The Andes and the Amazon; or, Across the continent of South America.

CHnmBORAzo. 131
and expanding as it mounts, till the wings of the condor,
fifteen feet in spread, glitter in the sun as the proud bird
fearlessly wheels over the dizzy chasm, and then, ascending above your head, sails over the dome of Chimborazo.*
Could the condor speak, what a glowing description could
lie give of the landscape beneath him when his horizon is
a thousand miles in diameter. If
"Twelve fair counties saw the blaze from Malvern's lonely height,"
what must be the panorama fronm a height fifteen times
higher!
Chimborazo was long supposed to be the tallest mountain on the globe, but its supremacy has been supplanted
by MIount Everest in Asia, and Aconcagua in Chile.t In
mountain gloom and glory, however, it still stands unrivaled. The Alps have the avalanche, "the thunderbolt of
snow," and the glaciers, those icy Niagaras so beautiful
and grand. Here they are wanting.: The monarch of
the Andes sits motionless in caln serenity and unbroken
silence. The silence is absolute and actually oppressive.
The road from Guayaquil to Quito crosses Chimborazo at
the elevation of fourteen thousand feet. Save the rush
* Humboldt's statement that the condor flies higher than Chimborazo has
been questioned; but we have seen numbers hovering at least a thousand feet
above the summit of Pichincha. Baron Mtiller, in his ascent of Orizaba, saw
two falcons flying at the height of full 1.8,000 feet; Dr. Hooker found crows
and ravens on the Himalayas at 16,500 feet; and flocks of wild geese are said
to fly over the peak of Kintschinghow, 22,756 feet.
t Mount Everest is 29,000 feet, and Aconcagua 23,200. Schlagintweit
enumerates thirteen Himalayan summits over 25,000 feet, and forty-six above
20,000. We have little confidence in the estimates of the Bolivian mountains. Chimborazo has nearly the same latitude and altitude as the loftiest
peak in Africa, Kilima Njaro.
$ Humboldt ascribes the absence of glaciers in the Andes to the extreme
steepness of the sides, and the excessive dryness of the air. Dr. Loomis,
above quoted, mentions indications of glacial action-moraines, and polished
and striated rocks-on the crest of the Cordillera, between Peru and Bolivia,
lat. 210 S.