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“The Rocky Mountains terminate in the plateau of Mexico, ‘a little south,’ says Hill, ‘of the capital of that republic; and that the mountains have no orographic continuity, or other features in common with those of the Central American region.’

“And the same authority, describing the terminus of the Andes, says, ‘The northern end of the Andean System lies entirely east of the Central American region, and is separated from it by the Rio Atrato—the most western of the great Rivers of Columbia. In fact, the deeply eroded drainage valley of this stream nearly severs the Pacific coast from the republic of Columbia, and the isthmian region, from the South American continent.’

“The Central American volcanoes belong to the type that is repeated along the Caribbean shores of Colombia and Venezuela, and those in the Isthmus of Panama, and those of the great Antilles. The genesis of this American Mediterranean land-aggregate was in an independent geological impulse, and the land aggregate itself impinged by intersection upon the dominant land surfaces of North and South America. To bring together North and South America as a simultaneous geological phenomena is wrong, to make them other than an accidental geographical continuity questionable. It is this intermediate zone—the Antillean continent with lateral elongations, grasping within its continental solidarity the parallel zones of Central America and the Isthmus, that gives them terrestrial unity. Extend the axis of the Rocky Mountains, and it passes almost two thousand miles west of the coast of South America; extend the axis of the Andes and it bisects the western extremity of Cuba, and passes along the seaboard of the United States.