120 The Andes and the Amazon. 



a coal-bed lifted i;p to the enormoiis height of 14,700 feet, 

 and on the side of Chimborazo there is a salt spring 13,000 

 feet above the sea. Marine shells have not been fonnd in 

 Europe above the summit of the Pyrenees, or 11,700 feet ; 

 but the Andes can show some a thousand feet higher. A 

 strange sight, to see shells once crawling on the bottom of 

 the ocean now resting at an elevation twice the height of 

 Mount Washington ! 



Beneath the Southern Cross, out of a sea perpetually 

 ■Swept by fearful gales, rise the rocky hills of Terra del 

 Fuego. It is the starting-point of that granite chain which 

 winds around the earth in a majestic curve, first northwest- 

 erly to the Arctic Sea, thence by the Aleutian and Japan- 

 ese Isles to Asia, crossing the Old World southwesterly 

 from Cliina to South Africa. 



Skirting the bleak shores of Patagonia in a single nar- 

 row sierra, the Andes enter Chile, rising higher and higher 

 till they culminate in the gigantic porphyritic peak of Acon- 

 cagua. At the boundary-line of Bolivia, the chain, which 

 has so far followed a precise meridional direction, turns to 

 the northwest, and, at the same time, separates into two 

 Cordilleras, inclosing the great table-land of Desaguadero. 

 This wonderful valley, the Thibet of the New World, has 

 four times the area of New York State, and five times the 

 elevation of the Catskill Mountain House. At one end of 

 the valley, perched above the clouds, is silvery Potosi, the 

 highest city in the world ; at the other stands the once 

 golden capital of Cuzco. Between them is Lake Titicaca* 



are as irregular as the Andes, or broken into such alternate substances, mani- 

 festing such prodigious revolutions of nature. " — Helms. ' ' More sublime than 

 the Alps by their ensemble, the Andes lack those curious and chaiTning details 

 of which Nature has been so lavish in the old continent." — Holinski. 



* This lake is the Largest fresh-vs'ater accumulation in South America. It 

 has diminished within the historic period. Its sui-fece is 12,79.') feet above 

 the Pacific, or higher than the highest peaks of the Pyrenees. 



