line, with two points (Mounts Sarmiento and Darwin) rising to heights of 6,800 and 6,900 feet.On the south-western side of this northern arm of the Beagle Channel, the clay-slate is seen with its STRATA dipping from the great chain, so that the metamorphic schists here form a ridge bordered on each side by clay-slate.Further north, however, to the west of this great range, there is no clay-slate, but only gneiss, mica, and hornblendic slates, resting on great barren hills of true granite, and forming a tract about sixty miles in width.Again, westward of these rocks, the outermost islands are of trappean formation, which, from information obtained during the voyages of the "Adventure" and "Beagle," seem, together with granite, chiefly to prevail along the western coast as far north as the entrance of the St.of Magellan (See the Paper by Captain King in the "Geographical Journal"; also a Letter to Dr.Fitton in "Geological Proceedings" volume 1page 29; also some observations by Captain Fitzroy "Voyages" volume 1 page 375.I am indebted also to Mr.Lyell for a series of specimens collected by Lieutenant Graves.): a little more inland, on the eastern side of Clarence Island and S.Desolation, granite, greenstone, mica-slate, and gneiss appear to predominate.I am tempted to believe, that where the clay-slate has been metamorphosed at great depths beneath the surface, gneiss, mica-slate, and other allied rocks have been formed, but where the action has taken place nearer the surface, feldspathic porphyries, greenstones, etc., have resulted, often accompanied by submarine volcanic eruptions.
Only one other rock, met with in both arms of the Beagle Channel, deserves any notice, namely a granulo-crystalline mixture of white albite, black hornblende (ascertained by measurement of the crystals, and confirmed by Professor Miller), and more or less of brown mica, but without any quartz.
This rock occurs in large masses, closely resembling in external form granite or syenite: in the southern arm of the Channel, one such mass underlies the mica-slate, on which clay-slate was superimposed: this peculiar plutonic rock which, as we have seen, occurs also in Hardy Peninsula, is interesting, from its perfect similarity with that (hereafter often to be referred to under the name of andesite) forming the great injected axes of the Cordillera of Chile.
The stratification of the clay-slate is generally very obscure, whereas the cleavage is remarkably well defined: to begin with the extreme eastern parts of Tierra del Fuego; the cleavage-planes near the St.of Le Maire strike either W.and E.or W.S.W.and E.N.E., and are highly inclined; the form of the land, including Staten Island, indicates that the axes of elevation have run in this same line, though I was unable to distinguish the planes of stratification.Proceeding westward, I accurately examined the cleavage of the clay-slate on the northern, eastern, and western sides (thirty-five miles apart) of Navarin Island, and everywhere found the laminae ranging with extreme regularity, W.N.W.and E.S.E., seldom varying more than one point of the compass from this direction.(The clay-slate in this island was in many places crossed by parallel smooth joints.Out of five cases, the angle of intersection between the strike of these joints and that of the cleavage-laminae was in two cases 45 degrees and in two others 79 degrees.) Both on the east and west coasts, I crossed at right angles the cleavage-planes for a space of about eight miles, and found them dipping at an angle of between 45 degrees and 90 degrees, generally to S.S.W., sometimes to N.N.E., and often quite vertically.The S.S.W.dip was occasionally succeeded abruptly by a N.N.E.dip, and this by a vertical cleavage, or again by the S.S.W.dip; as in a lofty cliff on the eastern end of the island the laminae of slate were seen to be folded into very large steep curves, ranging in the usual W.N.W.line, I suspect that the varying and opposite dips may possibly be accounted for by the cleavage-laminae, though to the eye appearing straight, being parts of large abrupt curves, with their summits cut off and worn down.
In several places I was particularly struck with the fact, that the fine laminae of the clay-slate, where cutting straight through the bands of stratification, and therefore indisputably true cleavage-planes, differed slightly in their greyish and greenish tints of colour, in compactness, and in some of the laminae having a rather more jaspery appearance than others.
I have not seen this fact recorded, and it appears to me important, for it shows that the same cause which has produced the highly fissile structure, has altered in a slight degree the mineralogical character of the rock in the same planes.The bands of stratification, just alluded to, can be distinguished in many places, especially in Navarin Island, but only on the weathered surfaces of the slate; they consist of slightly undulatory zones of different shades of colour and of thicknesses, and resemble the marks (more closely than anything else to which I can compare them) left on the inside of a vessel by the draining away of some dirty slightly agitated liquid: no difference in composition, corresponding with these zones, could be seen in freshly fractured surfaces.In the more level parts of Navarin Island, these bands of stratification were nearly horizontal; but on the flanks of the mountains they were inclined from them, but in no instance that I saw at a very high angle.There can, I think, be no doubt that these zones, which appear only on the weathered surfaces, are the last vestiges of the original planes of stratification, now almost obliterated by the highly fissile and altered structure which the mass has assumed.