142 EAMBLES AFTER SPORT. 



appearance is^ as Darwin says^ startling ; indeed, it was 

 difficult to believe that the two lower ones next the sea, 

 were not the work of man, as they presented the appear- 

 ance of two gigantic railway embankments, so perfectly 

 even and smooth had they been worn away by the tidal 

 action. The hacienda ^itself was situated on the very 

 edge of the lower one — at the neck, as it were, of an 

 enormous funnel, of which the valley formed the tube or 

 spout, the funnel itself stretching out on both sides to- 

 wards the sea beach. The width from the summit of the 

 upper terrace on the one side to that of the other on the 

 opposite side (there are only two in the first two leagues 

 from the sea) may be about three miles ; and the hacienda 

 is situated about the same distance from the beach, so 

 that the estuary or funnel forms a space of at least eight 

 or nine square miles, perfectly flat, covered with pasture, 

 and scooped as it were out of the earth. I could have 

 walked along the edge of the terrace and rolled a stone 

 down the declivity into the plain below, so steep were its 

 sides. The height of this terrace was, I should judge, 

 about eighty or ninety feet. Back from this lower terrace 

 stretches a plain, perfectly flat, of a least a mile in width, 

 inclosed by a second embankment, nearly as well defined 

 as the other; the height of this second one is rather 

 greater than that of the lower, and it terminates con- 

 siderably higher up the valley. The valley itself continues 

 perfectly straight for ten or twelve miles, with steep pre- 

 cipitous sides; and looking up it on a summer^s day, 

 when the wind moved the shimmering willows, it required 

 no great stretch of the imagination to fancy it a broad 

 glittering river flowing to the sea. That such it was 

 once is the universal belief of the inhabitants. Both 

 terraces are formed entirely of shingle, and abound in 



