410 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
a zoologist, accustomed to trace a like structure under 
variously modified animal forms, cannot but have his 
homological studies recalled to his mind by the coinci- 
dence between certain physical features in the northern 
and southern parts of the Western hemisphere. And yet 
here, as throughout all nature, these correspondences aie 
combined with a distinctness of individualization which 
leaves its respective character, not only to each continent 
as a whole, but also to the different regions circumscribed 
within its borders. In both, however, the highest mountain- 
chains, the Rocky Mountains and the Western Coast Range, 
with their wide intervening table-land in North America, and 
the chain of the Andes, with its lesser plateaux in South 
America, run along the western coast ; both have a great 
eastern promontory, Newfoundland in the Northern conti- 
nent, and Cape St. Roque in the Southern : and though 
the resemblance between the inland elevations is perhaps 
less striking, yet the Canadian range, the White Mountains, 
and the Alleghanies may very fairly be compared to the 
table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, and the Serra do Mar. 
Similar correspondences may be traced among the river- 
systems. The Amazons and the St. Lawrence, though so 
different in dimensions, remind us of each other by their 
trend and geographical position ; and while the one is 
fed by the largest river-system in the world, the other 
drains the most extensive lake surfaces known to exist 
in immediate contiguity. The Orinoco, with its bay, recalls 
Hudson's Bay and its many tributaries, and the Rio Mag- 
dalena may be said to be the South- American Mackenzie ; 
while the Rio de la Plata represents geographically our 
Mississippi, and the Paraguay recalls the Missouri. The 
Parana may be compared to the Ohio ; the Pilcomayo, 
