80 LtfPALLATA PASS. 



the manellous story which this scene at once uu- 

 I'olded ; though, I confess, I was at first so much as- 

 tonished that I could scarcely believe the plainest 

 evid(jllce. I saw the spot where a cluster of fine 

 trees once waved their branches on the shores of 

 the Atlantic, when that ocean (now driven back 

 700 miles) came to the foot of the Andes. I saw 

 that they had sprung fr<jm a volcanic soil which 

 had been raised above the level of the sea, and that 

 subsequently this dry land, with its upright trees, 

 had been let down into the depths of the ocean. 

 In these depths the formerly dry land was cover- 

 ed by sedimentary beds, and these again by enor- 

 mous streams of submarine lava — one such mass 

 attaining the thickness of a thousand feet ; and 

 these deluges of molten stone and aqueous deposits 

 five times alternately had been spread out. The 

 ocean which received such thick masses must have 

 been profoundly deep ; but again the subteiTanean 

 forces exerted themselves, and I no\V beheld the 

 bed of that ocean fonning a chain of mountains 

 more than seven thousand feet in height. Nor had 

 those antagonist forces been dormant which are 

 always at work wearing down the surface of the 

 land : the great piles of strata had been intersected 

 by many wide valleys, and the trees, now changed 

 into silex, were exposed projecting from the vol- 

 canic soil, now changed into rock, whence former- 

 ly, in a green and budding state, they had raised 

 their lofty heads. Now all is utterly irreclaimable 

 and desert ; even the lichen cannot adhere to the 

 stony casts of former trees. Vast and scarcely 

 comprehensible as such changes must ever appear, 

 yet they have all occuiTed within a period recent 

 when compared with the history of the Cordillera; 

 and the Cordillera itself is absolutely modern as 

 compared with many of the fossiliferous strata of 

 Europe and America. 



