SECTION 1.

Configuration of the Country. Inequalities of the Soil. Chains and Groups of Mountains. Divisionary Ridges. Plains or Llanos.

South America is one of those great triangular masses which form the three continental parts of the southern hemisphere of the globe. In its exterior configuration it resembles Africa more than Australia. The southern extremities of the three continents are so placed that, in sailing from the Cape of Good Hope (latitude 33 degrees 55 minutes) to Cape Horn (latitude 55 degrees 58 minutes), and doubling the southern point of Van Diemen's Land (latitude 43 degrees 38 minutes), we see those lands stretching out towards the south pole in proportion as we advance eastward. A fourth part of the 571,000 square sea leagues* (* Almost double the extent of Europe.) which South America comprises is covered with mountains distributed in chains or gathered together in groups. The other parts are plains forming long uninterrupted bands covered with forests or gramina, flatter than in Europe, and rising progressively, at the distance of 300 leagues from the coast, between 30 and 170 toises above the level of the sea. The most considerable mountainous chain in South America extends from south to north according to the greatest dimension of the continent; it is not central like the European chains, nor far removed from the sea-shore, like the Himalaya and the Hindoo-Koosh; but it is thrown towards the western extremity of the continent, almost on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Referring to the profile which I have given* of the configuration of South America (* Map of Columbia according to the astronomical observations of Humboldt by A.H. Brue 1823.), in the latitude of Chimborazo and Grand Para, across the plains of the Amazon, we find the land low towards the east, in an inclined plane, at an angle of less than 25 seconds on a length of 600 leagues; and if, in the ancient state of our planet, the Atlantic Ocean, by some extraordinary cause, ever rose to 1100 feet above its present level (a height one-third less than the table-lands of Spain and Bavaria), the waves must, in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, have broken upon the rocks that bound the eastern declivity of the Cordilleras of the Andes. The rising of this ridge is so inconsiderable compared to the whole continent that its breadth in the parallel of Cape Saint Roche is 1400 times greater than the average height of the Andes.

We distinguish in the mountainous part of South America a chain and three groups of mountains, namely, the Cordillera of the Andes, which the geologist may trace without interruption from Cape Pilares, in the western part of the Straits of Magellan, to the promontory of Paria opposite the island of Trinidad; the insulated group of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; the group of the mountains of the Orinoco, or of La Parime; and that of the mountains of Brazil. The Sierra de Santa Marta being nearly in the meridian of the Cordilleras of Peru and New Grenada, the snowy summits descried by navigators in passing the mouth of the Rio Magdalena are commonly mistaken for the northern extremity of the Andes.

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