chap. ix. Fossil Remains of Human Art. 269 



be cut mto the sandstone, all show that these remains 

 were not thrown high up by an earthquake-wave : on 

 the other hand, these facts, together with the number 

 of dead shells, and of floating objects, both marine and 

 terrestrial, both natural and human, render it almost 

 certain that they were accumulated on a true beach, 

 since upraised eighty-five feet, and upraised this much 

 since Indian man inhabited Peru. The elevation 

 may have been, either by several small sudden starts, 

 or quite gradual ; in this latter case the unrolled shells 

 having been thrown up during gales beyond the reach 

 of the waves which afterwards broke on the slowly 

 emerging land. I have made these remarks, chiefly 

 because I was at first surprised at the complete differ- 

 ence in nature, between this broad, smooth, upraised 

 bed of shells, and the present shingle-beach at the foot 

 of the low sandstone-cliffs ; but a beach formed, when 

 the sea is cutting into the land, as is shown now to be 

 the case by the low bare sandstone-cliffs, ought not to 

 be compared with a beach accumulated on a gently in- 

 clined rocky surface, at a period when the sea (probably 

 owing to the elevatory movement in process) was not 

 able to eat into the land. With respect to the mass of 

 nearly angular, salt-cemented fragments of sandstone, 

 which lie under the shells, and which are so unlike the 

 materials of an ordinary sea-beach ; I think it probable 

 after having seen the remarkable effects ! of the earth- 

 quake of 1835, in absolutely shattering as if by gun- 

 powder the surface of the primary rocks near Concepcion, 

 that a smooth bare surface of stone was left by the sea 

 covered by the shelly mass, and that afterwards when 

 upraised, it was superficially shattered by the severe 

 shocks so often experienced here. 



1 I have described these effects in my 'Journal of Kesearches,'p. 

 303, 2nd edit., 1845. 



