Hence We May Safely Conclude, That Within The Indo-Human
Period There Has Been An Elevation, As Before Alluded To, Of
More Than Eighty-Five Feet; For Some Little Elevation Must
Have Been Lost By The Coast Having Subsided Since The Old
Maps Were Engraved.
At Valparaiso, although in the 220
years before our visit, the elevation cannot have exceeded
nineteen feet, yet subsequently to 1817, there has been a rise,
partly insensible and partly by a start during the shock of
1822, of ten or eleven feet.
The antiquity of the Indo-human
race here, judging by the eighty-five feet rise of the land
since the relics were embedded, is the more remarkable, as on
the coast of Patagonia, when the land stood about the same
number of feet lower, the Macrauchenia was a living beast;
but as the Patagonian coast is some way distant from the
Cordillera, the rising there may have been slower than here.
At Bahia Blanca, the elevation has been only a few feet
since the numerous gigantic quadrupeds were there entombed;
and, according to the generally received opinion,
when these extinct animals were living, man did not exist.
But the rising of that part of the coast of Patagonia, is
perhaps no way connected with the Cordillera, but rather with
a line of old volcanic rocks in Banda Oriental, so that it
may have been infinitely slower than on the shores of Peru.
All these speculations, however, must be vague; for who will
pretend to say that there may not have been several periods
of subsidence, intercalated between the movements of elevation;
for we know that along the whole coast of Patagonia,
there have certainly been many and long pauses in
the upward action of the elevatory forces.
[1] Vol. iv. p. 11, and vol. ii. p. 217. For the remarks on
Guayaquil, see Silliman's Journ., vol. xxiv. p. 384. For those
on Tacna by Mr. Hamilton, see Trans. of British Association,
1840. For those on Coseguina see Mr. Caldcleugh in Phil. Trans.,
1835. In the former edition I collected several references on
the coincidences between sudden falls in the barometer and
earthquakes; and between earthquakes and meteors.
[2] Observa. sobre el Clima de Lima, p. 67. - Azara's Travels,
vol. i. p. 381. - Ulloa's Voyage, vol. ii. p. 28. - Burchell's
Travels, vol. ii. p. 524. - Webster's Description of the
Azores, p. 124. - Voyage a l'Isle de France par un Officer du
Roi, tom. i. p. 248. - Description of St. Helena, p. 123.
[3] Temple, in his travels through Upper Peru, or Bolivia, in
going from Potosi to Oruro, says, "I saw many Indian villages or
dwellings in ruins, up even to the very tops of the mountains,
attesting a former population where now all is desolate." He
makes similar remarks in another place; but I cannot tell
whether this desolation has been caused by a want of population,
or by an altered condition of the land.
[4] Edinburgh, Phil. Journ., Jan., 1830, p. 74; and April, 1830,
p. 258 - also Daubeny on Volcanoes, p. 438; and Bengal
Journ., vol.
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