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Updated: June 23, 2025
Flame-breathing Cotopaxi, whose wrathful mutterings are audible two hundred leagues away, and Chimborazo, Antisana, Sarata, Illimani, Aconcagua names of mountains that affect us like the names of gods, implacable Pachacamac and Viracocha, whose everlasting granite thrones they are. At the last I showed her Cuzco, the city of the sun, and the highest dwelling-place of men on earth.
Yet withal it could at least boast a Martyrdom and a Human Sacrifice. Three hundred miles and more from Chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of Cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of Ecuador's Andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from all the world of men, the Country of the Blind.
Here no less than twenty-one volcanoes rear their lofty summits, many of them crowned with perpetual snow, amid which Chimborazo and Cotopaxi are pre-eminent. To the north of the equator, the Cordilleras again form one vast ridge, and passing through New Granada, spread out like the branches of a palm through Venezuela and along the northern shores of the continent washed by the Caribbean Sea.
To judge of the augmentation of their bulk, we measured pieces exposed to a forge-fire of moderate heat, by the water they displaced from a cylindric glass, enveloping the spongy mass with a thin coating of wax. According to our experiments, the obsidians swelled very unequally: those of the Peak and the black varieties of Cotopaxi and of Quinche increased nearly five times their bulk.
As we approached they grew larger and larger, towering up to a tremendous height. I had seen Vesuvius and Stromboli and AEtna and Cotopaxi; but these appeared far larger than any of them, not excepting the last. They rose, like the Peak of Teneriffe, abruptly from the sea, with no intervening hills to dwarf or diminish their proportions.
On this occasion, it is said, columns of fire rose to the height of nearly 5000 feet, so great was the energy of the volcanic force. A little to the southward of Cotopaxi, but concealed from it by the intervening mass of Chimborazo, lies the volcano of Tunguragua, from which there was an extraordinary eruption in the year 1797, that proved very destructive to the cities in its neighbourhood.
The whole of the mountainous part of the kingdom of Quito may be considered as an immense volcano, occupying more than seven hundred square leagues of surface, and throwing out flames by different cones, known under the particular denominations of Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, and Pichincha. The group of the Canary Islands is situated on the same sort of submarine volcano.
Still almost interminable ranges of mountains appeared to the east. As we looked back, we could see the lofty heights of Pichincha, Corazon, Ruminagui, Cotopaxi, Antisana, and many others. We had a mountain before us. Our patient mules slowly climbed up it.
Passing over to the South American continent, we come to the range of the Andes, which contains numerous volcanoes. Among these the most conspicuous is Cotopaxi, the highest volcano in the world, situated in the territory of Quito. So perfect is the form of the cone, that it looks as if it had been turned in a lathe.
If I can make you understand those words, you will see why volcanos must be in general of the shape of Cotopaxi. Cone, crater, lava: those words make up the alphabet of volcano learning. The cone is the outside of a huge chimney; the crater is the mouth of it.
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