Dr. Redhead's observation was caused by a discussion which arose here upon some other specimens of native iron, which he had forwarded to me, from the desert of Atacama, in Peru, and which were described by the late Mr. Allan in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1828. They were analysed by Dr. Turner, who found them to contain—
| Iron | 93·4 |
| Nickel | 6·618 |
| Cobalt | 0·535 |
| 100·553 |
a result which he considered decisive concerning their origin, because, he says, it differs from any compound hitherto described in the earth, and corresponds exactly both in appearance and composition with other meteoric iron.
But these opinions differ entirely from the belief of those who procured the specimens.
That iron is found scattered in large quantities over a plain at the foot of a mountain a little to the south-west of a small Indian village called Toconao, ten leagues from San Pedro, the capital of Atacama, and about eighty from Cobija, on the coast. The tradition there is, that the fragments have been thrown out by some volcanic explosion from the side of the neighbouring mountain, in which the people of Toconao say there is a large veta of pure iron. The Indian who collected the specimens which I sent to this country was employed to catear, or search for mines; and the nature of his occupation rendered it requisite for him to be particular in his observations: his account was, that "they were taken from a heap of the same nature, estimated at about three hundred-weight, and that they existed at the month of a veta, or vein of solid iron, situated at the foot of a mountain; he called them 'reventazones,' or explosions from the mine, or veta. He had been charged to bring a piece of the veta itself, and some of the rock in which it is embedded, but this he said he could not effect for want of tools; he therefore contented himself with picking up some of the pieces that were at the foot of the hill, where the mouth of the vein opens."
Dr. Redhead says, that in giving him this account the man endeavoured to give him also some idea of the direction of the vein in the mountain.
Further inquiries were subsequently made, the result of which corroborated his testimony. The alcalde of Toconao, who had been at the place, stated that the fragments had issued from a cavity of about fifteen feet diameter, which, from the nature of the soil, was filling up. This is sandy, and for three leagues round there is neither wood nor water nor pasture of any kind. Several persons in San Pedro, and amongst others one named Gonzales, who had likewise seen the cavity, gave a similar account.
The Atacama iron is certainly remarkably similar to the specimen of that met with by Pallas in Siberia, which is to be seen in the British Museum, but what proof is there of that being meteoric?
The Santiago iron differs from them both in appearance. The Atacama and Siberian specimens are full of cavities, looking like large sponges or scoriæ. That from Santiago, on the contrary, is more like a solid lump of well-kneaded dough.
So long as such specimens were supposed to be of very rare occurrence, and differing as they do from the character of all other known minerals, it was not extraordinary that they should have been ascribed to an extraneous origin; but now that further discoveries have proved their existence in all parts of the world, and that enormous masses of similar iron have been met with in the northern parts of America, in Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Brazil,[61] and the provinces of La Plata, to speak of that continent alone, I think we may begin to doubt whether they may not be bonâ fide productions of our own planet, instead of bringing them from the moon, or elsewhere. On this I shall only quote another passage from the letters of my excellent correspondent, who took the trouble to institute the inquiries for me as to the origin of the specimens from Atacama. "Time," he says, "may perhaps justify the tradition or opinion of the Indians relative to the origin of this iron; nor do I know why we should refuse to Nature the power of reducing in her laboratory a metal so easily separated from its combinations by the efforts of man."