History of the conquest of Peru / by Willilam H. Prescott.

  • William Hickling Prescott
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the conquest of Peru / by Willilam H. Prescott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    whose names are effaced from the map of history. It is certain, however, that its breadth was altogether disproportioned to its length.1 The topographical aspect of the country is very remarkable. A strip of land, rarely exceeding twenty leagues in width, runs along the coast, and is hemmed in through its whole extent by a colossal range of mountains, which, advancing from the straits of Magellan, reaches its highest elevation—indeed, the highest on the American continent—about the seventeenth degree south,2 and, after crossing the line, gradually subsides into hills of inconsiderable magnitude as it enters the Isthmus of Panama. This is the famous Cordillera of the Andes, or “ copper mountains,”3 as termed by the natives, though they might with more reason have been called “mountains of gold.” Arranged sometimes in a single line, though more frequently in two or three lines running parallel or obliquely to each other, they seem to the voyager on the ocean but one continu¬ ous chain ; while the huge volcanoes, which to the inhabitants of the table-land look like solitary and independent masses, appear to him only like so many peaks of the same vast and magnificent range. So immense is the scale on which Nature works in these regions, that it is only when viewed from a great distance, that the spectator can in any degree comprehend the relation of the several parts to the stupendous whole. Few of the works of Nature, indeed, are calculated to produce impres¬ sions of higher sublimity than the aspect of this coast as it is gradually unfolded to the eye of the mariner sailing on the distant waters of the Pacific; where mountain is seen to rise above mountain, and Chimborazo, with its glorious canopy of snow, glittering far above the clouds, crowns the whole as with a celestial diadem.4 1 Sarmiento, Relation, MS., cap. Ixv.—Cieza de Leon, Cronica del Peru, (Anvers, I554>) cap. xli.—Garcilasso de la Vega, Commentarios Reales, (Lisboa, 1609,) parte i. lib. i. cap. viii. According to the last authority, the empire, in its greatest breadth, did not exceed one hundred and twenty leagues. But Garcilasso’s geography will not bear criticism. 2 According to Malte-Brun, it is under the equator that we meet with the loftiest summits of this chain. (Universal Geography, Eng. trans., book lxxxvi.) But more recent measurements have shown this to be between fifteen and seventeen degrees south, where the Nevado de Sorata rises to the enormous height of 25,250 feet, and the Illimani to 24,300. 3 At least, the word anta, which has been thought to furnish the etymology of Andes, in the Peruvian tongue, signified “copper.”—Garci¬ lasso, Com. Real., parte i. lib. v. cap. xv. 4 Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleres et Monumens des Peuples Indigenes de I’Amerique, (Paris, 1810,) p. 106Malte-Brun, book Ixxxviii The
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