270 Fossil Earthenware near Lima, paet n. 



The very low land surrounding the town of Callao, 

 is to the south joined by an obscure escarpment to a 

 higher plain (south of Bella Yista), which stretches 

 alonsr the coast for a length of about eisfht miles. This 

 plain appears to the eye quite level ; but the sea-cliffs 

 show that its height varies (as far as I could estimate) 

 from 70 to 120 feet. It is composed of thin, sometimes 

 waving, beds of clay, often of bright red and yellow 

 colours, of layers of impure sand, and in one part with 

 a great stratified mass of granitic pebbles. These beds 

 are capped by a remarkable mass, varying from two to 

 six feet in thickness, of reddish loam or mud, containing 

 many scattered and broken fragments of recent marine 

 shells, sometimes though rarely single large round 

 pebbles, more frequently short irregular layers of fine 

 gravel, and very many pieces of red coarse earthenware, 

 which from their curvatures must once have formed 

 parts of large vessels. The earthenware is of Indian 

 manufacture ; and I found exactly similar pieces acci- 

 dentally included within the bricks, of which the neigh- 

 bouring ancient Peruvian burial-mounds are built. 

 These fragments abounded in such numbers in certain 

 spots, that it appeared as if waggon- loads of earthen- 

 ware had been smashed to pieces. The broken sea- 

 shells and pottery are strewed both on the surface, and 

 throughout the whole thickness of this upper loamy 

 mass, I found them wherever I examined the cliffs, 

 for a space of between two and three miles, and for 

 half a mile inland ; and there can be little doubt that 

 this same bed extends with a smooth surface several 

 miles further over the entire plain. Besides the little 

 included irregular layers of small pebbles, there are 

 occasionally very obscure traces of stratification. 



At one of tne highest parts of the cliff, estimated 

 120 feet above the sea ; where a little ravine came down, 



