Some parts of the plain of Quito to the south are sterile, but the soil generally is good, and perpetual spring clothes it with exuberant vegetation. The city of Quito, containing 70,000 inhabitants, on the side of Pichincha has an absolute height of 9540 feet. The city is well built and handsome; the churches are splendid; it possesses universities, the comforts and luxuries of civilized life, in a situation of unrivalled grandeur and beauty. Thus, on the very summit of the Andes there is a world by itself, with its mountains and its valleys, its lakes and rivers, populous towns and cultivated fields. Many monuments of the Incas are still found in good preservation in these plains, where the scenery is most noble—eleven volcanic cones are visible from one spot. Although the Andes are inferior in height to the Himalaya, yet the domes of trachyte, the truncated cones of the active volcanos, and the serrated ruins of those that are extinct, mixed with the bold features of primary mountains, give an infinitely greater variety to the scene, while the smoke, and very often the flame, issuing from these regions of perpetual snow increase its sublimity. Stupendous as these mountains appear even from the plains of the table-land, they are merely the inequalities of the tops of the Andes, the serrated summit of that mighty chain. Between the large group of Los Pastos, containing several active volcanos, and the group of Las Papas, in the second degree of north latitude, the bottom of the valley is only 6900 feet above the sea; and north of the latter mountain-knot the crest of the Andes splits into three Cordilleras, which diverge not again to unite. The most westerly of these, the chain of Choco, which may be considered the continuation of the great chain, divides the valley of the river Cauca from the Pacific; it is only 5000 feet high, and the lowest of the three. Though but 20 miles broad, it is so steep, and so difficult of access, that travellers cannot cross it on mules, but are carried on men’s shoulders: it is rich in gold and platina. The central branch, or Cordillera of Quindiu, runs due north between the Magdalena and Cauca, rising to a great height in the volcanic Peak of Tolima. The two last chains are united by the mountain-knot of Antioquia, of which little more is known than that it forms two great masses, which, after separating the streams of the Magdalena, Cauca, and Atrato, trends to the N.W., greatly reduced in height, and with the chain of Choco forms the low mountains of the Isthmus of Panamá. The most easterly of the three Cordilleras, called the Sierra de la Summa Paz, spreads out on its western declivity into the table-lands of Bogota, Tunja, and others, the ancient Cundinamarca, which have an elevation of about 9000 feet; whilst on its eastern slope rise the rivers Guaviari and Meta, which form the head waters of the Orinoco. The tremendous crevice of Icononzo occurs in the path leading