cholagua_, 16,434 feet (Humboldt).

]

[Footnote 66: The snow limit at the equator is 15,800 feet. No living
creature, save the condor, passes this limit; naked rocks, fogs, and
eternal snows mark the reign of uninterrupted solitude. The following is
the approximate limit of perpetual snow in different latitudes:

0 deg. 15,800 feet.
27 deg. 18,800 "
33 deg. 12,780 "
40 deg. 8,300 feet.
54 deg. 3,700 "
70 deg. 3,300 "

The limit appears to descend more rapidly going south of the equator
than in going north.]

All of these would be visible from a single stand-point--the summit of
Cotopaxi. The lofty peaks shoot up with so much method as almost to
provoke the theory that the Incas, in the zenith of their power, planted
them as signal monuments along the royal road to Cuzco. The eastern
series is called the _Cordillera real_, because along its flank are the
remnants of the splendid highway which once connected Quito and the
Peruvian capital.[67] It can also boast of such tremendous volcanoes as
Cotopaxi and Sangai. The Western Cordillera contains but one active
volcano; but then it can point to peerless Chimborazo and the deep
crater of Pichincha. These twenty volcanic mountains rise within a space
only two hundred miles long and thirty miles wide. It makes one tremble
to think of the awful crevice over which they are placed.[68]

[Footnote 67: We traveled over a portion of this ancient road in going
from Riobamba to Cajabamba. It is well paved with cut blocks of dark
porphyry. It is not graded, but partakes of the irregularity of the
country. Designed, not for carriages, but for troops and llamas, there
are steps when the ascent is steep.]

[Footnote 68: Grand as the Andes are, how insignificant in a general
view! How slightly they cause our globe to differ from a perfect sphere!
Cotopaxi constitutes only 1/1100 of the earth's radius; and on a globe
six feet in diameter, Chimborazo would be represented by a grain of sand
less than 1/20 of an inch in thickness.]

CHAPTER VIII.

The Volcanoes of Ecuador.--Western
Cordillera.--Chimborazo.--Iliniza.--Corazon.--Pichincha.--Descent
into its Crater.

Coming up from Peru through the cinchona forests of Loja, and over the
barren hills of Assuay, the traveler reaches Riobamba, seated on the
threshold of magnificence--like Damascus, an oasis in a sandy plain,
but, unlike the Queen of