The width, extension, and excessive precipitation of the belt, over South America, follow the same law. The South Atlantic widens out by the trending of the coast to the S. W., and furnishes a large area for the unobstructed formation and evaporative action of the S. E. trades. So the trending of the coast to the N. W., from 5 deg. south to the northward, opens a large area for a like formation and action of the N. E. trades. No correspondingly favorable circumstances exist any where, except, perhaps, around Hindoostan, and there the fall of rain is very excessive in some places, as on the Kassaya hills, to the extent of 400 inches per annum. In addition to this, the magnetic line of no variation, and of greater intensity, which runs from our magnetic pole, obliquely, S. S. E., to its opposite and corresponding pole in the southern hemisphere, enters the Atlantic on the coast of North Carolina, and traverses it, and the eastern portion of South America, through the whole trade-wind region. The table-lands, and slopes, and high mountain peaks, meet the trades successively, as they go west, and the latter wrench from them, to an unusual extent, their moisture; depressing the line of perpetual snow, by an increase of quantity on the eastern sides, several thousand feet, as it is for a like cause depressed on the southern side of the Himmalayas. On the eastern slopes and tops of the Andes, as we have seen, and owing to their elevation, falls the moisture which, according to the working of the machinery, and the law of curvature, should bless the coast line of Peru and northern Chili, the eastern Pacific, northern Mexico, California, Utah, and New Mexico; and, while the Andes stand, the curse of comparative aridity must rest upon them all.