The Weather Continued So Very Bad That We Determine
To Make A Push, And Try To Reach The Vessel Before Night.
From The Quantity Of Rain Which Had Fallen, The Surface
Of The Whole Country Was Swampy.
I suppose my horse fell
at least a dozen times, and sometimes the whole six horses
were floundering in the mud together.
All the little streams
are bordered by soft peat, which makes it very difficult for
the horses to leap them without falling. To complete our
discomforts we were obliged to cross the head of a creek
of the sea, in which the water was as high as our horses'
backs; and the little waves, owing to the violence of the
wind, broke over us, and made us very wet and cold. Even
the iron-framed Gauchos professed themselves glad when
they reached the settlement, after our little excursion.
The geological structure of these islands is in most
respects simple. The lower country consists of clay-slate
and sandstone, containing fossils, very closely related to, but
not identical with, those found in the Silurian formations
of Europe; the hills are formed of white granular quartz
rock. The strata of the latter are frequently arched with
perfect symmetry, and the appearance of some of the masses
is in consequence most singular. Pernety [8] has devoted
several pages to the description of a Hill of Ruins, the
successive strata of which he has justly compared to the
seats of an amphitheatre. The quartz rock must have been
quite pasty when it underwent such remarkable flexures
without being shattered into fragments.
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