The small newly-created Republic of Panamá completes this northern system of Latin-American countries. Thus, before coming to South America at all, we count ten Latin-American states, three in the Antilles, seven upon the mainland.
The other ten republics lie within the continent of South America. That continent is shaped by nature in lines of a vast and imposing simplicity, so that it is possible to sketch its main features in a few words. It is divided broadly into mountain, forest and plain--the immense chain of the Andes, the vast Amazonian forests, the wide-stretching plains of the Pampa, and the colossal water system of the three rivers, Orinoco, Amazon, La Plata. The dominating element is the great backbone, the cordillera of the Andes. From the southern islands of Tierra del Fuego this cordillera stretches for 4000 miles along the Pacific coast to the northern peninsulas of the Spanish Main, and thence throws out a great eastward curve along the southern shore of the Caribbean Sea. This continuous mountain-wall, clinging closely to the Pacific coast, determines the whole character of the continent. In the tropical zone, the trade winds, blowing continually from the Atlantic, sweep across South America until they strike this towering mountain barrier. Then they shed their moisture on its eastern slopes, which give birth to the multitudinous upper waters of the Orinoco, the Amazon and the western affluents of the River Plate. The Amazon rather resembles a slowly moving inland sea, its twelve principal tributaries all surpassing the measure of European rivers. The River Plate pours into the ocean more water than all the rivers of Europe put together. The Orinoco, shorter but not less voluminous, drains a vast area with its 400 tributaries.
But the Andes, whose forest-clad eastern slopes pour these immeasurable water-floods across the whole continent to the Atlantic, oppose to the Pacific, in the southern tropics, a bare dry wall of rock and yellow sand. In the north, _the garrua_, the winter mist of equatorial Peru, supplies moisture for cultivation. South of this region, the rainless desert stretches, a ribbon-like strip, between the mountains and the sea. Here, except in some transverse river-valleys, not a blade of grass can grow for over a thousand miles. Yet it is this very barrenness which has produced the materials of fertility for other lands in the form of guano and nitrate deposits. Far to the south, in the "roaring forties," these conditions are reversed. Here, moisture-laden winds blow continually and stormily from the Pacific, feeding the dense and soaking forests of southern Chile. In the same latitudes, to the east of the Andes the terraced plains of Patagonia supply sheep pasture, thinly nourished by slight rainfall, although, over so vast an extent, these flocks amount to many millions. In the more temperate regions, between these zones of climatic extremes, more normal conditions prevail. On one side of the Andes are the rich valleys of Central Chile, on the other side the wide plains of the Argentine Pampa, formerly given over to pasture, now producing wheat, maize, flax, barley and oats as well as meat, hides and wool.