Geological Observations on South America

by Charles Darwin

(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.