212 CHARLES DARWIN 



up with sand. The width of these sheets of stones varies 

 from a few hundred feet to a mile; but the peaty soil daily 

 encroaches on the borders, and even forms islets wherever 

 a few fragments happen to lie close together. In a valley 

 south of Berkeley Sound, which some of our party called 

 the " great valley of fragments," it was necessary to cross 

 an uninterrupted band half a mile wide, by jumping from 

 one pointed stone to another. So large were the fragments, 

 that being overtaken by a shower of rain, I readily found 

 shelter beneath one of them. 



Their little inclination is the most remarkable circum- 

 stance in these " streams of stones." On the hill-sides I have 

 seen them sloping at an angle of ten degrees with the horizon ; 

 but in some of the level, broad-bottomed valleys, the inclina- 

 tion is only just sufficient to be clearly perceived. On so 

 rugged a surface there was no means of measuring the 

 angle ; but to give a common illustration, I may say that the 

 slope would not have checked the speed of an English mail- 

 coach. In some places, a continuous stream of these frag- 

 ments followed up the course of a valley, and even 

 extended to the very crest of the hill. On these crests huge 

 masses, exceeding in dimensions any small building, seemed 

 to stand arrested in their headlong course: there, also, the 

 curved strata of the archways lay piled on each other, like 

 the ruins of some vast and ancient cathedral. In endeavour- 

 ing to describe these scenes of violence one is tempted to pass 

 from one simile to another. We may imagine that streams 

 of white lava had flowed from many parts of the mountains 

 into the lower country, and that when solidified they had been 

 rent by some enormous convulsion into myriads of frag- 

 ments. The expression " streams of stones," which immedi- 

 ately occurred to every one, conveys the same idea. These 

 scenes are on the spot rendered more striking by the con- 

 trast of the low rounded forms of the neighbouring hills. 



I was interested by finding on the highest peak of one 

 range (about 700 feet above the sea) a great arched frag- 

 ment, lying on its convex side, or back downwards. Must 

 we believe that it was fairly pitched up in the air, and thus 

 turned? Or, with more probability, that there existed for- 

 merly a part of the same range more elevated than the point 



