However this may be, it is truly wonderful and beautiful to see so great a bird, hour after hour, without any apparent exertion, wheeling and gliding over mountain and river.
APRIL 29, 1834.
From some high land we hailed with joy the white summits of the Cordillera, as they were seen occasionally peeping through their dusky envelope of clouds.

During the few succeeding days we continued to get on slowly, for we found the river-course very tortuous, and strewed with immense fragments of various ancient slaty rocks, and of granite.

The plain bordering the valley had here attained an elevation of about 1100 feet above the river, and its character was much altered.

The well-rounded pebbles of porphyry were mingled with many immense angular fragments of basalt and of primary rocks.

The first of these erratic boulders which I noticed was sixty-seven miles distant from the nearest mountain; another which I measured was five yards square, and projected five feet above the gravel.