494 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



cone of Tunguragua, 16,500 feet high. A cataract on it springs from the very edge 

 of the perpetual snow, coming down 1,500 feet in three leaps. Its last eruption, 

 which lasted seven years, began in 1773. Close by, 17,500 feet high, rises Altar, 

 called by the Indians Capac-Urcu, " The Chief." They say that it once overtopped 

 Chimborazo ; but that, after an eruption which lasted eight years, the lofty walls of its 

 crater fell in. Twenty miles further is Sangai, 17,000 feet high, the most active 

 volcano on the globe. Without a moment's intermission it has for three hundred 

 years poured forth a stream of fire, water, mud, and ashes. Its ashes are almost 

 always falling at Guayaquil, a hundred miles distant ; and its explosions, generally 

 occurring every hour or two, are often heard in that city. It sometimes rouses itself 

 to unwonted activity. In 1849 Wisse counted 267 explosions in an hour, — more 

 than two in every three seconds. 



We have thus far followed the eastern Cordillera southward. We now turn to the 

 "western range, which runs parallel to it, at a distance of from thirty to sixty miles, 

 and go northward back to Quito. First and foremost, but not " sole monarch of the 

 vale," comes Chimborazo, "the Snowy Mountain," 21,470 feet high. Ages ago its 

 now silent summit glowed with volcanic fires. Its sides are seamed with huge rents 

 and dark chasms, in some of which Vesuvius could be hidden away out of sight. 

 Next, and separated from it only by a narrow valley, is Caraguarizo, 19,000 feet high, 

 called by the Indians "the wife of Chimborazo." A century and three-quarters ago 

 the top of this mountain fell in, and torrents of mud containing multitudes of the little 

 fishes of which we have spoken poured out. Journeying onward, passing peaks 

 scarcely lower than these, some of them extinct volcanoes, such as Illinza, 17,000 feet 

 high, and heart-shaped Corazon, we reach Pichincha, "the Boiling Mountain," 16,000 

 feet high, whose smoking crater lies only five miles distant from Quito. It is the only 

 Eucadorean volcano which has not a cone shaped crater. Such an one it doubtless 

 once had ; but some convulsion of nature far beyond the reach of history or tradition, 

 has hollowed out from its now flattened summit an enormous funnel-shaped basin 

 2,500 feet deep, three-quarters of a mile in diameter at the top, and 1,500 feet at the 

 bottom. It is the deepest crater on the globe. That of Kileaua is but 600 feet deep, 

 Orizaba 500, Etna 300, Hecla 100. 



The brink of the crater of Pichincha was first reached by the French Academicians 

 in 1742. Sixty years later Humboldt reached the edge, but pronounced its bottom 

 *' inaccessible on account of its great depth and precipitous descent." The crater was 

 first entered in 1844 by Morena, now President of Ecuador, and Wisse, a French 

 engineer. Mr. Orton and his associates, after one unsuccessful attempt, succeeded in 

 £^ccomplishing the perilous descent in October, 1867. Scrambling down the steep 

 sides, sometimes of rocks covered with snow, sometimes a mass of loose, treacherous 

 sand ; now leaping a chasm, now letting themselves down from cliff to cliff, threatened 

 by huge rocks which perpetually loosed themselves and went bounding past them, in 

 two and a half hours they reached the bottom of the crater. It was found to consist 

 of a deeply furrowed plain, strewn with ragged rocks, with here and there a patch of 

 vegetation, and half a dozen species of flowers. In the center was an irregular heap 

 of stones 260 feet high, and 800 in diameter. In its top and sides were seventy 

 vents, sending forth steam, smoke, and sulphurous gas. The central vent, or chim- 

 ney, gives forth a noise like that of a bubbling cauldron. 



