410 



A JOUBNEY IN BRAZIL. 



a zoologist, accustomed to trace a like structure under 

 variously modified animal forms, cannot but have his 

 homological studies recalled to his mind by the coinci- 

 dence between certain physical features in the northern 

 and southern parts of the Western hemisphere. And yet 

 here, as throughout all nature, these correspondences ai? 

 combined with a distinctness o.f individualization which 

 leaves its respective character, not only to each continent 

 as a whole, but also to the different regions circumscribed 

 within its borders. In both, however, the highest mountain- 

 chains, the Rocky Mountains and the Western Coast Range, 

 with their wide intervening table-land in North America, and 

 the chain of the Andes, with its lesser plateaux in South 

 America, run along the western coast ; both have a great 

 eastern promontory, Newfoundland in the Northern conti- 

 nent, and Cape St. Roque in the Southern : and though 

 the resemblance between the inland elevations is perhaps 

 less striking, yet the Canadian range, the White Mountains, 

 and the Alleghanies may very fairly be compared to the 

 table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, and the Serra do Mar. 

 Similar correspondences may be traced among the river- 

 systems. The Amazons and the St. Lawrence, though so 

 different in dimensions, remind us of each other by their 

 trend and geographical position ; and while the one is 

 fed by the largest river-system in the world, the other 

 drains the most extensive lake surfaces known to exist 

 in immediate contiguity. The Orinoco, with its bay, recalls 

 Hudson's Bay and its many tributaries, and the Rio Mag- 

 dalena may be said to be the South- American Mackenzie ; 

 while the Rio de la Plata represents geographically our 

 Mississippi, and the Paraguay recalls the Missouri. The 

 Parana may be compared to the Ohio ; the Pilcomayo, 



