he sea, that the relative elevation of its summit
becomes reduced by comparison with the surrounding mountains. Its
altitude is 21,420 feet, or forty-five times the height of Strasburg
Cathedral; or, to state it otherwise, the fall of one pound from the top
of Chimborazo would raise the temperature of water 30 deg.. One fourth of
this is perpetually covered with snow, so that its ancient name,
Chimpurazu--the mountain of snow--is very appropriate.[70] It is a
stirring thought that this mountain, now mantled with snow, once gleamed
with volcanic fires. There is a hot spring on the north side, and an
immense amount of debris covers the slope below the snow-limit,
consisting chiefly of fine-grained, iron-stained trachyte and coarse
porphyroid gray trachyte; very rarely a dark vitreous trachyte.
Chimborazo is very likely not a solid mountain: trachytic volcanoes are
supposed to be full of cavities. Bouguer found it made the plumb-line
deviate 7" or 8".

[Footnote 69: But Chimborazo is steeper than the Alp-king; and steepness
is a quality more quickly appreciated than mere massiveness. "Mont Blanc
(says a writer in _Frazer's Magazine_) is scarcely admired, because he
is built with a certain regard to stability; but the apparently reckless
architecture of the Matterhorn brings the traveler fairly on his knees,
with a respect akin to that felt for the leaning tower of Pisa, or the
soaring pinnacles of Antwerp."]

[Footnote 70: "White Mountain" is the natural and almost uniform name of
the highest mountains in all countries: thus Himalaya, Mont Blanc,
Hocmus, Sierra Nevada, Ben Nevis, Snowdon, Lebanon, White Mountains of
United States, Chimborazo, and Illimani.]

The valleys which furrow the flank of Chimborazo are in keeping with its
colossal size. Narrower, but deeper than those of the Alps, the mind
swoons and sinks in the effort to comprehend their grim majesty. The
mountain appears to have been broken to pieces like so much thin crust,
and the strata thrown on their vertical edges, revealing deep, dark
chasms, that seem to lead to the confines of the lower world. The
deepest valley in Europe, that of the Ordesa in the Pyrenees, is 3200
feet deep; but here are rents in the side of Chimborazo in which
Vesuvius could be put away out of sight. As you look down into the
fathomless fissure, you see a white fleck rising out of the gulf, and
expanding as it mounts, till the wings of the condor, fifteen feet in
spread, glitter i