[185] _Lyell's Principles of Geology_, pp. 201, 714, 715; see also _Somerville's Physical Geography_, vol. ii. p. 71. And on this confining power of the Cordillera of the Andes, see _Azara_, _Voyages dans l'Amérique Méridionale_, vol. i. p. 33. According to Dr. Tschudi, the eastern chain is properly the Andes, and the western the Cordillera; but this distinction is rarely made. _Tschudi's Travels in Peru_, p. 290.
[186] On the rain of Brazil, see _Daniell's Meteorological Essays_, p. 335; _Darwin's Journal_, pp. 11, 33; _Spix and Martius's Travels in Brazil_, vol. ii. p. 113; _Gardner's Travels in Brazil_, pp. 53, 99, 114, 175, 233, 394.
[187] Dr. Gardner, who looked at these things with the eye of a botanist, says that near Rio de Janeiro the heat and moisture are sufficient to compensate even the poorest soil; so that 'rocks, on which scarcely a trace of earth is to be observed, are covered with vellozias, tillandsias, melastomaceæ, cacti, orchideæ, and ferns, and all in the vigour of life.' _Gardner's Travels in Brazil_, p. 9. See also on this combination, _Walsh's Brazil_, vol. ii. pp. 297, 298, a curious description of the rainy season: 'For eight or nine hours a day, during some weeks, I never had a dry shirt on me; and the clothes I divested myself of at night, I put on quite wet in the morning. When it did not rain, which was very rare, there shone out in some places a burning sun; and we went smoking along, the wet exhaling by the heat, as if we were dissolving into vapour.'
[188] On the natural history of Brazil, I have compared a few notices in _Swainson's Geography of Animals_, pp. 75-87, with _Cuvier_, _Règne Animal_, vol. i. p. 460, vol. ii. pp. 28, 65, 66, 89, vol. iv. pp. 51, 75, 258, 320, 394, 485, 561, vol. v. pp. 40, 195, 272, 334, 553; _Azara_, _Amérique Méridionale_, vol. i. pp. 244-388, and the greater part of vols. iii. and iv.; _Winckler_, _Geschichte der Botanik_, pp. 378, 576-578; _Southey's History of Brazil_, vol. i. p. 27, vol. iii. pp. 315, 823; _Gardner's Brazil_, pp. 18, 32-34, 41-44, 131, 330; _Spix and Martius's Brazil_, vol. i. pp. 207-209, 238-248, vol. ii. pp. 131, 160-163. And as to the forests, which are among the wonders of the world, _Somerville's Physical Geog._ vol. ii. pp. 204-206; _Prichard's Physical History_, vol. v. p. 497; _Darwin's Journal_, pp. 11, 24; _Walsh's Brazil_, vol. i. p. 145, vol. ii. pp. 29, 30, 253.