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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It Would Be Interesting To Know The
Configuration Of The Strata Between Cape Garachine, Or The Gulf Of St.
Miguel,
And Cape Tiburon, especially towards the source of the Rio
Tuyra and Chucunaque or Chucunque, so as to determine with
Precision
where the mountains of the isthmus of Panama begin to rise; mountains
whose elevation does not appear to be more than 100 toises. The
interior of Darfur is not more unknown to geographers than the humid,
insalubrious forest-land which extends on the north-west of Betoi and
the confluence of the Bevara with the Atrato, towards the isthmus of
Panama. All that we positively know of it hitherto is that between
Cupica and the left bank of the Atrato there is either a land-strait,
or a total absence of the Cordillera. The mountains of the isthmus of
Panama, by their direction and their geographical position, may be
considered as a continuation of the mountains of Antioquia and Choco;
but on the west of Bas-Atrato, there is scarcely a ridge in the plain.
We do not find in this country a group of interposed mountains like
that which links (between Barquisimeto, Nirgua and Valencia) the
eastern chain of New Grenada (that of Suma Paz and the Sierra Nevada
de Merida) to the Cordillera of the shore of Venezuela.
The Cordillera of the Andes, considered in its whole extent, from the
rocky wall of the island of Diego Ramirez to the isthmus of Panama, is
sometimes ramified into chains more or less parallel, and sometimes
articulated by immense knots of mountains. We distinguish nine of
those knots, and consequently an equal number of branching-points and
ramifications. The latter are generally bifurcations. The Andes are
twice only divided into three chains; in the knot of Huanuco, near the
source of the Amazon, and the Huallaga (latitude 10 to 11 degrees) and
in the knot of the Paramo de las Papas (latitude 2 degrees), near the
source of the Magdalena and the Cauca. Basins, almost shut in at their
extremities, parallel with the axis of the Cordillera and bounded by
two knots and two lateral chains, are characteristic features of the
structure of the Andes. Among these knots of mountains some, for
instance those of Cuzco, Loxa and Los Pastos, comprise 3300, 1500 and
1130 square leagues, while others no less important in the eye of the
geologist are confined to ridges or transversal dykes. To the latter
belong the Altos de Chisinche (latitude 0 degrees 40 minutes south)
and the Los Robles (latitude 2 degrees 20 minutes north), on the south
of Quito and Popayan. The knot of Cuzco, so celebrated in the annals
of Peruvian civilization, presents an average height of from 1200 to
1400 toises, and a surface nearly three times greater than the whole
of Switzerland. The ridge of Chisinche, which separates the basins of
Tacunga and Quito, is 1580 toises high, but scarcely a mile broad. The
knots or groups which unite several partial chains have not the
highest summits, either in the Andes or, for the most part, in the
great mountain ranges of the old continent; it is not even certain
that there is always in those knots a widening of the chain.
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