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On the Napo itself, still higher up than Archidona where the stream, fed by the snows of the grand volcano of Cotopaxi, issues from the spurs of the Andes there were they most likely to accomplish the object of their expedition, and thither determined they to go.
Ye see they was all bound for Noo York, and the Platonic and Nigerian are both goin' there, so I expect they'll take the bulk of 'em between 'em. And if there's any as wants to go back home, the Cotopaxi and us'll take 'em. I haven't heard how they're feelin' after their spell in the boats, but I reckon they're all right. That wasn't no very great hardship for 'em, exceptin' for the kiddies.
The earthquakes began and grew until all down America from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening, and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. The whole side of Cotopaxi slipped out in one vast convulsion, and a tumult of lava poured out so high and broad and swift and liquid that in one day it reached the sea.
The voyagers were now abreast of some of the most stupendous heights of this magnificent range; Chimborazo, with its broad round summit, towering like the dome of the Andes, and Cotopaxi, with its dazzling cone of silvery white, that knows no change except from the action of its own volcanic fires; for this mountain is the most terrible of the American volcanoes, and was in formidable activity at no great distance from the period of our narrative.
Now the volcano of Cotopaxi is a cone, more than one thousand eight hundred toises above the basin of Honda, and it rises from a table-land, the elevation of which is more than one thousand five hundred toises above the valley of the Magdalena. In all the colossal mountains of Quito, of the province of los Pastos, and of Popayan, crevices and valleys without number intervene.
They had gone up the streams even into Peru itself, and had trodden the cinchona groves of Loxa, ignorant, as all the world was then, of their healing virtues. They had seen the virgin snows of Chimborazo towering white above the thundercloud, and the giant cone of Cotopaxi blackening in its sullen wrath, before the fiery streams rolled down its sides.
Having procured mules and a guide, they proceeded onward; and after a journey of three days in which, from the difficulty of the roads, they had travelled less than fifty miles they found themselves among the foot-hills of the Andes the giant Cotopaxi with his snowy cone towering stupendous above their heads.
What business has a fellow like you with Vesuvius a fellow that has scaled Cotopaxi, and all that sort of thing? Not you." Dacres put the cigar thoughtfully in his mouth, struck a light, and tried to light it, but couldn't. Then he bit the end off, which he had forgotten to do before. Then he gave three long, solemn, and portentous puffs.
They were to me objects of great curiosity as being messengers from the distant volcanoes of the Andes Cotopaxi, Llanganete, or Sangay which rear their peaks amongst the rivulets that feed some of the early tributaries of the Amazons, such as the Macas, the Pastaza, and the Napo. The stones must have already travelled a distance of 1200 miles.
When the Spanish conquerors, nearly four hundred years ago, took possession of these formerly free countries, Cotopaxi had one of its fearful eruptions; and even in more recent times European travellers have seen the mantle of snow melt away as from a lighted furnace, while a brownish-red reflection from the glowing crater lighted up the devastation caused in the villages and valleys at the foot of the mountain by the flood of melted snow and streams of lava.
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