The Father Of This Person
Had Lately Lost All His Property At Talcahuano, And He
Himself Had Only Just Escaped A Falling Roof At Valparaiso,
In 1822.
He mentioned a curious coincidence which then
happened:
He was playing at cards, when a German, one of
the party, got up, and said he would never sit in a room in
these countries with the door shut, as owing to his having
done so, he had nearly lost his life at Copiapo. Accordingly
he opened the door; and no sooner had he done this, than he
cried out, "Here it comes again!" and the famous shock
commenced. The whole party escaped. The danger in an
earthquake is not from the time lost in opening the door, but
from the chance of its becoming jammed by the movement
of the walls.
It is impossible to be much surprised at the fear which
natives and old residents, though some of them known to
be men of great command of mind, so generally experience
during earthquakes. I think, however, this excess of panic
may be partly attributed to a want of habit in governing
their fear, as it is not a feeling they are ashamed of. Indeed,
the natives do not like to see a person indifferent. I
heard of two Englishmen who, sleeping in the open air during
a smart shock, knowing that there was no danger, did not
rise. The natives cried out indignantly, "Look at those
heretics, they do not even get out of their beds!"
I spent some days in examining the step-formed terraces
of shingle, first noticed by Captain B. Hall, and believed
by Mr. Lyell to have been formed by the sea, during the
gradual rising of the land. This certainly is the true
explanation, for I found numerous shells of existing species
on these terraces. Five narrow, gently sloping, fringe-like
terraces rise one behind the other, and where best developed
are formed of shingle: they front the bay, and sweep up both
sides of the valley. At Guasco, north of Coquimbo, the
phenomenon is displayed on a much grander scale, so as to
strike with surprise even some of the inhabitants. The terraces
are there much broader, and may be called plains, in
some parts there are six of them, but generally only five;
they run up the valley for thirty-seven miles from the coast.
These step-formed terraces or fringes closely resemble those
in the valley of S. Cruz, and, except in being on a smaller
scale, those great ones along the whole coast-line of Patagonia.
They have undoubtedly been formed by the denuding
power of the sea, during long periods of rest in the
gradual elevation of the continent.
Shells of many existing species not only lie on the surface
of the terraces at Coquimbo (to a height of 250 feet),
but are embedded in a friable calcareous rock, which in some
places is as much as between twenty and thirty feet in
thickness, but is of little extent. These modern beds rest on an
ancient tertiary formation containing shells, apparently all
extinct. Although I examined so many hundred miles of
coast on the Pacific, as well as Atlantic side of the continent,
I found no regular strata containing sea-shells of
recent species, excepting at this place, and at a few points
northward on the road to Guasco. This fact appears to me
highly remarkable; for the explanation generally given by
geologists, of the absence in any district of stratified
fossiliferous deposits of a given period, namely, that the
surface then existed as dry land, is not here applicable; for we
know from the shells strewed on the surface and embedded
in loose sand or mould that the land for thousands of miles
along both coasts has lately been submerged. The explanation,
no doubt, must be sought in the fact, that the whole
southern part of the continent has been for a long time
slowly rising; and therefore that all matter deposited along
shore in shallow water, must have been soon brought up
and slowly exposed to the wearing action of the sea-beach;
and it is only in comparatively shallow water that the greater
number of marine organic beings can flourish, and in such
water it is obviously impossible that strata of any great
thickness can accumulate. To show the vast power of the
wearing action of sea-beaches, we need only appeal to the
great cliffs along the present coast of Patagonia, and to the
escarpments or ancient sea-cliffs at different levels, one
above another, on that same line of coast.
The old underlying tertiary formation at Coquimbo,
appears to be of about the same age with several deposits
on the coast of Chile (of which that of Navedad is the
principal one), and with the great formation of Patagonia.
Both at Navedad and in Patagonia there is evidence, that
since the shells (a list of which has been seen by Professor
E. Forbes) there entombed were living, there has been a
subsidence of several hundred feet, as well as an ensuing
elevation. It may naturally be asked, how it comes that,
although no extensive fossiliferous deposits of the recent
period, nor of any period intermediate between it and the
ancient tertiary epoch, have been preserved on either side of
the continent, yet that at this ancient tertiary epoch,
sedimentary matter containing fossil remains, should have been
deposited and preserved at different points in north and
south lines, over a space of 1100 miles on the shores of the
Pacific, and of at least 1350 miles on the shores of the
Atlantic, and in an east and west line of 700 miles across the
widest part of the continent? I believe the explanation is
not difficult, and that it is perhaps applicable to nearly
analogous facts observed in other quarters of the world.
Considering the enormous power of denudation which the sea
possesses, as shown by numberless facts, it is not probable
that a sedimentary deposit, when being upraised, could pass
through the ordeal of the beach, so as to be preserved in
sufficient masses to last to a distant period, without it were
originally of wide extent and of considerable thickness:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 140 of 205
Words from 141575 to 142618
of 208183
