Ate it otherwise, the fall of one pound from the top of Chimborazo would
raise the temperature of water 30 deg.. One fourth of this is
perpetually covered with snow, so that its ancient name, Chimpurazu--the
mountain of snow--is very appropriate.[70] It is a stirring thought that
this mountain, now mantled with snow, once gleamed with volcanic fires.
There is a hot spring on the north side, and an immense amount of debris
covers the slope below the snow-limit, consisting chiefly of
fine-grained, iron-stained trachyte and coarse porphyroid gray trachyte;
very rarely a dark vitreous trachyte. Chimborazo is very likely not a
solid mountain: trachytic volcanoes are supposed to be full of cavities.
Bouguer found it made the plumb-line deviate 7" or 8". [Footnote 69: But
Chimborazo is steeper than the Alp-king; and steepness is a quality more
quickly appreciated than mere massiveness. "Mont Blanc (says a writer in
_Frazer's Magazine_) is scarcely admired, because he is built with a
certain regard to stability; but the apparently reckless architecture of
the Matterhorn brings the traveler fairly on his knees, with a respect
akin to that felt for the leaning tower of Pisa, or the soaring
pinnacles of Antwerp."] [Footnote 70: "White Mountain" is the natural
and almost uniform name of the highest mountains in all countries: thus
Himalaya, Mont Blanc, Hocmus, Sierra Nevada, Ben
