Excerpt from Tropical Nature: An Account of the Most Remarkable Phenomena of Life in the Western Tropics I. The low country between the Andes and the coast, varying from 50 to 100 miles in width, and extending for about 4000 miles from north to south. This consists for the most part Of a continuous waste, covered with a fine, light, yellow sand, on which no rain ever falls, and where no vegetation exists, except on the banks Of the mountain torrents, many of which are dried up for a part Of the year. This sandy desert is intersected by hillocks or ridges, called Medanos, some of which are permanent, consisting Of sand heaped up by the wind about a rocky nucleus others are shifting, formed by the subsidence Of columns Of sand 80 to 100 feet in height, which are raised from time to time by the wind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.