Geological Delification of South A77ierica. 349 



much the attention of naturalists as the Carpathians, Can-, 

 casus, tlie Alps of the Valais, and the Pyrenees. The 

 whole immense tract on the west side of the Andes, which 

 extends ohliquely to the coast of Guiana and Brasil, is de- 

 scribed as a low plain, exposed to the inundatiion of the 

 rivers. As only a few Franciscan missionaries and a few 

 soldiers have been able to penetrate over the cataracts ta 

 Kio Neoro, the inhabitants of the coast of Caracas ima- 

 gine that the immense plain* (the Llanos dc Caiabozo, del 

 Guarico, and de Apure) which they sec to the south, be- 

 vond the vallevs of Aragua, extend without interruption to 

 the Pampas of Buenos-Ayrcs, and to the country of the 

 Patagonians ; but the extent of these plains is far fron"! 

 being so great ; they are not uninterrupted plains, they are 

 rather phenomena of the same kind as those presented by 

 Canada and Yucatan, the Island of St. Domingo, the north 

 of Siei-ra de St. Martha, the province of Barcelona, and the 

 land between Monte-Video and Mendoza, New Holland, 

 the eastern part of Hungary, and the country of Hanover. 

 They are separated fron> each other by the corddleras, and 

 are as far from lying in the same plane as the desarts of 

 Africa, and the steppes of Tartary, which rise by grada- 

 tions, according to the distance from the sea coast. 



When one considers the irruptions which the North Sea, 

 the Mediterranean, &c. have made into the old world, the 

 direction of its cordilleras appears not to be very different 

 from that of those in the nev*' world, as most naturalists 

 have asserted. We are acquainted also with the traces of 

 several lii'/h chains of mountains which extend from north 

 to south, and run out from those which extend east and 

 west. The garnet and micaceous schistus of Norway, 

 Scotland, Wales, Brittany, the province of Gallicia, Alem- 

 tego, Cape Bogador, (I have found the same with granite 

 on Tenerilf,) the upper part of Guinea, Congo, and the 

 Table Mountain, as also the original mountains of Oren- 

 burg, Caucasus, Lebanon, of Abyssinia and Madagascar, 

 seem at first to have formed nothing else than two large 

 cordilleras parallel to the meridian. 



In. the new world these cordilleras run parallel to the 

 meridian Troiii Cape Pilar to the north of California beyond 

 Noolka and Prince William's sound towards the Aleganhey 

 mountains, which were discovered in 1792 by Mr. Stewart 

 on his j(jiirney to the sources of the Missoury, the northern 

 part of the Andes, which is inhabited bv Indians nearly as 

 much civilized as the Peruvians were fifteen hundred years 

 Uj/o. From llii> Cordillera proceed ramifications of the 



original 



