154 The Andes and the Amazon. 



peared, and others took tlieir places ; and the very site of 

 the city was rent asunder. The surviving inhabitants 

 could not tell where their houses had stood, and property 

 was so mingled that litigation followed the earthquake. 

 Judging from the numerous sculptured columns lying bro- 

 ken and prostrate throughout the valley, the city must have 

 had a magnificence now unknown in Ecuador. Around 

 a coat of arms (evidently Spanish) we read these words : 

 Malo mori quam fedariy''! would rather die than be dis- 

 graced." In the spring of 1868 another convulsion caused 

 a lake to disappear and a mountain to take its place. 



Near Punin, seven miles southw^est of Riobamba, we dis- 

 covered in a deep ravine numerous fossil bones, belonging 

 chiefly to the mastodon, and extinct species of the horse, 

 deer, and llama. They w^ere imbedded in the middle of 

 an unstratified cliff, four hundred feet high, of very com- 

 pact silt or trachytic clay, free from stones, and resting on 

 a hard quartzoze sandstone. In the bed of the stream 

 which runs through the ravine (charged with nitrate of 

 soda) are some igneous rocks. The bones were drifted to 

 this spot and deposited (many of them in a broken state) 

 in horizontal layers along with recent shells. We have, 

 then, this remarkable fact, that this high valley w^as ten- 

 anted by elephantine quadrupeds, all of which passed away 

 before the arrival of the human species, and yet while the 

 land, and probably the sea also, were peopled with their 

 present molluscan inhabitants. This confii-ms the state- 

 ment of Mr. Lyell, that the longevity of mammalian spe- 

 cies is much inferior to that of the testacea. It is interest- 

 ing to speculate on the probable climate and the character 

 of the vegetation in this high valley wiien these extinct 

 mammifers lived. The great pachyderm w^ould have no 

 difiiculty in thriving at the present day at Quito, on the 

 score of temperature or altitude. The mammoth once 



