ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
were to be seen in the lower part of the western wall. To 
the south there was a huge spur of lava with the geometri¬ 
cal pattern upon its surface we had already observed else¬ 
where. In this particular case, too, it appeared to me that 
the peculiar net of surface channels had been formed by 
coming in contact with the air, and not underground in 
the boiling cauldron of the volcano when the ebullition of 
the rock ceased. They were only found at a lower eleva¬ 
tion because they had gone down with a great subsidence 
which had taken place, and in which neither the quad¬ 
rangular Paredao Grande, nor the peculiar isolated 
mountains we had observed from its height, had been 
affected. They had remained standing when all the rest 
sank for some six hundred feet and, in places, more. 
That might perhaps account for the extraordinary shapes 
of all those mountains, which could not otherwise be 
explained. 
At the foot of the vertical, giant block on the west, 
many domes of lava, channelled in a quadrangular net¬ 
work pattern, and ridges and cones, were found, all with 
a slope to the west. I had a great struggle in my research 
work that day, owing to the thick scrub with vicious 
thorns that tore one’s clothes and skin mercilessly. 
We came upon an immense deep crack in the earth 
surface — a regular canon — which extended all along the 
centre of the great valley. On the opposite side of it were 
more big domes of lava in corrugated designs, also a 
gigantic, circular crater. Many natural crucibles of iron 
rock, some cylindrical in shape, others oval, others formed 
not unlike Pompeian lamps — while still others were 
square or rectangular or lozenge-shaped —- were to be seen 
in many spots on the moraine-like tails that extended 
southward, like the tentacles of an octopus, and in the 
heaps of much carbonized rock and solidified froth pro¬ 
duced by what was once boiling rock. The mounds of 
froth were usually collected in depressions. 
258 
