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.