Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 531 of 635 - First - Home
(* The Lomnitzer Spitz Of The Carpathians
Is, According To M. Wahlenberg, 1245 Toises; Sneehattan, In The Chain
Of Dovrefjeld In
Norway (the highest summit of the old continent,
north of the parallel of 55 degrees), is 1270.) The depression of
The
line of elevation of the second order is consequently found in Europe
as well as in America, where the principal ridge is farthest removed
from the shore. If we did not fear to subject great phenomena to too
small a scale, we might compare the difference of the height of the
Alps and the mountains of eastern America, with the difference of
height observable between the Alps or the Pyrenees, and the Monts
Dores, the Jura, the Vosges or the Black Forest.
We have just seen that the causes which upheaved the oxidated crust of
the globe in ridges, or in groups of mountains, have not acted very
powerfully in the vast extent of country stretching from the eastern
part of the Andes towards the Old World; that depression and that
continuity of plains are geologic facts, the more remarkable, as they
extend nowhere else in other latitudes. The five mountain systems of
eastern America, of which we have stated the limits, divide that part
of the continent into an equal number of basins of which only that of
the Caribbean Sea remains submerged. From north to south, from the
polar circle to the Straits of Magellan, we see in succession:
1. THE BASIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI AND OF CANADA.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 531 of 635
Words from 145662 to 145912
of 174507
