[75] More accurately, 2527 feet; Wisse and Moreno made it 2460.
[76] The snow on the top of Mont Blanc is like dry dust; in Lapland, in open places, it consists of hexagonal crystals, and is called by the inhabitants "sand-snow." The French and Spanish mathematicians, Bouguer, La Condamine, and Ulloa, in their story of ascending Pichincha, give a long and dreadful account of their sufferings from cold and rarefied air: "whilst eating, every one was obliged to keep his plate over a chafing-dish of coals, to prevent his food from freezing." The traveler nowadays finds only a chilling wind. This rise of temperature, coupled with the fact that La Condamine (1745), Humboldt (1802), Boussingault (1831), and Wisse (1863) give to Quito a decreasing altitude, inclines us to believe, with Boussingault, that the Andes are sinking. Since the activity of the volcano in 1868, the summit has been so warm that the snow has totally disappeared. Ice-cream has in consequence risen in price in Quito, as snow must be brought from Sincholagua, four days' journey.
[77] From imba (fish), and bura, to produce. Its name can not be older than 1691, unless the mountain made similar eruptions before. It has frequently ejected water.
[78] The culminating point of Guamani is Sara-urcu, a volcano which threw out a vast quantity of ashes in 1843 and 1856.
[79] M. d'Abbadie professes to have visited a village in Abyssinia (Arquiage) which is 12,450 feet above the sea. Potosi stands 13,500 feet.
[80] This agrees with Humboldt's calculation that a difference of elevation of 278 feet produces the same effect on the annual temperature as a change of one degree of latitude. According to the experiments of Captain Pullen, the minimum temperature of the great depths of the ocean 35°, and it commences soon after passing 12,000 feet.
[81] The great dépôts of cattle in Ecuador are at the two extremes of elevation, the lowlands of St. Elena and the highlands of Antisana. On the slope of Cayambi is another extensive cattle estate.
[82] The grebe is considered by Messrs. Cassin and Lawrence to be the Podiceps occipitalis, Lisson (P. calipareus et Chilensis of Garnot), which occurs in large flocks on the coast of Chile and in the Straits of Magellan. It is quite different from the P. micropterus of Lake Titicaca. At Morococha, Peru, 15,600 feet above the sea, Herndon found snipes and ducks.
[83] In Brigham's Notes on the Volcanic Phenomena of the Hawaiian Islands, this volcano is put down as active, but there has been no eruption in the memory of man. Its lithology is represented in our collection by porous, gray, granular trachyte, fine-grained, compact trachyte, and dark porphyroid trachyte. The derivation of Sincholagua is unknown, Rumiñagui means the face of a rock, Cotopaxi, Sincholagua, and Rumiñagui, and Cotopaxi, Pichincha, and Guamani, form equilateral triangles.
[84] MM. Zurcher and Margalli make the slope 55°! and Guzman, 69° 30'!! The slope of Mauna Loa is 6° 30'; of Etna, 9°; of Teneriffe, 12° 30'; of Vesuvius, 35°. While cinder-cones may have an angle of 40°, lava-cones seldom exceed 10°.