uld lapse into the eternal
silence of God.

[Footnote 72: Mount Everest is 29,000 feet, and Aconcagua 23,200.
Schlagintweit enumerates thirteen Himalayan summits over 25,000 feet,
and forty-six above 20,000. We have little confidence in the estimates
of the Bolivian mountains. Chimborazo has nearly the same latitude and
altitude as the loftiest peak in Africa, Kilima Njaro.]

[Footnote 73: Humboldt ascribes the absence of glaciers in the Andes to
the extreme steepness of the sides, and the excessive dryness of the
air. Dr. Loomis, above quoted, mentions indications of glacial
action--moraines, and polished and striated rocks--on the crest of the
Cordillera, between Peru and Bolivia, lat. 21 deg. S.]

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 the traveled route.

The crown of this mountain presents three groups of rocky peaks. The
most westerly one is called Rucu-Pichincha, and alone manifests
activity. To the northeast of Rucu is Guagua-Pichincha, a ruined flue of
the same fiery furnace; and between the two is Cundur-guachana.[74]
Pichincha is the only volcano in Ecuador which has not a true
cone-crater. Some violent eruption beyond the reach of history or
tradition has formed an enormous funnel-shaped basin 2500 feet deep,[75]
1500 in diameter at the bottom, and expanding upward to a width of three
fourths of a mile. It is the _deepest_ crat