The lava where first met with is 130 feet in thickness: it there consists of two, three, or perhaps more streams, divided from each other by vesicular spheroids like those on the surface.From the streams having, as it appears, extended to different distances, the terminal points are of unequal heights.Generally the surface of the basalt is smooth them in one part high up the valley, it was so uneven and hummocky, that until Iafterwards saw the streams extending continuously on both sides of the valley up to a height of about three thousand feet close to the Cordillera, I thought that the craters of eruption were probably close at hand.This hummocky surface I believe to have been caused by the crossing and heaping up of different streams.In one place, there were several rounded ridges about twenty feet in height, some of them as broad as high, and some broader, which certainly had been formed whilst the lava was fluid, for in transverse sections each ridge was seen to be concentrically laminated, and to be composed of imperfect columns radiating from common centres, like the spokes of wheels.
The basaltic mass where first met with is, as I have said, 130 feet in thickness, and, thirty-five miles higher up the valley, it increases to 322feet.In the first fourteen and a half miles of this distance, the upper surface of the lava, judging from three measurements taken above the level of the river (of which the apparently very uniform inclination has been calculated from its total height at a point 135 miles from the mouth), slopes towards the Atlantic at an angle of only 0 degrees 7 minutes twenty seconds: this must be considered only as an approximate measurement, but it cannot be far wrong.Taking the whole thirty-five miles, the upper surface slopes at an angle of 0 degrees 10 minutes 53 seconds; but this result is of no value in showing the inclination of any one stream, for halfway between the two points of measurement, the surface suddenly rises between one hundred and two hundred feet, apparently caused by some of the uppermost streams having extended thus far and no farther.From the measurement made at these two points, thirty-five miles apart, the mean inclination of the sedimentary beds, over which the lava has flowed, is NOW(after elevation from under the sea) only 0 degrees 7 minutes 52 seconds:
for the sake of comparison, it may be mentioned that the bottom of the present sea in a line from the mouth of the S.Cruz to the Falkland Islands, from a depth of seventeen fathoms to a depth of eighty-five fathoms, declines at an angle of 0 degrees 1 minute 22 seconds; between the beach and the depth of seventeen fathoms, the slope is greater.From a point about half-way up the valley, the basaltic mass rises more abruptly towards the foot of the Cordillera, namely, from a height of 1,204 feet, to about 3,000 feet above the sea.
This great deluge of lava is worthy, in its dimensions, of the great continent to which it belongs.The aggregate streams have flowed from the Cordillera to a distance (unparalleled, I believe, in any case yet known)of about one hundred geographical miles.Near their furthest extremity their total thickness is 130 feet, which increase thirty-five miles farther inland, as we have just seen, to 322 feet.The least inclination given by M.E.de Beaumont of the upper surface of a lava-stream, namely 0 degrees 30 minutes, is that of the great subaerial eruption in 1783 from Skaptar Jukul in Iceland; and M.E.de Beaumont shows that it must have flowed down a mean inclination of less than 0 degrees 20 minutes.("Memoires pour servir" etc.pages 178 and 217.) But we now see that under the pressure of the sea, successive streams have flowed over a smooth bottom with a mean inclination of not more than 0 degrees 7 minutes 52 seconds; and that the upper surface of the terminal portion (over a space of fourteen and a half miles) has an inclination of not more than 0 degrees 7 minutes 20 seconds.
If the elevation of Patagonia has been greater nearer the Cordillera than near the Atlantic (as is probable), then these angles are now all too large.I must repeat, that although the foregoing measurements, which were all carefully taken with the barometer, may not be absolutely correct, they cannot be widely erroneous.
Southward of the S.Cruz, the cliffs of the 840 feet plain extend to Coy Inlet, and owing to the naked patches of the white sediment, they are said on the charts to be "like the coast of Kent." At Coy Inlet the high plain trends inland, leaving flat-topped outliers.At Port Gallegos (latitude 51degrees 35 minutes, and ninety miles south of S.Cruz), I am informed by Captain Sulivan, R.N., that there is a gravel-capped plain from two to three hundred feet in height, formed of numerous strata, some fine-grained and pale-coloured, like the upper beds at the mouth of the S.Cruz, others rather dark and coarser, so as to resemble gritstones or tuffs; these latter include rather large fragments of apparently decomposed volcanic rocks; there are, also, included layers of gravel.This formation is highly remarkable, from abounding with mammiferous remains, which have not as yet been examined by Professor Owen, but which include some large, but mostly small, species of Pachydermata, Edentata, and Rodentia.From the appearance of the pale-coloured, fine-grained beds, I was inclined to believe that they corresponded with the upper beds of the S.Cruz; but Professor Ehrenberg, who has examined some of the specimens, informs me that the included microscopical organisms are wholly different, being fresh and brackish-water forms.Hence the two to three hundred feet plain at Port Gallegos is of unknown age, but probably of subsequent origin to the great Patagonian tertiary formation.
EASTERN TIERRA DEL FUEGO.