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.
