TRUE VOLCANOES. 279 



Although, in the series of volcanoes of Bolivia and Chili, 

 the western branch of the chain of the Andes, which approach- 

 es nearest to the Pacific, at present exhibits the greater part 

 of the (races of still existing volcanic activity, yet a very ex- 

 perienced observer, Pentland, has discovered at the foot of 

 the eastern chain, more than 180 geographical miles from the 

 sea-coast, a perfectly preserved but extinct crater, with un- 

 mistakable lava streams. This is situated upon the summit 

 of a conical mountain, near San Pedro de Cacha, in the val- 

 ley of Yucay, at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet (lat. 14° 8', 

 long. 71° 20'), southeast from Cuzco, where the eastern snowy 

 chain of Apolobamba, Carabaya, and Vilcanoto extends from 

 southeast to northwest. This remarkable point* is marked 

 by the ruins of a famous temple of the Inca Viracocha. The 

 distance from the sea of this old lava-producing volcano is 



(10,986 feet), near Pamplona ; of Laura and Porquera, near La Grita. 

 Here, between Pamplona, Salazar, and Rosario (between lat. 7° 8' and 

 7° 50 ), is situated the small mountain group, from which a crest ex- 

 tends from south to north toward Ocafia and Valle de Upar to the 

 west of the Laguna de Maracaibo, and unites with the most advanced 

 mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (19,000 feet?). The 

 more elevated and vaster crest continues in .the original northeasterly 

 direction toward Merida, Truxillo, and Barquiscmeto, to unite there, 

 to the eastward of the Laguna de Maracaibo, with the granitic littoral 

 chain of Venezuela, to the west of Puerto Cabello. From the Grita 

 and the Paramo de Porquera the eastern Cordillera rises again at once 

 to an extraordinary height. Between the parallels of 8° 5' and 9° 7', 

 follow the Sierra Nevada de Merida (Mucuchies), examined by Bous- 

 singault, and determined by Codazzi trigonometrically at 15,069 feet; 

 and the four Paramos, De Timotes, Niquitao, Boconu, and de Las 

 Rosas, full of the most beautiful Alpine plants. (See Codazzi, Resit- 

 men de la Geografia de Venezuela, 1841, p. 12 and 495 ; and also my 

 Asie Centrale, t. iii., p. 258-262, with regard to the elevation of the 

 perpetual snow in this zone.) The western Cordillera is entirely want- 

 ing in volcanic activity, which is peculiar to the central Cordillera 

 as far as the Tolima and Paramo de Ruiz, which however are sep- 

 arated from the volcano of Purace by nearly three degrees of latitude. 

 The eastern Cordillei*a has a smoking hill near its eastern declivity, 

 at the origin of the Rio Fragua, to the northeast of Mocoa and south- 

 east of Timana, at a greater distance from the shore of the Pacific 

 than any other still active volcano of the New World. An accurate 

 knowledge of the local relations of the volcanoes to the arrangement 

 of the mountain chains is of the highest importance for the completion 

 of the geology of volcanoes. All the older maps, with the single ex- 

 ception of that of the high land of Quito, can only lead to error. 



* Pentland, in Mrs. Somerville's Physical Geography (1851), vol. i., 

 p. 185. The Peak of Vilcanoto (17,020 feet), situated in lat. 14° 28', 

 forming a portion of the vast mountain group of that name, closes the 

 northern extremity of the plateau, in which the lake of Titicaca, a 

 small inland sea of 88 miles in length, is situated. 



