COASTS. With regard to the nature of their coast-lines, North and South America present an extraordinary contrast. North America, in its extreme irregular coast-line and its great penin sulas, is the counterpart of the Eurasiatic con tinent in the Old World, while South America, with its almost unbroken coast, is the counter part of Africa. In North America we have the peninsulas of Alaska, Labrador, Nova Scotia, Florida. Yucatan, and Lower California. South America presents but one great peninsula, that of Patagonia. The Atlantic coast of America is far more irregular and broken than that of the Pacific. On the north of North America, Hudson Bay projects far into the interior of Canada. forming a vast inland sea. Farther south, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy form deep indentations. On the Atlantic coast of the United States are several large hays and harbors, Massachusetts Bay, Long Island Sound. Delaware and Chesapeake bays. and .Albemarle and Pamlico sounds being among them. The Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean See have many arms, extend ing into the laud, among them the gulfs of Cann peachy, Honduras. and Colon.
The Atlantic coast of South America is sim pler, the chief indentations being, on the north the gulfs of Darien and Venezuela, on the north east the estuary of the Amazon, and on the east the harbors of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, and the gulfs of San Alatias, and San Jorge, on the Argen tine coast.
The west coasts of both continents are in the Main extremely simple. Between latitudes 42° S. and 48° N. there are few' harbors. In South America, the Gulf of Guayaquil is almost the only indentation of magnitude. South of latitude 42°, S., however. the character of the coast changes to
a fiord coast, with many deep, narrow pasages and hundreds of islands. «here the two conti nents meet, the bend of the Pacific coast forms the deep bay of Panama. The west coast of North America south of the parallel of 48° N. is broken deeply only by the Gulf of California and San Francisco Bay, but near the north west corner of the United States a fiord coast commences with Puget Sound. and extends thence along British Columbia and Alaska to the Aleutian Islands. The Bering Sea coast of Alas ka is low, and broken by many indentations, and similar conditions prevail on the Arctic coast.
ToromtAnny. The prominent relief feature of both continents consists in a great system of ele vation, stretching along or near the western coast, from Cape Horn in South America to the extreme end of the Alaska peninsula in North America. This is known in South America as the Andean Cordillera, and in North America as the Cordillera. It differs greatly in its different parts, in breadth, height, complexity, and char acter. in North America the Cordillera are suc ceeded on the cast by a broad valley: east of this valley, and separating it in the south from the Atlantic, is the shorter, smaller, and lower Appa lachian system. In South America the succes sion is somewhat similar. East of the Andes is a broad slope or depression, which in Argentina continues to the Atlantic: but in eastern Brazil and the Guianas the continuity of the eastward slope is broken by numerous short and compara tively low ranges, corresponding roughly with the Appalachians of the northern continent.