TRUE VOLCANOES. 



north of Cancto, from the well-preserved, extinct crater 

 the Monte di Campo Bianco toward the sea, in which the 

 fibres of the former substance run, singularly enough, parallel 

 to the direction of the stream.* The extended pumice quar- 

 ries, four miles and a half from Lactacunga, present, accord- 

 ing to my investigation of the local conditions, an analogy 

 with this occurrence on Lipari. These quarries, in which 

 the pumice-stone, divided into horizontal beds, has exactly 

 the appearance of a rock in position, excited even the aston- 

 ishment of Bouguer in 1737-t " On volcanic mountains," 



bo unable to rise to geognostic combinations- I doubt the correctness 

 of this objection. The idea that a truncated cone, " in losing its 

 apex," may have thrown it off unbroken, as large blocks were thrown 

 out during subsequent eruptions, may present itself even to very un- 

 cultivated minds. The terraced pyramid of Cholula, a work of the 

 Tolteks, is truncated. The natives could not suppose that the pyra- 

 mid was not originally completed. They therefore invented the fable 

 that an aerolite, falling from heaven, destroyed the apex ; nay, por- 

 tions of the aerolite were shown to the Spanish conquerors. More- 

 over, how can we place the first eruption of the volcano of Cotopaxi 

 at a period when the ash-cone (the result of a series of eruptions) was 

 already in existence ? It seems probable to me that the Cabeza del 

 Inga was produced at the spot which it now occupies ; that it was up- 

 heaved there, like the Yana Urcu at the foot of Chimborazo, and like 

 the Moro on Cotopaxi itself, to the south of Suniguaica, and to the 

 northwest of the small lake Yurak-cocha (in the Qquechhua language, 

 the White Lake). 



With regard to the name of the Cotopaxi, I have stated in the first 

 volume of my Kkinere Schriftcn (s. 463) that only the first part of it 

 could be explained from the Qquechhua language, being the word 

 ccotto, heap or mass, but that pacsi was unknown. La Condamine 

 (p. 53) explains the whole name of the mountain, saying, " in the lan- 

 guage of the Incas the name signifies shining mass." Buschmann, 

 however, remarks that in this case pacsi is replaced by the word />acsa, 

 which is certainly quite different from it, and which signifies lustre, 

 brilliancy, especially the mild lustre of the moon ; to express ' ( shining 

 mass," moreover, in accordance with the spirit of the Qquechhua lan- 

 guage, the position of the two words would have to be reversed 

 pacsaccotto. 



* Fried. Hoffmann, in Poggendorff's Amialen, bd. xxvi., 1832, s. 48. 



t Bouguer, Figure de la Terre, p, Ixviii. How often, since the earth- 

 quake of the 19th July, 1698, has the little town of Lactacunga been 

 destroyed and rebuilt with blocks of pumice-stone from the subterra- 

 nean quarries of Zumbalica ! According to historical documents com- 

 municated to me during my sojourn in the country, from copies of the 

 old ones which have been destroyed, and from more recent original 

 documents partially preserved in the archives of the town, the destruc- 

 tions occurred in the years 1703 and 1736, on the 9th of December, 

 1742, 30th of November, 1744, 22d of February, 1757, 10th of Febru- 

 ary, 1766, and 4th of April, 1768 therefore seven times in 65 years! 

 In the year 1802 I found four fifths of the town still in ruins in conse- 



02 



