26 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY O^" PERU. 



By this description it would appear, that the true dire£lion 

 of the Peruvian Alps is by no means north and south, as has 

 been asserted, and that those who, upon this ground, have 

 fancied they could overturn, by a single effort, the systems of 

 Copernicus and Newton, have not paid a sufficient attention 

 to this subje6l. Formed of an infinite series of high mountains, 

 which run west and east, or in a contrary dire6lion, between 

 the South Sea and the country of the Amazons, and rising to 



V 



a prodigious height in the midst of their career, they unite, 

 and appear to the view to take a third course*. The delight- 

 ful 



•entirely of two cordiUeras, which, by the declivities that unite them, form La 

 Sierra, and one of which, by its opposite sides, composes the mountains of the An- 

 des, while the other, in a similar way, composes the coast. If the division of Peru 

 "be to be taken from the dire£tion of the summits of the mountains, by which, ac- 

 cording to the idea of Don UUoa, in his American Notices, it is separated into the 

 higher and lower worlds, the mountains belong exclusively to this plan of division. 

 But if the distinctive charaderistics be to be drawn from the qualities of the soil and 

 climate, Peru should be divided into three parts, as has been done by Father Acosta, 

 in his Natural History, page 175. These divisions are as follow: ist, the moun- 

 tains of the Andes ; ad. La Sierra ; and 3d, the coast, or plains. Characteristics 

 of the first ; constant rain, every where mountainous, the temperature warm ; of the 

 second, regular seasons, meteors; of the third, dryness, the temple of the spring. Since 

 the principal aim of divisions consists of order and perspicuity in the subjedt matter 

 treated of, we shall endeavour to preserve both, by adopting the first division ; and 

 although, in describing the low world, we have confined ourselves to the bare men- 

 tion of the coast, we shall, on a future opportunity, enter into a particular examina- 

 tion of tlie corresponding sections. 



* In the hypothesis of the motion of the earth and universal gravitation, the cen- 

 trifugal force, augmented beneath the Equator, should, to produce the mountains of 

 the Andes, have given them a dirediion east and west, as is the case with the moun- 

 tains of the Moon in Africa. Thus, did they in reality run north and south, the 

 hypothesis would be overturned j but our new observations convince us of the con- 

 trary. 



