300 THE CORDILLERA OF CHILE. 



branch (the Cordillera de Chiriguanaes, de los Sauces, and 

 Yuracarees), extend regularly from west to east; their east- 

 ern declivity* is very rapid, and their loftiest summits are 

 not in the centre, but in the northern part of the group. 



The principal Cordillera of Chile and Upper Peru is, for 

 the first time, ramified very distinctly into two branches, in 

 the group of Porco and Potosi, between lat. 19 and 20. 

 These two branches comprehend the table-land extending 

 from Carangas to Lamba (lat. 19f 15) and in which is 

 situated the small mountain lake of Paria, the Desaguadero, 

 and the great Laguna of Titicaca or Chucuito, of which the 

 western part bears the name of Vinamarca. To afford an idea 

 of the colossal dimensions of the Andes, I may here observe 

 that the surface of the lake of Titicaca alone (448 square 

 sea leagues) is twenty times greater than that of the Lake 

 of Geneva, and twice the average extent of a department of 

 France. On the banks of this lake, near Tiahuanacu, and 

 in the high plains of Callao, ruins are found which bear 

 evidence of a state of civilization anterior to that which the 

 Peruvians assign to the reign of the Inca Manco Capac. 

 The eastern Cordillera, that of La Paz, Palca, Ancuma, and 

 Pelechuco, join, north-west of Apolobamba, the western 

 Cordillera, which is the most extensive of the whole chain of 

 the Andes, between the parallels 14 and 15. The imperial 

 city of Cuzco is situated near the eastern extremity of this 

 knot, which comprehends, in an area of 3000 square leagues, 

 the mountains of Vilcanota, Carabaya, Abancai, Huando. 

 Parinacochas, and Andahuaylas. Though here, as in general, 

 in every considerable widening of the Cordillera, the grouped 

 summits do not follow the principal axis in uniform and 

 parallel directions, a phenomenon observable in the general 

 disposition of the chain of the Andes, from lat. 18, is well 

 worthy the attention of geologists. The whole mass of the 

 Cordilleras of Chile and Upper Peru, from the Straits of 



* For much information concerning the Sierra de Cochabamba, I am 

 indebted to the manuscripts of my countryman, the celebrated botanist 

 Taddeus Haenke, which a monk of the congregation of the Escurial, 

 Father Cisneros, kindly communicated to me at Lima. Mr. Haenke, 

 after having followed the expedition of Alexander Malaspina, settled at 

 Cochabamba, in 1798. A part of the immense herbal of this botanist if 

 now at Prague. 



