[Footnote 27:  Here is an evidence that those vertical strata, now elevated into the highest stations upon the earth; had been formed originally of the spoils of the land, and deposited at the bottom of the sea.]

“Si l’on descend dans la plaine, si l’on remonte sur les collines, toutes a-peu-pres de la meme hauteur qui sont entierement separees des montagnes voisines, et situees dans la direction ou courant des rivieres, on remarque aisement qu’elle sont les restes d’une plaine anterieure que les eaux ont degradee.  Au lieu de ces forets, et de ces boissons qui surchargent bientot nos campagnes lorsque la main de l’homme cesse de les cultiver, un gazon touffu couvre la plaine et les collines de Santa-Fee d’une verdure agreable sans nul arbrisseau qui puisse en alterer l’uniformite, ou les graminee, le plantain, le scorconnaire, le trefle, le marrube, la pimprenelle, le pourpier, la patience, le chardon, le raifort, le cresson, la chicoree sauvage, la jonquille, la marguerite, le fraisier, la violette, le serpolet, le thym, et mille autres plantes d’Europe et particulieres a ce pays, offrent les varietes les plus piquantes par la beaute des fleurs et I’odeur de leurs parfums; des rochers qu’entourent le rosier ou la ronce, et quelques cavernes que le hazard presente sur ces memes collines, en rendent l’aspect pittoresque et delicieux.”

Here is a picture of a country such as we might find in Europe; only it is placed under the line, and elevated above the highest of the frozen summits of the European Alps.  We may observe that the same order of things obtains here as in every other place upon the surface of this earth; mountains going into decay; plains formed below from the ruins of the mountains; these plains ruined again, and hills formed in their place; rivers wearing rocks and breaking through the obstacles which had before detained their waters; and a gradual progress of soil from the summits of the continent to the border at the sea, over the fertile surface of the land, successively destroyed and successively renewed.

Here are to be observed two states of country along side of each other, the plain of the Bogota, and the Valley of the Madalena.  The courses of the two rivers show the direction of those ridges of mountains which had been raised from the deep; they run south and north, as do those valleys which they drain.  At this place we find the valley of the river Cauca, and the valley of the Magdalena parallel to each other, and also to this high plain of the Bogota.  Now the waters of this high country, instead of running northward to the sea, as do those of the two valleys below, run both from the south and north until, uniting together, they proceed westward, break the rampard of granite rocks at Tekendama, and fall at once from the high plain down into the valley of the Madalena.  Those water formed plains which we perceive subsisting at unequal levels immediately adjoining to each other, while they present us with a view of the degradation of the elevated earth, at the same time illustrate the indefinite duration of a continent; for, we judge not of the progress of things from the actual operations of the surface, which are too slow for the life of man, and too vague for the subject of his history, but from the state of things which we contemplate with a scientific eye, and from the nature of things which we know to be in rule.