282 cosuos. 



Sangay, certainly cannot be regarded as extinct volcanoes. 

 Although to the north of the mountain group of the 

 Robles, near Popayan, as we shall shortly more fully show 

 in the tripartition of the vast chain of the Andes, it 

 is only the central Cordillera, and not the western one, 

 nearer to the sea-coast, that exhibits a volcanic activity ; 

 on the other hand, to the south of this group, where the 

 Andes form only two parallel chains, so frequently men- 

 tioned by Bouguer and La Condamine in their writings, 

 volcanoes are so equally distributed, that the four volcanoes 

 of the Pastes, as well as Cotocachi, Pichincha, Iliniza, Car- 

 guairazo, and Yana-Urcu, at the foot of Chimborazo, have 

 broken out upon the western chain, nearest to the sea ; and 

 upon the eastern Cordillera, Imbabura, Cayambe, Antisana, 

 Cotopaxi, Tungurahua (opposite to Chimborazo towards the 

 east, but still nearly approximated to the middle of the 

 narrow elevated plateau), the Altar de los Col lanes (Capac- 

 Urcu), and Sangay. If we include the northernmost group 

 of the linear volcanoes of South America in one view, the 

 opinion so often expressed in Quito, and to a certain extent 

 founded on historical documents, of the migration of the 

 volcanic activity and increase of intensity from north to 

 south, acquires, at all events, a certain amount of proba- 

 bility. It is true that in the south, and indeed close to the 

 colossal Sangay, which acts like Stromboli, we find the ruins 

 of the " Prince of Mountains," Capac-Urcu, which is said 

 to have exceeded Chimborazo in height, but which fell in 

 and became extinct in the latter part of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury (fourteen years before the capture of Quito by the son 

 of the Inca Tupac Yupangui), and has never again resumed 

 its former activity. 



The space of the chain of the Andes which is not occupied 

 by groups of volcanoes is far greater than is usually sup- 

 posed. In the northern part of South America, from the 

 volcan de E-uiz and the conical mountain Tolima, the two 

 most northern volcanoes of the series of New Granada and 

 Quito, over the isthmus of Panama as far as the vicinity 

 of Costa Rica, where the series of volcanoes of Central 

 America commences, there is a country which is frequently 

 and violently convulsed by earthquakes, and in which 

 flaming salses, but no true volcanic eruptions, are knovm. 



