TRUE VOLCANOES. 341 



down to the north of Caneto, from the well-preserved, 

 extinct crater of the Monte di Campo Bianco towards the 

 sea, in which the fibres of the former substance run, singu- 

 larly enough, parallel to the direction of the stream 31 . The 



is the fallen summit of the volcano, which formerly ended in a point, 

 without any statement of the date at which the occurrence took 

 place; according to the second hypothesis, this is placed in the year 

 (1533) in which the Inca Atahuallpa was strangled in Caxamarca, 

 and thus connected with the terrible fiery eruption of Cotopaxi, 

 described by Herrera, which took place in the same year, and also 

 with the obscure prophecy of Atahuallpa's father, Huayna Capac, 

 regarding th approaching fall of the Peruvian Empire. Is that 

 \vhich is common to both hypotheses, namely, the opinion that this 

 fragment of rock formerly constituted the apex of the cone, the tra- 

 ditional echo, or obscure remembrance of an actual occurrence ? The 

 aborigines, it may be said, in their uncultivated state, would probably 

 notice facts and preserve them in remembrance, but would be unable 

 to rise to geoguostic combinations. I doubt the correctness of this 

 objection. The idea that a truncated cone, " in losing its apex," may 

 have thrown it off unbroken, as large blocks were thrown out during 

 subsequent eruptions, may present itself even to very uncultivated 

 minds. The terraced pyramid of Cholula, a work of the Tolteks, is 

 truncated. The natives could not suppose that the pyramid was not 

 originally completed. They therefore invented the fable that an 

 aerolite, falling from heaven, destroyed the apex ; nay, portions of the 

 aerolite were shown to the Spanish conquerors. Moreover, how can we 

 place the first eruption of the volcano of Cotopaxi at a period when 

 the ash-cone (the result of a series of eruptions) was already in exist- 

 ence ? It seems probable to me, that that the Cabeza del Inga, was pro- 

 duced at the spot which it now occupies ; that it was upheaved there, 

 like the Yana-Urcu at the foot of Chimborazo, and like the Morro on 

 Cotopaxi itself, to the south of Suniguaica, and to the north-west of 

 the small lake Yurak-cocha (in the Qquechhua language, the White 

 Lake). 



With regard to the name of the Cotopaxi, I have stated in the 

 first volume of my Kleinere Schriften, (s. 463,) that only the first pai-t 

 of it could be explained from the Qquechhua language, being the word 

 ccotto, heap or mass, but that pacsi was unknown. La Condamine 

 (p. 53) explains the whole name of the mountain, saying " in the lan- 

 guage of the Incas, the name signifies shining mass" Buachmann, 

 however, remarks that, in this case, pacsi is replaced by the word 

 pacsa, which is certainly quite different from it, and which signifies 

 lustre, brilliancy, especially the mild lustre of the moon ; to express 

 " shining mass," moreover, in accordance with the spirit of the 

 Qquechhua language, the position of the two words would have to be 

 reversed, pacsaccotto. 



31 Friedrich Hoffmann, in Poggendorff's Annalen, Bd. xxvi, 1832, 

 s. 48. 



