life.

[Footnote 55: There is, however, a striking coincidence between the
mountain and river systems of the northern and southern continents of
this hemisphere. Thus,

The Andes represent the Rocky Mountains,
" Highland of Guiana represent the Canadian Mountains.
" " Brazil " Appalachian "
" Amazon " Saskatchewan.
" La Plata " Mississippi.
" Orinoco " Mackenzie.

]

The long and lofty chain of the Andes is certainly one of the grandest
results of the plications and uplifts of the earth's crust. While the
waves of the Pacific, from Panama to Patagonia, submissively kiss the
feet of the Andes, and the showers that swell the Amazon fall within
sight of the mariner on that peaceful ocean, the Rocky Mountains are
situated five hundred miles from the sea. The space west of the Andes
does not contain 20,000 square leagues, while the country east of it
equals 424,600. While the compact Andes have an average width of only
sixty miles,[56] the straggling mountain system beyond the Mississippi
has the breadth of the Empire State; but the mean elevation of the
latter would scarcely reach the bottom of the Quito Valley. The
mountains of Asia may surpass the Cordilleras in height, but, situated
beyond the tropics, and destitute of volcanoes, they do not present that
inexhaustible variety of phenomena which characterizes the latter. The
outbursts of porphyry and trachytic domes, so characteristic of the high
crests of the Cordilleras, impart a physiognomy quite distinct from that
presented by the mountains of Europe. The Andes offer, in the least
space, the greatest possible variety of impressions.[57] There is near
Huanca, Peru, a coal-bed lifted up to the enormous height of 14,700
feet, and on the side of Chimborazo there is a salt spring 13,000 feet
above the sea. Marine shells have not been found in Europe above the
summit of the Pyrenees, or 11,700 feet; but the Andes can show some a
thousand feet higher. A strange sight, to see shells once crawling on
the bottom of the ocean now resting at an elevation twice the height of
Mount Washington!

[Footnote 56: The width of the chain south of the equator varies with
that of the continent.]

[Footnote 57: "No mountains which I have seen in Hungary, Saxony, or the
Pyrenees are as irregular as the Andes, or broken into such alternate
substances, manifesting such prodigious revol