340 COSMOS. 



In the island of Lipari, which abounds in pumice- 

 stone, a lava-stream of pumice-stone and obsidian runs 

 constantly covered with, snow, whilst the flame always issued at the 

 top of the truncated cone." Quite at the top, close to the summit, some 

 horizontal, black streaks, parallel to each other, but interrupted, are 

 detected. When examined with the telescope under various illumi- 

 nations they appeared to me to be rocky ridges. The whole of this 

 upper part is steeper, and almost close to the truncation of* the cone 

 forms a wall-like ring of unequal height, which, however, is not 

 visible at a great distance with the naked eye. My description of this 

 nearly perpendicular uppermost circumvallation, has already attracted 

 the particular attention of two distinguished geologists, Darwin ( Vol- 

 canic Islands, 1844, p. 83), and Dana (Geology of the U.S. Explor. Exped., 

 1849, p. 356). The volcanoes of the Galapagos Islands, Diana's Peak 

 in St. Helena, Teneriffe, and Cotopaxi, present analogous formations. 

 The highest point which I determined by angles of altitude in the 

 trigonometrical measurement of Cotopaxi, was situated in a black 

 convexity. It is, perhaps, the inner wall of the higher and more 

 distant margin of the crater; or is the freedom from snow of the pro- 

 truding rock caused at once by steepness and the heat of the crater? 

 In the autumn of the year 1800, the whole upper part of the ash- 

 cone was seen to be luminous, although no eruption, or even emission 

 of visible vapours followed. On the other hand, in the violent erup- 

 tion of Cotopaxi on the 4th January. 1803, when during my residence 

 on the Pacific coast the thundering noise of the volcano shook the 

 windows in the harbour of Guayaquil (at a distance of 148 geog. 

 miles), the ash-cone had entirely lost its snow, and presented a 

 most threatening appearance. Was such a heating ever observed 

 before ? Even very recently, as we learn from that admirable, and 

 courageous female traveller, Ida Pfeiffer (Meine zweite Weltreise, Bd. iii, 

 s. 170), the Cotopaxi had, in the beginning of April, 1854, a violent 

 eruption of thick columns of smoke, "through which the fire wound 

 itself like flashing flames." May this luminous phenomenon have 

 been a consequence of the volcanic lightning excited by vaporization ? 

 The eruptions have been frequent since 1851. 



The great regularity of the snow-covered, truncated cone itself, 

 renders it the more remarkable that to the south-west of the summit 

 there is a small, grotesquely-notched, rocky mass with three or four 

 points at the lower limit of the region of perpetual snow, where 

 the conical form commences. The snow remains upon it only in 

 small patches, probably on account of its steepness. A glance at my 

 representation (Atlas Pittoresque du Voyage, pi. 10), shows its relation 

 to the ash-cone most distinctly. I approached nearest to this blackish- 

 gray, probably basaltic rocky mass, in the Quebrada and Reventazon 

 de Minas. Although this widely visible hill, of very strange appear- 

 ance, has been generally known for centuries in the whole province 

 as the Cabeza del Inga, two very different hypotheses, nevertheless, 

 prevail with regard to its origin amongst the coloured aborigines 

 (fndios), according to the one, it is merely asserted, that the rock 



