Page:Isaiah Bowman - Desert Trails of Atacama (1924).pdf/285

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The Puna de Atacama
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reader should turn to Figure 94 below for a similar map of the Iquique region, the two maps giving an excellent picture, the one of the eastern, the other of the western half of the desert country of northern Chile.

Fig. 94-——Topographic map of the Iquique region showing the Coast Range, steep and even precipitous in places on the seaward side and smooth-contoured on the summit and eastern border. Compare Figure 93.

Upon the western mountain border, as shown in Figure 93, are deep but narrow ravines, and these carry water to inter- mediate levels only. None of the flow reaches the adjacent floor of the Salar de Punta Negra, and it reaches its border only at the rarest intervals. West of the salar is broken country—a series of isolated peaks, knobs and ridges arranged in no system and all alike bordered by broad sheets of allu- vium, rarely affected by rainwash, débris from the long-con-