One morning, when it was my watch on deck, soon after dawn the cheery sound was heard of "Land on the starboard-bow!"  I looked out; and as daylight increased, there appeared, as if rising out of the ocean in their desolate grandeur, capped with snow and towering high above the clouds, the lofty summits of a range of mountains trending away north and south far as the eye could reach.  They were the giant Cordilleras. On we sailed with a fresh breeze.  The sun ascended with stately pace from behind them, and then a mist arose and shrouded their base.  Hour after hour we ran on, and yet we seemed not to have got nearer; till once more the mists lifted, and wild, rocky, and barren heights sloped upwards before us from the ocean.  Full sixty miles were gone over from the time those snowy peaks were first seen till we reached Valparaiso, far away down at their base.  We must have been a hundred and twenty miles off them at sunrise.