Curious Particulars respecting the Mountains and Volcanos, and the Effect of the late Earthquakes in South America, with Remarks on the Language and Science of the Natives, and other Subjects.

By M. A.

Von Homboldt .

Abridged from the Magazin Encylopedique.

Three branches of the Andes.

We arrived at Quito, by crossing the snows of Quridien and Tolima, for as the cordillera of the Andes forms three separate branches, and at Santa Fe de Bogoto, we were on the easternmost, it was necessary for us to pass the loftiest, in order to reach the coast of the Pacific ocean.

We travelled on foot, and spent seventeen days in these deserts, in which are to be found no traces of their ever having been inhabited.

We slept in huts made of the leaves of the heliconia, which we carried with us for the purpose.

Descending the Andes to the west, there are marshes, in which you sink up to the knees.

The latter part of the time we were deluged with rain; our boots rotted on our legs; and we arrived barefoot at Carthago, but enriched with a sine collection of new plants, of which I have a great number of drawings.

Huts made of the leaves of heliconia.

The Andes marshy toward the west.

Mines of Platina in mount Choca.

From Carthago we went to Popayan, by way of Buga, crossing the beautiful vale of the river Cauca, and having constantly at one side the mountain of Choca, in which are the mines of Platina.

Basaltic mountains.

We staid during the month of November 1801, at Popayan, visiting the Basaltic mountains of Julusuito; the mouths of the volcano of Purace, which evolve, with a dreadful noise, vapours of hydrosulphurated water; and the porphyritic granites of Pische, which form columns of five, six, or seven sides, similar to those I remember I saw in the Euganean mountains in Italy, which Strange has described.

Volcano of Purace.

Columnar porphyritic granites.

Paramos piercing cold and destitute of vegetation.

In travelling from Popayan to Quito, we had to cross the paramos of Pasto, and this in the rainy season.

Every place in the Andes, where, at the height of 3500 or 4000 yards, vegetation ceases, and the cold penetrates to the very marrow of your bones, is called a paramo.

To avoid the heats of the valley of Patia, where, in a fingle night, a fever may be caught, that will last three or four months, we passed the summit of the Cordillera, traversing frightful precipices.

We spent our Christmas at Pasto, a little town at the foot of a tremendous volcano, where we were entertained with great hospitality.

The roads leading to and from it are the most shocking in the world.

Thick forests, between marshes, in which the mules sink up to their bellies; and gullies so deep and narrow, that we seemed entering the galleries of a mine.

Town of Pasto.

The whole province of Pasto, including the environs of Guachucal and Tuqueres, is a frozen plain, nearly beyond the point where vegetation can subsist, and surrounded by volcanos and sulphur-pits, continually emitting volumes of smoke.

The wretched inhabitants of these deserts have no food but potatoes: and if these fail, as they did last year, they go to the mountains to eat the stem of a little tree, called achupalla (pourretia pitcarnia); but the bears of the Andes, as they too feed on it, often dispute it with them.

On the north of the volcano of Pasto, I discovered, in the little In - dian village of Voisaco, 1900 yards above the level of the sea, a red porphyry, with base of argil, enclosing vitreous feldspar, and hornblende, that has all the properties of the serpentine of the Fichtelgebirge.

This porphyry has very distinctly marked poles, but no attractive power.

Near the town of Ibarra, we nearly escaped being drowned by a very sudden swell of the water, accompanied with shocks of an earthquake.

The province a frozen plain.

The people live on potatoes,

and the stems of the pouretia pitcarnia.

Red porphyry with distinct poles.

We reached Quito on the 6th of January 1802. It is a handsome city; but the sky is commonly clouded and gloomy.

The neighbouring mountains exhibit little verdure, and the cold is very considerable.

The great earthquake on the 4th of February 1797, which changed the face of the whole province, and in one instant destroyed thirty-five or forty thousand persons, has so altered the temperature of the air, that the thermometer is now commonly 41° to 54°, and seldom rises to 68° or 70°, whereas Bouguer observed it constantly at 66° or 68°.

Since this catastrophe, earthquakes are continually recurring; and such shocks! it is probable, that all the higher ground is one vast volcano.

What are called the mountains of Cotopoxi and Pichincha, are but little summits, the craters of which, form different conduits terminating in the same cavity.

The earthquake of 1797, afforded a melancholy proof of this; for the ground then opened every where, and vomited forth sulphur, water, &c. Notwithstanding the dangers and horrors that furround them, the people of Quito are gay, lively, and sociable, and in no place did I ever see a more decided and general taste for pleasure, luxury, and amusement.

Thus man accustoms himself to sleep tranquilly on the brink of a precipice.

Quito.

Earthquake of 1797.

altered the climate greatly.

The heights one vast volcano.

People of Quito.

Pichincha.

I was twice at the mouth of the crater of Pichincha, the mountain that overlooks the city of Quito. I know of no one but Condamine, that ever reached it before; and he was without instruments, and could not stay above a quarter of an hour, on account of the extreme cold.

I was more successful.

From the edge of the crater rise three peaks, which are free from snow, as it is continually melted by the ascending vapour.

At the summit of one of these I found a rock, that projected over the precipice, and hence I made my observations.

This rock was about twelve feet long, by six broad, and strongly agitated by the frequent shocks, of which we counted eighteen in less than half an hour.

We lay on our bellies, the better to examine the bottom of the crater.

The mouth of the volcano forms a circular hole, near a league in circumference, the perpendicular edges of which are covered with snow on the top.

The inside is of a deep black; but the abyss is so vast, that the summits of several mountains may be distinguished in it.

Their tops seemed to be six hundred yards below us, judge then where their bases must be. I have no doubt but the bottom of the crater is on a level with the city of Quito.

Condamine found it extinct, and even covered with snow; but we had to report the unpleasant news, that it was burning.

On my second visit, being better furnished with instruments, I found the diameter of the crater to be 1600 yards, whereas that of Vesuvius is but 670. The height of the mountain is 5280 yards.

Its crater.

Several mountains within it.

Its diameter 1600 yards;

height 5280.

Volcano of Antisana, 5915 yards.

Barometer at 15.6 inches.

Hemorrhages brought on.

When we visited the volcano of Antisana, the weather was so favourable, that we reached the height of 5915 yards.

In this losty region, the barometer sunk to 14 inches 7 lines, [15.6 Eng.] and the tenuity of the air occasioned the blood to issue from our lips, gums, and even eyes: we felt extremely feeble, and one of our company fainted away.

The air brought from the loftiest point we visited, gave on being analysed 0.218 of oxigen gas, and 0.008 of carbonic acid.

Air 0.218 of oxigen.

We visited Cotopoxi, but could not reach the mouth of the crater.

The assertion, that this mountain was diminished in height by the earthquake of 1797, is a mistake.

Cotopoxi not sunk by the earthquake of 1797.

In June we proceeded to measure Chimboraco and Tunguragua, and take a plan of all the country affected by the grand catastrophe of 1797.

We approached within about 500 yards of the summit of Chimboraco, our ascent being facilitated by a line of volcanic rocks bare of snow.

The height we reached was 6465 yards; and we were prevented from ascending farther by a chasm too deep to cross.

We felt the same inconveniences as on Antisana; and were unwell for two or three days after. The air at this height contained 0.20 of oxigen.

The trigonometrical measurement I took of the mountain at two different times, and I can place some considence in my operations, gave me for its height 6970 yards, a hundred more than Condamine assigns it.

The whole of this huge mass, as of all the high mountains of the Andes, is not granite, but porphyry, from the foot to the summit, and there the porphyry is 4050 yards thick.

Air at 6465 yards, contained 0.20 of oxigen.

Chimboraco 6970 yards high.

Consists of porphyry.

Chimboraco is probably a volcanic mountain, for the track by which we ascended, consists of a burnt and scorisied rock mixed with pumice-stone, resembling all the streams of lava in this country, and ran higher up the mountain than we could climb.

The summit therefore is in all likelihood the crater of an extinct volcano.

Chimboraco a volcano.

The mountain of Tunguragua has diministhed in height since the earthquake of 1797.

Bouguer assigns it 5589 yards, I found it but 5399, so that it must have lost 190 yards; and indeed the people in the vicinity say, that they have seen its summit crumble away before their eyes.

Tunguragua diminished in height. Now 5399 yards.

During our stay at Riobancha, we accidentally made a very curious discovery.

The state of the province of Quito, previous to its conquest by the Inca Tupaynpangi, in 1470, is wholly unknown: but the king of the Indians, Leandro Zapla, who resides at Lican, and has a mind extraordinarily cultivated for an Indian, possesses manuscripts composed by one of his ancestors, in the sixteenth century, which contains the history of that period.

They are written in the Parugay tongue, which was formerly general in Quito, but is now lost, having been supplanted by the Inca or Anichna.

Fortunately another of Zapla's ancestors amused himself by translating these memoirs into Spanish.

We have obtained from them valuable information, particularly in the memorable period of the eruption of Nevado del Atlas, which must have been the highest mountain in the world, loftier than Chimboraco, and called by the Indians Capa-urcu, or chief of mountains.

These manuscripts, the traditions I collected at Parima, and the hieroglyphies I saw in the desert of Casiquiare, where scarcely a vestige of a human being is now to be seen, added to what Clavigero has said of the emigration of the Mexicans toward the south, have suggested to me ideas respecting the origin of this people, which I shall pursue when I have leisure.

Indian manuscripts of the 16th century.

Nevado del Atlas, once the highest mountain in the world.

Hieroglyphics.

American languages not poor.

I have likewise paid much attention to the study of the American languages, and found what Condamine has said of their poverty to be extremely false.

The Caribbee is rich, beautiful, energetic, and polished: it is not destitute of expressions for abstract ideas; and it has numerical terms sufficient for any possible combination of figures.

The Inca is particularly rich in delicacy and variety of expression.

The priests knew how to draw a meridian line, and observe the solstices: they had reduced the lunar to a solar year by intercalations: and the savages even at Erevato, in the interior of Parima, believe the moon to be inhabited, and know, from the traditions of their ancestors, that its light is derived from the sun.

Caribee.

Inca.

Ancient science.

Crocodile increases air by respiration.

At Monpox I made some very curious experiments on the respiration of the crocodile, having procured forty or fifty young ones.

Instead of diminishing the quantity of the air in which it respires like other animals, the crocodile increases it. A crocodile placed in 1000 parts of atmospheric air, consisting of 274 oxigen, 15 carbonic acid, and 711 azot, increased it in an hour and forty-three minutes, by the addition of 124 parts.

The carbonic acid had received an augmentation of 64 parts: the oxigen had been diminished 167; but, as 46 are contained in the carbonic acid produced, the crocodile had appropriated to itself only 121 parts, a small quantity considering the colour of its blood: and 227 parts of azot, or other gasses, on which acidifiable bases had no action, were produced.

For the analysis I used lime water and nitrous gas, prepared with great care.

Air 274 oxigen, 15 carbonic acid, 711 azot.

Near Santa Fee, at an elevation of 2890 yards, are found an immense number of fossil bones of elephants, both of the African species and of the carnivorous kind, discovered in North America. I have since received others from a part of the Andes, about the latitude of 2° from Quito, and from Chili:

so that these animals must have existed from Patagonia to the Ohio.

Large fossil bones at a considerable height, and nearly from one extremity of America to the other.