its first eruption, ejected far off a stony mass ; 
which, like the cap of a dome, covered the enor- 
mous cavity, that contains the subterraneous fire. 
Some pretend, that this extraordinary catas- 
trophe took place a short time after the invasion 
of the kingdom of Quito by the Inca Tupac 
Yupanqui ; and that the rock, which is sketched 
in the tenth plate to the left of the volcano, is 
called the head of the Inca, because its fall was 
the ominous presage of the death of the con- 
queror. Others, still more credulous, afiarm, 
that this mass of porphyry with basis of pitch- 
stone’^ was displaced in an explosion, that 
happened at the very moment when the Inca 
Atahualpa was strangled by the Spaniards at 
Caxamarca. It seems indeed certain, that an 
eruption of Cotopaxi took place when the army 
of Pedro Alvarado marched from Puerto Viejo to 
the elevated plains of Quito ; although Piedro 
de Cieca 'f' and Garcilasso de la Vega:}: do not 
name the mountain, that threw out ashes, the 
sudden fall of which affrighted the Spaniards. 
But to adopt the opinion, that at this epocha, 
for the first time, the rock called the Cabeza del 
Inca took its present place, we must suppose, 
that Cotopaxi had no former eruptions ; a sup- 
^ Pechsteiri'porphyr^ W^rrjer. 
X Chronica del Peru, 1554, ch. 41, fol. 109. 
X Comentarioj? Reales, lib. 2, ch. 2, vol. 2, p. 69. 
