316 MOUNTAIN BASINS. 





knots of mountains. We distinguish nine of those knots, 

 and consequently an equal number of branching-points and 

 ramifications. The latter are generally bifurcations. The 

 Andes are twice only divided into three chains ; in the knot 

 of Huanuco, near the source of the Amazon, and the Hual- 

 laga (lat. 10 to 11), and in the knot of the Paramo de las 

 Papas (lat. 2), near the source of the Magdalena and the 

 Cauca. Basins, almost shut in at their extremities, parallel 

 with the axis of the Cordillera, and bounded by two knots 

 and two lateral chains, are characteristic features of the 

 structure of the Andes. Among these knots of mountains, 

 some, for instance those of Cuzco, Loxa, and Los Pastos, 

 comprise 3300, 1500, and 1130 square leagues, while others 

 no less important in the eye of the geologist are confined 

 to ridges or transversal dykes. To the latter belong the 

 Altos de Chisinche (lat. 40' south), and the Los Robles 

 (lat. 2 20' north), on the south of Quito and Popayan. The 

 knot of Cuzco, so celebrated in the annals of Peruvian 

 civilization, presents an average height of from 1200 to 1400 

 toises, and a surface nearly three times greater than the 

 whole of Switzerland. The ridge of Chisinche, which sepa- 

 rates the basins of Tacunga and Quito, is 1580 toises high, 

 but scarcely a mile broad. The knots or groups which unite 

 several partial chains, have not the highest summits, either 

 in the Andes, or, for the most part, in the great mountain 

 ranges of the old continent ; it is not even certain that there 

 is always in those knots a widening of the chain. The 

 greatness of the mass, and the height so long attributed to 

 points whence several considerable branches issue, was 

 founded either on theoretic ideas or on false measures. 

 The Cordilleras were compared to rivers that swell as they 

 receive a number of tributary streams. 



Among the basins which the Andes present, and which 

 form probably as many lakes or small inland seas, those of 

 Titicaca, JRio Jauja, and the Upper Maranon, comprise re- 

 spectively 3500, 1300, and 2400 square leagues of surface.* 



* I here subjoin some measures interesting to geologists. Area of the 

 Andes, from Tierra del Fuego to the Paramo de las Rosas (lat. 9 north), 

 where the mountainous land of Tocuyo and Barquesimeto begins, part of 

 the Cordillera of the shore of Venezuela, 58,900 square leagues, (20 to a 

 degree) the four spurs of Cordova, Salta, Cochabamba, and Beui alone, 



