132 NEWER PLIOCENE PERIOD. [Ch. X. 



my friend Captain Hall for additional details, and he imme- 

 diately sent me his original manuscript notes, requesting me to 

 make free use of them. In them I find the following interesting 

 passages, omitted in his printed account. ' The valley is com- 

 pletely open towards the sea ; if the roads, therefore, are the ; 

 beaches of an ancient lake, it is difficult to imagine a catas- 

 trophe sufficiently violent to carry away the barrier which 

 should not at the same time obliterate all traces of the beaches. 

 I find it difficult also to account for the water- worn cha- 

 racter of all the stones, for they have the appearance of 

 having travelled over a great distance, being well rounded and 

 dressed. They are in immense quantity too, and much more 

 than one could expect to find on the beach of any lake, and. 

 seem more properly to belong to the ocean. 9 



We entertained a strong suspicion, before reading these 

 notes, that the beaches were formed by the waves of the Pacific, 

 and not by the waters of a lake ; in other words, that they, 

 bear testimony to the successive rise of the land, not to 

 the repeated fall of the waters of a lake. We have before 

 cited the proofs adduced by M. Boblaye, that in the Morea 

 there are four or five ranges of ancient sea-cliffs, one above the 

 other, at various elevations, where limestone precipices exhibit 

 lithodomous perforations and lines of ancient littoral caverns *. 

 If we discover lines of parallel upraised cliffs, we ought to find 

 parallel lines of elevated beaches on those coasts where the rocks 

 are of a nature to retain, for a length of time, the marks im- 

 printed on their surface. We may expect such indications to 

 be peculiarly manifest in countries where the subterranean 

 force has been in activity within comparatively modern times, 

 and it is there that the hypothesis of paroxysmal elevations, and 

 the instantaneous rise of mountain-chains, should first have been 

 put to the test, before it was hastily embraced by a certain 

 school of geologists. 



West Indian Archipelago. According to the sketch given 

 by Maclure of the geology of the Leeward Islands f, the 

 * See above, ,p. 113. f Quart. Jouru. of Sci., vol. v. p. 31 1. 



