240 COSMOS. 



the depths of the interior produce remarkable and con- 

 trasting forms in conical mountains : such as the cleavage 

 into double pyramids of a more or less regular kind in the 

 Carguairazo (15,667 feet), which suddenly fell in 4 on the 

 night of the 19th July, 1698, and in the still more beautiful 

 pyramids 5 of Ilinissa (17,438 feet) ; and a crenulation of the 

 upper walls of the crater, in which two very similar peaks, 

 opposite to each other, betray the previous primitive form 

 (Capac- Urcu, Cerro del Altar, now only 17,456 feet in 

 height). Amongst the aborigines of the highlands of Quito, 

 between Chambo and Lican, between the mountains of 

 Condorasto and Cuvillan, the tradition has been universally 

 preserved that fourteen years before the invasion of Huayna 

 Capac, the son of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, and after erup- 

 tions which lasted uninterruptedly for seven or eight years, 

 the summit of the last-mentioned volcano fell in, and 

 covered the entire plateau, in which New Riobamba is situ- 

 ated, with pumice-stone and volcanic ashes. The volcano, 

 originally higher than Chimborazo, was called in the Inca 

 or Quichua language, capac, the kins' or prince of mountains 

 (urcu), because the natives saw its summit rise to a greater 

 height above the lower snow line, than that of any other moun- 

 tain of the neighbourhood. 6 The great Ararat, the summit 



4 Umrisse von Vulkanen, Tafel iv. 



5 Ibid. Tafel iii, and vii. 



6 Long before the visit of Bouguer and La Condamine (1736) to the 

 plateau of Quito, long before any measurements of the mountains by 

 astronomers, the natives knew that Chimborazo was higher than any 

 other Nevado in that region. They had detected two lines of level 

 which remained almost exactly the same all the year round, that of 

 the lower limit of perpetual snow, and that of the elevation to 

 which a single, occasional snow-fall reached down. As in the equatorial 

 region of Quito, the snow-line, as I have proved by measurements else- 

 where (Asie Centrale, t. iii, p. 255), only varies about 190 feet in eleva- 

 tion on six of the most colossal peaks ; and as this variation, as well as 

 smaller ones caused by local conditions, is imperceptible to the naked 

 eye when seen from a great distance (the height of the summit of Mont 

 Blanc is the same as that of the lower equatorial snow-limit), this cir- 

 cumstance gives rise within the tropics to an apparently uninterrupted 

 regularity of the snowy covering, that is to say, the form of the snow- 

 line. The pictorial representation of this horizontally is astounding to 

 the physicists who are only accustomed to the irregularity of the 

 enowy covering in the variable, so-called temperate zones. The uni- 

 formity of elevation of the snow about Quito, and the knowledge of tlia 



