Chimborazo

"'I thought I should meet you here, although the crowd was so great.

I am glad we have found each other.' so am i i said allow me to introduce you to mr christopherson come and dine with us at our hotel the hotel de l'europe priscilla accepted and we hurried through the crowd to the hotel at dinner i put many questions to him about his journey he had been round the world and seemed to have seen everything he had been in california peru australia new zealand japan china india and egypt He had climbed Chimborazo and several Mexican mountains.

He had sailed up the Huanghou and the Yangtze Qiang.

He had visited Siberia, and had scaled the giant mountains Everest and Dwalegiri.

There was no atmosphere to support me.

So I had to return to my car, and to set its motive forces at work, so as to cast off the gravitating power of the great orb about me, and to float in ether over its surface.

i passed over the ridge of tycho to some four miles altitude above the plains and crater valleys again ring beyond ring of mountain circles some glistening white some shaded opened to my eyes it was a grand scene of confusion such as alps or himalayas cannot approach i first resolved to turn towards the south to the great ring of clavius almost as large as wales with peaks as lofty as the andes and with ninety craters in its vast expanse about as many volcanoes as suffice for the whole earth I mounted its lofty rampart, and resting on the highest peak, as high as Chimborazo, i.e. some 23,000 feet, contemplated the superb and yet most strange scene.

These ring mountains of the moon are almost as large as countries on the earth, and Clavius was more like a Swiss canton than a crater.

And we I went with a buddy that was in my Mont Blanc group, actually, and another buddy from that.

group so our plan was to go three of us to do chimborazo in ecuador which is you know it's ecuador has so many volcanoes yeah but actually it wasn't at that altitude it was because it was also It was about the same.

I think Chimborazo is a little bit higher than Kilimanjaro.

We didn't end up doing Chimborazo because there were avalanches when we went.

So we switched mountains and we did Cotopaxi, which is really close to Chimborazo and It's about the same height as Kilimanjaro.

So high, high altitude.

And that one, that one is very steep.

Yeah.

Let us approve the singer of Shallow rivers by whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard with a heavy beat of surf, one much broken in outline with small havens and dwarf headlands, if possible a few islets, and, as a first necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water.

Such a rock on a calm day is a better station than the top of Tenerife or Chimborazo.

In short, both for the desert and the water, the conjunction of many near and bold details is bold scenery for the imagination and keeps the mind alive.

Given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we are to live is, I had almost said, indifferent.

This spread of wing, like that of the frigate bird, is gained by the elongation of the inner bones of the wing and by increasing the number of secondaries, there being about forty of these feathers in the wing of the albatross.

The turkey buzzard is emphatically a high flyer, wheeling slowly about half a mile or a mile above the earth, while his cousin the condor, so Humboldt tells us, has been seen above the summit of Chimborazo.

If any bird knows how to utilize every breath of wind to the utmost, that bird is the albatross, and it is equally a delight and a marvel to see this bird apparently setting at naught all natural laws as he sails with outstretched pinions almost into the eye of the wind or hangs just off the lee quarter of a ship reeling off ten or twelve knots an hour.

In this last trick, however, the gull is almost equally expert, evidently making use of the draft from the sails as well as of the eddies caused by the passage of the vessel.

Many an undescribed species of fish known only to the epicure, and barrels or jars of water from a distant point of the river out of reach of the tide and the city sewers.

Ice is frequently brought from Chimborazo and sold for $1 a pound.

A flag hosted at a favorite cafe announces that snow has arrived from the mountains and that ice cream can be had.

The market, held every morning by the riverside, is an animated scene.

There stood in inconceivable grandeur one of the stupendous products of the last great revolution of the earth's crust, as a geologist would say, but in the language of history, the lofty home of the Incas, made illustrious by the sword of Pizarro and the pen of Prescott.

On the right, a sea of hills rose higher and higher till they accumulated in the purple mountains of Osway.

Far to the left, 100 miles northeasterly, the peerless Chimborazo lifted its untrodden and unapproachable summit above its fellows, an imposing background to lesser mountains and stately forests.

The great dome reflected dazzlingly the last blushes of the west, its crown of snow fringed with black lines, which were the steep and sharp edges of precipitous rocks.

If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard with a heavy beat of surf, one much broken in outline with small havens and dwarf headlands, if possible a few islets, and, as a first necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water.

Such a rock on a calm day is a better station than the top of Tenerife or Chimborazo.

In short, both for the desert and the water, the conjunction of many near and bold details is bold scenery for the imagination and keeps the mind alive.

Given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we are to live is, I had almost said, indifferent.