1835.1 FOSSIL HUMAN RELICS. 371 



similar to that now surrounding Callao, which being protected 

 hy a shingle beach, is raised but very little above the level of the 

 sea. On this plain, with its underlying red-clay beds, I imagine 

 that the Indians manufactured their earthen vessels ; and that, 

 during some violent earthquake, the sea broke over the beach, 

 and converted the plain into a temporary lake, as happened round 

 Callao in 1713 and 1746. The water would then have deposited 

 mud, containing fragments of pottery from the kilns, more abun- 

 dant at some spots than at others, and shells from the sea. This 

 bed with fossil earthenware, stands at about the same height with 

 the shells on the lower terrace of San Lorenzo, in which the 

 cotton-thread and other relics were embedded. Hence we may 

 safely conclude, that within the Indo-human period there has 

 been an elevation, as before alluded to, of more than eighty -five 

 feet ; for some little elevation must have been lost by the coast 

 having subsided since the old maps were engraved. At Val- 

 paraiso, although in the 220 years before our visit, the elevation 

 cannot have exceeded nineteen feet, yet subsequently to 1817 

 there has been a rise, partly insensible and partly by a start 

 during the shock of 1822, of ten or eleven feet. The antiquity 

 of the Indo-human race here, judging by the eighty-five feet 

 rise of the land since the relics were embedded, is the more re- 

 markable, as on the coast of Patagonia, when the land stood 

 about the same number of feet lower, the Macrauchenia was a 

 living beast ; but as the Patagonian coast is some way distant 

 from the Cordillera, the rising there may have been slower than 

 here. At Bahia Blanca, the elevation has been only a few feet 

 since the numerous gigantic quadrupeds were there entombed ; 

 and, according to the generally received opinion, when these ex- 

 tinct animals were living, man did not exist. But the rising of 

 that part of the coast of Patagonia, is perhaps noways connected 

 with the Cordillera, but rather with a line of old volcanic rocks 

 in Banda Oriental, so that it may have been infinite^ slower than 

 on the shores of Peru. All these speculations, however, must 

 be vague; for \vho will pretend to say, that there may not have 

 been several periods of subsidence, intercalated between the 

 movements of elevation ; for we know that along the whole coast 

 of Patagonia, there have certainly been many and long pauses 

 hi the upward action of the elevatory forces. 



