The marly or calcareous beds not only come up nearly horizontally to the northern and southern foot of the great quartzose mountains of the Sierra Ventana, but interfold between the parallel ranges.The superficial beds (for I nowhere obtained sections more than twenty feet deep) retain, even close to the mountains, their usual character: the uppermost layer, however, in one place included pebbles of quartz, and rested on a mass of detritus of the same rock.At the very foot of the mountains, there were some few piles of quartz and tosca-rock detritus, including land-shells;but at the distance of only half a mile from these lofty, jagged, and battered mountains, I could not, to my great surprise, find on the boundless surface of the calcareous plain even a single pebble.Quartz-pebbles, however, of considerable size have at some period been transported to a distance of between forty and fifty miles to the shores of Bahia Blanca.(Schmidtmeyer "Travels in Chile" page 150, states that he first noticed on the Pampas, very small bits of red granite, when fifty miles distant from the southern extremity of the mountains of Cordova, which project on the plain, like a reef into the sea.)The highest peak of the St.Ventana is, by Captain Fitzroy's measurement, 3,340 feet, and the calcareous plain at its foot (from observations taken by some Spanish officers) 840 feet above the sea-level.("La Plata" etc.by Sir W.Parish page 146.) On the flanks of the mountains, at a height of three hundred or four hundred feet above the plain, there were a few small patches of conglomerate and breccia, firmly cemented by ferruginous matter to the abrupt and battered face of the quartz--traces being thus exhibited of ancient sea-action.The high plain round this range sinks quite insensibly to the eye on all sides, except to the north, where its surface is broken into low cliffs.Round the Sierras Tapalguen, Guitru-gueyu, and between the latter and the Ventana we have seen (and shall hereafter see round some hills in Banda Oriental), that the tosca-rock forms low, flat-topped, cliff-bounded hills, higher than the surrounding plains of similar composition.From the horizontal stratification and from the appearance of the broken cliffs, the greater height of the Pampean formation round these primary hills ought not to be altogether or in chief part attributed to these several points having been uplifted more energetically than the surrounding country, but to the argillaceo-calcareous mud having collected round them, when they existed as islets or submarine rocks, at a greater height, than at the bottom of the adjoining open sea;--the cliffs having been subsequently worn during the elevation of the whole country in mass.
Southward of the Ventana, the plain extends farther than the eye can range;its surface is not very level, having slight depressions with no drainage exits; it is generally covered by a few feet in thickness of sandy earth;and in some places, according to M.Parchappe, by beds of clay two yards thick.(M.d'Orbigny "Voyage" Part Geolog.pages 47, 48.) On the banks of the Sauce, four leagues S.E.of the Ventana, there is an imperfect section about two hundred feet in height, displaying in the upper part tosca-rock and in the lower part red Pampean mud.At the settlement of Bahia Blanca, the uppermost plain is composed of very compact, stratified tosca-rock, containing rounded grains of quartz distinguishable by the naked eye: the lower plain, on which the fortress stands, is described by M.Parchappe as composed of solid tosca-rock (Ibid.); but the sections which I examined appeared more like a redeposited mass of this rock, with small pebbles and fragments of quartz.I shall immediately return to the important sections on the shores of Bahia Blanca.Twenty miles southward of this place, there is a remarkable ridge extending W.by N.and E.by S., formed of small, separate, flat-topped, steep-sided hills, rising between one hundred and two hundred feet above the Pampean plain at its southern base, which plain is a little lower than that to the north.The uppermost stratum in this ridge consists of pale, highly calcareous, compact tosca-rock, resting (as seen in one place) on reddish Pampean mud, and this again on a paler kind:
at the foot of the ridge, there is a well in reddish clay or mud.I have seen no other instance of a chain of hills belonging to the Pampean formation; and as the strata show no signs of disturbance, and as the direction of the ridge is the same with that common to all the metamorphic lines in this whole area, I suspect that the Pampean sediment has in this instance been accumulated on and over a ridge of hard rocks, instead of, as in the case of the above-mentioned Sierras, round their submarine flanks.
South of this little chain of tosca-rock, a plain of Pampean mud declines towards the banks of the Colorado: in the middle a well has been dug in red Pampean mud, covered by two feet of white, softish, highly calcareous tosca-rock, over which lies sand with small pebbles three feet in thickness--the first appearance of that vast shingle formation described in the First Chapter.In the first section after crossing the Colorado, an old tertiary formation, namely, the Rio Negro sandstone (to be described in the next chapter), is met with: but from the accounts given me by the Gauchos, I believe that at the mouth of the Colorado the Pampean formation extends a little further southwards.
BAHIA BLANCA.
To return to the shores of this bay.At Monte Hermoso there is a good section, about one hundred feet in height, of four distinct strata, appearing to the eye horizontal, but thickening a little towards the N.W.