354 
CONTINUITY or PLAINS. 
Tin's table contains the whole system of mountains of the 
New Continent; namely: the Andes, the maritime Alps of 
California or New Albion, and the five gronjis of the east. 
I may subjoin to the facts I have just stated, an observation 
equally striking ; in Europe, the maxima of secondai-y systems, 
which exceed 1600 toises, are found solely on the south 
of the Alps and Pyrenees, that is, on the south of the principal 
continental ridge. They are situated on the side where that 
ridge approaches nearest the shore, and where the Mediter- 
ranean has not overwhelmed the land. On the north of the 
Alps and Pyrenees, on the contrary, the most elevated 
secondary systems, the Carpathian and the Scandinavian 
mountains * do not attain the height of 1300 toises. The 
depression of the line of elevation of the second order is 
consequently found in Europe as well as in America, where 
the principal ridge is farthest removed from the shore. If we 
did not fear to subject great phenomena to too small a 
scale, we might compare the difference of the height of the 
Alps andthe mountains of eastern America, with the diflerence 
of height observable between the Alps or the Pyrenees, and 
the Monts Dores, the Jura, the Vosges, or the Black Forest. 
We have just seen that the causes which upheaved the 
oxidated crust of the globe in ridges, or in groups of moun- 
tains, have not acted very powerfully in the vast extent of 
country stretching from the eastern part of the Andes, 
towards the Old World; that depression and that continuity 
of plains are geologic facts, the more remarkable, as they 
extend nowhere else in other latitudes. The five moun- 
tain systems of eastern America, of which we have stated 
the limits, divide that part of the continent into an equal 
number of basins, of which, only that of the Caribbean 
Sea remains submerged. From north to south, from the 
polar circle to the Straits of Magellan, we see in succession : 
1400 to 1600 toises. Yet on the loftiest mountains of Greece, Tomoros, 
Glympus in Thessaly, Polyanos in Dolope, and Mount Parnassus, M. 
Pouqueville s,ivv, in the mouth of August, snow lying only in patches, and 
in cavities slieltered from the rays of the sun. 
* The LSmnitzer Spitz of the Carpathians, is, according to M. Wahlen- 
berg, 1245 toises; SneehUttan, in the chain of Dovretjeld in Norway (the 
highest summit of the old continent, north of the parallel of 55°), is 1270 
