ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 251 



in common with the language of the Incas, but should have de- 

 scended from a more remote antiquity? According to the generally 

 received tradition, it was not long before the arrival of the Spaniards 

 that the Inca or Quiehua language was introduced into the kingdom 

 of Quito, where the Puruay language, which has now entirely 

 perished, had previously prevailed. Other names of mountains, 

 Pichincha, Ilinissa, and Cotopaxi, have no signification at all in the 

 language of the Incas, and are therefore certainly older than the 

 introduction of the worship of the sun and the court language of the 

 rulers of Cuzco. In all parts of the world the names of mountains 

 and rivers are among the most ancient and most certain monuments 

 or memorials of languages ; and my brother Wilhelm von Hum- 

 boldt has employed these names with great sagacity in his researches 

 on the former diffusion of Iberian nations. A singular and unex- 

 pected statement has been put forward in recent years (Yelasco, His- 

 toria de Quito, t. i. p. 185), to the effect that " the Incas Tupac 

 Yupanqui and Huayna Capac were astonished to find at their first 

 conquest of Quito a dialect of the Quiehua language already in use 

 among the natives." Prescott, however, appears to regard this 

 statement as doubtful. (Hist, of the Conquest of Peru, vol. i. 

 p. 115.) 



If the Pass of St. G-othard, Mount Athos, or the Rigi, were 

 placed on the summit of the Chimborazo, it would form an elevation 

 equal to that now ascribed to the Dhawalagiri in the Himalaya. 

 The geologist who rises to more general views connected with the 

 interior of the earth, regards, not indeed the direction, but the rela- 

 tive height of the rocky ridges which we term mountain -chains, as 

 a phenomenon of so little import, that he would not be astonished 

 if there should one day be discovered between the Himalaya and 

 the Altai, summits which should surpass the Dhawalagiri tind the 

 Djawahir as much as these surpass the Chimborazo. (See my Yues 

 des Cordilleres et Monumens des peuples indigenes de TAmerique, 

 t. i. p. 116; and my notice on two attempts to ascend the Chimbo- 

 razo, in 1802 and 1831, in Schumacher's Jahrbuch for 1847, s. 176.) 

 The great height to which the snow line on the northern side of the 

 Himalaya is raised in summer, by the influence of the heat returned 

 by radiation from the high plains of the interior of Asia, renders 



