第67章 ON THE FORMATIONS OF THE PAMPAS(16)

When examining the junction between these two formations, I thought that the concretionary layer of marl marked a passage between the marine and estuary stages.M.d'Orbigny disputes this view (as given in my "Journal"), and I admit that it is erroneous, though in some degree excusable, from their conformability and from both abounding with calcareous matter.It would, indeed, have been a great anomaly if there had been a true passage between a deposit contemporaneous with existing species of mollusca, and one in which all the mollusca appear to be extinct.Northward of Santa Fe, M.d'Orbigny met with ferruginous sandstones, marly rocks, and other beds, which he considers as a distinct and lower formation; but the evidence that they are not parts of the same with an altered mineralogical character, does not appear to me quite satisfactory.

In Western Banda Oriental, while the marine tertiary strata were accumulating, there were volcanic eruptions, much silex and lime were precipitated from solution, coarse conglomerates were formed, being derived probably from adjoining land, and layers of red mud and marly rocks, like those of the Pampean formation, were occasionally deposited.The true Pampean deposit, with mammiferous remains, instead of as at Santa Fe overlying conformably the tertiary strata, is here seen at a lower level folding round and between the flat-topped, cliff-bounded hills, formed by a upheaval and denudation of these same tertiary strata.The upheaval, having occurred here earlier than at Santa Fe, may be naturally accounted for by the contemporaneous volcanic action.At the Barrancas de S.Gregorio, the Pampean deposit, as we have seen, overlies and fills up furrows in coarse sand, precisely like that now accumulating on the shores near the mouth of the Plata.I can hardly believe that this loose and coarse sand is contemporaneous with the old tertiary and often crystalline strata of the more western parts of the province; and am induced to suspect that it is of subsequent origin.If that section near Colonia could be implicitly trusted, in which, at a height of only fifteen feet above the Plata, a bed of fresh-looking mussels, of an existing littoral species, appeared to lie between the sand and the Pampean mud, I should conclude that Banda Oriental must have stood, when the coarse sand was accumulating, at only a little below its present level, and had then subsided, allowing the estuary Pampean mud to cover far and wide its surface up to a height of some hundred feet; and that after this subsidence the province had been uplifted to its present level.

In Western Banda Oriental, we know, from two unequivocal sections that there is a mass, absolutely undistinguishable from the true Pampean deposit, beneath the old tertiary strata.This inferior mass must be very much more ancient than the upper deposit with its mammiferous remains, for it lies beneath the tertiary strata in which all the shells are extinct.

Nevertheless, the lower and upper masses, as well as some intermediate layers, are so similar in mineralogical character, that I cannot doubt that they are all of estuary origin, and have been derived from the same great source.At first it appeared to me extremely improbable, that mud of the same nature should have been deposited on nearly the same spot, during an immense lapse of time, namely, from a period equivalent perhaps to the Eocene of Europe to that of the Pampean formation.But as, at the very commencement of the Pampean period, if not at a still earlier period, the Sierra Ventana formed a boundary to the south,--the Cordillera or the plains in front of them to the west,--the whole province of Corrientes probably to the north, for, according to M.d'Orbigny, it is not covered by the Pampean deposit,--and Brazil, as known by the remains in the caves, to the north-east; and as again, during the older tertiary period, land already existed in Western Banda Oriental and near St.Fe Bajada, as may be inferred from the vegetable debris, from the quantities of silicified wood, and from the remains of a Toxodon found, according to M.d'Orbigny, in still lower strata, we may conclude, that at this ancient period a great expanse of water was surrounded by the same rocky framework which now bounds the plains of Pampean formation.This having been the case, the circumstance of sediment of the same nature having been deposited in the same area during an immense lapse of time, though highly remarkable, does not appear incredible.

The elevation of the Pampas, at least of the southern parts, has been slow and interrupted by several periods of rest, as may be inferred from the plains, cliffs, and lines of sand-dunes (with shells and pumice-pebbles)standing at different heights.I believe, also, that the Pampean mud continued to be deposited, after parts of this formation had already been elevated, in the same manner as mud would continue to be deposited in the estuary of the Plata, if the mud-banks on its shores were now uplifted and changed into plains: I believe in this from the improbability of so many skeletons and bones having been accumulated at one spot, where M.Hermoso now stands, at a depth of between eight hundred and one thousand feet, and at a vast distance from any land except small rocky islets,--as must have been the case, if the high tosca-plain round the Ventana and adjoining Sierras, had not been already uplifted and converted into land, supporting mammiferous animals.At Punta Alta we have good evidence that the gravel-strata, which certainly belong to the true Pampean period, were accumulated after the elevation in that neighbourhood of the main part of the Pampean deposit, whence the rounded masses of tosca-rock were derived, and that rolled fragment of black bone in the same peculiar condition with the remains at Monte Hermoso.