Geological Observations on South America

by Charles Darwin

VALLEY OF THE DESPOBLADO.

This great barren valley, which has already been alluded to, enters the main valley of Copiapo a little above the town: it runs at first northerly, then N.E., and more easterly into the Cordillera; I followed its dreary course to the foot of the first main ridge. I will not give a detailed section, because it would be essentially similar to that already given, and because the stratification is exceedingly complicated. After leaving the plutonic hills near the town, I met first, as in the main valley, with the gypseous formation, having the same diversified character as before, and soon afterwards with masses of porphyritic conglomerate, about one thousand feet in thickness. In the lower part of this formation there were very thick beds composed of fragments of claystone porphyries, both angular and rounded, with the smaller ones partially blended together and the basis rendered porphyritic; these beds separated distinct streams, from sixty to eighty feet in thickness, of claystone lavas. Near Paipote, also, there was much true porphyritic breccia-conglomerate: nevertheless, few of these masses were metamorphosed to the same degree with the corresponding formation in Central Chile. I did not meet in this valley with any true andesite, but only with imperfect andesitic porphyry, including large crystals of hornblende: numerous as have been the varieties of intrusive porphyries already mentioned, there were here mountains composed of a new kind, having a compact, smooth, cream-coloured basis, including only a few crystals of feldspar, and mottled with dendritic spots of oxide of iron. There were also some mountains of a porphyry with a brick-red basis, containing irregular, often lens-shaped, patches of compact feldspar, and crystals of feldspar, which latter to my surprise I find to be orthite.

At the foot of the first ridge of the main Cordillera, in the ravine of Maricongo, and at an elevation which, from the extreme coldness and appearance of the vegetation, I estimated at about ten thousand feet, I found beds of white sandstone and of limestone including the Pecten Dufreynoyi, Terebratula aenigma, and some Gryphites. This ridge throws the water on the one hand into the Pacific, and on the other, as I was informed, into a great gravel-covered, basin-like plain, including a salt- lake, and without any drainage-exit. In crossing the Cordillera by this Pass, it is said that three principal ridges must be traversed, instead of two, or only one as in Central Chile.

The crest of this first main ridge and the surrounding mountains, with the exception of a few lofty pinnacles, are capped by a great thickness of a horizontally stratified, tufaceous deposit. The lowest bed is of a pale purple colour, hard, fine-grained, and full of broken crystals of feldspar and scales of mica. The middle bed is coarser, and less hard, and hence weathers into very sharp pinnacles; it includes very small fragments of granite, and innumerable ones of all sizes of grey vesicular trachyte, some of which were distinctly rounded. The uppermost bed is about two hundred feet in thickness, of a darker colour and apparently hard: but I had not time to ascend to it. These three horizontal beds may be seen for the distance of many leagues, especially westward or in the direction of the Pacific, capping the summits of the mountains, and standing on the opposite sides of the immense valleys at exactly corresponding heights. If united they would form a plain, inclined very slightly towards the Pacific; the beds become thinner in this direction, and the tuff (judging from one point to which I ascended, some way down the valley) finer-grained and of less specific gravity, though still compact and sonorous under the hammer. The gently inclined, almost horizontal stratification, the presence of some rounded pebbles, and the compactness of the lowest bed, though rendering it probable, would not have convinced me that this mass had been of subaqueous origin, for it is known that volcanic ashes falling on land and moistened by rain often become hard and stratified; but beds thus originating, and owing their consolidation to atmospheric moisture, would have covered almost equally every neighbouring summit, high and low, and would not have left those above a certain exact level absolutely bare; this circumstance seems to me to prove that the volcanic ejections were arrested at their present, widely extended, equable level, and there consolidated by some other means than simple atmospheric moisture; and this no doubt must have been a sheet of water. A lake at this great height, and without a barrier on any one side, is out of the question; consequently we must conclude that the tufaceous matter was anciently deposited beneath the sea. It was certainly deposited before the excavation of the valleys, or at least before their final enlargement (I have endeavoured to show in my “Journal” etc. (2nd edition) page 355, that this arid valley was left by the retreating sea, as the land slowly rose, in the state in which we now see it.); and I may add, that Mr. Lambert, a gentleman well acquainted with this country, informs me, that in ascending the ravine of Santandres (which branches off from the Despoblado) he met with streams of lava and much erupted matter capping all the hills of granite and porphyry, with the exception of some projecting points; he also remarked that the valleys had been excavated subsequently to these eruptions.

This volcanic formation, which I am informed by Mr. Lambert extends far northward, is of interest, as typifying what has taken place on a grander scale on the corresponding western side of the Cordillera of Peru. Under another point of view, however, it possesses a far higher interest, as confirming that conclusion drawn from the structure of the fringes of stratified shingle which are prolonged from the plains at the foot of the Cordillera far up the valleys,—namely, that this great range has been elevated in mass to a height of between eight and nine thousand feet (I may here mention that on the south side of the main valley of Copiapo, near Potrero Seco, the mountains are capped by a thick mass of horizontally stratified shingle, at a height which I estimated at between fifteen hundred and two thousand feet above the bed of the valley. This shingle, I believe, forms the edge of a wide plain, which stretches southwards between two mountain ranges.); and now, judging from this tufaceous deposit, we may conclude that the horizontal elevation has been in the district of Copiapo about ten thousand feet.