By this description it would appear, that the true direction of the Peruvian Alps is by no means north and south, as has been asserted, and that those who, upon this ground, have fancied they could overturn, by a single effort, the systems of Copernicus and Newton, have not paid a sufficient attention to this subject. Formed of an infinite series of high mountains, which run west and east, or in a contrary direction, between the South Sea and the country of the Amazons, and rising to a prodigious height in the midst of their career, they unite, and appear to the view to take a third course[1]. The delight-
- ↑ In the hypothesis of the motion of the earth and universal gravitation, the centrifugal force, augmented beneath the Equator, should, to produce the mountains of the Andes, have given them a direction east and west, as is the case with the mountains of the Moon in Africa. Thus, did they in reality run north and south, the hypothesis would be overturned; but our new observations convince us of the con-
entirely of two Cordilleras, which, by the declivities that unite them, form La Sierra, and one of which, by its opposite sides, composes the mountains of the Andes, while the other, in a similar way, composes the coast. If the division of Peru be to he taken from the direction of the summits of the mountains, by which, according to the idea of Don Ulloa, in his American Notices, it is separated into the higher and lower worlds, the mountains belong exclusively to this plan of division. But if the distinctive characteristics be to be drawn from the qualities of the soil and climate, Peru should be divided into three parts, as has been done by Father Acosta, in his Natural History, page 175. These divisions are as follow: ist, the mountains of the Andes; 2d, La Sierra; and 3d, the coast, or plains. Charadleristics of the first; constant rain, every where mountainous, the temperature warm; of the second, regular seasons, meteors; of the third, dryness, the temple of the spring. Since the principal aim of divisions consists of order and perspicuity in the subject matter treated of, we shall endeavour to preserve both, by adopting the first division; and although, in describing the low world, we have confined ourselves to the bare mention of the coast, we shall, on a future opportunity, enter into a particular examination of the corresponding sections.
