In Ecuador Nature might seem to have thought to display her powers after the manner of a model, with every grade of climate, topographical form and species of plant and animal life; to have set up, within a measurable compass, an example of her powers in the tropical world. The hot lowlands of the coast, covered in part with the densest and rankest vegetation, intersected by the most fertile of valleys, where ripen the most delicious and valuable fruits, with rivers wherein the curious life of the Tropics has its home, from gorgeous insect or bird down to the tortoise and the loathly alligator, slope upwards to the bleakest tablelands, the icy _paramos_, which themselves are crowned with the snow-capped volcanoes, at times belching forth fire and ash, carrying destruction to fruitful field and populous town. Beyond lies some of the most broken region on the earth's surface, descending to the forests inhabited by the half-naked and savage Indian, still outside the pale of civilization or the influence of Christianity, who may receive the incautious traveller with deadly weapons of blow-pipe and poisoned arrows. The uplands of Ecuador embody a high tableland, cut up into three _hoyas_ or basins, known as those of Quito, Ambato and Cuenca respectively. "Rising from both the eastern and western rims of this elevated plateau are the higher Cordilleras, their main summits culminating far above the perpetual snowline, which in Ecuador lies at about 15,750 feet above sea-level. As before remarked, due to their peculiarly symmetrical arrangement and spectacular appearance, such an assemblage of snow-clad peaks is not found in any other part of the world. Not only for their height are the Ecuadorian peaks noteworthy, but for their peculiar occurrence in parallel lines, sometimes in pairs facing each other across the 'cyclopean passage' or avenue formed by the long plateau. There are twenty-two of these great peaks, several of which are actual volcanoes, grouped along the central plains almost within sight of each other. Built up by subterranean fires, the great mountain edifices of Ecuador are sculptured by glacier streams and perpetual snows. The volcanoes of Ecuador have rendered the country famous among geologists and travellers of all nationalities. They were the terror of the primitive Indian, and objects of awe and worship by the semi-civilized peoples of the land, and have been at various periods terrible scourges and engines of destruction.