A. SYSTEMS OF MOUNTAINS.

A.1.

CORDILLERAS OF THE ANDES.

This is the most continuous, the longest, the most uniform in its direction from south to north and north-north-west, of any chain of the globe. It approaches the north and south poles at unequal distances of from 22 to 33 degrees. Its development is from 2800 to 3000 leagues (20 to a degree), a length equal to the distance from Cape Finisterre in Galicia to the north-east cape (Tschuktschoi-Noss) of Asia. Somewhat less than one half of this chain belongs to South America, and runs along its western shores. North of the isthmus of Cupica and of Panama, after an immense lowering, it assumes the appearance of a nearly central ridge, forming a rocky dyke that joins the great continent of North America to the southern continent. The low lands on the east of the Andes of Guatimala and New Spain appear to have been overwhelmed by the ocean and now form the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. As the continent beyond the parallel of Florida again widens towards the east, the Cordilleras of Durango and New Mexico, as well as the Rocky Mountains, merely a continuation of those Cordilleras, appear to be thrown still further westward, that is, towards the coast of the Pacific Ocean; but they still remain eight or ten times more remote from it than in the southern hemisphere. We may consider as the two extremities of the Andes, the rock or granitic island of Diego Ramirez, south of Cape Horn, and the mountains lying at the mouth of Mackenzie River (latitude 69 degrees, longitude 130 1/2 degrees), more than twelve degrees west of the greenstone mountains, known by the name of the Copper Mountains, visited by Captain Franklin. The colossal peak of Saint Elias and that of Mount Fairweather, in New Norfolk, do not, properly speaking, belong to the northern prolongation of the Cordilleras of the Andes, but to a parallel chain (the maritime Alps of the north-west coast), stretching towards the peninsula of California, and connected by transversal ridges with a mountainous land, between 45 and 53 degrees of latitude, with the Andes of New Mexico (Rocky Mountains). In South America the mean breadth of the Cordillera of the Andes is from 18 to 22 leagues.* (* The breadth of this immense chain is a phenomenon well worthy of attention. The Swiss Alps extend, in the Grisons and in the Tyrol, to a breadth of 36 and 40 leagues, both in the meridians of the lake at Como, the canton of Appenzell, and in the meridian of Bassano and Tegernsee.) It is only in the knots of the mountains, that is where the Cordillera is swelled by side-groups or divided into several chains nearly parallel, and reuniting at intervals, for instance, on the south of the lake of Titicaca, that it is more than 100 to 120 leagues broad, in a direction perpendicular to its axis. The Andes of South America bound the plains of the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio de la Plata, on the west, like a rocky wall raised across a crevice 1300 leagues long, and stretching from south to north. This upheaved part (if I may be permitted to use an expression founded on a geological hypothesis) comprises a surface of 58,900 square leagues, between the parallel of Cape Pilesar and the northern Choco. To form an idea of the variety of rocks which this space may furnish for the observation of the traveller, we must recollect that the Pyrenees, according to the observations of M. Charpentier, occupy only 768 square sea leagues.

The name of Andes in the Quichua language (which wants the consonants d, f, and g) Antis, or Ante, appears to me to be derived from the Peruvian word anta, signifying copper or metal in general. Anta chacra signifies mine of copper; antacuri, copper mixed with gold; and puca anta, copper, or red metal. As the group of the Altai mountains* takes its name from the Turkish word altor or altyn (* Klaproth. Asia polyglotta page 211. It appears to me less probable that the tribe of the Antis gave its name to the mountains of Peru.), in the same manner the Cordilleras may have been termed "Copper-country," or Anti-suyu, on account of the abundance of that metal, which the Peruvians employed for their tools. The Inca Garcilasso, who was the son of a Peruvian princess, and who wrote the history of his native country in the first years of the conquest, gives no etymology of the name of the Andes. He only opposes Anti-suyu, or the region of summits covered with eternal snow (ritiseca), to the plains or Yuncas, that is, to the lower region of Peru. The etymology of the name of the largest mountain chain of the globe cannot be devoid of interest to the mineralogic geographer.

The structure of the Cordillera of the Andes, that is, its division into several chains nearly parallel, which are again joined by knots of mountains, is very remarkable. On our maps this structure is indicated but imperfectly; and what La Condamine and Bouguer merely guessed, during their long visit to the table-land of Quito, has been generalized and ill-interpreted by those who have described the whole chain according to the type of the equatorial Andes. The following is the most accurate information I could collect by my own researches and an active correspondence of twenty years with the inhabitants of Spanish America. The group of islands called Tierra del Fuego, in which the chain of the Andes begins, is a plain extending from Cape Espiritu Santo as far as the canal of San Sebastian. The country on the west of this canal, between Cape San Valentino and Cape Pilares, is bristled with granitic mountains covered (from the Morro de San Agueda to Cabo Redondo) with calcareous shells. Navigators have greatly exaggerated the height of the mountains of Tierra del Fuego, among which there appears to be a volcano still burning.

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