ve the highest of the frozen
summits of the European Alps. We may observe that the same order of
things obtains here as in every other place upon the surface of this
earth; mountains going into decay; plains formed below from the ruins
of the mountains; these plains ruined again, and hills formed in their
place; rivers wearing rocks and breaking through the obstacles which had
before detained their waters; and a gradual progress of soil from the
summits of the continent to the border at the sea, over the fertile
surface of the land, successively destroyed and successively renewed.

Here are to be observed two states of country along side of each other,
the plain of the Bogota, and the Valley of the Madalena. The courses of
the two rivers show the direction of those ridges of mountains which had
been raised from the deep; they run south and north, as do those valleys
which they drain. At this place we find the valley of the river Cauca,
and the valley of the Magdalena parallel to each other, and also to this
high plain of the Bogota. Now the waters of this high country, instead
of running northward to the sea, as do those of the two valleys below,
run both from the south and north until, uniting together, they proceed
westward, break the rampard of granite rocks at Tekendama, and fall at
once from the high plain down into the valley of the Madalena. Those
water formed plains which we perceive subsisting at unequal levels
immediately adjoining to each other, while they present us with a view
of the degradation of the elevated earth, at the same time illustrate
the indefinite duration of a continent; for, we judge not of the
progress of things from the actual operations of the surface, which
are too slow for the life of man, and too vague for the subject of
his history, but from the state of things which we contemplate with a
scientific eye, and from the nature of things which we know to be in
rule.

In like manner the horizontal situation of the solid strata in the
mountains of that low country, while those of the high country are more
or less inclined, afford the most instructive view of the internal
operations of the globe, by which the Andes had been raised from the
bottom of the sea, and of the external operations of the earth by which
mountains are formed by the wasting of the elevated surface.

With this description of those high plains upon the north side of the
line, let us compare what D. Ulloa has said upon th