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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That Part Only Of This Basin Lying On The West Of The
Rio Paraguay, And Which Is Entirely Covered With Gramina, Is 70,000
Square Leagues.
This surface of the Pampas or Llanos of Manse,
Tucuman, Buenos Ayres and eastern Patagonia is consequently four times
greater than the surface of the whole of France.
The Andes of Chile
narrow the Pampas by the two spurs of Salta and Cordova; the latter
promontory forms so projecting a point that there remains (latitude 31
to 32 degrees) a plain only 45 leagues broad between the eastern
extremity of the Sierra de Cordova and the right bank of the river
Paraguay, stretching in the direction of a meridian, from the town of
Nueva Coimbra to Rosario, below Santa Fe. Far beyond the southern
frontiers of the old viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, between the Rio
Colorado and the Rio Negro (latitude 38 to 39 degrees) groups of
mountains seem to rise in the form of islands in the middle of a
muriatiferous plain. A tribe of Indians of the south (Tehuellet) have
there long borne the characteristic name of men of the mountains
(Callilehet) or Serranos. From the parallel of the mouth of the Rio
Negro to that of Cabo Blanco (latitude 41 to 47 degrees) scattered
mountains on the eastern Patagonian coast denote more considerable
inequalities inland. All that part, however, of the Straits of
Magellan, from the Virgins' Cape to the North Cape, on the breadth of
more than 30 leagues, is surrounded by savannahs or Pampas; and the
Andes of western Patagonia only begin to rise near the latter cape,
exercising a marked influence on the direction of that part of the
strait nearest the Pacific, proceeding from south-east to north-west.
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