[49] Their favorite musical instrument is the rondador, a number of reeds of different lengths tied in a row. The "plaintive national songs" which Markham heard at Cuzco are not sung in Ecuador.
[50] At Paita, the most western point of South America, there is a raised beach three hundred feet high. The basal slate and sandstone rocks, dipping S. of E., are covered by conglomerate, sand, and a gypseous formation, containing shells of living species. Additional to those described by D'Orbigny we found here Cerithium læviuscula, Ostrea gallus, and Ampullina Ortoni, as determined by W.M. Gabb, Esq., of Philadelphia. Darwin found shells in Chile 1300 feet above the sea, covered with marine mud. President Loomis, of Lewisburg University, Pa., informs the writer, that in 1853, after nearly a day's ride from Iquique, he came to a former sea-beach. "It furnished abundant specimens of Patellæ and other shells, still perfect, and identical with others that I had that morning obtained at Iquique with the living animal inhabiting them." This beach is elevated 2500 feet above the Pacific. The same observer says that near Potosi there is one uninterrupted mass of lava, having a columnar structure, not less than one hundred miles in length, fifty miles wide, and eight hundred feet thick. It overlies a bed of saliferous sandstone which has been worked for salt. Fifty feet within a mine, and in the undisturbed rock which forms its roof, the doctor found fragments of dicotyledonous trees with the bark on, undecomposed, uncharred, and fibrous.
[51] The name Andes is often derived from anta, an old Peruvian word signifying metal. But Humboldt says: "There are no means of interpreting it by connecting it with any signification or idea; if such connection exist, it is buried in the obscurity of the past." According to Col. Tod, the northern Hindoos apply the name Andes to the Himalayan Mountains.
[52] On this point see Chapter XVII.
[53] "The interior plateau of Brazil (says Dr. Lund) is composed of horizontal strata of the transition period, which are nowhere covered with the secondary or tertiary formations." The highest point in Brazil is 5755 feet. Darwin speaks of "some ancient submarine volcanic rocks (in the province of La Plata) worth mentioning, from their rarity on this eastern side of the continent." With the exception of the coast of Venezuela, the eastern system is little exposed to earthquakes.
[54] These three plains constitute four fifths of all South America east of the Andes. The west slope of the Ecuadorian Andes is about 275 feet per mile; on the east it is 125 feet.
[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. | ||
[56] The width of the chain south of the equator varies with that of the continent.
[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 revolutions of nature."—Helms. "More sublime than the Alps by their ensemble, the Andes lack those curious and charming details of which Nature has been so lavish in the old continent."—Holinski.