Jan.] VOLCANOES OF QUITO. 189 



" After living some months on this elevated plateau, where the barom- 

 eter stands at 21.33 inches English, the traveller experiences an 

 extraordinary illusion. He gradually forgets that every surrounding 

 object — those villages that proclaim the industry of a nation of moun- 

 taineers ; those pastures, covered at the same time with lamas, and with 

 the sheep of Europe ; those orchards bordered with quickset hedges 

 of the Duranta and the Barnadesia ; those luxuriant and highly culti- 

 vated cornfields — occupy a station, suspended, as it were, in the high 

 regions of the atmosphere ; and he can scarce bring himself to believe 

 that this habitable region is even still farther elevated above the neigh- 

 bouring shores of the Pacific Ocean, than the Pyrenean summit of 

 Canigou is above the basin of the Mediterranean." 



The majestic Chimborazo, says Malte Brun, is probably nothing but 

 an extinguished volcano. The snow which for centuries has crowned 

 its colossal peak will probably, one day or other, be melted by the 

 remorseless fires pent up within its vast and fathomless caverns resum- 

 ing their destructive activity. But one of the greatest volcanoes on the 

 surface of the whole globe is much nearer the city of Quito than is 

 Chimborazo. It is called Pichinca, and rises eleven miles south of 

 the equator, to the height of fifteen thousand nine hundred and thirty- 

 nine feet above the level of the ocean, as measured by Humboldt. 



Three rocky peaks rise from the circumference of Pichinca 's crater, 

 as if shooting up from the abyss below. They are not covered with 

 snow, because it is constantly melted by the vapours that exhale from 

 the volcano. " In order the better to examine the bottom of the crater," 

 says Humboldt, " we lay down flat on our breasts ; and I do not be- 

 lieve that the imagination could figure to itself any thing more melan- 

 choly, gloomy, and terrific than what we now beheld. The mouth 

 of the volcano forms a circular hole of nearly a league in circumfer- 

 ence, the sides of which, a perpendicular precipice, are covered above 

 with snow to their very edge. The interior was of a deep black ; but 

 the gulf is so immense that we could distinguish the tops of several 

 mountains that are situated within it. Their summits appeared to be 

 two or three hundred fathoms (toises) below us — judge then where 

 must be their base ! I myself have no doubt that the bottom of the 

 crater is on a level with the city of Quito." 



But the most formidable volcano of all this group is that of Coto- 

 paxi, rising to nearly eighteen thousand nine hundred feet above the 

 level of the ocean ; as its eruptions have been the most frequent and 

 the most destructive of any in South America. Its last was in the year 

 1803. The cinders and fragments of rocks that have been ejected at 

 different times by this volcano cover the neighbouring valleys to an 

 extent of several square leagues. In 1758 the flames of Cotopaxi shot 

 up to a height of two thousand seven hundred feet above the edge of 

 the crater. In 1744 the roaring of this volcano was heard as far as 

 Honda, a town situated on the river Magdalena, at a distance of two 

 hundred leagues. On the 4th of April, in the year 1768, the quan- 

 tity of ashes vomited up from the mouth of Cotopaxi was so great that 

 in the towns of Hambato and Tacunga, the sky continued as dark as 

 night until the third hour after midday. The eruption which took 



