Geological Observations on South America

It is worthy of remark, that nowhere near Valparaiso above the height of twenty feet, or rarely of fifty feet, I saw any lines of erosion on the solid rocks, or any beds of pebbles; this, I believe, may be accounted for by the disintegrating tendency of most of the rocks in this neighbourhood. Nor is the land here modelled into terraces: Mr. Alison, however, informs me, that on both sides of one narrow ravine, at the height of 300 feet above the sea, he found a succession of rather indistinct step-formed beaches, composed of broken shells, which together covered a space of about eighty feet vertical.

I can add nothing to the accounts already published of the elevation of the land at Valparaiso, which accompanied the earthquake of 1822 (Dr. Meyen "Reise um Erde" Th. 1 s. 221, found in 1831 seaweed and other bodies still adhering to some rocks which during the shock of 1822 were lifted above the sea.): but I heard it confidently asserted, that a sentinel on duty, immediately after the shock, saw a part of a fort, which previously was not within the line of his vision, and this would indicate that the uplifting was not horizontal: it would even appear from some facts collected by Mr. Alison, that only the eastern half of the bay was then elevated. Through the kindness of this same gentleman, I am able to give an interesting account of the changes of level, which have supervened here within historical periods: about the year 1680 a long sea-wall (or Prefil) was built, of which only a few fragments now remain; up to the year 1817, the sea often broke over it, and washed the houses on the opposite side of the road (where the prison now stands); and even in 1819, Mr. J. Martin remembers walking at the foot of this wall, and being often obliged to climb over it to escape the waves. There now stands (1834) on the seaward side of this wall, and between it and the beach, in one part a single row of houses, and in another part two rows with a street between them. This great extension of the beach in so short a time cannot be attributed simply to the accumulation of detritus; for a resident engineer measured for me the height between the lowest part of the wall visible, and the present beach-line at spring-tides, and the difference was eleven feet six inches. The church of S. Augustin is believed to have been built in 1614, and there is a tradition that the sea formerly flowed very near it; by levelling, its foundations were found to stand nineteen feet six inches above the highest beach-line; so that we see in a period of 220 years, the elevation cannot have been as much as nineteen feet six inches. From the facts given with respect to the sea-wall, and from the testimony of the elder inhabitants, it appears certain that the change in level began to be manifest about the year 1817. The only sudden elevation of which there is any record occurred in 1822, and this seems to have been less than three feet. Since that year, I was assured by several competent observers, that part of an old wreck, which is firmly embedded near the beach, has sensibly emerged; hence here, as at Chiloe, a slow rise of the land appears to be now in progress. It seems highly probable that the rocks which are corroded in a band at the height of fourteen feet above the sea were acted on during the period, when by tradition the base of S. Augustin church, now nineteen feet six inches above the highest water-mark, was occasionally washed by the waves.

VALPARAISO TO COQUIMBO.

For the first seventy-five miles north of Valparaiso I followed the coast- road, and throughout this space I observed innumerable masses of upraised shells. About Quintero there are immense accumulations (worked for lime) of the Mesodesma donaciforme, packed in sandy earth; they abound chiefly about fifteen feet above high-water, but shells are here found, according to Mr. Miers, to a height of 500 feet, and at a distance of three leagues from the coast ("Travels in Chile" volume 1 pages 395, 458. I received several similar accounts from the inhabitants, and was assured that there are many shells on the plain of Casa Blanca, between Valparaiso and Santiago, at the height of 800 feet.): I here noticed barnacles adhering to the rocks three or four feet above the highest tides. In the neighbourhood of Plazilla and Catapilco, at heights of between two hundred and three hundred feet, the number of comminuted shells, with some perfect ones, especially of the Mesodesma, packed in layers, was truly immense: the land at Plazilla had evidently existed as a bay, with abrupt rocky masses rising out of it, precisely like the islets in the broken bays now indenting this coast. On both sides of the rivers Ligua, Longotomo, Guachen, and Quilimari, there are plains of gravel about two hundred feet in height, in many parts absolutely covered with shells. Close to Conchalee, a gravel-plain is fronted by a lower and similar plain about sixty feet in height, and this again is separated from the beach by a wide tract of low land: the surfaces of all three plains or terraces were strewed with vast numbers of the Concholepas, Mesodesma, an existing Venus, and other still existing littoral shells. The two upper terraces closely resemble in miniature the plains of Patagonia; and like them are furrowed by dry, flat-bottomed, winding valleys. Northward of this place I turned inward; and therefore found no more shells: but the valleys of Chuapa, Illapel, and Limari, are bounded by gravel-capped plains, often including a lower terrace within. These plains send bay-like arms between and into the surrounding hills; and they are continuously united with other extensive gravel-capped plains, separating the coast mountain-ranges from the Cordillera.

COQUIMBO.

A narrow fringe-like plain, gently inclined towards the sea, here extends for eleven miles along the coast, with arms stretching up between the coast-mountains, and likewise up the valley of Coquimbo: at its southern extremity it is directly connected with the plain of Limari, out of which hills abruptly rise like islets, and other hills project like headlands on a coast. The surface of the fringe-like plain appears level, but differs insensibly in height, and greatly in composition, in different parts.

At the mouth of the valley of Coquimbo, the surface consists wholly of gravel, and stands from 300 to 350 feet above the level of the sea, being about one hundred feet higher than in other parts. In these other and lower parts the superficial beds consist of calcareous matter, and rest on ancient tertiary deposits hereafter to be described. The uppermost calcareous layer is cream-coloured, compact, smooth-fractured, sub- stalactiform, and contains some sand, earthy matter, and recent shells. It lies on, and sends wedge-like veins into, a much more friable, calcareous, tuff-like variety; and both rest on a mass about twenty feet in thickness, formed of fragments of recent shells, with a few whole ones, and with small pebbles firmly cemented together. (In many respects this upper hard, and the underlying more friable, varieties, resemble the great superficial beds at King George's Sound in Australia, which I have described in my "Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands." There could be little doubt that the upper layers there have been hardened by the action of rain on the friable, calcareous matter, and that the whole mass has originated in the decay of minutely comminuted sea-shells and corals.) This latter rock is called by the inhabitants losa, and is used for building: in many parts it is divided into strata, which dip at an angle of ten degrees seaward, and appear as if they had originally been heaped in successive layers (as may be seen on coral-reefs) on a steep beach. This stone is remarkable from being in parts entirely formed of empty, pellucid capsules or cells of calcareous matter, of the size of small seeds: a series of specimens unequivocally showed that all these capsules once contained minute rounded fragments of shells which have since been gradually dissolved by water percolating through the mass. (I have incidentally described this rock in the above work on Volcanic Islands.)

The shells embedded in the calcareous beds forming the surface of this fringe-like plain, at the height of from 200 to 250 feet above the sea, consist of: —

1. Venus opaca. 2. Mulinia Byronensis. 3. Pecten purpuratus. 4. Mesodesma donaciforme. 5. Turritella cingulata. 6. Monoceros costatum. 7. Concholepas Peruviana. 8. Trochus (common Valparaiso species). 9. Calyptraea Byronensis.

Although these species are all recent, and are all found in the neighbouring sea, yet I was particularly struck with the difference in the proportional numbers of the several species, and of those now cast up on the present beach. I found only one specimen of the Concholepas, and the Pecten was very rare, though both these shells are now the commonest kinds, with the exception, perhaps, of the Calyptraea radians, of which I did not find one in the calcareous beds. I will not pretend to determine how far this difference in the proportional numbers depends on the age of the deposit, and how far on the difference in nature between the present sandy beaches and the calcareous bottom, on which the embedded shells must have lived.

(DIAGRAM 8. – SECTION OF PLAIN OF COQUIMBO.

Section through Plain B-B and Ravine A.

Surface of plain 252 feet above sea.

A. Stratified sand, with recent shells in same proportions as on the beach, half filling up a ravine.

B. Surface of plain, with scattered shells in nearly same proportions as on the beach.

C. Upper calcareous bed, and D. Lower calcareous sandy bed (Losa), both with recent shells, but not in same proportions as on the beach.

E. Upper ferrugino-sandy old tertiary stratum, and F. Lower old tertiary stratum, both with all, or nearly all, extinct shells.)

On the bare surface of the calcareous plain, or in a thin covering of sand, there were lying, at a height from 200 to 252 feet, many recent shells, which had a much fresher appearance than the embedded ones: fragments of the Concholepas, and of the common Mytilus, still retaining a tinge of its colour, were numerous, and altogether there was manifestly a closer approach in proportional numbers to those now lying on the beach. In a mass of stratified, slightly agglutinated sand, which in some places covers up the lower half of the seaward escarpment of the plain, the included shells appeared to be in exactly the same proportional numbers with those on the beach. On one side of a steep-sided ravine, cutting through the plain behind Herradura Bay, I observed a narrow strip of stratified sand, containing similar shells in similar proportional numbers; a section of the ravine is represented in Diagram 8, which serves also to show the general composition of the plain. I mention this case of the ravine chiefly because without the evidence of the marine shells in the sand, any one would have supposed that it had been hollowed out by simple alluvial action.

The escarpment of the fringe-like plain, which stretches for eleven miles along the coast, is in some parts fronted by two or three narrow, step- formed terraces, one of which at Herradura Bay expands into a small plain. Its surface was there formed of gravel, cemented together by calcareous matter; and out of it I extracted the following recent shells, which are in a more perfect condition than those from the upper plain: —

1. Calyptraea radians. 2. Turritella cingulata. 3. Oliva Peruviana. 4. Murex labiosus, var. 5. Nassa (identical with a living species). 6. Solen Dombeiana. 7. Pecten purpuratus. 8. Venus Chilensis. 9. Amphidesma rugulosum. The small irregular wrinkles of the posterior part of this shell are rather stronger than in the recent specimens of this species from Coquimbo. (G.B. Sowerby.) 10. Balanus (identical with living species).

On the syenitic ridge, which forms the southern boundary of Herradura Bay and Plain, I found the Concholepas and Turritella cingulata (mostly in fragments), at the height of 242 feet above the sea. I could not have told that these shells had not formerly been brought up by man, if I had not found one very small mass of them cemented together in a friable calcareous tuff. I mention this fact more particularly, because I carefully looked, in many apparently favourable spots, at lesser heights on the side of this ridge, and could not find even the smallest fragment of a shell. This is only one instance out of many, proving that the absence of sea-shells on the surface, though in many respects inexplicable, is an argument of very little weight in opposition to other evidence on the recent elevation of the land. The highest point in this neighbourhood at which I found upraised shells of existing species was on an inland calcareous plain, at the height of 252 feet above the sea.

It would appear from Mr. Caldcleugh's researches, that a rise has taken place here within the last century and a half ("Proceedings of the Geological Society" volume 2 page 446.); and as no sudden change of level has been observed during the not very severe earthquakes, which have occasionally occurred here, the rising has probably been slow, like that now, or quite lately, in progress at Chiloe and at Valparaiso: there are three well-known rocks, called the Pelicans, which in 1710, according to Feuillee, were a fleur d'eau, but now are said to stand twelve feet above low-water mark: the spring-tides rise here only five feet. There is another rock, now nine feet above high-water mark, which in the time of Frezier and Feuillee rose only five or six feet out of water. Mr. Caldcleugh, I may add, also shows (and I received similar accounts) that there has been a considerable decrease in the soundings during the last twelve years in the Bays of Coquimbo, Concepcion, Valparaiso, and Guasco; but as in these cases it is nearly impossible to distinguish between the accumulation of sediment and the upheavement of the bottom, I have not entered into any details.

VALLEY OF COQUIMBO.

(FIGURE 9. EAST AND WEST SECTION THROUGH THE TERRACES AT COQUIMBO, WHERE THEY DEBOUCH FROM THE VALLEY, AND FRONT THE SEA.

Vertical scale 1/10 of inch to 100 feet: horizontal scale much contracted.

Height of terrace in feet from east (high) to west (low):

Terrace F. 364

Terrace E. 302

Terrace D. shown dotted, height not given.

Terrace C. 120

Terrace B. 70

Terrace A. 25 sloping down to level of sea at Town of Coquimbo.)

The narrow coast-plain sends, as before stated, an arm, or more correctly a fringe, on both sides, but chiefly on the southern side, several miles up the valley. These fringes are worn into steps or terraces, which present a most remarkable appearance, and have been compared (though not very correctly) by Captain Basil Hall, to the parallel roads of Glen Roy in Scotland: their origin has been ably discussed by Mr. Lyell. ("Principles of Geology" 1st edition volume 3 page 131.) The first section which I will give (Figure 9), is not drawn across the valley, but in an east and west line at its mouth, where the step-formed terraces debouch and present their very gently inclined surfaces towards the Pacific.

The bottom plain (A) is about a mile in width, and rises quite insensibly from the beach to a height of twenty-five feet at the foot of the next plain; it is sandy, and abundantly strewed with shells.

Plain or terrace B is of small extent, and is almost concealed by the houses of the town, as is likewise the escarpment of terrace C. On both sides of a ravine, two miles south of the town, there are two little terraces, one above the other, evidently corresponding with B and C; and on them marine remains of the species already enumerated were plentiful. Terrace E is very narrow, but quite distinct and level; a little southward of the town there were traces of a terrace D intermediate between E and C. Terrace F is part of the fringe-like plain, which stretches for the eleven miles along the coast; it is here composed of shingle, and is 100 feet higher than where composed of calcareous matter. This greater height is obviously due to the quantity of shingle, which at some former period has been brought down the great valley of Coquimbo.

Considering the many shells strewed over the terraces A, B, and C, and a few miles southward on the calcareous plain, which is continuously united with the upper step-like plain F, there cannot, I apprehend, be any doubt, that these six terraces have been formed by the action of the sea; and that their five escarpments mark so many periods of comparative rest in the elevatory movement, during which the sea wore into the land. The elevation between these periods may have been sudden and on AN AVERAGE not more than seventy-two feet each time, or it may have been gradual and insensibly slow. From the shells on the three lower terraces, and on the upper one, and I may add on the three gravel-capped terraces at Conchalee, being all littoral and sub-littoral species, and from the analogical facts given at Valparaiso, and lastly from the evidence of a slow rising lately or still in progress here, it appears to me far more probable that the movement has been slow. The existence of these successive escarpments, or old cliff- lines, is in another respect highly instructive, for they show periods of comparative rest in the elevatory movement, and of denudation, which would never even have been suspected from a close examination of many miles of coast southward of Coquimbo.

(FIGURE 10. NORTH AND SOUTH SECTION ACROSS THE VALLEY OF COQUIMBO.

From north F (high) through E?, D, C, B, A (low), B?, C, D?, E, F (high).

Vertical scale 1/10 of inch to 100 feet: horizontal scale much contracted.

Terraces marked with? do not occur on that side of the valley, and are introduced only to make the diagram more intelligible. A river and bottom- plain of valley C, E, and F, on the south side of valley, are respectively, 197, 377, and 420 feet above the level of the sea.

AA. The bottom of the valley, believed to be 100 feet above the sea: it is continuously united with the lowest plain A of Figure 9.

B. This terrace higher up the valley expands considerably; seaward it is soon lost, its escarpment being united with that of C: it is not developed at all on the south side of the valley.

C. This terrace, like the last, is considerably expanded higher up the valley. These two terraces apparently correspond with B and C of Figure 9.

D is not well developed in the line of this section; but seaward it expands into a plain: it is not present on the south side of the valley; but it is met with, as stated under the former section, a little south of the town.

E is well developed on the south side, but absent on the north side of the valley: though not continuously united with E of Figure 9, it apparently corresponds with it.

F. This is the surface-plain, and is continuously united with that which stretches like a fringe along the coast. In ascending the valley it gradually becomes narrower, and is at last, at the distance of about ten miles from the sea, reduced to a row of flat-topped patches on the sides of the mountains. None of the lower terraces extend so far up the valley.)

We come now to the terraces on the opposite sides of the east and west valley of Coquimbo: the section in Figure 10 is taken in a north and south line across the valley at a point about three miles from the sea. The valley measured from the edges of the escarpments of the upper plain FF is about a mile in width; but from the bases of the bounding mountains it is from three to four miles wide. The terraces marked with an interrogative do not exist on that side of the valley, but are introduced merely to render the diagram more intelligible.

These five terraces are formed of shingle and sand; three of them, as marked by Captain B. Hall (namely, B, C, and F), are much more conspicuous than the others. From the marine remains copiously strewed at the mouth of the valley on the lower terraces, and southward of the town on the upper one, they are, as before remarked, undoubtedly of marine origin; but within the valley, and this fact well deserves notice, at a distance of from only a mile and a half to three or four miles from the sea, I could not find even a fragment of a shell.

ON THE INCLINATION OF THE TERRACES OF COQUIMBO, AND ON THE UPPER AND BASAL EDGES OF THEIR ESCARPMENTS NOT BEING HORIZONTAL.

The surfaces of these terraces slope in a slight degree, as shown by the sections in Figures 9 and 10 taken conjointly, both towards the centre of the valley, and seawards towards its mouth. This double or diagonal inclination, which is not the same in the several terraces, is, as we shall immediately see, of simple explanation. There are, however, some other points which at first appear by no means obvious, – namely, first, that each terrace, taken in its whole breadth from the summit-edge of one escarpment to the base of that above it, and followed up the valley, is not horizontal; nor have the several terraces, when followed up the valley, all the same inclination; thus I found the terraces C, E, and F, measured at a point about two miles from the mouth of the valley, stood severally between fifty-six to seventy-seven feet higher than at the mouth. Again, if we look to any one line of cliff or escarpment, neither its summit-edge nor its base is horizontal. On the theory of the terraces having been formed during a slow and equable rise of the land, with as many intervals of rest as there are escarpments, it appears at first very surprising that horizontal lines of some kind should not have been left on the land.

The direction of the diagonal inclination in the different terraces being different, – in some being directed more towards the middle of the valley, in others more towards its mouth, – naturally follows on the view of each terrace, being an accumulation of successive beach-lines round bays, which must have been of different forms and sizes when the land stood at different levels: for if we look to the actual beach of a narrow creek, its slope is directed towards the middle; whereas, in an open bay, or slight concavity on a coast, the slope is towards the mouth, that is, almost directly seaward; hence as a bay alters in form and size, so will the direction of the inclination of its successive beaches become changed.

(FIGURE 11. DIAGRAM OF A BAY IN A DISTRICT WHICH HAS BEGUN SLOWLY RISING)

If it were possible to trace any one of the many beach-lines, composing each sloping terrace, it would of course be horizontal; but the only lines of demarcation are the summit and basal edges of the escarpments. Now the summit-edge of one of these escarpments marks the furthest line or point to which the sea has cut into a mass of gravel sloping seaward; and as the sea will generally have greater power at the mouth than at the protected head of the bay, so will the escarpment at the mouth be cut deeper into the land, and its summit-edge be higher; consequently it will not be horizontal. With respect to the basal or lower edges of the escarpments, from picturing in one's mind ancient bays ENTIRELY surrounded at successive periods by cliff-formed shores, one's first impression is that they at least necessarily must be horizontal, if the elevation has been horizontal. But here is a fallacy: for after the sea has, during a cessation of the elevation, worn cliffs all round the shores of a bay, when the movement recommences, and especially if it recommences slowly, it might well happen that, at the exposed mouth of the bay, the waves might continue for some time wearing into the land, whilst in the protected and upper parts successive beach-lines might be accumulating in a sloping surface or terrace at the foot of the cliffs which had been lately reached: hence, supposing the whole line of escarpment to be finally uplifted above the reach of the sea, its basal line or foot near the mouth will run at a lower level than in the upper and protected parts of the bay; consequently this basal line will not be horizontal. And it has already been shown that the summit-edges of each escarpment will generally be higher near the mouth (from the seaward sloping land being there most exposed and cut into) than near the head of the bay; therefore the total height of the escarpments will be greatest near the mouth; and further up the old bay or valley they will on both sides generally thin out and die away: I have observed this thinning out of the successive escarpment at other places besides Coquimbo; and for a long time I was quite unable to understand its meaning. The rude diagram in Figure 11 will perhaps render what I mean more intelligible; it represents a bay in a district which has begun slowly rising. Before the movement commenced, it is supposed that the waves had been enabled to eat into the land and form cliffs, as far up, but with gradually diminishing power, as the points AA: after the movement had commenced and gone on for a little time, the sea is supposed still to have retained the power, at the exposed mouth of the bay, of cutting down and into the land as it slowly emerged; but in the upper parts of the bay it is supposed soon to have lost this power, owing to the more protected situation and to the quantity of detritus brought down by the river; consequently low land was there accumulated. As this low land was formed during a slow elevatory movement, its surface will gently slope upwards from the beach on all sides. Now, let us imagine the bay, not to make the diagram more complicated, suddenly converted into a valley: the basal line of the cliffs will of course be horizontal, as far as the beach is now seen extending in the diagram; but in the upper part of the valley, this line will be higher, the level of the district having been raised whilst the low land was accumulating at the foot of the inland cliffs. If, instead of the bay in the diagram being suddenly converted into a valley, we suppose with much more probability it to be upraised slowly, then the waves in the upper parts of the bay will continue very gradually to fail to reach the cliffs, which are now in the diagram represented as washed by the sea, and which, consequently, will be left standing higher and higher above its level; whilst at the still exposed mouth, it might well happen that the waves might be enabled to cut deeper and deeper, both down and into the cliffs, as the land slowly rose.

The greater or lesser destroying power of the waves at the mouths of successive bays, comparatively with this same power in their upper and protected parts, will vary as the bays become changed in form and size, and therefore at different levels, at their mouths and heads, more or less of the surfaces between the escarpments (that is, the accumulated beach-lines or terraces) will be left undestroyed: from what has gone before we can see that, according as the elevatory movements after each cessation recommence more or less slowly, according to the amount of detritus delivered by the river at the heads of the successive bays, and according to the degree of protection afforded by their altered forms, so will a greater or less extent of terrace be accumulated in the upper part, to which there will be no surface at a corresponding level at the mouth: hence we can perceive why no one terrace, taken in its whole breadth and followed up the valley, is horizontal, though each separate beach-line must have been so; and why the inclination of the several terraces, both transversely, and longitudinally up the valley, is not alike.

I have entered into this case in some detail, for I was long perplexed (and others have felt the same difficulty) in understanding how, on the idea of an equable elevation with the sea at intervals eating into the land, it came that neither the terraces nor the upper nor lower edges of the escarpments were horizontal. Along lines of coast, even of great lengths, such as that of Patagonia, if they are nearly uniformly exposed, the corroding power of the waves will be checked and conquered by the elevatory movement, as often as it recommences, at about the same period; and hence the terraces, or accumulated beach-lines, will commence being formed at nearly the same levels: at each succeeding period of rest, they will, also, be eaten into at nearly the same rate, and consequently there will be a much closer coincidence in their levels and inclinations, than in the terraces and escarpments formed round bays with their different parts very differently exposed to the action of the sea. It is only where the waves are enabled, after a long lapse of time, slowly to corrode hard rocks, or to throw up, owing to the supply of sediment being small and to the surface being steeply inclined, a narrow beach or mound, that we can expect, as at Glen Roy in Scotland ("Philosophical Transactions" 1839 page 39.), a distinct line marking an old sea-level, and which will be strictly horizontal, if the subsequent elevatory movements have been so: for in these cases no discernible effects will be produced, except during the long intervening periods of rest; whereas in the case of step-formed coasts, such as those described in this and the preceding chapter, the terraces themselves are accumulated during the slow elevatory process, the accumulation commencing sooner in protected than in exposed situations, and sooner where there is copious supply of detritus than where there is little; on the other hand, the steps or escarpments are formed during the stationary periods, and are more deeply cut down and into the coast-land in exposed than in protected situations; – the cutting action, moreover, being prolonged in the most exposed parts, both during the beginning and ending, if slow, of the upward movement.

Although in the foregoing discussion I have assumed the elevation to have been horizontal, it may be suspected, from the considerable seaward slope of the terraces, both up the valley of S. Cruz and up that of Coquimbo, that the rising has been greater inland than nearer the coast. There is reason to believe (Mr. Place in the "Quarterly Journal of Science" 1824 volume 17 page 42.), from the effects produced on the water-course of a mill during the earthquake of 1822 in Chile, that the upheaval one mile inland was nearly double, namely, between five and seven feet, to what it was on the Pacific. We know, also, from the admirable researches of M. Bravais, that in Scandinavia the ancient sea-beaches gently slope from the interior mountain-ranges towards the coast, and that they are not parallel one to the other ("Voyages de la Comm. du Nord" etc. also "Comptes Rendus" October 1842.), showing that the proportional difference in the amount of elevation on the coast and in the interior, varied at different periods.