six
feet high! Then, for the first time, the scales fell from our eyes; the
giant building began to grow; higher and higher still it rose, longer
and deeper it expanded, yet in perfect proportions; the colossal
structure, now a living temple, put on its beautiful garments and the
robe of majesty. And that dome! the longer we looked at it the vaster it
grew, till finally it seemed to be a temple not made with hands; the
spacious canopy became the firmament; the mosaic figures of cherubim and
seraphim were endowed with life; and as we fixed our eyes on the zenith
where the Almighty is represented in glory, we thought we had the vision
of Stephen. Long we gazed upward into this heaven of man's creation, and
gazed again till we were lost in wonder.

But the traveler needs no such steps to lift him up to the grand
conception of the divine Architect as he beholds the great white dome of
Chimborazo. It looks lofty from the very first. Now and then an expanse
of thin, sky-like vapor would cut the mountain in twain, and the dome,
islanded in the deep blue of the upper regions, seemed to belong more to
heaven than to earth. We knew that Chimborazo was more than twice the
altitude of Etna. We could almost see the great Humboldt struggling up
the mountain's side till he looked like a black speck moving over the
mighty white, but giving up in despair four thousand feet below the
summit. We see the intrepid Bolivar mounting still higher; but the hero
of Spanish-American independence returns a defeated man. Last of all
comes the philosophic Boussingault, and attains the prodigious elevation
of nineteen thousand six hundred feet--the highest point reached by man
without the aid of a balloon; but the dome remains unsullied by his
foot. Yet none of these facts increase our admiration. The mountain has
a tongue which speaks louder than all mathematical calculations.

There must be something singularly sublime about Chimborazo, for the
spectator at Riobamba is already nine thousand feet high, and the
mountain is not so elevated above him as Mont Blanc above the vale of
Chamouni, when, in reality, that culminating point of Europe would not
reach up even to the snow-limit of Chimborazo by two thousand feet.[69]
It is only while sailing on the Pacific that one sees Chimborazo in its
complete proportions. Its very magnitude diminishes the impression of
awe and wonder, for the Andes on which it rests are heaved to such a
vast altitude above t