OKIGIN OF THE 
295 
niouHtains, known by tbe name of tbe Copper Mountoins, 
visited by Captain lYanklin. The colossal pe^ of banit 
Elias and that of Mount Eairweather, in New Jvorfolk, do 
not, properly speaking, belong to the northern prolongat ion 
of the C^ordiUeraa of the Andes, but to a parallel chain (the 
maritime Alps of the north-west coast), stretchi^ towards 
the peninsula of California, and connected by transversal 
rido-es with a mountainous land, between 45 and o6 ol 
latftude, with the Andes of New Mexico (^eky Moun- 
tains). In South America the mean breadth of the t-or- 
dillera of the Andes is from 18 to 22 leagues * It is only 
in the knots of the mountains, that is where the Cordilleia 
is swelled by side-groups or divided into several chains 
nearly paraUel, and re-uniting at 
the sLth of the lake of Titicaca, that it is “'“/e ^ ^90 
to 120 leagues broad, in a direction perpendicular to its axis. 
The Andes of South America bound 
Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Eio de la ^ata, on west, 
like a rocky wall raised across a crevice 1300 leagues lon„, 
and stretching from south to north. This upheaved part 
(if I may be permitted to use an expression founded on a 
geologied hypothesis), comprises a surface of 58,900 square 
feaguls, bet^en the parallel of Cape Pdesar and the 
northern Choco. To form an idea of ^he variety of ^cks 
which this space may furnish for the observation of the 
traveller, we must recoUect that the Pyrenees, accraduig 
to the observations of M. Charpentier, occupy only 7b8. 
**^The name of Andes in the Quichua language (which wants 
the consonants d,f, and g) Antis, or appears to me to be 
derived from the Peruvian word anta, signifying copper oi 
metal in general. Anta chacra signifies mme of copper 
antaenri, copper mixed with gold; and puca “PP^ ’ 
or red metal. As the group of the Altai mountainst takes 
* The breadth of this immense chain is a iihcnomenon 
attention. The Swiss Alps extend, in the Grisons and in the y ^ ® 
breadth of 36 and 40 leagues, both in the 
Como, the canton of Appenzell, and in the meridian of Bassaiio and 
"'TKk^mth. Asiapolyglotta. p. 211. I*;, 
that the tribe of the Antis gave its name to the mountains of Peru. 
