Rise of the Andes. 115 



setting sun the white surf beats in long lines of foam 

 against a low, winding archipelago — the western outline 

 of the coming continent. Fierce is the fight for the mas- 

 tery between sea and land, between the denuding power 

 of the waves and the volcanic forces underneath. But 

 slowly — very slowly, yet surely — rises the long chain of 

 islands by a double process; the submarine crust of the 

 earth is cooling, and the rocks are folded up as it shrivels, 

 while the molten material within, pressed out through the 

 crevices, overflows and helps to build up the sea-defiant 

 wall. A man's life would be too short to count even the 

 centuries consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru 

 has risen eighty feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro : sup- 

 posing the Andes to have risen at this rate uniformly and 

 without interruption, seventy thousand years must have 

 elapsed before they reached their present altitude. But 

 when we consider that, in fact, it was an intermittent 

 movement — alternate upheaval and subsidence — we must 

 add an unknown number of millennia. 



Three times the Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath 

 the ocean level, and again were slowly brought up to their 

 present height. The suns of uncounted ages have risen 

 and set upon these sculptured forms, though geologically 

 recent, casting the same line of shadows century after cen- 

 tury. A long succession of brute races roamed over the 

 mountains and plains of South America, and died out ages 

 ere man was created. In those pre- Adamite times, long 

 before the Incas ruled, the mastodon and megatherium, 

 the horse and the tapir, dwelt in the high valley of Quito ; 

 yet all these passed away before the arrival of the aborig- 

 ines : the wild horses now feeding on the pampas of Bue- 

 nos Ayres were imported from Europe three hundred and 

 thirty-three years ago.* 



* At Paita, the most western point of South America, there is a raised 



