Has this great Cordillera produced a high type of humanity? Has the clear atmosphere, the nearer approach to the clouds, the purity and example of the heights made man here pure and noble? We shall judge later, after viewing the palimpsest of history here, following on the palimpsest of Nature, for the Cordillera is a scroll of time, erased, rewritten in the physical and in the human world. The Andes have been blood-stained along all their four-thousand-mile course, that we know, ever since the white man trod them. We also know that before his time the Cordillera did produce a high human culture, that of the mysterious "Andine people," with their successors, the Incas. Pagan, perhaps, but who, in the long ages, had evolved some comprehension of the "Unknown God," and whose social code was more in tune with a true economic philosophy of life than that of their successors.
Descending now from the clouds, metaphorically and actually, we must glance more particularly at the life of those modern countries which have in part their home in the Cordillera, to whom the Cordillera is a very real and palpable thing.
From north to south, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile occupy this extensive zone: countries whose general conditions as regards the littoral we have seen in our journey along the Pacific coast. Excepting Bolivia, all these lands have the advantages accruing from the condition that they stretch from the coast across the Andes, extending to the Amazon plains beyond; thus enjoying zones respectively of coast, mountain and forest, with all their diversity of environment, climate and resource.
As we shall see in the chapter devoted to the Amazon Valley, many navigable streams traverse this forested region, giving access by launch or canoe through thousands of miles of otherwise inaccessible territory, for roads are often impossible and of railways there are none.
Colombia we shall visit in another chapter. Both Colombia and Venezuela lie in part upon the Andes and face upon the Spanish Main.
Ecuador is but a small country in comparison with the vaster areas of its neighbours, but Nature has rendered it extremely diverse, and has dowered it—it is a terrible gift, however—with some of the most remarkable mountain forms on the face of the globe. Nothing can exceed the stupendous grandeur of the great "avenue" of snow-clad volcanoes which arises before us around Quito and terminates on the Equator.
In Ecuador Nature might seem to have thought to display her powers after the manner of a model, with every grade of climate, topographical form and species of plant and animal life; to have set up, within a measurable compass, an example of her powers in the tropical world. The hot lowlands of the coast, covered in part with the densest and rankest vegetation, intersected by the most fertile of valleys, where ripen the most delicious and valuable fruits, with rivers wherein the curious life of the Tropics has its home, from gorgeous insect or bird down to the tortoise and the loathly alligator, slope upwards to the bleakest tablelands, the icy paramos, which themselves are crowned with the snow-capped volcanoes, at times belching forth fire and ash, carrying destruction to fruitful field and populous town. Beyond lies some of the most broken region on the earth's surface, descending to the forests inhabited by the half-naked and savage Indian, still outside the pale of civilization or the influence of Christianity, who may receive the incautious traveller with deadly weapons of blow-pipe and poisoned arrows.
The uplands of Ecuador embody a high tableland, cut up into three hoyas or basins, known as those of Quito, Ambato and Cuenca respectively.
"Rising from both the eastern and western rims of this elevated plateau are the higher Cordilleras, their main summits culminating far above the perpetual snowline, which in Ecuador lies at about 15,750 feet above sea-level. As before remarked, due to their peculiarly symmetrical arrangement and spectacular appearance, such an assemblage of snow-clad peaks is not found in any other part of the world. Not only for their height are the Ecuadorian peaks noteworthy, but for their peculiar occurrence in parallel lines, sometimes in pairs facing each other across the 'cyclopean passage' or avenue formed by the long plateau. There are twenty-two of these great peaks, several of which are actual volcanoes, grouped along the central plains almost within sight of each other. Built up by subterranean fires, the great mountain edifices of Ecuador are sculptured by glacier streams and perpetual snows. The volcanoes of Ecuador have rendered the country famous among geologists and travellers of all nationalities. They were the terror of the primitive Indian, and objects of awe and worship by the semi-civilized peoples of the land, and have been at various periods terrible scourges and engines of destruction.
"The largest number of high peaks and the greatest average elevations occur upon the eastern Andes, or Cordillera Oriental, whilst the western or Occidental is distinguished by having the highest individual elevations. The altitudes given by various authorities of these peaks differ somewhat, and the measurements of later investigators vary considerably from those of Humboldt in some cases. Humboldt was the first to study and measure the Ecuadorian volcanoes, and La Condamine measured them in 1742. The more modern investigators were Drs. Reiss and Stübel, who spent four years, from 1870 to 1874, in the study, and in 1880 they were the subject of Edward Whymper's famous travels. The alleged remarkable condition of the sinking or rising of various of these summits and localities may account, it has been stated, for the variation found in measurements made at different times. It has been estimated that a considerable decrease in the elevation of the Ecuadorian Andes in the region took place during last century. Quito has sunk, it is stated, 26 feet in 122 years, and Pichincha 218 feet in the same period. The farm at Antisana, where Humboldt lived for some time, has sunk 165 feet in sixty-four years. On the other hand, two of the active volcanoes, those of Cotopaxi and Sangay, have increased in altitude since they were measured by La Condamine, it is asserted. Underlying seismic disturbances have doubtless been the cause of these movements."[24]
The highest of these peaks is Chimborazo, 20,498 feet, followed by Cotopaxi, 19,613 feet, Antisana and Cayambe, both over 19,000 feet, with others ranging downwards to about 14,000 feet.