We Slept With A Party Of Men, Who Were
Employed In Loading Mules With This Substance, Which Is Used
In The Manufacture Of Wine.
We set out early in the morning
(21st), and continued to follow the course of the river, which
had become very small, till we arrived at the foot of the ridge,
that separates the waters flowing into the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans.
The road, which as yet had been good with a steady
but very gradual ascent, now changed into a steep zigzag
track up the great range, dividing the republics of Chile
and Mendoza.
I will here give a very brief sketch of the geology of the
several parallel lines forming the Cordillera. Of these lines,
there are two considerably higher than the others; namely,
on the Chilian side, the Peuquenes ridge, which, where the
road crosses it, is 13,210 feet above the sea; and the Portillo
ridge, on the Mendoza side, which is 14,305 feet. The lower
beds of the Peuquenes ridge, and of the several great lines
to the westward of it, are composed of a vast pile, many
thousand feet in thickness, of porphyries which have flowed as
submarine lavas, alternating with angular and rounded fragments
of the same rocks, thrown out of the submarine craters.
These alternating masses are covered in the central parts,
by a great thickness of red sandstone, conglomerate, and
calcareous clay-slate, associated with, and passing into,
prodigious beds of gypsum. In these upper beds shells are
tolerably frequent; and they belong to about the period of the
lower chalk of Europe.
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