They Stood A Little Way Apart
From Each Other, But The Whole Formed One Group.
Mr. Robert
Brown has been kind enough to examine the wood:
He
says it belongs to the fir tribe, partaking of the character
of the Araucarian family, but with some curious points of
affinity with the yew. The volcanic sandstone in which the
trees were embedded, and from the lower part of which they
must have sprung, had accumulated in successive thin layers
around their trunks; and the stone yet retained the impression
of the bark.
It required little geological practice to interpret the
marvellous story which this scene at once unfolded; though I
confess I was at first so much astonished that I could
scarcely believe the plainest evidence. I saw the spot where
a cluster of fine trees once waved their branches on the
shores of the Atlantic, when that ocean (now driven back
700 miles) came to the foot of the Andes. I saw that they
had sprung from a volcanic soil which had been raised above
the level of the sea, and that subsequently this dry land,
with its upright trees, had been let down into the depths of
the ocean. In these depths, the formerly dry land was
covered by sedimentary beds, and these again by enormous
streams of submarine lava - one such mass attaining the
thickness of a thousand feet; and these deluges of molten
stone and aqueous deposits five times alternately had been
spread out. The ocean which received such thick masses,
must have been profoundly deep; but again the subterranean
forces exerted themselves, and I now beheld the bed of
that ocean, forming a chain of mountains more than seven
thousand feet in height. Nor had those antagonistic forces
been dormant, which are always at work wearing down the
surface of the land; the great piles of strata had been
intersected by many wide valleys, and the trees now changed
into silex, were exposed projecting from the volcanic soil,
now changed into rock, whence formerly, in a green and
budding state, they had raised their lofty heads. Now,
all is utterly irreclaimable and desert; even the lichen cannot
adhere to the stony casts of former trees. Vast, and
scarcely comprehensible as such changes must ever appear,
yet they have all occurred within a period, recent when
compared with the history of the Cordillera; and the Cordillera
itself is absolutely modern as compared with many
of the fossiliferous strata of Europe and America.
April 1st. - We crossed the Upsallata range, and at night
slept at the custom-house - the only inhabited spot on the
plain. Shortly before leaving the mountains, there was a
very extraordinary view; red, purple, green, and quite white
sedimentary rocks, alternating with black lavas, were broken
up and thrown into all kinds of disorder by masses of porphyry
of every shade of colour, from dark brown to the
brightest lilac. It was the first view I ever saw, which
really resembled those pretty sections which geologists make
of the inside of the earth.
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