bare, owing to the trade winds, which, sweeping across the continent, carry the ashes westward. Cotopaxi is the loftiest of active volcanoes, though its grand eruptions are a century apart, according to the general rule that the higher a volcano the less frequent its eruptions, but all the more terrible when they do occur. Imagine Vesuvius on the summit of Mont Blanc, and you have the altitude of Cotopaxi.

[Footnote 83: In Brigham's Notes on the Volcanic Phenomena of the Hawaiian Islands, this volcano is put down as active, but there has been no eruption in the memory of man. Its lithology is represented in our collection by porous, gray, granular trachyte, fine-grained, compact trachyte, and dark porphyroid trachyte. The derivation of Sincholagua is unknown, Ruminagui means the face of a rock, Cotopaxi, Sincholagua, and Ruminagui, and Cotopaxi, Pichincha, and Guamani, form equilateral triangles.]

The top just reaches the middle point of density in the atmosphere, for at the height of three miles and a half the air below will balance that above. The crater has never been seen by man; the steepness of the sides and the depth of the ashes covering them render it inaccessible. The valiant Col. Hall tried it with scaling ladders, only to fail. The telescope reveals a parapet of scoria on the brim, as on Teneriffe. Humboldt's sketch of the volcano, so universally copied, is overdrawn. It makes the slope about 50 deg., while in truth it is nearer 30 deg.. The apical angle is 122 deg. 30'.[84]

[Footnote 84: MM. Zurcher and Margalli make the slope 55 deg.! and Guzman, 69 deg. 30'!! The slope of Mauna Loa is 6 deg. 30'; of Etna, 9 deg.; of Teneriffe, 12 deg. 30'; of Vesuvius, 35 deg.. While cinder-cones may have an angle of 40 deg., lava-cones seldom exceed 10 deg..]

Cotopaxi is slumbering now; or, as Mr. Coan says of Hilo, it is "in a state of solemn and thoughtful suspense." The only signs of life are the deep rumbling thunders and a cloud of smoke lazily issuing from the crater.[85] Sometimes at night the smoke looks like a pillar of fire, and fine ashes and sand often fall around the base, to the great annoyance of the farmers. On the south side is a huge rock of porphyry, called the Inca's Head. Tradition has it that this was the original summit of the volcano, torn off and hurled down by an eruption on the very day Atahuallpa was murdered by Pizarro. The last great eruption occurred in 1803, though so late as 1855 it tossed out stones, water, and sand. Heaps of ruins, piled up during the lapse of ages, are scattered for miles around the mountain, among them great boulders twenty feet square. In one place (Quinchevar) the accumulation is 600 feet deep. Between Cotopaxi and Sincholagua are numerous conical hills covering the paramo, reminding one of the mud volcanoes of Jorullo.

[Footnote 85: Even this has now (August, 1869) ceased, save an occasional grumble, and the Tacungans are trembling with fear of another eruption.]

Pumice and trachyte are the most common rocks around this mountain, and these are augitic or porphyroid. Obsidian also occurs, though not on the immediate flank, but farther down near Chillo. In plowing, thousands of pieces as large as "flints" are turned up. The natives know nothing about their origin or use; the large specimens were anciently polished and used for mirror. But Cotopaxi is the great pumice-producing volcano. The new road up the valley cuts through a lofty hill formed by the successive eruptions; the section, presenting alternate layers of mud, ashes, and pumice, is a written history of the volcano.[86] The cone itself is evidently composed of similar beds super-imposed, and holding fragments of porphyry and trachyte. What is Vesuvius, four thousand feet high, to Cotopaxi, belching forth fire from a crater fifteen thousand feet higher, and shooting its contents three thousand feet above its snow-bound summit, with a voice of thunder heard six hundred miles!

[Footnote 86: Compare the following sections:

COTOPAXI (near Tiupullo). Soil 1 ft. 0 in. Fine yellow pumice 5 " 0 " Compact black ashes, with seams of pumice 10 " 0 " Fine yellow pumice 1 " 6 " Compact black ashes 12 " 0 " Fine yellow pumice 2 " 0 " Compact black ashes, with seams of pumice.

VESUVIUS (at Pompeii). Soil 3 ft. 0 in. Brown incoherent tuff 1 " 6 " Small scoriae and white lapilli 0 " 3 " Brown earthy tuff 4 " 9 " Whitish lapilli 0 " 1 " Gray solid tuff 0 " 3 " Pumice and white lapilli 0 " 3 "

]

Leaving this terrible "safety-valve" to the imprisoned fires under our feet, we travel along the wooded flanks and savage valleys of the Llanganati Mountains, whose lofty blue ridge is here and there pointed with snow.[87] It is universally believed that the Incas buried an immense quantity of gold in an artificial lake on the sides of this mountain during the Spanish invasion, and many an adventurous expedition has been made for it. The inhabitants will tell you of one Valverde, a Spaniard, who, from being very poor, had suddenly become very rich, which was attributed to his having married an Indian girl whose father showed him where the treasure was hidden, and accompanied him on various occasions to bring away portions of it; and that Valverde returned to Spain, and on his death-bed bequeathed the secret of his riches to the king. But since Padre Longo suddenly disappeared while leading an expedition, the timid Ecuadorians have been content with their poverty.[88]

[Footnote 87: Immediately south of Cotopaxi, the Cordillera consists of paramos sown with lakes and morasses, and is rarely covered with snow. Llanganati is probably from llanga, to touch: they touch the sources of nearly all the Ecuadorian rivers.]

[Footnote 88: The story is doubtless due to the fact that the eastern streams, which issue from the foot of this cordillera, are auriferous.]

And now we have reached the perfect cone of Tunguragua, the rival of Cotopaxi in symmetry and beauty.[89] It stands 16,500 feet above the Pacific, its upper part covered with a splendid robe of snow, while the sugar-cane grows in the romantic town of Banos, 10,000 feet below the summit. A cataract, 1500 feet high, comes down at three bounds from the edge of the snow to the warm valley beneath; and at Banos a hot ferruginous spring and a stream of ice-water flow out of the volcano side by side. Here, too, the fierce youth of the Pastassa, born on the pumice slopes of Cotopaxi, dashes through a deep tortuous chasm and down a precipice in hot haste, as if conscious of the long distance before it ere it reaches the Amazon and the ocean. Tunguragua was once a formidable mountain, for we discovered a great stream of lava reaching from the clouds around the summit to the orange-groves in the valley, and blocking up the rivers which tumble over it in beautiful cascades. It has been silent since 1780; but it can afford to rest, for then its activity lasted seven years.[90]

[Footnote 89: From Tunguri, the ankle-joint, alluding to its apical angle. It is a little steeper than Cotopaxi, having a slope of 38 deg..]

[Footnote 90: Spruce asserts that he saw smoke issuing from the western edge in 1857; and Dr. Terry says that in 1832 smoke ascended almost always from the summit. Dr. Taylor, of Riobamba, informs the writer that smoke is now almost constantly visible. The characteristic rock is a black vitreous trachyte resembling pitchstone, but anhydrous.]

Close by rises beautiful Altar, a thousand feet higher. The Indians call it Capac-urcu, or the "Chief." They say it once overtopped Chimborazo; but, after a violent eruption, which continued eight years, the walls fell in. Its craggy crest is still more Alpine than Caraguairazo; eight snowy peaks shoot up like needles into the sky, and surround an altar to whose elevated purity no mortal offering will ever attain. The trachyte which once formed the summit of this mountain is now spread in fragments over the plain of Riobamba.

Leaving this broken-down volcano, but still the most picturesque in the Andes, we travel over the rough and rugged range of Cubillin, till our attention is arrested by terrific explosions like a naval broadside, and a column of smoke that seems to come from the furnace of the Cyclops. It is Sangai, the most active volcano on the globe. From its unapproachable crater, three miles high, it sends forth a constant stream of fire, water, mud, and ashes.[91]

[Footnote 91: La Condamine (1742) adds "sulphur and bitumen."]

No intermission has been noticed since the Spaniards first saw it three hundred years ago. Stromboli is the only volcano that will compare with it. Its ashes are almost always falling on the city of Guayaquil, one hundred miles distant, and its explosions, generally occurring every hour or two, are sometimes heard in that city. Wisse, in 1849, counted 267 explosions in one hour.

We have now completed the series. What an array of snow-clad peaks wall in the narrow Valley of Quito—Nature's Gothic spires to this her glorious temple! If ever there was a time when all these volcanoes were active in concert, this secluded vale must have witnessed the most splendid pyrotechnics conceivable. Imagine fifty mountains as high as Etna, three of them with smoking craters, standing along the road between New York and Washington, and you will have some idea of the ride down this gigantic colonnade from Quito to Riobamba. If, as Ruskin says, the elements of beauty are in proportion to the increase of mountainous character, Ecuador is artistically beautiful to a high degree.

Here, amid these Plutonic peaks, are the energies of volcanic action best studied. The constancy of the volcanic fires is a striking fact. First we have the deluges of submarine lavas, which were poured out long before the Andes lifted their heads above the waters; then alternate porphyritic strata, feldspathic streams, and gypseous exhalations; then, at a later day, floods of basaltic lava; next the old tertiary eruptions; and, lastly, the vast accumulations of boulders, gravel, ashes, pumice, and mud of the present day, spread over the Valley of Quito and the west slope of the Cordilleras to an unknown depth beneath the sea. The incessant eruptions of Sangai, and the frequent earthquakes, show that the subterranean energy which heaved the Andes is not yet expended.



CHAPTER X.

The Valley of Quito.—Riobamba.—A Bed of "Fossil Giants."—Chillo Hacienda.—Otovalo and Ibarra.—The Great Earthquake of 1868.

The Valley of Quito has about the same size and shape as the basin of Salt Lake, but it is five thousand feet higher.[92] The two cordilleras inclosing it are tied by the mountain-knots of Assuay and Chisinchi, so that the valley is subdivided into three basins, those of Cuenca, Ambato, and Quito proper, which increase in beauty and altitude as we travel north. There are several subordinate transversal dikes and some longitudinal ridges, but all the basins lie parallel to the axes of the cordilleras—a characteristic feature of the Andes. The deep valleys on the outside flanks are evidently valleys of erosion, but the basins between the cordilleras were created with them.

[Footnote 92: Compare the table-lands in the Old World:

Thibet 11,500 feet. South Africa 6,000 " Mysore (India) 2,880 " Spain 2,240 " Bavaria 1,770 "

]

The first is fifty miles long. It contains the cities of Loja and Cuenca,[93] the former distinguished for its cinchona forests, the latter for Inca graves and mines of precious metals. The middle basin (130 miles in length) is covered with vast quantities of volcanic debris, the outpourings of Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, and Altar, on one side, and of Chimborazo and Caraguairazo on the other. Nothing relieves the barrenness of the landscape but hedges of century plant, cactus, and wild heliotrope, which border the roads. Whirlwinds of sand are often seen moving over the plain. The mean temperature is 61 deg..5. Here exist, we can not say thrive, the cities of Riobamba, Ambato, and Tacunga, already noticed. Riobamba,[94] properly Rayobamba, the plain of lightning, was founded at the beginning of this century, or shortly after the destruction of the old city. Excepting the ecclesiastical buildings, the houses are of one story, built of stone plastered with mud, sometimes of adobe or bamboo, and the windows are grated like those of a prison. As in all Spanish-American towns, the main church fronts the great Plaza where the weekly fairs are held. Save on fair-day, the city is lifeless. Nothing is exported to the coast except a few eggs and fowls, lard and potatoes. Such is the power of habit, an Indian will take a hen to Bodegas and sell it for four reals (50 cents) when he could get three for it in Riobamba, and six on the road. Another instance of this dogged adherence to custom was related to us by Dr. Taylor: The Indians were accustomed to bring the curate of a certain village a bundle of alfalfa every day. A new curate, having no use for so much, ordered them not to bring any more. He was besieged by five hundred of his wild parishioners, and had he not been a powerful man, they would have killed him. They told him they were accustomed to bring the curate that much of alfalfa, and should continue.

[Footnote 93: The altitude of Loja is 6768 feet; of Cuenca, 8640 feet.]

[Footnote 94: According to Villavicencio, Rio (or Rie) is Quichua for road; bamba is plain.]

Old Riobamba (Cajabamba) is situated twelve miles to the west. This has been the scene of some of the most terrible paroxysms that over shook the Andes. In 1797 a part of Mount Cicalfa was thrown down, crushing the city at its foot; hills arose where valleys existed; rivers disappeared, and others took their places; and the very site of the city was rent asunder. The surviving inhabitants could not tell where their houses had stood, and property was so mingled that litigation followed the earthquake. Judging from the numerous sculptured columns lying broken and prostrate throughout the valley, the city must have had a magnificence now unknown in Ecuador. Around a coat of arms (evidently Spanish) we read these words: Malo mori quam fedari, "I would rather die than be disgraced." In the spring of 1868 another convulsion caused a lake to disappear and a mountain to take its place.

Near Punin, seven miles southwest of Riobamba, we discovered in a deep ravine numerous fossil bones, belonging chiefly to the mastodon, and extinct species of the horse, deer, and llama. They were imbedded in the middle of an unstratified cliff, four hundred feet high, of very compact silt or trachytic clay, free from stones, and resting on a hard quartzoze sandstone. In the bed of the stream which runs through the ravine (charged with nitrate of soda) are some igneous rocks. The bones were drifted to this spot and deposited (many of them in a broken state) in horizontal layers along with recent shells. We have, then, this remarkable fact, that this high valley was tenanted by elephantine quadrupeds, all of which passed away before the arrival of the human species, and yet while the land, and probably the sea also, were peopled with their present molluscan inhabitants. This confirms the statement of Mr. Lyell, that the longevity of mammalian species is much inferior to that of the testacea. It is interesting to speculate on the probable climate and the character of the vegetation in this high valley when these extinct mammifers lived. The great pachyderm would have no difficulty in thriving at the present day at Quito, on the score of temperature or altitude. The mammoth once flourished in Siberia; and Gibbon met an elephant on the high table-lands of Bolivia that had walked over the Cordillera at the pass of Antarangua, sixteen thousand feet above the sea. Darwin thinks that the climate of the Cordilleras has changed since the pleistocene period. "It is a marvelous fact in the history of mammalia (says this naturalist) that in South America a native horse should have lived and disappeared, to be succeeded in after ages by the countless herds descended from the few introduced with the Spanish colonists."

The high ridge of Chisinchi, stretching across the great plateau from Cotopaxi to Iliniza, separates the evergreen Valley of Quito from the arid and melancholy valleys of Cuenca and Ambato. It rolls out like a rich carpet of emerald verdure between the towering mountains of Pichincha and Antisana, Cotacachi and Cayambi. This was the centre of the most ancient native civilization after that of Titicaca. Here, while the darkness of the Middle Ages was settling over Europe, dwelt the Quitus, whose origin is lost in the mists of fable. Then, while Peter the Hermit was leading his fanatic host against the Saracens, the Cara nation waged a more successful crusade, and supplanted the Quitus. Here, too, in the bloody days of Pizarro, reigned, and was buried, the last of the Incas, ill-fated Atahuallpa. To him, indeed, it was a more delightful spot than the vale of Vilcamayu—the paradise of Peru.

The Puengasi Hills, running through the valley from north to south, partially divide the capital and its vicinity from the charming Valley of Chillo, spread out at the foot of Antisana. Here is the venerable hacienda of Chillo, where Humboldt and Bonpland resided for some time. It is owned by the Aguirres, who are grand-nephews of Don Carlos Montufar, the companion of the famous travelers. The hacienda contains two valuable paintings—an original "Crucifixion" by Titian, and a portrait of the great German from life, as he appeared in 1803. This latter relic interested us exceedingly, and, through the kindness of Sr. Aguirre, we were allowed to photograph it. It represents Humboldt in his prime, a traveler on the Andes, dressed after the court-fashion of Berlin; very different from the usual portrait—an old man in his library, his head, thinly covered with gray hair, resting on his bosom.



Thirty miles north of Quito, near the volcanic Imbabura, is the ruined city of Otovalo, a thousand feet lower than the capital. It was well built, and contained 7000 inhabitants. Quichua was the prevailing language. Its chief trade was in saddles, ponchos, straw hats, and fruit. Here was the cotton factory, or quinta, of Sr. Pareja. Three miles from Otovalo was the enterprising Indian village of Cotocachi, at the mountain of the same name. It was noted for its hand-loom products. A heap of ruins now marks the locality. It is a doomed spot, suffering more than any other town in 1859.

Four miles northwest of Otovalo was the city of Ibarra, picturesquely seated on a plain 2000 feet lower than Quito, and surrounded with orchards and gardens. It numbered nearly 10,000 souls. It was not a commercial place, but the residence of landed proprietors. The neighborhood produced cotton, sugar, and fruit. A league distant was Carranqui, the birthplace of Atahuallpa. And, finally, the great valley fitly terminates in the plain of Atuntaqui,[95] where the decisive battle was fought which ushered in the reign of the Incas.



[Footnote 95: Atuntaqui received its name from the big drum which was kept here in the days of Huayna-Capac, to give the war-signal.]

This northern province of Imbabura was the focus of the late terrible earthquake. At half past one on Sunday morning, August 16, 1868, with scarcely a premonitory sign (save a slight trembling at 3 P.M. the previous day), there was an upheaving of the ground, and then one tremendous shock and rocking of the earth, lasting one minute. In that brief moment the rich and flourishing province became a wilderness, and "Misericordia!" went up, like tho sound of many waters, from ten villages and cities. Otovalo, Ibarra, Cotocachi, and Atantaqui are heaps of ruins. At Otovalo 6000 perished. After the first shock, not a wall a yard high remained. Houses, in some instances, seemed to have been cut from their foundation, and thrown ten feet distant. The large stone fountain in the Plaza was thrown many yards. The cotton factory, which was built on the edge of a ravine, was by one stroke reduced to fragments. Such was the force of the concussion, the looms smashed each other, the carding-machines were thrown on their sides, and the roof, with part of the machinery, was found in the river below. The proprietor was killed. Throughout this whole region roads were broken up, and vast chasms created crossing the country in all directions. One is 2000 yards long, 500 yards broad, and 80 yards deep. Large fissures were opened on the sides of Cotocachi and Imbabura, from which issued immense torrents of water, mud, and bituminous substances, carrying away and drowning hundreds of cattle. A caravan of mules going to Chillo with cotton-bales was found four days after grazing on a narrow strip of land, on each side of which was a fearful chasm, while the muleteers were killed.

At Quito comparatively little damage was done. Fifteen lives were lost, and the churches, convents, and many private houses are in a state of dilapidation. Domes and arches, which are much used because of the scarcity of timber, were first to fall.

In the fierceness of the shock, and the extent of the territory shaken, the earthquake of August, 1868, is without a parallel in the New World. The destruction of life (50,000 officially reported in Ecuador alone) has not been equaled in any other earthquake during this century. The tremor was felt over four republics, and from the Andes to the Sandwich Islands. The water-wave was felt on the coast of New Zealand sixteen hours after it had set a United States gunboat, on the sand-hills of Arica. In some respects it is surpassed only by the Lisbon earthquake, which reached from Sweden to the West Indies, and from Barbary to Scotland. The loss of property seems to have been greatest in Peru, and the loss of life greatest in Ecuador. The commotion seemed to be most violent along the Western Cordillera, though it was felt even on the Napo.

There are few places where the crust of our planet is long at rest. Brazil, Egypt, Russia, and Greenland are comparatively free from earthquakes. But had we delicate instruments scattered throughout the world, upheaval and subsidence would doubtless be detected in every part of the so-called terra firma. The sea, and not the land, is the true image of stability.

"Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."

Earthquakes have occurred in every period of geological history, and are independent of latitude. The first well-known earthquake came in the year 63, and shattered Pompeii and Herculaneum sixteen years before they were overwhelmed by the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius. The most celebrated earthquake, and perhaps the most terrible manifestation of force during the human period, was in 1755. The shock, which seemed to originate in the bed of the Atlantic, pervaded one twelfth of the earth's surface. Unhappy Lisbon stood in its path.

An earthquake is a vertical vibration, having an undulatory progression. An example of the simple bounding movement occurred in 1797, when the city of Riobamba, in the Quito Valley, was buried under part of a mountain shaken down by the violent concussion, and men were tossed several hundred feet. We saw one massive structure which had nearly turned a somersault. The ordinary vibrations seldom exceed two feet in height. The wave-movement has a rate of from twenty to thirty miles a minute, depending on the elasticity of the rock and the elevations on the surface. When two undulations cross each other, a rotatory or twisting motion is produced. The waves are generally transmitted along the lines of primary mountain chains, which are doubtless seated on a fracture. The Lisbon waves moved from southwest to northeast, or parallel to the mountain system of the Old World; those of the United States, in 1843, ran parallel to the volcanic chain in Mexico. In South America they roll along the Andes. That of 1797 left its tracks along a westerly line from Tunguragua through Pelileo and Guano. It is a little singular, that while the late trembling at Quito seemed to come from the north, the great shock in Peru preceded that in Ecuador by three days. Though the origin of earthquakes is deep-seated, the oscillation is mostly superficial, as deep mines are little disturbed. The most damage is done where the sedimentary plains abut against the hard, upturned strata of the mountains. The shock is usually brief. That of Caracas lasted fifty seconds, that of Lisbon six minutes; but Humboldt witnessed one in South America which continued a quarter of an hour.

Several hypotheses have been advanced to account for earthquakes. Rogers ascribes them to billowy pulsations in the molten matter upon which the flexible crust of the earth floats. Mallet thinks they may be viewed as an uncompleted effort to establish a volcano. Dana holds that they are occasioned by the folding up of the rocks in the slow process of cooling and consequent contraction of the earth's crust. In this process there would occur enormous fractures to relieve the tension; tilted strata would slip, and caverns give way. All this no doubt takes place; but the sudden, paroxysmal heavings incline us to refer the cause to the same eruptive impulse which makes Vesuvius and Cotopaxi discharge pent-up subterranean vapor and gas. The most destructive earthquakes occur when the overlying rocks do not break and give vent to the imprisoned gas. There is some connection between volcanoes and earthquakes; the former are, to a certain extent, "safety-valves." The column of smoke from the volcano of Pasto suddenly disappeared just before the great earthquake at Riobamba. In the spring of 1868 Pichincha and Cotopaxi showed signs of increasing activity, but in the summer became quiet again. Cotocachi and Sangai, 200 miles apart, were awaked simultaneously; the former, silent for centuries, sent forth dense masses of earth and volcanic matter to a distance of many miles, covering thousands of acres; the latter thundered every half hour instead of hourly, as before. Still, the greatest earthquakes do not occur in the vicinity of active volcanoes. Lisbon and Lima (where, on an average, forty-five shocks occur annually, and two fearful ones in a century) are far distant from any volcanic vent; likewise Northern India, South Africa, Scotland, and the United States.

An earthquake is beyond the reach of calculation. Professor Perrey, of Dijon, France, is endeavoring to prove that there is a periodicity in earthquakes, synchronous with that in the tides of the ocean, the greatest number occurring at the time of new and full moon.[96] If this theory be sustained, we must admit the existence of a vast subterranean sea of lava. But all this is problematical. Earthquakes appear independently of the geology of a country, though the rate of undulation is modified by the mineral structure. Earthquake waves seem to move more rapidly through the comparatively undisturbed beds of the Mississippi Valley than through the contorted strata of Europe. Meteorology is unable to indicate a coming earthquake, for there is no sure prophecy in sultry weather, sirocco wind, and leaden sky. The Lisbon shock came without a warning. Sudden changes of the weather, however, often occur after an earthquake. Since the great convulsion of 1797 the climate of the Valley of Quito is said to be much colder. A heavy rain often follows a violent earthquake in Peru.

[Footnote 96: Professor Quinby, of the University of Rochester, has, at our request, calculated the position of the moon at the late earthquake: "August 16th, 1868, 1 A.M., the moon was on meridian 137 deg. 21' east of that of Quito, or 42 deg. 30' past the lower meridian of Quito, assuming the longitude of Quito west of Greenwich to be 79 deg., which it is very nearly. This is but little after the vertex of the tidal wave should have passed the meridian of Quito, on the supposition that the interior of the earth is a liquid mass. The age of the moon at that time was 27.36 days, i.e., it was only about two days before new moon." At the time of the earthquake, 8 A.M., March 22, 1859, the moon was on meridian 25 deg. 48' east of that of Quito, and was 17.6 days old. Shocks have since occurred, March 20th at 3 A.M., and April 10th at 8 A.M., 1869.]

No amount of familiarity with earthquakes enables one to laugh during the shock, or even at the subterranean thunders which sound like the clanking of chains in the realm of Pluto. All animated nature is terror-stricken. The horse trembles in his stall; the cow moans a low, melancholy tune; the dog sends forth an unearthly yell; sparrows drop from the trees as if dead; crocodiles leave the trembling bed of the river and run with loud cries into the forest; and man himself becomes bewildered and loses all capacity. When the earth rocks beneath our feet (the motion resembling, in the words of Darwin, "that felt by a person skating over thin ice which bends under the weight of his body"), something besides giddiness is produced. We feel our utter insignificance in the presence of a mysterious power that shakes the Andes like a reed. But more: there is an awful sensation of insecurity. "A moment (says Humboldt) destroys the illusion of a whole life: our deceptive faith in the repose of nature vanishes, and we feel transported, as it were, into a region of unknown destructive forces." A judgment day seems impending, and each moment is an age when one stands on a world convulsed.



CHAPTER XI.

"The Province of the Orient," or the Wild Napo Country.—The Napos, Zaparos, and Jivaros Indians.—Preparations to cross the Continent.

On the eastern slope of the Ecuadorian Andes, between the Maranon and its tributary the Putumayo, lies the Napo country. This almost unknown region has the area of New York and New England together. The government of Quito, by a sonorous decree in 1854, baptized it "La Provincia del Oriente." Peru likewise claims it, but neither republic has done any thing to colonize it. A dense primeval forest, broken only by the rivers, covers the whole territory, and is the home of wild races untouched by civilization.[97] There is not a road in the whole province. A footpath, open only in the dry season, and barely passable then, connects Quito and the Rio Napo. Congress lately promised to put Canelos in communication with the capital; but the largest villages in this vast and fertile region—Archidona, Canelos, and Macas—still remain isolated from the outer world.[98] Ecuador once appointed a functionary under the high-sounding title of "Governor of the Orient," with a salary of $700; but now the Indians are not troubled with any higher official than an alcalde.

[Footnote 97: The boundary-line between Ecuador and Peru is about as indefinite as the eastern limit of Bolivia, Brazilians claiming "as far west as the cattle of the empire roam."]

[Footnote 98: Quito might be made more accessible on the Atlantic than on the Pacific side. But Ecuadorians dote on Guayaquil, and refuse to connect themselves directly with the great nations of the East. We believe there is a glorious future for Quito, when it will once more become a city of palaces. But it will not come until a road through the wilderness and a steamer on the Napo open a short communication with the wealth of Amazonia and the enterprise of Europe.]

The country is very thinly inhabited. The chief tribes are the semi-Christianized Napos (sometimes called Quijos), dwelling on the north bank of the Napo; the peaceful but uncivilized Zaparos, living between the Napo and Pastassa, and the warlike Jivaros, spread over the unexplored region between the Pastassa and Santiago.

These oriental tribes would probably be assigned by D'Orbigny to the Antisian branch of the Alpine races of South America. Dwelling amid the darkness of primeval forests, and on the gloomy banks of mountain torrents, they have acquired modifications of character, physical and moral, which distinguish them from the natives of the high and open regions, or the steaming lowlands of the Amazon. In color, however, they do not appear to us to be entitled to the name of "white men;" they approach nearer to the bronze complexion of the Quichuans than the yellow cast of the Brazilians. We see no evidence of that "bleaching process" resulting from a life under the dense canopy of foliage of which the learned French naturalist speaks, neither did we perceive the force of his statement that the color of the South American bears a very decided relation to the humidity of the atmosphere.

The features of the Napo Indians are Quichuan, especially the low forehead, squarely-built face, and dull expression; but in stature they exceed the mountaineers. From a skull in our possession we take the following measurements, adding for comparison the dimensions of an ancient Peruvian cranium in Dr. Morton's collection:

Napo. Peruvian.

Longitudinal diameter 6-1/2 in. 6.1 in. Parietal " 5-3/8 " 6. " Frontal " 4 " 4.7 " Vertical " 4-1/2 " 5.5 " Capacity 83-1/64 cub. in. 83 cub. in. Facial angle 70 deg. 81 deg.

From this it will be seen that the capacity of this individual Napo is 8 cubic inches greater than the average bulk (75 cubic inches) of the old Peruvians; a trifle less than the average North American (84); 10 cubic inches less than the European (94); and the same as the average Polynesian and native African. He has a rounded head, somewhat prominent vertex, not an excessive protuberance of brain behind—a line through the meatus dividing it into very nearly equal parts; but a narrow front as viewed from above, small vertical diameter, quadrangular orbits, vertical teeth, and low facial angle. These characters place him between the Toltecan and the more barbarous tribes of the New World.

The Napos are nominally subject to the Ecuadorian government, which is represented by three or four petty alcaldes; but the Jesuit missionaries, who have established a bishopric and three curacies, generally control affairs—spiritual, political, and commercial. The Indians of each village annually elect one of their number governor, who serves without salary, and whose only show of authority is a silver-headed cane about four feet long. He is attended by half a dozen "justices," whose duty it is to supply the curate, alcalde, and any traveling blanco who may happen to be in town with daily food at a reasonable rate.

The religion of the Napos is a mixture of Paganism and Christianity. In common with all the other orient tribes, they believe in good and evil principles, and in metempsychosis. They swear in the name of the devil. They bury their dead horizontally, in a coffin made of a part of a canoe, with a lid of bamboo. They are very kind to the aged. Monogamy is the rule: the usual age of wedlock is sixteen or seventeen. The parents negotiate the marriage, and the curate's fee is one castellano ($3.50). When a person dies they hold an Irish "wake" over the body, and then take the widow to the river and wash her. They have seven semi-religious feasts in a year. To us they appeared to be nothing more than meaningless drunken frolics. Attired in their best, with head-dresses consisting of a circlet of short, richly-colored feathers from the breast of the toucan, surmounted with the long tail-feathers of the macaw, and with necklaces of beads, seeds, and monkeys' teeth, they keep up a constant monotonous tapping on little drums, and trot around a circle like dogs on a treadmill, stopping only to drink chicha. This is kept up for three weeks, when they all start off, with wives and children, for the forest to hunt monkeys for meat.

Chicha, the favorite drink of all the Andean Indians, is here brewed from yuca, not from corn and barley as in the Quito Valley. So true is it, as Humboldt remarks, that almost every where man finds means of preparing some kind of beverage from the vegetable kingdom. The Chilotans, Darwin informs us, make chicha from a species of Bromelia. In every zone, too, we find nations in a low degree of civilization living almost exclusively upon a single animal or plant. Thus the Laplander has his reindeer, the Esquimaux his seal, the Sandwich Islander his tara-root, the Malay his sago-palm, the Napo Indian his yuca.

Yuca is the staple food in this region. It is more commonly roasted, but is sometimes ground into flour. The manufacture of chicha is primitive, and not a little disgusting. A "bee," usually old women, sit around a wooden trough; each one takes a mouthful of yuca root, and, masticating it, throws it into the trough. The mass is then transferred to large earthen jars containing water, and left to ferment. The liquor is slightly acid, but not intoxicating unless taken in excess. This is done on feast-days, when the poor Indian keeps his stomach so constantly distended for weeks that the abdominal protrusion is not only unsightly, but alarming to a stranger. Chicha-drinking is a part of the worship of these simple aborigines. They seem to think that the more happy they make themselves while paying their devotions to the Creator, the better he is satisfied. The Jesuits have found it impossible to change this method of praise. Here, as among all rude nations, an ancient custom is one half the religion. In eating meat (usually monkey, sea-cow, and peccari), we observed that they did not tear or bite it, but, putting one end of a long piece in the mouth, cut off what they could not get in, as Darwin noticed among the Fuegians. They keep no domestic animals except fowls.

As to dress, they make use of a coarse cotton cloth, called lienzo, woven by the more enlightened Indians of Quito, dyeing it a dull brown by means of achote juice. The men wear a strip of this around the loins, and the women a short skirt. On feast-days, or when musquitoes are thick, the men add a little poncho and pantaloons. They do not properly tattoo, but color the skin with achote or anatto. This substance, which serves so many purposes in this part of the world, is the red powder which covers the seeds contained in the prickly bur of the Bixa orellana. The pigment is an article of commerce on the Amazon, and is exported to Europe, where it is used for coloring butter, cheese, and varnish. They have no fixed pattern; each paints to suit his fancy. Usually, however, they draw horizontal bands from the month to the ears, and across the forehead; we never saw curved lines in which higher savages, like the Tahitians, tattoo.