ashes.[91]

[Footnote 91: La Condamine (1742) adds "sulphur and bitumen."]

No intermission has been noticed since the Spaniards first saw it three
hundred years ago. Stromboli is the only volcano that will compare with
it. Its ashes are almost always falling on the city of Guayaquil, one
hundred miles distant, and its explosions, generally occurring every
hour or two, are sometimes heard in that city. Wisse, in 1849, counted
267 explosions in one hour.

We have now completed the series. What an array of snow-clad peaks wall
in the narrow Valley of Quito--Nature's Gothic spires to this her
glorious temple! If ever there was a time when all these volcanoes were
active in concert, this secluded vale must have witnessed the most
splendid pyrotechnics conceivable. Imagine fifty mountains as high as
Etna, three of them with smoking craters, standing along the road
between New York and Washington, and you will have some idea of the ride
down this gigantic colonnade from Quito to Riobamba. If, as Ruskin says,
the elements of beauty are in proportion to the increase of mountainous
character, Ecuador is artistically beautiful to a high degree.

Here, amid these Plutonic peaks, are the energies of volcanic action
best studied. The constancy of the volcanic fires is a striking fact.
First we have the deluges of submarine lavas, which were poured out long
before the Andes lifted their heads above the waters; then alternate
porphyritic strata, feldspathic streams, and gypseous exhalations; then,
at a later day, floods of basaltic lava; next the old tertiary
eruptions; and, lastly, the vast accumulations of boulders, gravel,
ashes, pumice, and mud of the present day, spread over the Valley of
Quito and the west slope of the Cordilleras to an unknown depth beneath
the sea. The incessant eruptions of Sangai, and the frequent
earthquakes, show that the subterranean energy which heaved the Andes is
not yet expended.

CHAPTER X.

The Valley of Quito.--Riobamba.--A Bed of "Fossil Giants."--Chillo
Hacienda.--Otovalo and Ibarra.--The Great Earthquake of 1868.

The Valley of Quito has about the same size and shape as the basin of
Salt Lake, but it is five thousand feet higher.[92] The two cordilleras
inclosing it are tied by the mountain-knots of Assuay and Chisinchi, so
that the valley is subdivided into three basins, those of Cuenca,
Ambato, and Quito proper, which increase in beauty and altitude as we
travel nort