ed with a dry, rolling waste, where only the condor lives. We
turn to Darwin for an answer.[82]

[Footnote 82: The grebe is considered by Messrs. Cassin and Lawrence to
be the _Podiceps occipitalis_, Lisson (_P. calipareus et Chilensis_ of
Garnot), which occurs in large flocks on the coast of Chile and in the
Straits of Magellan. It is quite different from the _P. micropterus_ of
Lake Titicaca. At Morococha, Peru, 15,600 feet above the sea, Herndon
found snipes and ducks.]

The ragged Sincholagua[83] and romantic Ruminagui follow Antisana, and
then we find ourselves looking up at the most beautiful and most
terrible of volcanoes. This is the far-famed Cotopaxi, or more properly
Cutu-pacsi, meaning "a brilliant mass." Humboldt calls it the most
regular and most picturesque of volcanic cones. It looks like a huge
truncated cone rising out of the Valley of Quito, its sides deeply
furrowed by the rivers of mud and water which have so often flowed out.
The cone itself is about six thousand feet high. The east side is
covered with snow, but the west is nearly bare, owing to the trade
winds, which, sweeping across the continent, carry the ashes westward.
Cotopaxi is the loftiest of active volcanoes, though its grand eruptions
are a century apart, according to the general rule that the higher a
volcano the less frequent its eruptions, but all the more terrible when
they do occur. Imagine Vesuvius on the summit of Mont Blanc, and you
have the altitude of Cotopaxi.

[Footnote 83: In Brigham's _Notes on the Volcanic Phenomena of the
Hawaiian Islands_, this volcano is put down as active, but there has
been no eruption in the memory of man. Its lithology is represented in
our collection by porous, gray, granular trachyte, fine-grained, compact
trachyte, and dark porphyroid trachyte. The derivation of Sincholagua is
unknown, Ruminagui means the face of a rock, Cotopaxi, Sincholagua, and
Ruminagui, and Cotopaxi, Pichincha, and Guamani, form equilateral
triangles.]

The top just reaches the middle point of density in the atmosphere, for
at the height of three miles and a half the air below will balance that
above. The crater has never been seen by man; the steepness of the sides
and the depth of the ashes covering them render it inaccessible. The
valiant Col. Hall tried it with scaling ladders, only to fail. The
telescope reveals a parapet of scoria on the brim, as on Teneriffe.
Humboldt's sketch of the volcano, so universally copi