UO SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES REGIONS. 



Relief of the Land. 



In Colombia the highest group of mountains forms no part of the Andean 

 system, but rises in complete isolation on the \erge of the Atlantic as a triangular 

 pyramid, with its most regular side facing seawards, its second turned westwards 

 to the Rio Magdalena, and its third south-eastwards to the rivers Cesar and 

 Rancheria. 



The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, as it is called, covers a space of some 6,500 

 square miles, standing out like an insular mass high above the surrounding swamps 

 and lowlands. At a former epoch it was really an island, and even still the 

 highest pass over the rising ground sejDarating it from the Cordilleras scarcely 

 exceeds 920 feet. This rising ground, the Sierra Negra, is an alluvial plain, 

 across which it would be easy to cut a canal between the two divergent streams, 

 the Rio Cesar, flowing to the Magdalena, and the Rancheria, which sweeps round 

 the east foot of the sierra to reach the Caribbean Sea. It seems evident that 

 the plain formed the bed of the Magdalena before this river had shifted its course 

 to a lower level farther west. 



The Santa Marta and Goajira Uplands. 



The snowy Sierra de Santa Marta, rising abruptly above the sea to a vertical 

 height of over three miles, presents one of the grandest spectacles in the New 

 World. Seen from the sea at sunrise, before its crests are wrapped in fleecy 

 vapour or dense clouds, a full view is obtained of its precipitous flanks from the 

 verdant woodlands at its base and the bluish crags following at mid-distance up to 

 the crowning glory of its rose-tinged snowy peaks, standing out against the azure 

 sky. Above the Rio Cesar valley the heights, although less abrupt, have a more 

 forbidding aspect, owing to their arid, rugged slopes, unrefreshed by a breath of 

 the moisture-charged trade winds. Beneath the vertical rays of the sun beating 

 against the many-coloured bare rocks, the mountains seem all ablaze, as if a vast 

 conflagration were rushing from the glaciers down to the plains. 



There can be no doubt that the first Spanish conquerors had penetrated into 

 the Sierra Nevada ; the " frigid mountains " where so many of Alfinger's men 

 perished of cold were the Citarma uplands inhabited by the formidable Tairona 

 Indians. Later other Spanish expeditions invaded these heights in search of gold, 

 and exterminated their inhabitants. In recent times the sierra has been visited 

 by Fane, Karsten, Acosta, Sievers, and other explorers, who ascended the slopes 

 to the neighbourhood of the snow-line. Simons came within a short distance of 

 the great peak in 1875, when he crossed the Paramo de Chirugua at an altitude 

 of 16,000 feet. During a second exploration he was arrested some 500 feet below 

 the summit, variously estimated at from 17,350 to 19,000 feet high. At last 

 J. de Brettes and Manuel Nunez reached the highest point from the south, which 

 is by far the most accessible slope, thanks to its less rugged character, the absence 

 of forests, and the greater elevation of the snow-line. 



The central granitic group stands 28 miles from the sea in a straight line, 

 which would give a general incline of not more than 3 in 10 yard?* ; but the 



