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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5. PLAINS OF THE RIO DE LA PLATA, AND OF PATAGONIA, FROM THE
SOUTH-WESTERN SLOPE OF THE GROUP OF THE BRAZIL MOUNTAINS TO THE STRAIT
OF MAGELLAN; FROM 20 TO 53 DEGREES OF LATITUDE.
These plains correspond with those of the Mississippi and of Canada in
the northern hemisphere.
If one of their extremities approaches less
nearly to the polar regions, the other enters much further into the
region of palm-trees. That part of this vast basin extending from the
eastern coast towards the Rio Paraguay does not present a surface so
perfectly smooth as the part situated on the west and the south-east
of the Rio de la Plata, and which has been known for ages by the name
of Pampas, derived from the Peruvian or Quichua language.* (* Hatan
Pampa signifies in that language, a great plain. We find the word
Pampa also in Riobamba and Guallabamba; the Spaniards, in order to
soften the geographical names, changing the p into b.) Geognostically
speaking these two regions of east and west form only one basin,
bounded on the east by the Sierra de Villarica or do Espinhaco, which
loses itself in the Capitania of San Paul, near the parallel of 24
degrees; issuing on the north-east by little hills, from the Serra da
Canastra and the Campos Parecis towards the province of Paraguay; on
the west by the Andes of Upper Peru and Chile; and on the north-west
by the ridge of the partition of the waters which runs from the spur
of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, across the plains of the Chiquitos,
towards the Serras of Albuquerque (latitude 19 degrees 2 minutes) and
San Fernando. That part only of this basin lying on the west of the
Rio Paraguay, and which is entirely covered with gramina, is 70,000
square leagues. This surface of the Pampas or Llanos of Manse,
Tucuman, Buenos Ayres and eastern Patagonia is consequently four times
greater than the surface of the whole of France. The Andes of Chile
narrow the Pampas by the two spurs of Salta and Cordova; the latter
promontory forms so projecting a point that there remains (latitude 31
to 32 degrees) a plain only 45 leagues broad between the eastern
extremity of the Sierra de Cordova and the right bank of the river
Paraguay, stretching in the direction of a meridian, from the town of
Nueva Coimbra to Rosario, below Santa Fe. Far beyond the southern
frontiers of the old viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, between the Rio
Colorado and the Rio Negro (latitude 38 to 39 degrees) groups of
mountains seem to rise in the form of islands in the middle of a
muriatiferous plain. A tribe of Indians of the south (Tehuellet) have
there long borne the characteristic name of men of the mountains
(Callilehet) or Serranos. From the parallel of the mouth of the Rio
Negro to that of Cabo Blanco (latitude 41 to 47 degrees) scattered
mountains on the eastern Patagonian coast denote more considerable
inequalities inland.
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