1835.] EFFECT OF AN INUNDATION. 367 



salt not having been washed away, of their decomposition 

 and early decay. 



I was much interested by finding on the terrace, at the 

 height of eighty-iive feet, e7nhedded amidst the shells and 

 much sea-drifted rubbish, some bits of cotton thread, 

 plaited rush, and the head of a stalk of Indian corn ; I 

 compared these relics with similar ones taken out of the 

 Huacas, or old Peruvian tombs, and found them identical in 

 appearance. On the mainland in front of San Lorenzo, 

 near Bellavista, there is an extensive and level plain about 

 a hundred feet high, of which the lower part is formed of 

 alternating layers of sand and impure clay, together with 

 some gravel, and the surface, to the depth of from three to 

 six feet, of a reddish loam, containing a few scattered sea- 

 shells and numerous small fragments of coarse red earthen- 

 ware, more abundant at certain spots than at others. At 

 first I was inclined to believe that this superficial bed, from 

 its wide extent and smoothness, must have been deposited 

 beneath the sea ; but I afterwards found in one spot, that it 

 lay on an artificial floor of round stones. It seems, there- 

 fore, most probable that at a period when the land stood at 

 a lower level, there was a plain very similar to that now 

 surrounding Callao, which being protected by 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 abundant 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 

 tliere 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 Valparaiso, 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 ofthe Indo-human race 



