conception of the divine Architect as he beholds the great white dome of
Chimborazo. It looks lofty from the very first. Now and then an expanse
of thin, sky-like vapor would cut the mountain in twain, and the dome,
islanded in the deep blue of the upper regions, seemed to belong more to
heaven than to earth. We knew that Chimborazo was more than twice the
altitude of Etna. We could almost see the great Humboldt struggling up
the mountain's side till he looked like a black speck moving over the
mighty white, but giving up in despair four thousand feet below the
summit. We see the intrepid Bolivar mounting still higher; but the hero
of Spanish-American independence returns a defeated man. Last of all
comes the philosophic Boussingault, and attains the prodigious elevation
of nineteen thousand six hundred feet,--the highest point reached by man
without the aid of a balloon; but the dome remains unsullied by his
foot. Yet none of these facts increase our admiration. The mountain has
a tongue which speaks louder than all mathematical calculations.
There must be something singularly sublime about Chimborazo, for the
spectator at Riobamba is already nine thousand feet high, and the
mountain is not so elevated above him as Mont Blanc above the vale of
Chamouni, when, in reality, that culminating point of Europe would not
reach up even to the snow-limit of Chimborazo by two thousand feet. It
is only while sailing on the Pacific that one sees Chimborazo in its
complete proportions. Its very magnificence diminishes the impression of
awe and wonder, for the Andes on which it rests are heaved to such a
vast altitude above the sea, that the relative elevation of its summit
becomes reduced by comparison with the surrounding mountains. Its
altitude is twenty-one thousand four hundred and twenty feet, or
forty-five times the height of Strasburg cathedral; or, to state it
otherwise, the fall of one pound from the top of Chimborazo would raise
the temperature of water thirty degrees. One-fourth of this is
perpetually covered with snow, so that its ancient name Chimpurazu--the
mountain of snow--is very appropriate. It is a stirring thought that
this mountain, now mantled with snow, once gleamed with volcanic fires.
There is a hot spring on the north side, and an immense amount of
debris covers the slope below the snow-limit, consisting chiefly of
fine-grained, iron-stained trachyte and coarse porphyroid gray trachyte;
very rarely a dark vitreous trachyte. Chimborazo is very likely not a
solid mountain; trachytic volcanoes are supposed to be full of cavities.
Bouger found it made the plumb line deviate 7" or 8".
The valleys which furrow the flank of Chimborazo are in keeping with its
colossal size. Narrower, but deeper, than those of the Alps, the mind
swoons and sinks in the effort to comprehend their grim majesty. The
mountain appears to have been broken to pieces like so much thin crust,
and the strata thrown on their vertical edges, revealing deep, dark
chasms, that seem to lead to the confines of the lower world. The
deepest valley in Europe, that of the Ordesa in the Pyrenees, is three
thousand two hundred feet deep; but here are rents in the side of
Chimborazo in which Vesuvius could be put away out of sight. As you look
down into the fathomless fissure, you see a white fleck rising out of
the gulf, 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 he could 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 from a height fifteen times higher!
Chimborazo was long supposed to be the tallest mountain on the globe,
but its supremacy has been supplanted by Mount Everest in Asia, and
Aconcagua in Chile. In mountain gloom and glory, however, it still
stands unrivalled. 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 calm
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 of the trade wind in
the afternoon, as it sweeps over the Andes, not a sound is audible; not
the hum of an insect, nor the chirp of a bird, nor the roar of the puma,
nor the music of running waters. Mid-ocean is never so silent. You can
almost hear the globe turning on its axis. There was a time when the
monarch deigned to speak, and spoke with a voice of thunder, for the
lava on its sides is an evidence of volcanic activity. But ever since
the morning stars sang together over man's creation Chimbo has sat in
sullen silence, satisfied to look "from his throne of clouds o'er half
the world." There is something very suggestive in this silence of
Chimborazo. It was once full of noise and fury; it is now a _completed_
mountain, and thunders no more. How silent was Jesus, a completed
character! The reason that we are so noisy is that we are so full of
wants; we are _unfinished_ characters. Had we perfect fulness of all
things, the beatitude of being without a want, we should lapse into the
eternal silence of God.
Chimborazo is a leader of a long train of ambitious crags and peaks; but
as he who comes after the king must not expect to be noticed, we will
only take a glimpse of these lesser lights as we pass up the Western
Cordillera, and then down the Eastern.
The first after leaving the monarch is Caraguairazo. The Indians call it
"the wife of Chimborazo." They are separated only by a very narrow
valley. One hundred and seventy years ago the top of this mountain fell
in, and torrents of mud flowed out containing multitudes of fishes. It
is now over seventeen thousand feet high, and is one of the most Alpine
of the Quitonian volcanoes, having sharp pinnacles instead of the smooth
trachytic domes--usually double domes--so characteristic of the Andean
summits. And now we pass in rapid succession numerous picturesque
mountains, some of them extinct volcanoes, as Iliniza, presenting two
pyramidal peaks, the highest seventeen thousand feet above the sea, and
Corazon, so named from its heart-shaped summit, till we reach Pichincha,
whose smoking crater is only five miles distant in a straight line from
the city of Quito, or eleven by the travelled route.
The crown of this mountain presents three groups of rocky peaks. The
most westerly one is called Rucu-Pichincha, and alone manifests
activity. To the northeast of Rucu is Guagua-Pichincha, a ruined flue of
the same fiery furnace; and between the two is Cundur-Guachana.
Pichincha is the only volcano in Ecuador which has not a true cone
crater. Some violent eruption beyond the reach of history or tradition
has formed an enormous funnel-shaped basin two thousand five hundred
feet deep, fifteen hundred in diameter at the bottom, and expanding
upward to a width of three-fourths of a mile. It is the _deepest_ crater
on the globe. That of Kilauea is six hundred feet; Orizaba, five
hundred; Etna, three hundred; Hecla, one hundred. Vesuvius is a portable
furnace in comparison. The abyss is girt with a ragged wall of dark
trachyte, which rises on the inside at various angles between forty-five
degrees and perpendicularity. As we know of but one American besides the
members of our expedition (Mr. Farrand, a photographer) who has
succeeded in entering the crater of this interesting volcano, we will
give a brief sketch of our visit.
Leaving Quito in the afternoon by the old arched gate-way at the foot of
Panecillo, and crossing a spur of the mountain, we stopped for the night
at the Jesuit hacienda, situated in the beautiful valley of Lloa, but
nearly ruined by the earthquake of 1859. On the damp walls of this
monastery, perched ten thousand two hundred and sixty-eight feet above
the ocean, we found several old paintings, among them a copy of the
_Visitation_ by Rubens. The sunset views in this heart of the Andes were
surpassingly beautiful. Mounting our horses at break of day, and taking
an Indian guide, we ascended rapidly by a narrow and difficult path
through the forest that belts the volcano up to the height of twelve
thousand feet, emerging gradually into a thicket of stunted bushes, and
then entered the dreary _paramo_. Splendid was the view of the Eastern
Cordillera. At least six dazzling white volcanoes were in sight just
across the valley of Quito, among them table-topped Cayambi, majestic
Antisana, and princely Cotopaxi, whose tapering summit is a mile above
the clouds. Toiling upward we reached the base of the cone where
vegetation ceased entirely; and tying our horses to some huge rocks
that had fallen from the mural cliff above, we started off on hands and
feet for the crater. The cone is deeply covered with sand and cinders
for about two hundred feet, and the sides are inclined at an angle of
about thirty-five degrees. At ten o'clock we reached the brim of the
crater, and the great gulf burst suddenly into view.
We can never forget the impression made upon us by the sight. We speak
of many things here below as awful, but that word has its full meaning
when carried to the top of Pichincha. There you see a frightful opening
in the earth's crust nearly a mile in width and half a mile deep, and
from the dark abyss comes rolling up a cloud of sulphurous vapors. Monte
Somma in the time of Strabo was a miniature; but this crater is on the
top of a mountain four times the height of the Italian volcano.
Imagination finds it difficult to conceive a spectacle of more fearful
grandeur or such solemn magnificence. It well accords with Milton's
picture of the bottomless pit. The united effect of the silence and
solitude of the place, the great depth of the cavity, the dark
precipitous sides, and the column of smoke standing over an unseen
crevice, was to us more impressive than thundering Cotopaxi or fiery
Vesuvius. Humboldt, after standing on this same brink, exclaimed, "I
have never beheld a grander or more remarkable picture than that
presented by this volcano;" and La Condamine compared it to "the Chaos
of the poets."
Below us are the smouldering fires which may any moment spring forth
into a conflagration; around us are black, ragged cliffs,--fit boundary
for this gate-way to the infernal regions. They look as if they had just
been dragged up from the central furnace of the earth. Life seems to
have fled in terror from the vicinity; even lichens, the children of the
bare rocks, refuse to clothe the scathed and beetling crags. For some
moments made mute by the dreadful sight, we stood like statues on the
rim of the mighty caldron, with our eyes riveted on the abyss below,
lost in contemplating that which cannot be described. The panorama from
this lofty summit is more pleasing, but equally sublime. Towards the
rising sun is the long range of the Eastern Cordillera, hiding from our
view the great valley of the Amazon. To right and left are the peaks of
another procession of august mountains from Cotocachi to Chimborazo. We
are surrounded by the great patriarchs of the Andes, and their speaker,
Cotopaxi, ever and anon sends his muttering voice over the land.
The view westward is like looking down from a balloon. Those parallel
ridges of the mountain chain, dropping one behind the other, are the
gigantic staircase by which the ice-crowned Chimborazo steps down to the
sea. A white sea of clouds covers the peaceful Pacific and the lower
parts of the coast. But the vapory ocean, curling into the ravines,
beautifully represents little coves and bays, leaving islands and
promontories like a true ocean on a broken shore. We seem raised above
the earth, which lies like an opened map below us; we can look down on
the upper surface of the clouds, and, were it night, down too upon the
lightnings....
The first to reach the brink of the crater were the French Academicians
in 1742. Sixty years after Humboldt stood on the summit. But it was not
until 1844 that any one dared to enter the crater. This was accomplished
by Garcia Moreno, now President of Ecuador, and Sebastian Wisse, a
French engineer. Humboldt pronounced the bottom of the crater
"inaccessible from its great depth and precipitous descent." We found it
accessible, but exceedingly perilous. The moment we prepared to descend
our guide ran away. We went on without him, but when half-way down were
stopped by a precipice.
On the 22d of October, 1867, we returned to Pichincha with another guide
and entered the crater by a different route. Manuel, our Indian, led us
to the south side, and over the brink we went. We were not long in
realizing the danger of the undertaking. Here the snow concealed an ugly
fissure or covered a treacherous rock (for nearly all the rocks are
crumbling), there we must cross a mass of loose sand moving like a
glacier down the almost vertical side of the crater; and on every hand
rocks were giving way, and, gathering momentum at each revolution, went
thundering down, leaping over precipices and jostling other rocks, which
joined in the race, till they all struck the bottom with a deep rumbling
sound, shivered like so many bomb-shells into a thousand pieces, and
telling us what would be our fate if we made a single misstep. We
followed our Indian in single file, keeping close together, that the
stones set free by those in the rear might not dash those below from
their feet; feeling our way with the greatest caution, clinging with our
hands to the snow, sand, rocks, tufts of grass, or anything that would
hold for a moment; now leaping over a chasm, now letting ourselves down
from rock to rock; at times paralyzed with fear, and always with death
staring us in the face; thus we scrambled for two hours and a half till
we reached the bottom of the crater.
Here we found a deeply furrowed plain strewn with ragged rocks, and
containing a few patches of vegetation, with half a dozen species of
flowers. In the centre is an irregular heap of stones, two hundred and
sixty feet high by eight hundred in diameter. This is the cone of
eruption,--its sides and summit covered with an imposing group of vents,
seventy in number, all lined with sulphur and exhaling steam, black
smoke, and sulphurous gas. The temperature of the vapor just within the
fumarole is 184 deg., water boiling beside it at 189 deg..
The central vent or chimney gives forth a sound like the violent
bubbling of boiling water. As we sat on this fiery mount surrounded by a
circular rampart of rocks, and looked up at the immense towers of dark
dolerite which ran up almost vertically to the height of twenty-five
hundred feet above us, musing over the tremendous force which fashioned
this awful amphitheatre,--spacious enough for all the gods of Tartarus
to hold high carnival,--the clouds which hung in the thin air around the
crest of the crater pealed forth thunder after thunder, which,
reverberating from precipice to precipice, were answered by the crash of
rocks let loose by the storm, till the whole mountain seemed to tremble
like a leaf. Such acoustics, mingled with the flash of lightning and the
smell of brimstone, made us believe that we had fairly got into the
realm of Pluto. It is the spot where Dante's "Inferno" ought to be read.
INCA HIGH-ROADS AND BRIDGES.
E. GEORGE SQUIER.
[Squier's "Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the
Land of the Incas" is the source of our present selection. The
author, Ephraim George Squier, was born in Albany County, New
York, in 1821. He studied the aboriginal monuments of New York,
and afterwards travelled and made extensive archaeological
researches in Central America. He was appointed United States
Commissioner to Peru in 1863, and made important studies of the
ancient ruins of that country. We give his interesting account
of the perilous crossing of the Apurimac.]
The great and elaborate highways, or public roads, which the chroniclers
and the historians, following their authority, tell us were constructed
by the Incas throughout their vast empire, all radiating north, east,
south, and west from the imperial city of Cuzco, if they existed at all
in Central and Southern Peru, have disappeared, leaving here and there
only short sections or fragments, hardly justifying the extravagant
praise that has been bestowed on them. The modern mule-paths, miscalled
roads, must necessarily follow nearly, if not exactly, the routes of the
Indians under the Empire. The physical conformation of the country is
such that communication between _puna_ and _puna_, and from valley to
valley, must always be made by the same passes. All these passes over
the mountains are marked by huge piles of stone raised, like the cairns
of Scotland and Wales, by the contribution of a single stone from each
traveller as an offering to the spirits of the mountains, and as an
invocation for their aid in sustaining the fatigues of travel. These
great stone heaps still exist, and will remain to the end of time,
monuments marking forever the routes of travel in the days of the Incas.
We know, therefore, from these rude monuments very nearly what were the
ancient lines of communication. These are also further indicated by
remains of the _tambos_, which occur at intervals all through the
country, and oftenest in places remote from supplies, in cold and desert
districts, where the traveller stands most in need of food and shelter.
The modern voyager would consider himself supremely fortunate were he to
find one in a hundred of these tambos, now in existence; for travelling
in Peru is infinitely more difficult and dangerous than it was in the
days of the Incas: more difficult, because the facilities are less; more
dangerous, because the laws are more lax, and the moral standard of the
people lower. The influence of Spain in Peru has been every way
deleterious; the civilization of the country was far higher before the
Conquest than now.
As I have said, few traces of the Inca roads, such as are described by
the early writers, and such as Humboldt saw in Northern Peru, are now to
be found in the southern part of that country; and as the modern
pathways must follow the ancient lines, I infer that they never existed
here, for there is no reason why they should have suffered more from
time and the elements in one part of the country than in another.
Between Cuzco and the sweet valley of Yucay there are numerous traces of
an ancient road, some sections of which are perfect. These sections
coincide in character with the long reaches in the direction of Quito.
They consist of a pathway from ten to twelve feet wide, raised slightly
in the centre, paved with stones, and the edges defined by larger stones
sunk firmly in the ground. Where this road descends from the elevated
_puna_--a sheer descent of almost four thousand feet into the valley of
Yucay--it zigzags on a narrow shelf cut in the face of the declivity,
and supported here and there, where foothold could not otherwise be
obtained, by high retaining-walls of cut stone, looking as perfect and
firm as when first built centuries ago.
High mountain-ranges and broad and frigid deserts, swept by fierce,
cold winds, are not the sole obstacles to intercommunication in the
Altos of Peru, and among those snow-crowned monarchs of the Andes and
Cordilleras. There are deep valleys, gorges, and ravines among the
mountains, or cut deep in the plains that alternate with them, in which
flow swelling rivers or rapid torrents, fed by the melting snows in the
dry season, and swollen by the rains in the wet season. They are often
unfordable, but still they must somehow be passed by the traveller. A
few bridges of stone were constructed by the Spaniards, some after the
Conquest, and a few others have been erected by their descendants; but,
as a rule, the rivers and mountain-torrents are passed to-day by the
aid of devices the same as were resorted to by the Incas, and at points
which they selected.
Had the principle of the arch been well understood by the ancient
inhabitants, who have left some of the finest stone-cutting and masonry
to be found in the world, there is no doubt the interior of Peru would
have abounded in bridges rivalling those of Rome in extent and beauty.
As it was, occupying a country destitute of timber, they resorted to
suspension-bridges, no doubt precisely like those now constructed by
their descendants and successors,--bridges formed of cables of braided
withes, stretched from bank to bank, and called _puentes de mimbres_
(bridges of withes). Where the banks are high, or where the streams are
compressed between steep or precipitous rocks, these cables are anchored
to piers of stone. In other places they are approached by inclined
causeways, raised to give them the necessary elevation above the water.
Three or four cables form the floor and the principal support of the
bridge, over which small sticks, sometimes only sections of cane or
bamboo, are laid transversely, and fastened to the cables by vines,
cords, or thongs of raw hide. Two smaller cables are sometimes stretched
on each side as a guard or hand-rail. Over these frail and swaying
structures pass men and animals, the latter frequently with their load
on their backs.
Each bridge is usually kept up by the municipality of the nearest
village; and as it requires renewal every two or three years, the
Indians are obliged at stated periods to bring to the spot a certain
number of withes of peculiar kinds of tough wood, generally of that
variety called ioke, which are braided by experts, and then stretched
across the stream or river by the united exertions of the inhabitants.
Some of the larger and most important structures of this kind are kept
up by the government, and all passengers and merchandise pay a fixed
toll. Such is the case with the great bridge over the Apurimac, on the
main road from the ancient Guamanga (now Ayacucho) to Cuzco.
The Apurimac is one of the head-waters of the Amazon, a large and rapid
stream, flowing in a deep valley, or rather gigantic ravine, shut in by
high and precipitous mountains. Throughout its length it is crossed at
only a single point, between two enormous cliffs, which rise dizzily
on both sides, and from the summits of which the traveller looks down
into a dark gulf. At the bottom gleams a white line of water, whence
struggles up a dull but heavy roar, giving to the river its name,
_Apu-rimac_ signifying, in the Quichua tongue, "the great speaker." From
above, the bridge, looking like a mere thread, is reached by a path
which on one side traces a thin, white line on the face of the mountain,
and down which the boldest traveller may hesitate to venture. This path,
on the other side, at once disappears from a rocky shelf, where there is
just room enough to hold the hut of the bridge-keeper, and then runs
through a dark tunnel cut in the rock, from which it emerges to trace
its line of many a steep and weary zigzag of the face of the mountain.
It is usual for the traveller to time his day's journey so as to reach
this bridge in the morning, before the strong wind sets in; for during
the greater part of the day it sweeps up the canyon of the Apurimac with
great force, and then the bridge sways like a gigantic hammock, and
crossing is next to impossible.
It was a memorable incident in my travelling experiences, the crossing
of this great swinging bridge of the Apurimac. I shall never forget it,
even if it were not associated with a circumstance which, for the time,
gave me much uneasiness and pain. The fame of the bridge over the
Apurimac is coextensive with Peru, and every one we met who had crossed
it was full of frightful reminiscences of his passage: how the frail
structure swayed at a dizzy height between gigantic cliffs over a dark
abyss, filled with the deep, hoarse roar of the river, and how his eyes
grew dim, his heart grew faint, and his feet unsteady as he struggled
across it, not daring to cast a look on either hand.