If the kings of Egypt, instead of having erected pyramids, and raised such sumptuous monuments of their riches and vanity, had been at the same expence to sound the earth, and make a deep excavation to the depth of a league, they, perhaps, might have found substances which would have amply recompensed the trouble, labour, and expence, or at least we should have received information on the matters of which the internal part of the globe is composed, which might have been very useful, and which we at present have not. But let us return to the mountains; the highest are in the southern countries, and the nearer we approach the equator, the more inequalities we find on the surface of the globe. This is easy to prove, by a short enumeration of the mountains and islands. In America, the chain of the Cordeliers, the highest mountains of the earth, is exactly under the equator, and extends on the two sides far beyond the tropic circles. In Africa, the highest mountains of the Moon, and Monomotapa, the great and the little Atlas, are under the equator, or not far from it. In Asia, Mount Caucasus, the chain of which extends under different names as far as the mountains of China, is nearer the equator than the poles. In Europe, the Pyrennees, the Alps, and mountains of Greece, which are only the same chain, are still less distant from the equator than the poles. Now these mountains which we have enumerated, are all higher, more considerable and extended in length and breadth than the mountains of the northern countries. With respect to their direction, the Alps form a chain which crosses the whole continent from Spain to China. These mountains begin at the sea coast of Galicia, reach to the Pyrennees, cross France, by Vivares, and Auvergne, pass through Italy and extend into Germany, beyond Dalmatia, as far as Macedonia; from thence they join with the mountains of Armenia, Caucasus, Taurus, Imaus, and extend as far as the Tartarian sea. So likewise Mount Atlas traverses the whole continent of Africa, from west to east, from the kingdom of Fez to the Straits of the Red Sea; and the mountains of the Moon have the same direction. But in America, the direction is quite contrary, and the chains of the Cordeliers and other mountains extend from south to north more than from east to west.