TOPOGEAPIirY OF ECUADOR. 



251 



extremity of the city. Here is seen the famous stone on \vliich La Condamine and 

 his associates commemorated, by an inscription, their operations connected with 

 the measurement of an arc of the terrestrial meridian. But the base line which 

 they had traced with so much care north-east of the city, and which enabled them 

 to measure three degrees of the meridian between Ibarra and Cuenca, can no longer 

 be identified. Either through some narrow patriotic feeling of jealousy or through 

 barbarous ignorance, the Government ordered the two terminal pyramids to be 

 razed which La Condamine had erected, one near the town of Pifo, between Coto- 

 paxi and Cayambe, the other on the edge of the Guallabamba gorge. The first, 

 that of Oyambaro, has been reconstructed since the War of Independence, but 

 not on the old site and only as a commemorative monument ; the second (Caraburo) 



Fig. 97. — Quito and its Envieons. 

 Scale 1 : 760,000. 



■^ 73?'T^~-irT»^>j,/^gg^g%»- '■ i,^- ' -^"J^P'.*;^'^y% "^-^^ 



■^v.i'i.'i "i' 







78T0 



West o(" Greenwich 78" 



18 Miles. 



may possibly occupy its original position, though Whymper was unable to deter- 

 mine the point. Some blocks in the neighbourhood of Quito recall the old 

 fortresses of the Incas and of their Cara predecessors. 



A carriage-road, often ploughed up by the rains, and always threatened by the 

 avalanches of mud, connects Quito with Ambaio. But Quito still lacks easy com- 

 munication with the nearest seaport, at the mouth of the Rio Esmeraldas. The 

 road begun by Maldonado in 1735 was never comj)leted, though another has been 

 begun farther south, to run through Aloag, along the base of Corazon and by the 

 Rio Toachi valley. The port of Esinrraldas itself is obstructed by a bar, and 

 Quito remains without any access to the sea except by the extremely difficult 

 Guayaquil route, twice as long as that of Esmeraldas. The emeralds which excited 

 the cupidity of Pizarro are no longer exported from this place; one of the stones 



