CHAPTER V. 



THE CORDILLERAS. 



HE voyager sailing from the Atlantic into the 

 Pacific Ocean passes a dark granite headland rising 

 nearly three thousand feet out of the water, and 

 which may be distinctly seen at a distance of sixty miles. 

 It is Cape Horn — the southern end, broken off by the Strait 

 of Magellan, of that range of mighty mountains which runs 

 in a northerly course along the western coast of South 

 America, rising into lofty pinnacles — the summits of many 

 covered with perpetual snow — sinking at length only at the 

 northern extremity, where the narrow Isthmus of Panama 

 unites the two continents. Again it gradually rises in Mexico, 

 and runs on under the name of the Rocky Mountains, at a 

 less elevation and a greater distance from the sea, till it sinks 

 once more into the snow-covered plains of the Arctic region. 

 We must, however, confine ourselves to the South American 

 portion of the range. For the entire distance its summits are 

 distinctly seen from the ocean, many at a distance of up- 

 wards of a hundred miles. Between their base and the shores 

 of the Pacific there is, however, a level tract, in some parts 

 consisting of arid plains, from fifteen to fifty miles in width. 



