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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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.
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