336 COSMOS. 



other, from the cacao woods of the valleys to the region 

 of perpetual snow, and as the temperature in the tropics 

 varies but little throughout the year, we may form to our- 

 selves a tolerably correct representation of the climatic rela- 

 tions to which the inhabitants of the large cities in the Andes 

 are subjected, by comparing these climates with the tempera- 

 tures of particular months in the plains of France and Italy. 

 While the heat which prevails daily on the woody shores of 

 the Orinoco exceeds, by 7*2, that of the month of August at 

 Palermo, we find, on ascending the chain of the Andes, at 

 Popayan, at an elevation of 5826 feet, the temperature of the 

 three summer months of Marseilles ; at Quito, at an elevation of 

 9541 feet, that of the close of May at Paris; and on the Para- 

 mos, at a height of 11,510 feet, where only stunted Alpine 

 shrubs grow, though flowers still bloom in abundance, that of 

 the beginning of April at Paris. The intelligent observer, 

 Peter Martyr de Anghiera, one of the friends of Christopher 

 Columbus, seems to have been the first who recognised (in the 

 expedition undertaken by Kodrigo Enrique Colmenares, in 

 October 1510), that the limit of perpetual snow continues to 

 ascend as we approach the equator. We read, in the fine 

 work, De rebus Oceanicis* " the River Gaira comes from a 

 mountain in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which, 

 according to the testimony of the companions of Colmenares, is 

 Jbighcr than any other mountain hitherto discovered. It 

 must, undoubtedly, be so if it retain snow perpetually in a 

 xone which is not more than 10 from the equinoctial line." 

 The lower limit of perpetual snow, in a given latitude, is the 

 lowest line at which snow continues during summer, or, in 

 other words, it is the maximum of height to which the snow 

 line recedes in the course of the year. But this elevation must 

 be distinguished from three other phenomena: namely, the 

 annual fluctuation of the snow line ; the occurrence of sporadic 

 falls of snow ; and the existence of glaciers, which appear to 

 be peculiar to the temperate and cold zones. This last phe- 

 nomenon, since Saussure's immortal work on the Alps, has 

 received much light, in recent times, from the labours of 



* Anglerius, De rebus Oceanids, Dec. 11, lib. ii. p. 140 (ed. Col, 

 1574). In the Sierra de Santa Marta, the highest point of which 

 appears to exceed 19,000 feet, (see my Relat. hist., t. ii. p. 214,) there is 

 & peak that is still called Pico de Gaira. 



