of the New World. It is surely a
splendid undertaking to make it possible for a vessel to sail from
Liverpool direct to San Francisco without rounding the whole of South
America, and at a single blow to shorten the distance by near 6000
miles.

The bridge still stands unbroken, however, and we come dryshod over to
South America just where the Andes begin their mighty march along all
the west coast. Their ranges rise, here in double and there in many
folds, like ramparts against the Pacific Ocean, and between the ranges
lie plains at a height of 12,000 feet. Here also lift themselves on high
the loftiest summits of the New World--Aconcagua in Argentina, the
highest of all, an extinct volcano covered with eternal snow and
glistening glaciers; Sorata in Bolivia; the extinct volcano Chimborazo
in Ecuador, like a marble dome; and lastly, one of the earth's most
noted mountains, Cotopaxi, the highest of all still active volcanoes
(Plate XXXV.). Stand for a moment in the valley above the tree limit,
where only scattered plants can find hold in the hard ground. You see a
cone as regular as the peak of Fujiyama. The crater is 2500 feet in
diameter, and from its edge, 19,600 feet high, the snow-cap falls down
the mountain sides like the rays of a gigantic starfish. When the
Spanish conquerors, nearly four hundred years ago, took possession of
these formerly free countries, Cotopaxi had one of its fearful
eruptions; and even in more recent times European travellers have seen
the mantle of snow melt away as from a lighted furnace, while a
brownish-red reflection from the glowing crater lighted up the
devastation caused in the villages and valleys at the foot of the
mountain by the flood of melted snow and streams of lava.

[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA.]

Even under the burning sun of the equator, then, these giants stand with
mantles of eternal snow and glittering blue fields of ice in the
bitterly cold atmosphere. Up there you would think that you were near
the pole. There are no trees on the high crests, which seem to rise up
from the depths of the Pacific Ocean; but the climate is good, and
agriculture yields sustenance to men. On the eastern flanks, which are
watered by abundant rains, the vegetation is exceedingly luxuriant, and
here the traveller enters the primeval forests of the tropics. Here is
the home of the cinchona tree, here orchids bloom among the tall trunks,
and here whole woods are entangled in a network of lia