FOSSIL HUMAN RELICS. 137 



or eleven feet. The antiquity of the Indo-human 

 race here, judging by the eighty-five feet rise of 

 the land since the relics wei-e embedded, is the 

 more remarkable, as on the coast of Patagonia, 

 when tl>e 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 ele- 

 vation has been only a few feet since the numerous 

 gigantic quadrupeds were there entombed ; and, 

 according to the generally received opinion, when 

 these extinct animals were living, man did not ex- 

 ist. But the rising of that part of the coast of Pat- 

 agonia is perhaps noways connected with the Cor- 

 dillera, but rather with a line of old volcanic rocks 

 in Banda Oriental, so that it may have been infi- 

 nitely slower than on the shores of Peru. All 

 these speculations, however, must be vague ; for 

 who will pretend to say that there may not have 

 been several periods of subsidence intercalated 

 between the movements of elevation 1 for we know 

 that along the whole coast of Patagonia there have 

 certainly been many and long pauses in the up- 

 ward action of the elevatorv forces. 

 M2 



