Is It Not
Most Wonderful That Men Should Have Attempted Such Operations,
Without The Use Of Iron Or Gunpowder?
Mr. Gill also
mentioned to me a most interesting, and, as far as I am
aware, quite unparalleled case, of a subterranean disturbance
having changed the drainage of a country.
Travelling from
Casma to Huaraz (not very far distant from Lima), he
found a plain covered with ruins and marks of ancient
cultivation but now quite barren. Near it was the dry course of
a considerable river, whence the water for irrigation had
formerly been conducted. There was nothing in the appearance
of the water-course to indicate that the river had not flowed
there a few years previously; in some parts, beds of sand and
gravel were spread out; in others, the solid rock had been
worn into a broad channel, which in one spot was about 40
yards in breadth and 8 feet deep. It is self-evident that a
person following up the course of a stream, will always
ascend at a greater or less inclination: Mr. Gill, therefore,
was much astonished, when walking up the bed of this
ancient river, to find himself suddenly going down hill. He
imagined that the downward slope had a fall of about 40 or
50 feet perpendicular. We here have unequivocal evidence
that a ridge had been uplifted right across the old bed of a
stream. From the moment the river-course was thus arched,
the water must necessarily have been thrown back, and a new
channel formed.
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