When the Stars and Stripes have faded from view at Balboa, and the jagged backbone of the continent has disappeared into the mists on either horizon, towards Nicaragua and Colombia, one feels that a new world has been reached. The real South America has been entered, and, when the good ship crosses the Line, about the third day out, home and the rest of the world seem very far away. It is a long journey to Valparaiso, Chile, if one takes a steamer that stops at all the intermediate ports, as it lasts more than three weeks. There are swifter vessels, however, that avoid Ecuador and make the journey in twelve days. The slower vessels follow the coast line, and the passenger is given many a view of the Andes, whose peaks are crowned with eternal snows but are frequently wrapped in fleecy clouds. At Guayaquil, the westernmost city of South America, it is even possible on occasions in clear weather to see Chimborazo, eighty miles from the sea. Nowhere in the world is there a greater assembly of lofty peaks than will be seen as the vessel proceeds along the coast. The Spaniards called these “sierras,” because their uneven summits resembled the teeth of a saw. Some of the peaks are regular in outline, but more often they are irregular and even grotesque, so that the imaginative minds of the natives have fancied resemblances to works of nature and have given them corresponding names. Nowhere in the world are there stranger freaks in geological formations, or more startling contrasts. Near the coast run the foothills, which gradually become higher and bolder until they end in the loftiest peaks. Back, and beyond all, an occasional volcanic peak may be seen lifting itself in solitary grandeur.