woodworth: geological expedition to brazil and chile. 123 



same level holds for the seaward edge of the terrace on the south side 

 of Corral entrance facing the open sea, where, however, the surface 

 rises inwards towards the hills, being in part covered by deposits at 

 the mouths of gullies. The terrace thus has the appearance of being 

 a. few feet higher on the coast than inland. At most, the terrace is a 

 few rods in width and carries here and there a few houses. On 

 the south side of Corral entrance near English Bay, there are drongs, 

 or stacks of the schists standing up on the surface of the terrace, 

 evidently sea-stacks left by marine erosion at about the sixty foot 

 level. I saw none of these along the Valdivia River or inside of Corral 

 Harbor. I have no doubt that this bench marks a stand of the sea 

 when the coast stood relativel\' lower than now. Above this terrace 

 the hills are sharply ravined by long continued sculpturing of the 

 schists and no signs of beaches or wave action were found. The next 

 higher plain is that of the summit of the Coastal Cordillera (Plate 29), 

 which is undoubtedly an old peneplain of Tertiary or older date. 



The lack of beach deposits or signs of modern occupation of the 

 fifty to sixty foot terrace by the sea makes it necessary to place its 

 origin in early Pleistocene or possible Pliocene times. It is long 

 anterior to such beaches as occur about the shores of the Champlain 

 or Hochelagan sea in northeastern North America. 



South of Corral entrance near a group of houses I saw marine shells 

 on the terrace in the sod but they were in such a situation as to render 

 it altogether probable that they had no geological significance, being 

 nothing more than refuse of the aborigines. 



At Valdivia and Corral it seems to me demonstrable that there was 

 in early Pleistocene of late Tertiary times a relatively lower stand 

 of the land than now by about sixty feet during a period long enough 

 for the river to widen out its valley on a rock-floor of schists and older 

 Tertiary sediments in a disturbed position. Whether these Tertiary 

 sediments occupy an old valley in the schists or owe their position to 

 down-faulting I can not state from the observations which I made. 

 Their disturbed attitude and the presence of cleavage in the con- 

 glomerates at Corral favors the view of infolding and down-faulting 

 of the Tertiary beds in the schistose terrane. After this period of 

 partial basele veiling the land rose about sixty feet relatively to the 

 sea. 



The presumption that the channel of the Valdivia River and the 

 depression forming Corral Harbor have been excavated since the 

 uplift of the terrace began is also an argument for the ancient date 

 of the sixty foot terrace. The depths of water in the Valdivia River 



