On two attempts to ascend Chimborazo / by Alexander von Humboldt ; translated from the German, and communicated at the request of the author by Martin Barry.

  • Alexander von Humboldt
Date:
[1837]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On two attempts to ascend Chimborazo / by Alexander von Humboldt ; translated from the German, and communicated at the request of the author by Martin Barry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    satyrical, Italian traveller, Girolamo Benzoni, whose work was printed in 1565. He says, that the Montagna di Chimbo, 40 miglia high, appeared to him strangely come una visione. The natives of Quito knew, long before the arrival of the French surveyors, that Chimborazo was the highest snow-mountain in all their country. They saw that it ascended highest above the line of perpetual snow. It was just this consideration that induced them to consider the now fallen in Capac Urcu as higher than Chimborazo. Regarding the geognostical constitution of Chimborazo, I here add only the general remark, that if, according to the im- portant results which Leopold von Buch has laid down in his classical memoir, “ On Craters of Elevation and Volcanoes,*” Trachyte is a mass containing Felspar, and Andesite a mass with imbedded Albite; the rock of Chimborazo is by no means deserving of either name. That in Chimborazo, Augite replaces Hornblende, the same intelligent geognost observed, more than twenty years ago, when I requested him to ex- amine, oryctognostically and with precision, the rocks brought home by me from the Andes. This fact has been mentioned in several parts of my “ Essai geognostique sur le Gisement des Kochers dans les deux Hemispheres^' which appeared in the year 1823. Besides this, my Siberian travelling companion, Gustav Rose, who, by his excellent work on the minerals related to felspar, and their association with augite and hornblende, has opened new ways for geognostical research, finds in all my col- lection of mountain-fragments from Chimborazo, neither albite nor felspar. The whole formation of this celebrated summit of the Andes, consists of labrador and augite ; both fossils recognisable in distinct crystals. Chimborazo is, according to the nomencla- ture of Gustav Rose, an augite-porphyry, a species of dolerite. Obsidian and pumice stone are also wanting in it. Hornblende occurs very sparingly. Chimborazo is thus, as taught by Leopold von Buch’s and Elie de Beaumont’s latest decisions, analogous in its rock to Etna. With the ruins of the old city of Riobamba, three geographical miles east of Chimborazo, there • Po(;gendorff's KnudiXeii, Band. 3?. S. 188—190. Also Edinburgh New philoso])hical Journal, for translation of this memoir.