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And now the Andes 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.

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 , afterward descending, moved over the inclined plane, and ground the loose rock to powder. 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.

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. 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.

Such are the characteristic features of South America; they are not repeated in any other continent. 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.

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, 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. 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!

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 , 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, 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.

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 Rumi?agua, however, the western wall is lowest, apparently broken down. 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 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.

There are fifty-one volcanoes in the Andean chain. Of these, twenty girdle the Valley of Quito, three active, five dormant, and twelve extinct. 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.

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."

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 Chamoun?, when, in reality, that culminating point of Europe would not reach up even to the snow-limit of Chimborazo by two thousand feet. 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?. One fourth of this is perpetually covered with snow, so that its ancient name, Chimpurazu--the mountain of snow--is very appropriate. 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 d?bris 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".

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. 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!

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 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 ; 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.

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.

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

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, 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 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."

Ten miles farther south is the bare-headed Guamani range, over which passes the road to the wild Napo country. 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.

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. The mean temperature is the same as that of Quebec, so that thirteen thousand feet in elevation at the equator is equal to 47? in latitude. Here is an extensive corral, inclosing thousands of cattle, owned by a rheumatic old gentleman, Se?or Valdevieso, who supplies the beef-market of Quito. 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.

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 ; 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.

The ragged Sincholagua and romantic Rumi?agui 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.

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?, while in truth it is nearer 30?. The apical angle is 122? 30'.

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. 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 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.

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. 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!

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. 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.

And now we have reached the perfect cone of Tunguragua, the rival of Cotopaxi in symmetry and beauty. 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 Ba?os, 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 Ba?os 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

The first is fifty miles long. It contains the cities of Loja and Cuenca, the former distinguished for its cinchona forests, the latter for Inca graves and mines of precious metals. The middle basin is covered with vast quantities of volcanic d?bris, 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?.5. Here exist, we can not say thrive, the cities of Riobamba, Ambato, and Tacunga, already noticed. Riobamba, 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 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.

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