146 The Andes and the Amazon. 



in the lowlands no longer has that effect on Mont Blanc. 

 This appears to be true on the Andes ; indeed, there is very 

 little drunkenness in Quito. So the higher we perch our 

 inebriate asylums, the better for the patients. 



Near the hacienda is a little lake called Mica, on which 

 w^e found a species of grebe, with wings so short it could 

 not %. Its legs, also, seem fitted only for paddling, and it 

 goes ashore only to lay its eggs. It peeps like a gosling. 

 Associated with them were penguins (in appearance) ; they 

 were so shy we could not secure one. The query is, How 

 came they there ? Was this a centre of creation, or were 

 the fowls upheaved with the Andes ? They could not have 

 flown or walked to this lofty lake, and there are no water- 

 courses leading to it ; it is surrounded with a dry, rolling 

 waste, where only the condor lives. "We turn to Darwin 

 for an answer.* 



The ragged Sincholaguaf and romantic Huminagui fol- 

 low Antisana, and then we find ourselves looking up at the 

 most beautiful and most terrible of volcanoes. This is the 

 far-famed Cotopaxi, or more properly Cutu-pacsi, meaning 

 "a brilhant mass." Humboldt calls it the most regular 

 and most picturesque of volcanic cones. It looks like a 

 huge truncated cone rising out of the Valley of Quito, its 

 sides deeply furrowed by the rivers of mud and water 

 which have so often flowed out. The cone itself is about 



* The grebe is considered by Messrs. Cassin and Law-rence to be the Podi- 

 ceps occipitalis, Lisson (P. calipareus et Chiknsis of Garnot), Avhich occurs 

 in large flocks on the coast of Chile and in the Straits of Magellan. It is 

 quite different from the P. micropterus of Lake Titicaca. At INIorococha, 

 Peru, 15,600 feet above the sea, Herndon found snipes and ducks. 



f In Brigham's Notes on the Volcanic Phenomena of the Hawaiian Islands, 

 this volcano is put down as active, but there has been no eruption in the mem- 

 ory of man. Its lithology is represented in our collection by porous, gray, 

 granular trachyte, fine-grained, compact trachyte, and dark porphyroid tra- 

 chyte. The derivation of Sincholagua is unknown. Ruraiiiagui means the 

 fece of a rock. Cotopaxi, Sincholagua, and Kuminagui, and Cotopaxi, Pi- 

 chincha, and Guamani, form equilateral triangles. 



