The perpendicular height of the Chimborazo is, according to my trigonometrical measurement, 3350 toises (21422 E. feet.) (Recueil d’Observ. Astron., vol. i., Introd. p. lxxii.) This result is intermediate between those given by French and Spanish academicians. The differences depend not on different assumptions for refraction, but on differences in the reduction of the measured base lines to the level of the sea. In the Andes this reduction could only be made by the barometer, and thus every measurement called a trigonometric measurement is also a barometric one, of which the result differs according to the first term in the formula employed. If in chains of mountains of great mass, such as the Andes, we insist on determining the greater part of the whole altitude trigonometrically, measuring from a low and distant point in the plain or nearly at the level of the sea, we can only obtain very small angles of altitude. On the other hand, not only is it difficult to find a convenient base among mountains, but also every step increases the portion of the height which must be determined barometrically. These difficulties have to be encountered by every traveller who selects, among the elevated plains which surround the Andes, the station at which he may execute his geodesical measurements. My measurement of the Chimborazo was made from the plain of Tapia, which is covered with pumice. It is situated to the west of the Rio Chambo, and its elevation, as determined by the barometer, is 1482 toises (9477 E. feet.) The Llanos de Luisa, and still more the plain of Sisgun, which is 1900 toises (12150 E. feet) high, would have given greater angles of altitude; I had prepared everything for making the measurement at the latter station when thick clouds concealed the summit of Chimborazo.
Those who are engaged in investigations on languages may not be unwilling to find here some conjectures respecting the etymology of the widely celebrated name of Chimborazo. Chimbo is the name of the Corregimiento or District in which the mountain of Chimborazo is situated. La Condamine (Voyage à l’Equateur, 1751, p. 184) deduces Chimbo from “chimpani,” “to pass over a river.” Chimbo-raço signifies, according to him, “la neige de l’autre bord,” because at the village of Chimbo one crosses a stream in full view of the enormous snow-clad mountain. (In the Quichua language “chimpa” signifies the “other, or farther, side;” and chimpani signifies to pass or cross over a river, a bridge, &c.) Several natives of the province of Quito have assured me that Chimborazo signifies merely “the snow of Chimbo.” We find the same termination in Carguai-razo. But razo appears to be a provincial word. The Jesuit Holguin, (whose excellent “Vocabulario de la Lengua general de todo el Peru llamada Lengua Qquichua ó del Inca,” printed at Lima in 1608, is in my possession,) knows nothing of the word “razo.” The genuine word for snow is “ritti.” On the other hand, my learned friend Professor Buschmann remarks that in the Chinchaysuyo dialect (spoken north of Cuzco up to Quito and Pasto,) raju (the j apparently guttural) signifies snow; see the word in Juan de Figueredo’s notice of Chinchaysuyo words appended to Diego de Torres Rubio, Arte, y Vocabulario de la Lengua Quichua, reimpr. en Lima, 1754; fol. 222, b. For the two first syllables of the name of the mountain, and for the village of Chimbo, (as chimpa and chimpani suit badly on account of the a), we may find a definite signification by means of the Quichua word chimpu, an expression used for a coloured thread or fringe (señal de lana, hilo ó borlilla de colores),—for the red of the sky (arreboles),—and for a halo round the sun or moon. One may try to derive the name of the mountain directly from this word, without the intervention of the village or district. In any case, and whatever the etymology of Chimborazo may be, it must be written in Peruvian Chimporazo, as we know that the Peruvians have no b.
But what if the name of this giant mountain should have nothing in common with the language of the Incas, but should have descended from a more remote antiquity? According to the generally received tradition, it was not long before the arrival of the Spaniards that the Inca or Quichua language was introduced into the kingdom of Quito, where the Puruay language, which has now entirely perished, had previously prevailed. Other names of mountains, Pichincha, Ilinissa, and Cotopaxi, have no signification at all in the language of the Incas, and are therefore certainly older than the introduction of the worship of the sun and the court language of the rulers of Cuzco. In all parts of the world the names of mountains and rivers are among the most ancient and most certain monuments or memorials of languages; and my brother Wilhelm von Humboldt has employed these names with great sagacity in his researches on the former diffusion of Iberian nations. A singular and unexpected statement has been put forward in recent years (Velasco Historia de Quito, T. i. p. 185) to the effect that “the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna Capac were astonished to find at their first conquest of Quito a dialect of the Quichua language already in use among the natives.” Prescott, however, appears to regard this statement as doubtful. (Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. p. 115.)
If the Pass of St. Gothard, Mount Athos, or the Rigi, were placed on the summit of the Chimborazo, it would form an elevation equal to that now ascribed to the Dhawalagiri in the Himalaya. The geologist who rises to more general views connected with the interior of the earth, regards, not indeed the direction, but the relative height of the rocky ridges which we term mountain chains, as a phenomenon of so little import, that he would not be astonished if there should one day be discovered between the Himalaya and the Altai, summits which should surpass the Dhawaligiri and the Djawahir as much as these surpass the Chimborazo. (See my Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique, T. i. p. 116; and my Notice on two attempts to ascend the Chimborazo, in 1802 and 1831, in Schumacher’s Jahrbuch for 1847, S. 176.) The great height to which the snow line on the northern side of the Himalaya is raised in summer, by the influence of the heat returned by radiation from the high plains of the interior of Asia, renders those mountains, although situated in 29 to 30½ degrees of latitude, as accessible as the Peruvian Andes within the tropics. Captain Gerard has attained on the Tarhigang an elevation as great, and perhaps (as is maintained in the Critical Researches on Philosophy and Geography) 117 English feet greater than that reached by me on the Chimborazo. Unfortunately, as I have shewn more at large in another place, these mountain journies beyond the limits of perpetual snow (however they may engage the curiosity of the public) are of only very inconsiderable scientific use.
[2] p. 4.—“The Condor, the giant of the Vulture tribe.”
In my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, vol. i. pp. 26-45, I have given the natural history of the Condor, which, before my journey to the equatorial regions, had been much misrepresented. (The name of the bird is properly Cuntur in the Inca language; in Chili, in the Araucan, Mañque; Sarcoramphus Condor of Duméril.) I made and had engraved a drawing of the head from the living bird, and of the size of nature. Next to the Condor, the Lämmergeier of Switzerland, and the Falco destructor of Daudin, probably the Falco Harpyia of Linnæus, are the largest flying birds.
The region which may be regarded as the ordinary haunt of the Condor begins at the height of Etna, and comprises atmospheric strata from ten to eighteen thousand (about 10600 to 19000 English) feet above the level of the sea. Humming birds, which make summer excursions as far as 61° N. latitude on the north-west coast of America on the one hand, and the Tierra del Fuego on the other, have been seen by Von Tschudi (Fauna Peruana, Ornithol. p. 12) in Puna as high as 13700 (14600 English) feet. There is a pleasure in comparing the largest and the smallest of the feathered inhabitants of the air. Of the Condors, the largest individuals found in the chain of the Andes round Quito measured, with extended wings, 14 (nearly 15 English) feet, and the smallest 8 (8½ English) feet. From these dimensions, and from the visual angle at which the bird often appeared vertically above our heads, we are enabled to infer the enormous height to which the Condor soars when the sky is serene. A visual angle of 4´, for example, gives a perpendicular height above the eye of 6876 (7330 English) feet. The cave (Machay) of Antisana, which is opposite the mountain of Chussulongo, and from whence we measured the height of the soaring bird, is 14958 (15942 English) feet above the surface of the Pacific. This would give the absolute height attained by the Condor at fully 21834 (23270 English) feet; an elevation at which the barometer would hardly reach 12 French inches, but which yet does not surpass the highest summits of the Himalaya. It is a remarkable physiological phenomenon, that the same bird, which can fly round in circles for hours in regions of an atmosphere so rarified, should sometimes suddenly descend, as on the western declivity of the Volcano of Pichincha, to the sea-shore, thus passing rapidly through all gradations of climate. The membranous air-bags of the Condor, if filled in the lower regions of the atmosphere, must undergo extraordinary distension at altitudes of more than 23000 English feet. Ulloa, more than a century ago, expressed his astonishment that the vulture of the Andes could soar in regions where the atmospheric pressure is less than 14 French inches, (Voyage de l’Amérique meridionale, T. ii. p. 2, 1752; Observations astronomiques et physiques, p. 110). It was then believed, in analogy with experiments under the air-pump, that no animal could live in so low a pressure. I have myself, as I have already noticed, seen the barometer sink on the Chimborazo to 13 French inches 11·2 lines (14.850 English inches). Man, indeed, at such elevations, if wearied by muscular exertion, finds himself in a state of very painful exhaustion; but the Condor seems to perform the functions of respiration with equal facility under pressures of 30 and 13 English inches. It is apparently of all living creatures on our planet the one which can remove at pleasure to the greatest distance from the surface of the earth; I say at pleasure, for minute insects and siliceous-shelled infusoria are carried by the ascending current to possibly still greater elevations. The Condor probably flies higher than the altitude found as above by computation. I remember on the Cotopaxi, in the pumice plain of Suniguaicu, 13578 (14470 English) feet above the sea, to have seen the bird soaring at a height at which he appeared only as a small black speck. What is the smallest angle under which feebly illuminated objects can be discerned? Their form, (linear extension) has a great influence on the minimum of this angle. The transparency of the mountain atmosphere at the equator is such that, in the province of Quito, as I have elsewhere noticed, the white mantle or Poncho of a horseman was distinguished with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of 84132 (89665 English) feet; therefore under a visual angle of 13 seconds. It was my friend Bonpland, whom, from the pleasant country seat of the Marques de Selvalegre, we saw moving along the face of a black precipice on the Volcano of Pichincha. Lightning conductors, being long thin objects, are seen, as has already been remarked by Arago, from the greatest distances, and under the smallest angles.
The accounts of the habits of the Condor in the mountainous districts of Quito and Peru, given by me in a monograph on this powerful bird, have been confirmed by a later traveller, Gay, who has explored the whole of Chili, and has described that country in an excellent work entitled Historia fisica y politica de Chile. The Condor, which, like the Lamas, Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos, does not extend beyond the equator into New Granada, is found as far south as the Straits of Magellan. In Chili, as in the mountain plains of Quito, the Condors, which at other times live either solitarily or in pairs, assemble in flocks to attack lambs and calves, or to carry off young Guanacos (Guanacillos). The ravages annually committed among the herds of sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as among the wild Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos of the Andes, are very considerable. The inhabitants of Chili assert that, in captivity, the Condor can support forty days’ hunger; when free, his voracity is excessive, and, vulture-like, is directed by preference to dead flesh.
The mode of capture of Condors in Peru by means of palisades, as described by me, is practised with equal success in Chili. When the bird has gorged himself with flesh, he cannot rise into the air without first running for some little distance with his wings half expanded. A dead ox, in which decomposition is beginning to take place, is strongly fenced round, leaving within the fence only a small space, in which the Condors attracted by the prey are crowded together. When they have gorged themselves with food, the palisades not permitting them to obtain a start by running, they become, as remarked above, unable to rise, and are either killed with clubs by the country people, or taken alive by the lasso. On the first declaration of the political independence of Chili, the Condor appeared on the coinage as the symbol of strength. (Claudio Gay, Historia fisica y politica de Chile, publicada bajo los auspicios del Supremo Gobierno; Zoologia, pp. 194-198.)
Far more useful than the Condor in the great economy of Nature, in the removal of putrefying animal substances and in thus purifying the air in the neighbourhood of human habitations, are the different species of Gallinazos, of which the number of individuals is much greater. In tropical America I have sometimes seen as many as 70 or 80 assembled at once round a dead animal; and I am able, as an eye-witness, to confirm the fact long since stated, but which has recently been doubted by ornithologists, of the whole assembly of these birds in such cases taking flight on the appearance of a single king-vulture, who yet is no larger than the Gallinazos. No combat ever takes place; but the Gallinazos (the two species of which, Cathartes urubu and C. aura, have been confounded with each other by an unfortunately fluctuating nomenclature) appear to be terrified by the sudden appearance and courageous demeanour of the richly coloured Sarcoramphus papa. As the ancient Egyptians protected the bird which rendered them similar services towards the purification of their atmosphere, so in Peru the careless or wanton killing of the Gallinazos is punished with a fine, which in some towns amounts, according to Gay, to 300 piastres for each bird. It is a remarkable circumstance, stated so long ago as by Don Felix de Azara, that these species of vultures, if taken young and reared, will so accustom themselves to the person who feeds them, that they will follow him on a journey for many miles, flying after the waggon in which he travels over the Pampas.