“I know where all the heat goes!” Jimmie declared. “It pours out of those big peaks you see off there. How do you suppose the earth is going to keep any warmth in it when it is all running out at volcanoes?”
The boys were, perhaps, twenty miles north of Quito, almost exactly under the equator. From the plateau on which they were encamped several ancient volcanoes were in plain view.
“Huh! I guess the volcanoes we see are about burned out!” Carl declared. “At any rate, I don’t hear of their filling in any valleys with lava.”
“I guess about all they do now is to smoke,” Ben suggested.
“And that’s a bad habit, too!” Glenn Richards grinned.
“Now, I’ll tell you what we’d better do, boys,” Glenn said, after glancing disapprovingly at the small fire. “We’d better hop on the machines and drop down about ten thousand feet. I’ve got enough of this high mountain business.”
“All right!” Jimmie returned. “You know what you said about wanting experiences which were out of the way. If you think you’ve got one here, we’ll slide down to the green grass.”
It was late in November and the hot, dry season of the South American continent was on. Far below the boys could see the dark green of luxuriant vegetation, while all around them lay the bare brown peaks of lofty plateaus and lifting mountain cones.
As it was somewhere near the middle of the afternoon, the boys lost no time in packing their camp equipage and provisions on the aeroplanes. In order to find a suitable place for a camp lower down they might be obliged to traverse considerable country.
In describing this part of the continent a traveler once crumpled a sheet of paper in his hand and tossed it on the table, saying to a friend as he did so that that was an outline map of the northern part of South America. There were many gorges and plateaus, but only a few spots where aeroplanes might land with safety.