[1] p. 3.--“_On the Chimborazo, eight thousand feet higher than Etna._”
Small singing birds, and even butterflies, are found at sea at great
distances from the coast, (as I have several times had opportunities of
observing in the Pacific), being carried there by the force of the wind
when storms come off the land. In the same involuntary manner insects
are transported into the upper regions of the atmosphere, 16000 or
19000 feet above the plains. The heated crust of the earth occasions
an ascending vertical current of air, by which light bodies are borne
upwards. M. Boussingault, an excellent chemist who, as Professor at
the newly instituted Mining Academy at Santa Fé de Bogota, visited
the Gneiss Mountains of Caraccas, in ascending to the summit of the
Silla witnessed, together with his companion Don Mariano de Rivero,
a phenomenon affording a remarkable ocular demonstration of the fact
of a vertically ascending current. They saw in the middle of the day,
about noon, whitish shining bodies rise from the valley of Caraccas to
the summit of the Silla, which is 5400 (5755 E.) feet high, and then
sink down towards the neighbouring sea coast. These movements continued
uninterruptedly for the space of an hour, and the objects, which at
first were mistaken for a flock of small birds, proved to be small
agglomerations of straws or blades of grass. Boussingault sent me some
of the straws, which were immediately recognised by Professor Kunth
for a species of Vilfa, a genus which, together with Agrostis, is very
abundant in the provinces of Caraccas and Cumana: it was the Vilfa
tenacissima of our Synopsis Plantarum æquinoctialium Orbis Novi, T. i.
p. 205. Saussure found butterflies on Mont Blanc, as did Ramond in the
solitudes which surround the summit of the Mont Perdu. When Bonpland,
Carlos Montufar, and myself, reached, on the 23d of June, 1802, on the
eastern declivity of the Chimborazo, the height of 18096 (19286 E.)
feet--a height at which the barometer sank to 13 inches 11-1/5 lines
(14.850 English inches), we saw winged insects fluttering around us.
We could see that they were Dipteras, resembling flies, but on a sharp
ridge of rock (cuchilla) often only ten inches wide, between steeply
descending masses of snow, it was impossible to catch the insects. The
height at which we saw them was nearly the same at which the uncovered
trachytic rock, piercing through the eternal snows, gave to our view,
in Lecidea geographica, the last traces of vegetation. The insects were
flying at a height of about 2850 toises (18225 E. feet), or about 2600
E. feet higher than Mont Blanc. Somewhat lower down, at about 2600
toises (10626 E. feet), also therefore within the region of perpetual
snow, Bonpland had seen yellow butterflies flying very near the ground.
According to our present knowledge the Mammalia which live nearest to
the region of perpetual snow are in the Swiss Alps, the Marmot which
sleeps through the winter, and a very small field-mouse (Hypudæus
nivalis), described by Martins, which on the Faulhorn lays up a store
of the roots of phænogamous alpine plants almost under the snow. (Actes
de la Société Helvétique, 1843, p. 324.) The beautiful Chinchilla, of
which the bright and silky fur is so much prized, is often supposed by
Europeans to be an inhabitant of the high mountain regions of Chili:
this, however, is an error; the Chinchilla laniger (Gray) only lives in
the mild temperature of the lower zone, and is not found farther south
than the parallel of 35°. (Claudio Gay, Historia fisica y politica de
Chile, Zoologia, 1844, p. 91.)
While on our European Alps, Lecideas, Parmelias, and Umbilicarias form
only a few coloured patches on the rocks which are not completely
covered with snow, in the Andes, beautiful flowering phænogamous
plants, first described by us, live at elevations of thirteen to
fourteen thousand feet (13700 to nearly 15000 E.) We found there
woolly species of Culcitium and Espeletia (C. nivale, C. rufescens,
and C. reflexum, E. grandiflora, and E. argentea), Sida pichinchensis,
Ranunculus nubigenus, R. Gusmanni with red or orange-coloured blossoms,
the small moss-like umbelliferous plant Myrrhis andicola, and
Fragosa arctioides. On the declivity of the Chimborazo the Saxifraga
boussingaulti, described by Adolph Brongniart, grows beyond the
limit of perpetual snow on loose boulders of rock, at 14796 (15770
E.) feet above the level of the sea, not at 17000, as stated in two
estimable English journals. (Compare my Asie Centrale, T. iii. p. 262,
with Hooker, Journal of Botany, vol. i. 1834, p. 327, and Edinburgh
New Philosophical Journal, vol. xvii. 1834, p. 380.) The Saxifrage
discovered by Boussingault is certainly, up to the present time, the
highest known phænogamous plant on the surface of the earth.
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 30-1/2
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 (8-1/2 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.
[3] p. 4.--“_Their rotating bodies._”
Fontana, in his excellent work “Über das Viperngift,” Bd. i. S. 62,
relates that he succeeded, in the course of two hours, by means of a
drop of water, in bringing to life a rotifera which had lain for two
years and a half dried up and motionless. On the action and effect of
water, see my “Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser,” Bd.
ii. S. 250.
What has been called the revivification of Rotiferæ, since observations
have been more exact and have had to undergo stricter criticism, has
been the subject of much animated discussion. Baker affirmed that he
had resuscitated, in 1771, paste-eels which Needham had given him in
1744! Franz Bauer saw his Vibrio tritici, which had been dried up for
four years, move again on being moistened. An extremely careful and
experienced observer, Doyère, in his Mémoire sur les Tardigrades, et
sur leur propriété de revenir à la vie (1842), draws from his own fine
experiments the following conclusions:--Rotiferæ come to life, _i. e._
pass from a motionless state to a state of motion, after having been
exposed to temperatures of 19°.2 Reaumur below, and 36° Reaumur above,
the freezing point; _i. e._ from 11°.2 to 113°.0 Fah. They preserve
the capability of apparent revivification, in _dry sand_, up to 56°.4
R. (158°.9 Fah.); but they lose it, and cannot be excited afresh, if
heated in _moist sand_ to 44° only (131°.0 Fah.) Doyère, p. 119. The
possibility of revivification or reanimation is not prevented by their
being placed for twenty-eight days in barometer tubes in vacuo, or even
by the application of chloride of lime or sulphuric acid (pp. 130-133).
Doyère has also seen the rotiferæ come to life again very slowly after
being dried without sand (desséchés à nu), which Spallanzani had denied
(pp. 117 and 129). “Toute dessiccation faite à la température ordinaire
pourroit souffrir des objections auxquelles l’emploi du vide sec n’eût
peut-être pas complètement repondu: mais en voyant les Tardigrades
périr irrévocablement à une température de 44°, si leurs tissus sont
pénétrés d’eau, tandis que desséchés ils supportent sans périr une
chaleur qu’on peut évaluer a 96° Reaumur, on doit être disposé à
admettre que la revivification n’a dans l’animal d’autre condition
que l’intégrité de composition et de connexions organiques.” In the
same way, in the vegetable kingdom, the sporules of cryptogamia, which
Kunth compares to the propagation of certain phænogamous plants by buds
(bulbillæ), retain their germinating power in the highest temperatures.
According to the most recent experiments of Payen, the sporules of a
minute fungus (Oïdium aurantiacum), which covers the crumb of bread
with a reddish feathery coating, do not lose their power of germination
by being exposed for half an hour in closed tubes to a temperature of
from 67° to 78° Reaumur (182°.75 to 207°.5 Fah.), before being strewed
on fresh perfectly unspoilt dough. May not the newly discovered monad
(Monas prodigiosa), which causes blood-like spots on mealy substances,
have been mingled with this fungus?
Ehrenberg, in his great work on Infusoria (S. 492-496), has given the
most complete history of all the investigations which have taken place
on what is called the revivification of rotiferæ. He believes that, in
spite of all the means of desiccation employed, the organization-fluid
still remains in the apparently dead animal. He contests the hypothesis
of “latent life;” death, he says, is not “life latent, but the want of
life.”