I04 Charles Darwin. 



a war that was impending. Near Lima he exam- 

 ined the burial mounds, or huacas, and the ruins 

 of some ancient Indian villages ; but the ruins which 

 most impressed him were those of old Callao, all 

 that remained after a most destructive tidal wave in 

 1746. His trip to the island of San Lorenzo in 

 Callao Bay was pregnant with results, the field be- 

 ing rich, geologically. In one terrace eighty-five feet 

 up, his quick eye discovered some bits of cotton 

 thread and plaited rushes embedded with shells and 

 other rubbish from the ocean, the former comparing 

 with material he took from the old Peruvian tombs. 

 This discovery gave him many new ideas concern- 

 ing the antiquity of man, and he writes in his note- 

 book : " 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 remarkable, 

 as on the coast of Patagonia, when the land stood 

 about the same number of feet lower, the Macrau- 

 chenia 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 en- 

 tombed ; and, according to the generally received 

 opinion, when these extinct 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 infinitely slower than on the shores of 

 Peru. All these speculations, however, must be 



