400 



thy of remark, that inthe southern hemisphere 

 the Cordillera of the Andes sends an immense 

 counterpoise towards the east, the promontory 

 of the Sierra Nevada de Cochabamba, whence 

 begins the ridge stretching between the tribu- 

 tary streams of the Madeira and Paraguay to- 

 wards the lofty group of the mountains of Bra- 

 zil or Minas Geraes. Three transversal chains 

 (the mountains of the shore of Venezuela, of 

 the Oroonoko, or Parime, and the mountains of 

 Brazil) tend, it may be said, to join the longi- 

 tudinal chain (the Andes), either by an inter- 

 mediary group (between the lake of Valencia and 

 Tocuyo) or by ridges formed by the intersec- 

 tion of counter-slopes in the plains. The two 

 extremities of the three Llanos which commu- 

 nicate by land-straits, the Llanos of the Lower 

 Oroonoko, the Amazon, and the Rio de la Plata 

 or of Buenos Ayres, are steppes, covered with 

 gramina, while the intermediary Llanos, that 

 of the Amazon, is a thick forest. With respect 

 to the two land-straits, forming bands directed 

 from north to south (from the Apure to Caqueta 

 across the Provincia de los Llanos, and the 

 sources of the Mamori to Rio Pilcomayo, across 

 the province of Mocos and Chiquitos) they dis- 

 play bare and grassy steppes like the plains of 

 Caraccas and Buenos Ayres. 



In the immense space of land east of the 

 Andes, which comprehends more than 480,000 



