ages this granite peak was the solo
representative of dry land in our hemisphere south of the Canada hills.
In process of time, a cluster of islands rose above the thermal waters.
They were the small beginnings of the future mountains of Brazil,
holding in their laps the diamonds which now sparkle in the crown of Dom
Pedro II. Long protracted eons elapsed without adding a page to the
geology of South America. The Creator seems to have been busy elsewhere.
Decorating the north with the gorgeous flora of the carboniferous
period, till, in the language of Hugh Miller, "to distant planets our
earth must have shone with a green and delicate ray," he rubbed the
picture out, and ushered in the hideous reptilian age, when monstrous
saurians, footed, paddled, and winged, were the lords of this lower
world. All the great mountain chains were at this time slumbering
beneath the ocean. The city of New York was sure of its site; but huge
dinotheria wallowed in the mire where now stand the palaces of Paris,
London, and Vienna.

At length the morning breaks upon the last day of creation, and the fiat
goes forth that the proud waves of the Pacific, which have so long
washed the table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, shall be stayed. Far away
toward the setting sun the white surf beats in long lines of foam
against a low, winding archipelago--the western outline of the coming
continent. Fierce is the fight for the mastery between sea and land,
between the denuding power of the waves and the volcanic forces
underneath. But slowly--very slowly, yet surely--rises the long chain of
islands by a double process; the submarine crust of the earth is
cooling, and the rocks are folded up as it shrivels, while the molten
material within, pressed out through the crevices, overflows and helps
to build up the sea-defiant wall. A man's life would be too short to
count even the centuries consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru
has risen eighty feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro: supposing the
Andes to have risen at this rate uniformly and without interruption,
seventy thousand years must have elapsed before they reached their
present altitude. But when we consider that, in fact, it was an
intermittent movement--alternate upheaval and subsidence--we must add an
unknown number of millennia.

Three times the Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath the ocean level, and
again were slowly brought up to their present height. The suns of
uncounted ages hav