352 CHARLES DARWIN 



ruptly broken off, the upright stumps projecting a few feet 

 above the ground. The trunks measured from three to five 

 feet each in circumference. They stood a little way apart 

 from each other, but the whole formed one group. Mr. Rob- 

 ert Brown has been kind enough to examine the wood: he 

 says it belongs to the fir tribe, partaking of the character 

 of the Araucarian family, but with some curious points of 

 affinity with the yew. The volcanic sandstone in which the 

 trees were embedded, and from the lower part of which they 

 must have sprung, had accumulated in successive thin layers 

 around their trunks; and the stone yet retained the impres- 

 sion of the bark. 



It required little geological practice to interpret the mar- 

 vellous story which this scene at once unfolded; though I 

 confess I was at first so much astonished that I could 

 scarcely believe the plainest evidence. 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 from 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 

 covered by sedimentary beds, and these again by enormous 

 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 subterranean 

 forces exerted themselves, and I now beheld the bed of 

 that ocean, forming a chain of mountains more than beven 

 thousand feet in height. Nor had those antagonistic forces 

 been dormant, which are always at work wearing down the 

 surface of the land; the great piles of strata had been in- 

 tersected by many wide valleys, and the trees now changed 

 into silex, were exposed projecting from the volcanic soil, 

 now changed into rock, whence formerly, in a green and 

 budding state, they had raised their lofty heads. Now, 

 all is utterly irreclaimable and desert; even the lichen can- 

 not adhere to the stony casts of former trees. Vast, and 



