230 COTOPAXI. 



1768 the quantity of ashes sifted from it was so great, 

 that in the towns of Hambato and Taciinga, day broke 

 only at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the inhabit- 

 ants were obliged to use lanterns in the streets. 



The summit of Cotopaxi was one of the most beauti- 

 ful and regular of all the colossal summits of the Cor- 

 dilleras. It was a perfect cone, covered with an enormous 

 laj^er of snow, which at sunset shone with a dazzling 

 splendour, detaching itself picturesquely from the in- 

 tensely blue sky. This covering of snow concealed from 

 the eyes of the travellers the smallest inequalities of the 

 soil; no point of rock, no stony mass penetrated this 

 coat of ice, or broke the regularity of the figure of the 

 cone. Near the brink of the crater they saw a ledge of 

 rock which was never covered with snow, and which 

 looked like a series of belts of the darkest hue. The 

 cone was too steep here for the snow ever to lodge upon 

 it; besides, currents of heated air were continually 

 issuing from the crevices. The soul of Winter himself 

 would have shrunk into nothingness before these " blasts 

 from hell." 



The crater of Cotopaxi, like that of TeneriflPe, was sur- 

 rounded by a circular wall, which the travellers were 

 unable to scale ; for unlike the crater of Teneriffe it had 

 no opening. The lava which had poured over its horri- 

 ble brink had never yet made a breach in it. Indeed 

 they found it difficult to attain even the inferior boun- 

 dary of perpetual snow : so the}^ were reluctantly com- 

 pelled to descend. Humboldt made two sketches of the 

 volcano, one at Suniguaicu, from a ridge of porphyritic 

 mountains which joined Cotopaxi to the Nevada of 

 Quelendanna — a southern view of the crater, near the 



