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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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. The
greatness of the mass, and the height so long attributed to points
whence several considerable branches issue, was founded either on
theoretic ideas or on false measures. The Cordilleras were compared to
rivers that swell as they receive a number of tributary streams.
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