By The Extraordinary Breadth Of The New Continent, In The 30 And 60 Degrees North Latitude, The Cordillera Of The Andes, Continually Approaching Nearer To The Western Coast In The Southern Hemisphere, Is Removed 400 Leagues On The North From The Source Of The Rio De La Paz.

The Andes of Chile may be considered as maritime Alps,* (* Geognostically speaking, a littoral chain is not a range

Of mountains forming of itself the coast; this name is extended to a chain separated from the coast by a narrow plain.) while, in their most northern continuation, the Rocky Mountains are a chain in the interior of a continent. There is, no doubt, between latitude 23 and 60 degrees from Cape Saint Lucas in California, to Alaska on the western coast of the Sea of Kamschatka, a real littoral Cordillera; but it forms a system of mountains almost entirely distinct from the Andes of Mexico and Canada. This system, which we shall call the Cordillera of California, or of New Albion, is linked between latitude 33 and 34 degrees with the Pimeria alta, and the western branch of the Cordilleras of Anahuac; and between latitude 45 and 53 degrees, with the Rocky Mountains, by transversal ridges and spurs that widen towards the east. Travellers who may at some future time pass over the unknown land between Cape Mendocino and the source of the Rio Colorado, may perhaps inform us whether the connexion of the maritime Alps of California or New Albion, with the western branch of the Cordilleras of Mexico, resembles that which, notwithstanding the depression, or rather total interruption observed on the west of the Rio Atrato, is admitted by geographers to exist between the mountains of the isthmus of Panama and the western branch of the Andes of New Grenada.

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