Looking To Its Earliest Origin, The Red
Granite Seems To Have Been Injected On An Ancient Pre-Existing
Line Of White Granite And Mica-Slate.
In most parts, perhaps in
all parts, of the Cordillera, it may be concluded that each line
has been formed by repeated upheavals and injections; and
that the several parallel lines are of different ages.
Only
thus can we gain time, at all sufficient to explain the truly
astonishing amount of denudation, which these great, though
comparatively with most other ranges recent, mountains have
suffered.
Finally, the shells in the Peuquenes or oldest ridge, prove,
as before remarked, that it has been upraised 14,000 feet
since a Secondary period, which in Europe we are accustomed
to consider as far from ancient; but since these shells
lived in a moderately deep sea, it can be shown that the area
now occupied by the Cordillera, must have subsided several
thousand feet - in northern Chile as much as 6000 feet - so
as to have allowed that amount of submarine strata to have
been heaped on the bed on which the shells lived. The proof
is the same with that by which it was shown, that at a much
later period, since the tertiary shells of Patagonia lived,
there must have been there a subsidence of several hundred
feet, as well as an ensuing elevation. Daily it is forced home
on the mind of the geologist, that nothing, not even the wind
that blows, is so unstable as the level of the crust of this
earth.
I will make only one other geological remark: although
the Portillo chain is here higher than the Peuquenes, the
waters draining the intermediate valleys, have burst through
it. The same fact, on a grander scale, has been remarked in
the eastern and loftiest line of the Bolivian Cordillera,
through which the rivers pass: analogous facts have also
been observed in other quarters of the world. On the supposition
of the subsequent and gradual elevation of the Portillo
line, this can be understood; for a chain of islets would
at first appear, and, as these were lifted up, the tides would
be always wearing deeper and broader channels between them.
At the present day, even in the most retired Sounds on the
coast of Tierra del Fuego, the currents in the transverse
breaks which connect the longitudinal channels, are very
strong, so that in one transverse channel even a small vessel
under sail was whirled round and round.
About noon we began the tedious ascent of the Peuquenes
ridge, and then for the first time experienced some little
difficulty in our respiration. The mules would halt every fifty
yards, and after resting for a few seconds the poor willing
animals started of their own accord again. The short breathing
from the rarefied atmosphere is called by the Chilenos
"puna;" and they have most ridiculous notions concerning
its origin. Some say "all the waters here have puna;" others
that "where there is snow there is puna;" - and this no
doubt is true.
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