Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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For The Inhabitants Of The
Central Parts Of Europe The Aquatic Hemisphere May Be Called Western,
And The Land Hemisphere Eastern; Because In Going To The West We Reach
The Former Sooner Than The Latter.
It is the division according to the
meridians, which is intended in the text.
Till the end of the 15th
century the western hemisphere was as much unknown to the nations of
the eastern hemisphere, as one half of the lunar globe is to us at
present, and will probably always remain.) One system only, that of
the Andes, comprises in America, over a long and narrow zone of 3000
leagues, all the summits exceeding 1400 toises high. In Europe, on the
contrary, even considering the Alps and the Pyrenees as one sole line
of elevation, we still find summits far from this line or principal
ridge, in the Sierra Nevada of Grenada, Sicily, Greece, the Apennines,
perhaps also in Portugal, from 1500 to 1800 toises high.* (* Culminant
points; Malhacen of Grenada, 1826 toises; Etna, according to Captain
William Henry Smith, 1700 toises; Monte Corno of the Apennines, 1489
toises. If Mount Tomoros in Greece and the Serra Gaviarra of Portugal
enter, as is alleged, into the limit of perpetual snow, those summits,
according to their position in latitude, should attain from 1400 to
1600 toises. Yet on the loftiest mountains of Greece, Tomoros, Olympus
in Thessaly, Polyanos in Dolope and Mount Parnassus, M. Pouqueville
saw, in the month of August, snow lying only in patches, and in
cavities sheltered from the rays of the sun.) The contrast between
America and Europe, with respect to distribution of the culminant
points, which attain from 1300 to 1500 toises, is the more striking,
as the low eastern mountains of South America, of which the maximum of
elevation is only from 1300 to 1400 toises, are situated beside a
Cordillera of which the mean height exceeds 1800 toises, while the
secondary system of the mountains of Europe rises to maxima of
elevation of 1500 to 1800 toises, near a principal chain of at least
1200 toises of average height.
MAXIMA OF THE LINE OF ELEVATION IN THE SAME PARALLELS.
Andes of Chile, Upper Peru. Knots of the mountains of Porco and Cuzco,
2500 toises. : Group of the Brazil Mountains; a little lower than the
Cevennes 900 to 1000 toises.
Andes of Popayan and Cundinamarca. Chain of Guacas, Quindiu, and
Antioquia. More than 2800 toises. : Group of Parime Mountains; little
lower than the Carpathians; 1300 toises.
Insulated group of the Snowy Mountains of Santa Marta. It is believed
to be 3000 toises high. : Littoral Chain of Venezuela; 80 toises lower
than the Scandinavian Alps; 1350 toises.
Volcanic Andes of Guatimala, and primitive Andes of Oaxaca, from 1700
to 1800 toises. : Group of the West Indies, 170 toises higher than the
mountains of Auvergne, 1140 toises.
Andes of New Mexico and Upper Louisiana (Rocky Mountains) and further
west. The Maritime Alps of New Albion, 1600 to 1900 toises. : Chain of
the Alleghenies; 160 toises higher than the chains of Jura and the
Gates of Malabar; 1040 toises.
This table contains the whole system of mountains of the New
Continent; namely: the Andes, the maritime Alps of California or New
Albion and the five groups of the east.
I may subjoin to the facts I have just stated an observation equally
striking; in Europe the maxima of secondary systems, which exceed 1500
toises, are found solely on the south of the Alps and Pyrenees, that
is, on the south of the principal continental ridge. They are situated
on the side where that ridge approaches nearest the shore, and where
the Mediterranean has not overwhelmed the land. On the north of the
Alps and Pyrenees, on the contrary, the most elevated secondary
systems, the Carpathian and the Scandinavian mountains* do not attain
the height of 1300 toises. (* The Lomnitzer Spitz of the Carpathians
is, according to M. Wahlenberg, 1245 toises; Sneehattan, in the chain
of Dovrefjeld in Norway (the highest summit of the old continent,
north of the parallel of 55 degrees), is 1270.) The depression of the
line of elevation of the second order is consequently found in Europe
as well as in America, where the principal ridge is farthest removed
from the shore. If we did not fear to subject great phenomena to too
small a scale, we might compare the difference of the height of the
Alps and the mountains of eastern America, with the difference of
height observable between the Alps or the Pyrenees, and the Monts
Dores, the Jura, the Vosges or the Black Forest.
We have just seen that the causes which upheaved the oxidated crust of
the globe in ridges, or in groups of mountains, have not acted very
powerfully in the vast extent of country stretching from the eastern
part of the Andes towards the Old World; that depression and that
continuity of plains are geologic facts, the more remarkable, as they
extend nowhere else in other latitudes. The five mountain systems of
eastern America, of which we have stated the limits, divide that part
of the continent into an equal number of basins of which only that of
the Caribbean Sea remains submerged. From north to south, from the
polar circle to the Straits of Magellan, we see in succession:
1. THE BASIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI AND OF CANADA.
An able geologist, Mr. Edwin James, has recently shown that this basin
is comprehended between the Andes of New Mexico, or Upper Louisiana,
and the chains of the Alleghenies which stretch northward in crossing
the rapids of Quebec. It being quite as open northward as southward,
it may be designated by the collective name of the basin of the
Mississippi, the Missouri, the river St. Lawrence, the great lakes of
Canada, the Mackenzie river, the Saskatchewan and the coast of
Hudson's Bay. The tributary streams of the lakes and those of the
Mississippi are not separated by a chain of mountains running from
east to west, as traced on several maps; the line of partition of the
waters is marked by a slight ridge, a rising of two counter-slopes in
the plain.
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