第64章 ON THE FORMATIONS OF THE PAMPAS(13)

("Geological Proceedings" volume 4 page 36.) Now in the valley of the Santa Cruz, only fifty miles of latitude south of the spot where the Macrauchenia was entombed, vast numbers of gigantic, angular boulders, which must have been transported from the Cordillera on icebergs, lie strewed on the plain, at the height of 1,400 feet above the level of the sea.In ascending to this level, several step-formed plains must be crossed, all of which have necessarily required long time for their formation; hence the lowest or ninety feet plain, with its superficial bed containing the remains of the Macrauchenia, must have been formed very long subsequently to the period when the 1,400 feet plain was beneath the sea, and boulders were dropped on it from floating masses of ice.(It must not be inferred from these remarks, that the ice-action ceased in South America at this comparatively ancient period; for in Tierra del Fuego boulders were probably transported contemporaneously with, if not subsequently to, the formation of the ninety feet plain at S.Julian, and at other parts of the coast of Patagonia.) Mr.

Lyell's conclusion, therefore, is thus far confirmed in the southern hemisphere; and it is the more important, as one is naturally tempted to admit so simple an explanation, that it was the ice-period that caused the extinction of the numerous great mammifers which so lately swarmed over the two Americas.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE PAMPEAN FORMATION.

One of its most striking features is its great extent; I passed continuously over it from the Colorado to St.Fe Bajada, a distance of 500geographical miles; and M.d'Orbigny traced it for 250 miles further north.

In the latitude of the Plata, I examined this formation at intervals over an east and west line of 300 miles from Maldonado to the R.Carcarana; and M.d'Orbigny believes it extends 100 miles further inland: from Mr.

Caldcleugh's travels, however, I should have thought that it had extended, south of the Cordovese range, to near Mendoza, and I may add that I heard of great bones having been found high up the R.Quinto.Hence the area of the Pampean formation, as remarked by M.d'Orbigny, is probably at least equal to that of France, and perhaps twice or thrice as great.In a basin, surrounded by gravel-cliff (at a height of nearly three thousand feet), south of Mendoza, there is, as described in the Third Chapter, a deposit very like the Pampean, interstratified with other matter; and again at S.

Julian's, in Patagonia, 560 miles south of the Colorado, a small irregular bed of a nearly similar nature contains, as we have just seen, mammiferous remains.In the provinces of Moxos and Chiquitos (1,000 miles northward of the Pampas), and in Bolivia, at a height of 4,000 metres, M.d'Orbigny has described similar deposits, which he believes to have been formed by the same agency contemporaneously with the Pampean formation.Considering the immense distances between these several points, and their different heights, it appears to me infinitely more probable, that this similarity has resulted not from contemporaneousness of origin, but from the similarity of the rocky framework of the continent: it is known that in Brazil an immense area consists of gneissic rocks, and we shall hereafter see, over how great a length the plutonic rocks of the Cordillera, the overlying purple porphyries, and the trachytic ejections, are almost identical in nature.

Three theories on the origin of the Pampean formation have been propounded:--First, that of a great debacle by M.d'Orbigny; this seems founded chiefly on the absence of stratification, and on the number of embedded remains of terrestrial quadrupeds.Although the Pampean formation (like so many argillaceous deposits) is not divided into distinct and separate strata, yet we have seen that in one good section it was striped with horizontal zones of colour, and that in several specified places the upper and lower parts differed, not only considerably in colour, but greatly in constitution.In the southern part of the Pampas the upper mass (to a certain extent stratified) generally consists of hard tosca-rock, and the lower part of red Pampean mud, often itself divided into two or more masses, varying in colour and in the quantity of included calcareous matter.In Western Banda Oriental, beds of a similar nature, but of a greater age, conformably underlie and are intercalated with the regularly stratified tertiary formation.As a general rule, the marly concretions are arranged in horizontal lines, sometimes united into irregular strata:

surely, if the mud had been tumultuously deposited in mass, the included calcareous matter would have segregated itself irregularly, and not into nodules arranged in horizontal lines, one above the other and often far apart: this arrangement appears to me to prove that mud, differing slightly in composition, was successively and quietly deposited.On the theory of a debacle, a prodigious amount of mud, without a single pebble, is supposed to have been borne over the wide surface of the Pampas, when under water:

on the other hand, over the whole of Patagonia, the same or another debacle is supposed to have borne nothing but gravel,--the gravel and the fine mud in the neighbourhood of the Rios Negro and Colorado having been borne to an equal distance from the Cordillera, or imagined line of disturbance: