Note 1 — PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.

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 11¹⁄₅ 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 30½ 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.