File:The earth and its inhabitants (1894) (14579925847).jpg

Identifier: earthitsinhabita941recl (find matches)
Title: The earth and its inhabitants ..
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905 Ravenstein, Ernest George, 1834-1913 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Geography
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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o this local discharge. Mojanda, forming the transverse linkbetween the two cordilleras at this point, falls below the snowdine. Cayambe—Sara-TJrcu. Between the Ibarra and the Quito basins the divide is formed by Cayambe,third or fourth highest peak of Ecuador. Lying just north of the equator, thistriple-crested mountain presents an aspect no less imposing than Chimborazoitself, its glaciers and snowfields (explored to the highest summit by Whymper)towering some 6,000 feet above the bare rocks of the range. By following thecourse of the streamlets, which rise on the western slopes of the extinct volcano,and which converge to form the Eio Guallabamba, the traveller enters that pro-digious avenue of burning mountains which has no rival in the whole world. Onall sides are seen cones of igneous origin; even the long crests and the so-calledpanecillos, or bladder-like knolls dotted like bosses over the surface of the innerbasin, consist of lavas, scoriae, ashes, and other erupted matter.
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MOUNTAINS OF ECUADOR. 225 The first mountain seen to the south-west of Cayambe, beyond the uplandcombes where rise some of the headwaters of the Coca affluent of tbe Napo, isPambamarca, called also Francès-Urcu, or French Mount, in memory of LaCondamines geodetic studies. Then follow Guamani and other superb crests, nothowever, reaching the snow-line, and to the east the snowy Sara-Urcu, scaled byWhymper with his Swiss guides, the two Carrels, at the cost of almost super-human eiîorts. According to Villavicencio, copied by Orton and others, Sara-Urcu has oftenemitted flames, and in recent times (1843, 1856) vomited showers of ashes, to thegreat alarm of the inhabitants of Quito. But some mistake must have been madeas to the focus of these eruptions, for Sara-Urcu, ascended by Whymper, is not avolcano ; its rocks consist of a micaceous gneiss, which in some places has thestructure of slate. I found that Sara-Urcu is only 15,502 feet high, that it isnot a volcano, and cannot have emit

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