May not the name of this colossal mountain be wholly independent of the Inca language, and have come down from a bygone age? The Inca or Quichua language had not been introduced long prior to the Spanish invasion into the kingdom of Quito, where the now wholly extinct Puruay language had been previously used. The names of other mountains, as Pichincha, Ilinissa, and Cotopaxi, are wholly devoid of meaning in the language of the Incas, and are therefore undoubtedly of higher antiquity than the introduction of the worship of the sun, and of the court-language of the rulers of Cuzco. The names of mountains and rivers belong in all regions of the earth to the most ancient and authentic relics of languages; and my brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt, in his investigations into the former distribution of the Iberian races, has made ingenious use of these names. A singular and unexpected statement has recently been made,[JJ] “that the Incas, Tupac Yupanqui, and Huayna Capac, were astonished on their first conquest of Quito, to find a dialect of their Quichua language in use among the natives.” Prescott, however, seems to regard this as a very bold assertion.[JK] If we could suppose the pass of St. Gothard, Mount Athos, or the Rigi, piled on the summit of the Chimborazo, we should have the elevation which is at present ascribed to the Dhawalagiri in the Himalaya. The geologist who regards the interior of our planet from a more general point of view, and to whom not the directions, but the relative heights of the rocky projections, which we designate mountain chains, appear but as phenomena of little importance, will not be astonished if at some future period mountain summits should be discovered between the Himalaya and the Altai, which should surpass in height those of Dhawalagiri and Djawahir as much as these exceed that of Chimborazo.[JL] The great height to which the snow-line recedes _in summer_ on the northern declivity of the Himalaya, owing to the heat radiated from the elevated plateaux in Central Asia, renders the mountain, notwithstanding that it is situated in 29 to 30½° north lat., as accessible as are the Peruvian Andes in the region of the tropics. Captain Gerard has moreover recently ascended the Tarhigang as high, if not 117 feet higher,[JM] than I ascended the Chimborazo. Unfortunately, as I have elsewhere more fully shown, these mountain ascents, beyond the line of perpetual snow, however they may engage the curiosity of the public, are of very little scientific utility. Footnote 72: p. 210—“_The Condor, that giant among vultures_.”