A little to the southward of Cotopaxi, but concealed from it by the intervening mass of Chimborazo, lies the volcano of Tunguragua, from which there was an extraordinary eruption in the year 1797, that proved very destructive to the cities in its neighbourhood. Indeed, so terrible was the convulsion of the ground, which lasted four minutes, that the cities of Riobamba and Quero were reduced to heaps of ruins. Then the base of Tunguragua was rent, and from numerous apertures there were poured out streams of water and mud, the latter gathering in the valleys to the depth of 600 feet. This mud spread itself far and wide, blocking up the channels of rivers, and forming lakes, which remained upwards of two months. But, strangest of all, quantities of dead fishes were found in the water which burst from the volcano. These fishes are supposed to have been bred in subterranean lakes contained in caverns in the interior of the mountain, considerably removed from the volcanic fires in the centre. It is probable that, when the rent was formed near the base, one of those caverns was broken open, and that the waters from it were discharged along with their finny inhabitants. Here is a picture of one of those fishes, which was taken by Baron Humboldt. When you see what a queer-looking fish it is, you will wonder the less at its having chosen so strange an abode. [Illustration: Pimelodus Cyclopum] Quito, the capital of the province of that name, is the highest of cities--being situated at an elevation of between nine and ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is built on a plain, lying on the flanks of the volcano Pichinca, of which a view is given in the annexed woodcut. Poor Quito has suffered severely from this dangerous neighbourhood; for, on the 22nd of March 1859, a violent shaking of the mountain laid the whole city in ruins. Pichinca, you will observe, has a most irregular outline, but very graceful withal. Instead of a single cone like Cotopaxi, it has a group of cones, some of which are very pointed. It has four principal summits, of which the most southerly contains the active crater. Here the celebrated traveller Baron Humboldt nearly lost his life. Having ascended the cone and approached the edge of the crater, he peered into the depths of the dark abyss, and there beheld the glowing lava boiling as if in a huge caldron. A thick mist coming on, he unwarily advanced to within a few feet of the rapid slope descending into the crater, and was within an ace of toppling over into the fiery gulf beneath. What a pity it would have been had he fallen in! We should have had no "Personal Narrative," no "Cosmos." [Illustration: Pichinca]