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University of California. 



[Vol. 2. 



The town of Santiago de Veraguas is centrally located on the 

 western part of the plain and Aguadulce is an important place near 

 its eastern border. 



This remarkable inland topographic depression is bounded on 

 the north by a high, steep chain of mountains, which is the primary 

 axis of this portion of the Isthmus and bears the name of the Cor- 

 dillera de Veraguas. The system is made up of exceedingly 

 steep, narrow ridges, which mostly rise to a height of about 5,000 

 feet but further westward attain elevations of 8,000 and in the vol- 

 canic peak of Chiriqui 10,500 feet, and form a chain trending in a 

 general east-west direction parallel with and close to the Caribbean 

 coast. It is the eastward extension of the main plateau of Costa 

 Rica, but has here been more deeply trenched by erosion. The 

 change from the low plain on the south to the high sierra is effected 

 by a series of lower mountains (montanas) or foot-hills, whose sum- 

 mits gradually rise from the level of the monadnocks on the plain 

 to the crest of the Cordillera. 



On the north of the main chain, the surface descends very 

 rapidly to a dissected plain, which slopes more gradually to the sea, 

 two to five miles distant from the foot of the sierra. This also is 

 a dissected plain of erosion. The streams issue from the deep 

 mountain valleys and flow across it in narrow rocky canons. 



Southward from the Aguadulce-Santiago plain lies the moun- 

 tainous land of the Peninsula of Azuero, but its central range, the 

 Sierra Guanico, trends north-south, being therefore at a right angle 

 to the Cordillera de Veraguas. From the axis of the peninsula, 

 along which the sierra attain altitudes of 2,000 to 3,000 feet, the 

 mountains descend in sloping spurs eastward to the Bay of Parita 

 and on the west to the Gulf of Montijo. From some points of view 

 the interior of the peninsula seems to be occupied by several 

 parallel north-south mountain ranges with irregular crest lines, 

 being sometimes reduced to a range of mere hills and again rising 

 to mountain ridges several thousand feet high. On the west of the 

 Gulf of Montijo the mountains are not quite so high but are equally 

 irregular and the main range has a north-south trend, terminating 

 in low hill ranges on the south of the Aguadulce-Santiago plain. 

 In the gulf are several large hilly but not mountainous islands, 



