CXX NOTES. 



educated minds. The terraced pyramid of Cholula, an artificial erection of the 

 Toltecs, is truncated : the natives, from the impression that it must have been 

 originally a complete pyramid, have imagined the fable that its top was destroyed 

 by a stone which fell on it from heaven, and even assert that fragments of this 

 aerolite were shown to the Spanish Conquistadores. How would it be possible to 

 place the first eruption of Cotopaxi at a time when the cone of cinders (the 

 result of a series of eruptions) is admitted, in the story itself, to have been 

 already existing ? It seems to me probable that the Cabeza del Inga origi- 

 nated at the spot where it now is : like Yana-Urcu at the foot of Chimborazo, 

 and on Cotopaxi itself the"Morro," south of Sunniguaicu, and north- 

 west of the little lake Yurak-cocha (white lake in the Qquechhua language). 



Kespecting the name of Cotopaxi, I have said, in the first volume of my 

 Kleinere Schriften (S. 463), that it is only the first part of the word which can 

 be interpreted in the Qquechhua language, in which " ccotto " means " heap," 

 but that " pacsi " is quite unknown. La Condamine (p. 53) interprets the en- 

 tire name of the mountain, saying : " le nom signifie en langue des Incas masse 

 brillante" Buschmann, however, remarks that this requires the substitution 

 for pacsi of pacsa (which is certainly not the same word), meaning brightness, 

 shining, especially the soft brightness of the moonshine; but, in order to express 

 the idea of a " shining mass," the genius of the language would further require 

 the order of the two words to be reversed, " pacsacotto." 



( 455 ) p. 319. Friedrich Hoffmann, in Poggeudorff's Annalen, Bd. xxvi. 

 1832, S. 48. 



( 456 ) p. 320. Bouguer, Figure de la Terre, p. Ixviii. How often, since the 

 earthquake of 19th July 1698, has the little town of Lactagunga been destroyed, 

 and rebuilt out of blocks of pumice-stone from the subterranean quarries of 

 Zumbalica ! According to the historic documents, consisting of copies df old 

 ones which had thus perished, and of some more recently saved, in partial rescues, 

 from the town archives, it appears that such destructions took place in 1703, 

 1736, 9th Dec. 1742, 30th Nov. 1744, 22nd Feb. 1757, 10th Feb. 1766, and 

 4th April 1768: seven times in sixty-five years! In 1802, I still found four 

 fifths of the town in ruins, the result of the great earthquake of Riobamba, 4th 

 Feb. 1797. 



( W7 ) p. 321. This diversity was also already recognised by the sagacious 

 Abich (Ueber Natur und Zusammenhang vulkanischer Bildungen, 1841, S. 83). 



( 458 ) p. 321. The rock of Cotopaxi has essentially the same mineralogical 

 composition as the volcanoes which are nearest to it, .Antisana and Tungurahua. 

 It is a trachyte composed of oligoclase and augite. therefore a " Chimborazo- 

 rock : " a proof of identity of the volcanic rock in the Cordilleras oppo.-ite to 



