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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We Seem To Recognize In The
Cordilleras Those Longitudinal Sinkings, Those Rocky Vaults, Which, To
Use The Expression Of A Great Geologist,* "Are Broken When Extended
Over A Great Space, And Leave Deep And Almost Perpendicular Rents." (*
Von Buch, Tableau Du Tyrol Meridional Page 8 1823.)
If, to complete the sketch of the structure of the Andes from Tierra
del Fuego to the northern Polar Sea,
We pass the boundaries of South
America, we find that the western Cordillera of New Grenada, after a
great depression between the mouth of the Atrato and the gulf of
Cupica, again rises in the isthmus of Panama to 80 or 100 toises high,
augmenting towards the west, in the Cordilleras of Veragua and
Salamanca,* and extending by Guatimala as far as the confines of
Mexico. (* If it be true, as some navigators affirm, that the
mountains at the north-western extremity of the republic of Columbia,
known by the names of Silla de Veragua, and Castillo del Choco, be
visible at 36 leagues distance, the elevation of their summits must be
nearly 1400 toises, little lower than the Silla of Caracas.) Within
this space it extends along the coast of the Pacific where, from the
gulf of Nicoya to Soconusco (latitude 9 1/2 to 16 degrees) is found a
long series of volcanoes,* most frequently insulated, and sometimes
linked to spurs or lateral branches. (* See the list of twenty-one
volcanoes of Guatimala, partly extinct and partly still burning, given
by Arago and myself, in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour
1824 page 175.
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