46 CHANGES IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. chap. in. 



alterations in the level of the ground, are frequent, in which 

 fresh-water shells of species now inhabiting the lakes and 

 rivers of that region are imbedded, together with the remains 

 of pottery, often at the depth of fifty feet, and in which a 

 splendid Hindoo temple has lately been discovered, and laid 

 open to view by the removal of the lacustrine silt which had 

 enveloped it for four or five centuries. 



In the same treatise (ch. xxix.) it is stated that the west 

 coast of South America, between the Andes and the Pacific, 

 is a great theatre of earthquake movements, and that per- 

 manent upheavals of the land of several feet at a time have 

 been experienced since the discovery of America. In various 

 parts of the littoral region of Chili and Peru, strata have 

 been observed enclosing shells in abundance, all agreeing 

 specifically wnth those now swarming in the Pacific. In one 

 bed of this kind, in the island of San Lorenzo, near Lima, 

 Mr. Darwin found, at the altitude of eighty-five feet above 

 the sea, pieces of cotton thread, ])laited rush, and the head of 

 a stalk of Indian corn, the whole of which had evidently been 

 imbedded with the shells. At the same height, on the neigh- 

 boring mainland, he found other signs corroborating the 

 opinion that the ancient bed of the sea had there also been 

 uplifted eighty-five feet since the region was first peopled by 

 the Peruvian race. But similar shelly masses are also met 

 with at much higher elevations, at innumerable points be- 

 tween the Chilian and Peruvian Andes and the sea-coast, in 

 which no human remains have as yet been observed. The 

 preservation for an indefinite period of such perishable sub- 

 stances as thread is explained by the entire absence of rain 

 in Peru. The same articles, had thej- been enclosed in the 

 permeable sands of an European raised beach, or in any 

 coiintry where rain falls even for a small part of the year, 

 would probabl}" have disappeared entirely. 



In the literature of the last centuiy, we find frequent allu- 



