icy Niagaras so beautiful and grand. Here
they are wanting. The monarch of the Andes sits motionless in calm
serenity and unbroken silence. The silence is absolute and actually
oppressive. The road from Guayaquil to Quito crosses Chimborazo at the
elevation of fourteen thousand feet. Save the rush of the trade wind in
the afternoon, as it sweeps over the Andes, not a sound is audible; not
the hum of an insect, nor the chirp of a bird, nor the roar of the puma,
nor the music of running waters. Mid-ocean is never so silent. You can
almost hear the globe turning on its axis. There was a time when the
monarch deigned to speak, and spoke with a voice of thunder, for the
lava on its sides is an evidence of volcanic activity. But ever since
the morning stars sang together over man's creation Chimbo has sat in
sullen silence, satisfied to look "from his throne of clouds o'er half
the world." There is something very suggestive in this silence of
Chimborazo. It was once full of noise and fury; it is now a _completed_
mountain, and thunders no more. How silent was Jesus, a completed
character! The reason that we are so noisy is that we are so full of
wants; we are _unfinished_ characters. Had we perfect fulness of all
things, the beatitude of being without a want, we should lapse into the
eternal silence of God.

Chimborazo is a leader of a long train of ambitious crags and peaks; but
as he who comes after the king must not expect to be noticed, we will
only take a glimpse of these lesser lights as we pass up the Western
Cordillera, and then down the Eastern.

The first after leaving the monarch is Caraguairazo. The Indians call it
"the wife of Chimborazo." They are separated only by a very narrow
valley. One hundred and seventy years ago the top of this mountain fell
in, and torrents of mud flowed out containing multitudes of fishes. It
is now over seventeen thousand feet high, and is one of the most Alpine
of the Quitonian volcanoes, having sharp pinnacles instead of the smooth
trachytic domes--usually double domes--so characteristic of the Andean
summits. And now we pass in rapid succession numerous picturesque
mountains, some of them extinct volcanoes, as Iliniza, presenting two
pyramidal peaks, the highest seventeen thousand feet above the sea, and
Corazon, so named from its heart-shaped summit, till we reach Pichincha,
whose smoking crater is only five miles distant in a straight line from
the city of Quito, or eleven by th