284 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



indented and fringed with many islands are placed opposite 

 to those of a contrary character. It is long since I called 

 attention to the geognostical interest of the comparison of the 

 west coasts of Africa and of South America. Within the 

 tropics, the deeply re-entering curve of the African coast 

 near Fernando Po (4j-N. lat.), is repeated on the shores of 

 the Pacific (in 18i S. lat.), where, between the Valle de 

 Arica and the Morro of Juan Diaz, the Peruvian coast sud- 

 denly alters the direction from south to north which it had 

 previously followed, and turns to the north-west. This 

 change of direction in the coast of Peru is participated in 

 by the chain of the Andes ; ( 347 ) and not only by the maritime 

 branch of the two parallel ranges into which the mountains 

 are there divided, but also by the eastern Cordillera, in which 

 civilisation had its earliest seat in the South American 

 highlands, and where the small alpine lake of Titfaca lies at 

 the foot of the giant mountains of Sorata and Illimani. 

 Farther to the south, from Yaldivia and Chiloe in 40 and 

 42 S. lat,, through the Archipelago of los Chonos, to Tierra 

 del Fuego, we find the same peculiar " fiord" character, 

 which distinguishes the west coasts of Norway and 

 Scotland. 



Such are the most general considerations respecting the 

 form of continents in the horizontal direction, which an 

 examination of the present surface of our planet suggests. 

 "We have brought facts together, so as to call attention to 

 certain analogies of form in regions remote from each other, 

 without, however, venturing to give to these analogies the 

 title of laws. When an observer at the foot of an active 

 volcano, Vesuvius for example, notices the not unfrequerit 

 phenomenon of partial elevations, in which, previously to, or 



