244 MOUNTAINS ABOUT THE VALLEY OF QUITO. 



(at 171.5° F.), the lieight of the mountain to be 21,467 

 feet, forty more than obtained by the trigonometrical 

 measurement of Humboldt, made upon the high plain 

 of Tapia, near Riobamba, in 1803. 



Situated in the Eastern Cordillera, a little out of the 

 axis of the range, in a southeast direction from Chimbo- 

 razo, is Sangai, the most terrible volcano in the world. It 

 is 17,120 feet in height, and, although in a state of con- 

 stant activity, it is jierpetually wrapped in snow. It fre- 

 quently sprinkles with ashes the forests of the Pacific 

 coast, and, during its eruptions, it makes its thunders to 

 be heard one hundred miles around. 



Cotopaxi, whose position relative to the Eastern Cor- 

 dillera has been given, is a peak with which Chimborazo 

 must share its honors. Its height is 18,880 feet; yet it 

 seems scarcely half that estimate. But we must not for- 

 get that it stands upon elevated table-lands, the height of 

 which Vesuvius, piled upon Mount Washington, would fail 

 to measure. About three thousand feet of its summit are 

 covered with snow. Since 1742, there have been seven 

 eruptions of the volcano, all of which have been accom- 

 panied with ejected floods of water and mud, or by storms 

 of sand and ashes, which have devastated the surrounding 

 plains of Callao, Mulalu, and Latacunga. It has never 

 thrown out lava-streams. When in a state of rest, as at 

 present, only light smoke-clouds, at times almost imper- 

 ceptible, float about its crater. These, with its occasional 

 deep mutterings, are the only indications of the slumber- 

 ing forces beneath. When in actual eruption its explosions 

 can be heard at a distance of over five hundred miles, and 

 ashes, pumice-stone, and plutonic rocks, are hurled from 

 its crater and scattered over the plains for leagues around. 

 Rocks fifteen feet square have been tossed a distance of 

 nine miles. Until 1870, its crater was unseen by man. 

 During the summer of that yoar, a party of Spaniards 



