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Updated: May 20, 2025
Doubtless the birth of some of the mountain-systems of the globe is still going on, and we suspect it not; an elevation of one foot in a century would lift up the Sierra or the Rocky Mountains in a comparatively short geologic period. It was the geologist that emboldened Tennyson to sing,
Then at the end of Palaeozoic time how many millions of years is only conjectural the truce of aeons was broken, and the dogs of war let loose; it was a period of revolution which resulted in the making of one of our greatest mountain-systems, the Appalachian, and in an unprecedented extinction of species. Later eras have witnessed similar revolutions. Why may they not come again?
Three separate mountain-systems exist in South America: that of the Andes on the west, Guiana and Venezuela on the north, and the serras of Brazil in the centre. The surface of the remainder of the continent is occupied by vast level, or undulating tracts of different elevations.
A few more of these geologic years and they will be reduced to a peneplain, only their stumps left. This seems to hold truer of mountains that are wrinkles in the earth's crust squeezed up and crumpled stratified rock, such as most of the great mountain-systems are than of mountains of erosion like the Catskills, or of upheaval like the Adirondacks.
The South American continent, it will thus be seen, consists of several distinctly different descriptions of country: the long line of the Cordilleras, with their snow-capped peaks and their lofty punas or high table-lands, and the narrow strip of arid soil at their western base; the three separate mountain-systems of Venezuela, Guiana, and the Brazils; the mighty forests bordering the great rivers and their tributaries, to which must be added the wooded heights of the inter-tropical regions, where tall trees, including several palms, flourish at an elevation of many thousand feet above the level of the ocean; and lastly, the wide-extending regions of the Llanos and the Pampas.
Parallel with either coast we shall see two great mountain-systems that called the Appalachian, including the chain of the Alleghanies, on the east, and the famed Rocky Mountains on the west running from north to south through the continent.
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