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14 in return, it affords other advantages, which are not only able to keep up the balance, but also to give a preponderance to the side of the territory. For the architecture of this Cordillera appears to be altogether distinct from that which Nature displays in the organization of the rest of the globe; or, rather, it is its design and completion. Divided into two parts, it composes as many worlds, the one high, the other low, in which, as has already been said, is united whatever distinguishes Africa from Asia, and both of them conjointly from Europe.

The high world occupies the ground which separates the two above-mentioned chains of mountains, the summits of which are distant from each other, ten, twenty, and, in some instances, fifty leagues. It indeed happens that in some places they meet and unite, by the interposition of a third Cordillera, which runs east and west. Such is that of Asuay and Moxanda, in the kingdom of Quito. Notwithstanding its soil,

Andes