Glimpse of the Andes. 33 



the impression produced by that glorious view is unfading. 

 The sun had nearly touched the Pacific when the clouds, 

 which for days had wrapped the Cordilleras* in misty robes, 

 suddenly rose like a curtain. There stood, in inconceivable 

 grandeur, one of the stupendous products of the last great 

 I'evolution of the earth's crust, as a geologist would say, 

 but, in the language of history, the lofty home of the In- 

 cas, made illustrious by the sword of Pizarro and the pen 

 of Prescott. On the right a sea of hills rose higher and 

 higher, till they culminated in the purple mountains of As- 

 suay. Far to the left, one hundred miles northeasterly, 

 the peerless Chimborazo lifted its untrodden and unap- 

 proachable summit above its fellows — an imposing back- 

 ground to lesser mountains and stately forests. The great 

 dome reflected dazzlingly the last blushes of the west, its 

 crown of snow fringed with black lines, which were the 

 steep and sharp edges of precipitous rocks. It was inter- 

 esting to watch the mellowing tints on the summit as the 

 shadows crept upward : gold, vermilion, violet, purple, were 

 followed by a momentary " glory ;" then darkness covered 

 the earth, and a host of stars, " trembling with excess of 

 light," burst suddenly into view over the peaks of the An- 

 des. 



Bidding " adios" to our Guayaquilian friends, we took 

 passage in one of Captain Lee's little steamers to Bodegas, 

 seventy miles xip the river. The Ecuadorian government, 

 strange to say, does not patronize these steamers, but car- 

 ries the Quito mail in a canoe. The Guayas is a sluggish 

 stream, its turbid waters starting from the slope of the 



* Cordillera (pronounced Cor-de-yer-ra), literally a long ridge, is usually 

 applied to a longitudinal subdivision of the Andes, as the east and west Cor- 

 dilleras inclosing the valley of Quito ; Sierra (from the Spanish for saw or 

 Arabic sehrah, an uncultivated tract) is a jagged spur of the Andes ; Cerro, 

 "a hog-backed hill. " Paramo (a desert) is the treeless, uninhabited, uncul- 

 tivated rolling steppes just below the snow-limit. 



c 



