The Hawaiian gazette., 1868-10-28
The Andes and the Amazons.

Professor Orion, in communication to
the New York EreRing Post of June %,
gives the following highly instructive and
interesting description Of the formation of
our continent. as deduced from the teach
ings of Geology:
Three cycles ago an island rose from the
sea where now expands the vast continent
of South America. 1t was the culminat-
ing point Of the highlands of Guiana. For
ages this granite peak was the sole repre-
sentative of dry land on our hemisphere
south of the Canada hills. In process of
time cluster Of islands rose above the
thermal waters. They were the small be-
ginnings of the future mountains of Brazil
holding in their laps the diamonds which
now sparkle in the diadem Of Don Pedro
ii. Long protracted cons elapsed without
adding page to the geology of South
America. The Creator seems to have been
busy elsewhere. Decorating the north
with the gorgeous fora of the carbonifer-
Gus period, till, in the language of Hugh
Miller. to distant planets our earth must
have shone with green and delicate ray"
He rubbed the picture out and ushered in
the hideous reptilian age, when monstrous
saurians-footed, padded and winged
were the lords of the lower world. All
the great mountain chains were at this
time slumbering beneath the ocean. The
city of New York was sure Of its site;
but huge dinotheria wallowed in the mire
where now stands the palaces of Paris,
London and Vienna. At length the morn
ing breaks upon the last day of creation,
and the fat goes forth that the proud waves
of the Pacific, which have so long washed
the table-lands of Guiana and Brazil shall
be stayed Far away toward the setting
sun the white surf beats in long lines of
foam against low, winding archipelago
the western outline of the coming CONT
nent. Fierce is the fight for the mastery
between sea and land; between the denud-
ing power Of the waves and the volcanic
forces underneath. But slowly, very slow
y,yet surely, rises the long chain of islands
by a double process; the submarine crust
of the earth is cooling and the rocks are
folded up as it shrlvels, while the molten
material within, pressed out through the
crevices, overfows and helps to build up
the sea-defant wall. A mans life would
be too short to count even the centuries
consumed in this operation. The coast of
Peru has risen eighty feet since it felt the
tread of Pizarro; supposing the Andes
to have risen at this rate uniformity and
without interruption, 10000 years must
have elapsed before they. reached their
present altitude. But when we consider
that, in fact, it was an intermittent move
ment-alternate upheaval and subsistence
we must add an unknown number of
millennia. Three times the Andes sank
hundreds of feet beneath the ocean level,
and again were brought up to their present
height. A long succession of brute races
roamed over the mountains and plains of
South America, and died out ere man was
created. In those pre-Adamite times, long
before the Incas ruled, the mastodon and
megatherium, the horse and the tapir dwelt
in the high valley of Quito; yet all these
passed away before the arrival of the abo-
riginies; the wild horses now feeding on
the Pampas of Buenos Ayres were import
ed from Europe three hundred and thirty
years ago.
And now the Andes stand complete in
their present gigantic proportions-one of
the grandest and most Symmetrical mountain
chains in the world. Starting from the
Land Of Fire, it stretches northward and
mounts upward till it enters the Isthmus of
Panama, where it bows gracefully to either
ocean, but soon resumes, under another
name, its former majesty. and loses its mag
ni6cence only where the trappers chase the
fur-bearing animals over the Arctic plains.
Nowhere else does nature present such
continuous and lofty chain of mountains
unbroken for eight thousand miles, save
where it is rent asunder by the Magellan
Straits, and proudly tossing up thousand
pinnacles into the regions of eternal snow.
Nowhere in the Old World do we see q
single well defined mountain chain, only
broad belt Of mountainous country trav-
ersing the heart of the continent.
The moment the Andes rose, the great
continental valley of the Amazons was
sketched out and moulded in its lap. The
tidal waves of the Atlantic were dashing
against the Cordilleras, and legion of riv-
ulets were busily ploughing up the sides
into deep ravines; the sediment produced
by this incessant wear and tear was carried
eastward and spread out scatum by stra-
tum till the shallow sea between the Andes
and the Islands of Guiana and Brazil was
filled up with sand and clay Huge gla-
ciers thinks Agassiz) afterwards descend
ing, moved over the inclined plane and
ground the loose rock to powder. Eddies
and currents, throwing up sand banks as
they do now, defined the limits of the trib-
utary streams and directed them into one
main trunk, which worked for itself wide,
deep bed, capable of containing its sccu-
INFLATED food. Then and thus was created
the Amazons, the mightest river in the
world, rising in the loftiest volcanoes on
the globe. and flowing through forest of
unparalleled extent
In South America, nature has framed her
work on gigantic scale. Where else com
bined do We see such series Of towering