[Footnote 93: The altitude of Loja is 6768 feet; of Cuenca, 8640 feet.]

[Footnote 94: According to Villavicencio, _Rio_ (or _Rie_) is Quichua
for road; _bamba_ is plain.]

Old Riobamba (Cajabamba) is situated twelve miles to the west. This has
been the scene of some of the most terrible paroxysms that over shook
the Andes. In 1797 a part of Mount Cicalfa was thrown down, crushing the
city at its foot; hills arose where valleys existed; rivers
disappeared, and others took their places; and the very site of the
city was rent asunder. The surviving inhabitants could not tell where
their houses had stood, and property was so mingled that litigation
followed the earthquake. Judging from the numerous sculptured columns
lying broken and prostrate throughout the valley, the city must have had
a magnificence now unknown in Ecuador. Around a coat of arms (evidently
Spanish) we read these words: _Malo mori quam fedari_, "I would rather
die than be disgraced." In the spring of 1868 another convulsion caused
a lake to disappear and a mountain to take its place.

Near Punin, seven miles southwest of Riobamba, we discovered in a deep
ravine numerous fossil bones, belonging chiefly to the mastodon, and
extinct species of the horse, deer, and llama. They were imbedded in the
middle of an unstratified cliff, four hundred feet high, of very compact
silt or trachytic clay, free from stones, and resting on a hard
quartzoze sandstone. In the bed of the stream which runs through the
ravine (charged with nitrate of soda) are some igneous rocks. The bones
were drifted to this spot and deposited (many of them in a broken state)
in horizontal layers along with recent shells. We have, then, this
remarkable fact, that this high valley was tenanted by elephantine
quadrupeds, all of which passed away before the arrival of the human
species, and yet while the land, and probably the sea also, were peopled
with their present molluscan inhabitants. This confirms the statement of
Mr. Lyell, that the longevity of mammalian species is much inferior to
that of the testacea. It is interesting to speculate on the probable
climate and the character of the vegetation in this high valley when
these extinct mammifers lived. The great pachyderm would have no
difficulty in thriving at the present day at Quito, on the score of
temperature or altitude. The mammoth once flourished in Siberia; and
Gibbon met an elephant on the high table-lands of Bolivia that had
w