354 CONTINUITY OF PLAINS. 



This table contains the whole system of mountains of the 

 New Continent ; namely : the Andes, the maritime Alps of 

 California or New Albion, and the five groups of the east. 



I may subjoin to the facts I have just stated, an observation 

 equally striking ; in Europe, the maxima of secondary systems, 

 which exceed 1500 toises, are found solely on the south 

 of the Alps and Pyrenees, that is, on the south of the principal 

 continental ridge. They are situated on the side where that 

 ridge approaches nearest the shore, and where the Mediter- 

 ranean has not overwhelmed the land. On the north of the 

 Alps and Pyrenees, on the contrary, the most elevated 

 secondary systems, the Carpathian and the Scandinavian 

 mountains * do not attain the height of 1300 toises. The 

 depression of the line of elevation of the second order is 

 consequently found in Europe as well as in America, where 

 the principal ridge is farthest removed from the shore. If wo 

 did not fear to subject great phenomena to too small a 

 scale, we might compare the difference of the height of the 

 Alps andthe mountains of eastern Am erica, with the difference 

 of height observable between the Alps or the Pyrenees, and 

 the Monts Dores, the Jura, the Vosges, or the Black Forest. 



We have just seen that the causes which upheaved the 

 oxidated crust of the globe in ridges, or in groups of moun- 

 tains, have not acted very powerfully in the vast extent of 

 country stretching from the eastern part of the Andes, 

 towards the Old World ; that depression and that continuity 

 of plains are geologic facts, the more remarkable, as they 

 extend nowhere else in other latitudes. The five moun- 

 tain systems of eastern America, of which we have stated 

 the limits, divide that part of the continent into an equal 

 number of basins, of which, only that of the Caribbean 

 Sea remains submerged. From north to south, from the 

 polar circle to the Straits of Magellan, we see in succession : 



1400 to 1600 toises. Yet on the loftiest mountains of Greece, Tomoros, 

 Olympus in Thessaly, Polyanos in Dolope, and Mount Parnassus, M. 

 Pouqueville saw, in the month of August, snow lying only in patches, and 

 in cavities sheltered from the rays of the sun. 



* The Lomnitzer Spitz of the Carpathians, is, according to M. Wahlen- 

 berg, 1245 toises j Sneeh&ttan, in the chain of Dovrefjeld in Norway (the 

 highest summit of the old continent, north of the parallel of 55), is 1270 



