150 The Andes and the A:mazon. 



of ice-water flow out of the volcano side by side. Here, 

 too, the fierce youth of the Pastassa, born on the pumice 

 slopes of Cotopaxi, dashes through a deep tortuous chasm 

 and down a precipice in hot haste, as if conscious of the 

 long distance before it ere it reaches the Amazon and the 

 ocean. Tunguragua was once a formidable mountain, for 

 we discovered a great stream of lava reaching fi'om the 

 clouds around the summit to the orange-groves in the val- 

 ley, and blocking up the rivers which tumble over it in 

 beautiful cascades. It has been silent since 1780 ; but it 

 can afford to rest, for then its activity lasted seven years.* 



Close by rises beautiful Altar, a thousand feet higher. 

 The Indians call it Capac-urcu, or the " Chief." They say 

 it once overtopped Chimborazo ; but, after a violent erup- 

 tion, which continued eight years, the walls fell in. Its 

 craggy crest is still more Alpine than Caraguairazo ; eight 

 snowy peaks shoot up like needles into the sky, and sur- 

 round an altar to whose elevated purity no mortal offering 

 will ever attain. The trachyte which once formed the sum- 

 mit of this mountain is now spread in fragments over the 

 plain of Riobamba. 



Leaving this broken-down volcano, but still the most pic- 

 turesque in the Andes, w^e travel over the rough and rug- 

 ged range of Cubillin, till our attention is arrested by ter- 

 rific explosions like a naval broadside, and a column of 

 smoke that seems to come from the furnace of the Cy- 

 clops. It is Sangai, the most active volcano on the globe. 

 From its unapproachable crater, three miles high, it sends 

 forth a constant stream of fire, water, mud, and ashes.l 



* Spnice asserts that he saw smoke issuing from the western edge in 1857; 

 and Dr. Terry says that in 1832 smoke ascended almost always from the 

 summit. Dr. Taylor, of Riobamba, informs the writer that smoke is noAv 

 almost constantly \'isible. The characteristic rock is a black vitreous tra- 

 chyte resembUng pitchstone, but anhydrous. 



t La Condamine (1742) adds " sulphur and bitumen." 



