y and beauty.[89] It stands 16,500 feet above the
Pacific, its upper part covered with a splendid robe of snow, while the
sugar-cane grows in the romantic town of Banos, 10,000 feet below the
summit. A cataract, 1500 feet high, comes down at three bounds from the
edge of the snow to the warm valley beneath; and at Banos a hot
ferruginous spring and a stream of ice-water flow out of the volcano
side by side. Here, too, the fierce youth of the Pastassa, born on the
pumice slopes of Cotopaxi, dashes through a deep tortuous chasm and down
a precipice in hot haste, as if conscious of the long distance before it
ere it reaches the Amazon and the ocean. Tunguragua was once a
formidable mountain, for we discovered a great stream of lava reaching
from the clouds around the summit to the orange-groves in the valley,
and blocking up the rivers which tumble over it in beautiful cascades.
It has been silent since 1780; but it can afford to rest, for then its
activity lasted seven years.[90]

[Footnote 89: From Tunguri, the ankle-joint, alluding to its apical
angle. It is a little steeper than Cotopaxi, having a slope of 38 deg..]

[Footnote 90: Spruce asserts that he saw smoke issuing from the western
edge in 1857; and Dr. Terry says that in 1832 smoke ascended almost
always from the summit. Dr. Taylor, of Riobamba, informs the writer that
smoke is now almost constantly visible. The characteristic rock is a
black vitreous trachyte resembling pitchstone, but anhydrous.]

Close by rises beautiful Altar, a thousand feet higher. The Indians call
it Capac-urcu, or the "Chief." They say it once overtopped Chimborazo;
but, after a violent eruption, which continued eight years, the walls
fell in. Its craggy crest is still more Alpine than Caraguairazo; eight
snowy peaks shoot up like needles into the sky, and surround an altar to
whose elevated purity no mortal offering will ever attain. The trachyte
which once formed the summit of this mountain is now spread in fragments
over the plain of Riobamba.

Leaving this broken-down volcano, but still the most picturesque in the
Andes, we travel over the rough and rugged range of Cubillin, till our
attention is arrested by terrific explosions like a naval broadside, and
a column of smoke that seems to come from the furnace of the Cyclops. It
is Sangai, the most active volcano on the globe. From its unapproachable
crater, three miles high, it sends forth a constant stream of fire,
water, mud, and