It Is Known That Common Salt And Carbonate Of Lime
Left In A Mass For Some Time Together, Partly Decompose Each
Other; Though This Does Not Happen With Small Quantities In
Solution.
As the half-decomposed shells in the lower parts
are associated with much common salt, together with some
of the saline substances composing the upper saline layer,
and as these shells are corroded and decayed in a remarkable
manner, I strongly suspect that this double decomposition
has here taken place.
The resultant salts, however, ought
to be carbonate of soda and muriate of lime, the latter is
present, but not the carbonate of soda. Hence I am led to
imagine that by some unexplained means, the carbonate of
soda becomes changed into the sulphate. It is obvious that
the saline layer could not have been preserved in any country
in which abundant rain occasionally fell: on the other
hand, this very circumstance, which at first sight appears so
highly favourable to the long preservation of exposed shells,
has probably been the indirect means, through the common
salt not having been washed away, of their decomposition
and early decay.
I was much interested by finding on the terrace, at the
height of eighty-five feet, _embedded_ amidst the shells and
much sea-drifted rubbish, some bits of cotton thread, plaited
rush, and the head of a stalk of Indian corn: I compared
these relics with similar ones taken out of the Huacas, or old
Peruvian tombs, and found them identical in appearance.
On the mainland in front of San Lorenzo, near Bellavista,
there is an extensive and level plain about a hundred feet
high, of which the lower part is formed of alternating layers
of sand and impure clay, together with some gravel, and the
surface, to the depth of from three to six feet, of a reddish
loam, containing a few scattered sea-shells and numerous
small fragments of coarse red earthenware, more abundant
at certain spots than at others. At first I was inclined to
believe that this superficial bed, from its wide extent and
smoothness, must have been deposited beneath the sea; but
I afterwards found in one spot, that it lay on an artificial
floor of round stones. It seems, therefore, most probable
that at a period when the land stood at a lower level there
was a plain very similar to that now surrounding Callao,
which being protected by a shingle beach, is raised but very
little above the level of the sea. On this plain, with its
underlying red-clay beds, I imagine that the Indians
manufactured their earthen vessels; and that, during some
violent earthquake, the sea broke over the beach, and converted
the plain into a temporary lake, as happened round Callao in
1713 and 1746. The water would then have deposited mud,
containing fragments of pottery from the kilns, more abundant
at some spots than at others, and shells from the sea.
This bed, with fossil earthenware, stands at about the
same height with the shells on the lower terrace of San
Lorenzo, in which the cotton-thread and other relics were
embedded.
Hence we may safely conclude, that within the Indo-human
period there has been an elevation, as before alluded to, of
more than eighty-five feet; for some little elevation must
have been lost by the coast having subsided since the old
maps were engraved. At Valparaiso, although in the 220
years before our visit, the elevation cannot have exceeded
nineteen feet, yet subsequently to 1817, there has been a rise,
partly insensible and partly by a start during the shock of
1822, of ten or eleven feet. The antiquity of the Indo-human
race here, judging by the eighty-five feet rise of the land
since the relics were embedded, is the more remarkable, as on
the coast of Patagonia, when the land stood about the same
number of feet lower, the Macrauchenia was a living beast;
but as the Patagonian coast is some way distant from the
Cordillera, the rising there may have been slower than here.
At Bahia Blanca, the elevation has been only a few feet
since the numerous gigantic quadrupeds were there entombed;
and, according to the generally received opinion,
when these extinct animals were living, man did not exist.
But the rising of that part of the coast of Patagonia, is
perhaps no way connected with the Cordillera, but rather with
a line of old volcanic rocks in Banda Oriental, so that it
may have been infinitely slower than on the shores of Peru.
All these speculations, however, must be vague; for who will
pretend to say that there may not have been several periods
of subsidence, intercalated between the movements of elevation;
for we know that along the whole coast of Patagonia,
there have certainly been many and long pauses in
the upward action of the elevatory forces.
[1] Vol. iv. p. 11, and vol. ii. p. 217. For the remarks on
Guayaquil, see Silliman's Journ., vol. xxiv. p. 384. For those
on Tacna by Mr. Hamilton, see Trans. of British Association,
1840. For those on Coseguina see Mr. Caldcleugh in Phil. Trans.,
1835. In the former edition I collected several references on
the coincidences between sudden falls in the barometer and
earthquakes; and between earthquakes and meteors.
[2] Observa. sobre el Clima de Lima, p. 67. - Azara's Travels,
vol. i. p. 381. - Ulloa's Voyage, vol. ii. p. 28. - Burchell's
Travels, vol. ii. p. 524. - Webster's Description of the
Azores, p. 124. - Voyage a l'Isle de France par un Officer du
Roi, tom. i. p. 248. - Description of St. Helena, p. 123.
[3] Temple, in his travels through Upper Peru, or Bolivia, in
going from Potosi to Oruro, says, "I saw many Indian villages or
dwellings in ruins, up even to the very tops of the mountains,
attesting a former population where now all is desolate." He
makes similar remarks in another place; but I cannot tell
whether this desolation has been caused by a want of population,
or by an altered condition of the land.
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