Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 276 of 332 - First - Home
From These
Considerations It Results, And Above All, From The Comparison Of The
New Continent With Those Parts Of The
Old world which we know best,
with Europe and Asia, that America, thrown into the aquatic
hemisphere* of our planet,
Is still more remarkable for the continuity
and extent of the depressions of its surface, than for the height and
continuity of its longitudinal ridge. Beyond and within the isthmus of
Panama, but eastward of the Cordillera of the Andes, the mountains
scarcely attain, over an extent of 600,000 square leagues, the height
of the Scandinavian Alps, the Carpathians, the Monts-Dores (in
Auvergne) and the Jura. (* The southern hemisphere, owing to the
unequal distribution of seas and continents, has long been marked as
eminently aquatic; but the same inequality is found when we consider
the globe as divided not according to the equator but by meridians.
The great masses of land are stinted between the meridian of 10
degrees west, and 150 degrees east of Paris, while the hemisphere
eminently aquatic begins westward of the meridian of the coast of
Greenland, and ends on the east of the meridian of the eastern coast
of New Holland and the Kurile Isles. This unequal distribution of land
and water has the greatest influence on the distribution of heat over
the surface of the globe, on the inflexions of the isothermal lines,
and the climateric phenomena in general. 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 276 of 332
Words from 144780 to 145367
of 174507