The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

MOUNTAINS.

“And lo! the mountains print the distant sky,

And o’er their airy tops faint clouds are driven,

So softly blending that the cheated eye,

Forgets or which is earth, or which is heaven!”—Fay.

“Mountains and all hills—let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven.”—David.

Among the wonders, or uncommon phenomena of the world, may be classed stupendous mountains. For though compared with the entire diameter of the earth, the highest elevations on its surface are no more than the inequalities on the skin of the orange to the orange itself, yet to our eyes they often appear immensely lofty and sublime. Descriptions of such vast and striking objects often fail to excite corresponding ideas; so that however accurate or poetical may be the accounts of this class of the prodigies of nature, no just notions of their vastness can be conveyed, by any written or graphical representation. The magnitude of an object must be seen[seen] to be duly conceived; and the mountain-wonders of the world will best be understood and felt by those who have visited Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, or the mountainous regions of America or Asia.

THE ANDES.

Some of the loftiest and most extensive mountains in the world, are the Andes, in South America. These stupendous hills, called by the Spaniards the Cordilleras, (from the word cord or chain,) i.e. the chains of the Andes, stretch north and south near the western coast, from the isthmus of Darien, through the whole of the continent of South America, to the straits of Magellan. In the north, there are three chains of separate ridges; but in advancing from Popayan toward the south, the three chains unite into a single group, which is continued far beyond the equator. In Equador, near Quito, the more elevated summits of this group are ranged in two rows, (as seen in the cut below,) which form a double crest to the Cordilleras. The extent of the Andes mountains is not less than four thousand three hundred miles, from one end to the other.