

ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 39 



than the introduction of the worship of the sun and the 

 court language of the rulers of Cuzco. In all parts of 

 the world the names of mountains and rivers are among 

 the most ancient and most certain monuments or memorials 

 of languages ; and my brother Wilhelm von Humboldt has 

 employed these names with great sagacity in his researches 

 on the former diffusion of Iberian nations. A singular and 

 unexpected statement has been put forward in recent years 

 (Velasco Historia de Quito., T. i. p. 185) to the effect that 

 "the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayiia Capac were 

 astonished to find at their first conquest of Quito a dialect 

 of the Quichua language already in use among the natives." 

 Prescott, however, appears to regard this statement as 

 doubtful. (Hist, of the Conquest of Peru, Yol. i. p. 115.) 

 If the Pass of St. Gothard, Mount Athos, or the Bigi, 

 were placed on the summit of the Chimborazo, it would 

 form an elevation equal to that now ascribed to the Dha- 

 walagiri in the Himalaya. The geologist who rises to more 

 general views connected with the interior of the earth, 

 regards, not indeed the direction, but the relative height 

 of the rocky ridges which we term mountain chains, as 

 a phenomenon of so little import, that he would not be 

 astonished if there should one day be discovered between 

 the Himalaya and the Altai, summits which should 

 surpass the Dhawaligiri and the Djawahir as much as these 

 surpass the Chimborazo. (See my Vues des Cordilleres 

 et Monumens des peuples indigenes de TAmerique, T. i. 

 p. 116; and my Notice on two attempts to ascend the 

 Chimborazo, in 1802 and 1831, in Schumacher's Jahrbuch 



