Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/50

28 the feeble decorations of the chisel and the pencil, without the necessity of viewing her sensible creatures humbled in the dismal array of the sepulchre, she displays herself living, and in all her splendor. The high world is the principal nave; its flooring, superior in elevation to Olympus, Pindus, Imaus, or the Pyrenean mountains, supports a magnificent façade looking towards the north, and crowned by the celestial Equator. The edifice which terminates beneath the tropic of Capricorn, is crowned at the meridian by another arch of equal elegance. Corazon, Iligniza, Chimborazo, Collanes, Vilcanota, Illimani, Condoroma, and Tacora, are the columns by which it is supported. Antisana, Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, Pichincha, Ambato, Quinistakac, and Cheke-Putina, are so many inextinguishable lamps, which, covered by a thick vapour, perpetuate unceasingly the worship of the Deity.

The collateral divisions, regulated, not according to the wretched ideas of man, but by the infinitely wise plans of the Creator, point out the direction of the vallies of which they are composed, and lead, by superb entrances, to the east and west, to the spacious passages formed, on the one hand, by thefertile plains of the Amazons, and on the other by the coasts and the ocean. The produ6tions of the three kingdoms are distributed in each of them. The areas and columns of the centre are enriched by minerals, among which the diamond, enchased in the finest gold, sparkles with effulgence. In the circumference meteors prevail; and while in one direction, the lightning's vivid flash precedes the loud explosion and the darted thunderbolt, in another the blushing dawn of Aurora shines amid the calmly-floating vapours. The vallies are replete with the treasures of the animal and vegetable doms.