3-011-335 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

View of the Chilian Cordillera, from Santiago, 1864. Engraving from a sketch by David Powell, junior, '...of the view from the little hill of Santa Lucia - a small jumble of rocks rising in the middle of the city. Santiago, the capital of Chili, can boast of a situation which in beauty yields to none. It stands in a valley, which is almost a perfect garden of fruit-trees and vines, immediately below some of the highest peaks of the Chilian Cordillera. These mountains, many of which are believed to be extinct volcanoes, are, on the whole some 22,000 ft. above the level of the sea, the highest (Aconcagua) being, according to Admiral Fitzroy's survey, 27,000 ft. high, and consequently the highest in America. For a South American city, Santiago is very fine; the buildings are generally in good taste, some having been built at an enormous expense. The roads for miles round are lined with poplars, and the land is one mass of vines, figs, melons, and other fruits. The Chilian Cordillera forms part of the Andes..., the great mountain system of South America, which extends through sixty-five degrees of latitude along its western coast, from Cape Horn to the Isthmus of Panama'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.