NOTICES OP BOLIVIA. 



165 



in breadth, appears to be formed by the accumulation of earth 

 and stones, washed and rolled down in the course of time ; 

 and a walk on shore corroborated this opinion. Along the 

 street we saw several shelving strata, formed of large pebbles 

 of a greenish color, bedded in a cement of dry earth, resem- 

 bling a mammoth puddingstone formation. The rocks about 

 the place are hard, dark, green-stone, and every where bear 

 marks of having been worn smooth on their angles by the sea. 

 In fact, towards Catica, there is a kind of natural wall, some 

 two hundred feet high, that has evidently been under water 

 at some remote period. Fancy a stiff mud or ooze, worked up 

 with shells and pebbles of every size, and then left to dry, and 

 you will get an idea of this bank or wall. Another curious 

 formation in the neighborhood, is of very small shells, which 

 when carelessly examined presents a texture similar to a coarse 

 flag stone, but a nearer inspection shows you the minute shells, 

 some of which are sufficiently perfect to be very readily class- 

 ed. The metallurgist at Calica stated that this formation was a 

 phosphate of lime, and that square slabs of it were used for 

 the flooring of their furnaces, and also ground fine, and mixed 

 with mud or clay, to form fire bricks. 



The landing is effected by pulling through a belt of kelp, 

 which lines the shore of the bay, and through a narrow chan- 

 nel, between some low black rocks, into a smooth little basin, 

 where the boat is drawn up on the sand beach. So soon as 

 we stepped ashore, our attention was drawn to a fisherman, 

 who was filling his balsa with air. He was a short, square 

 built Indian, pretty well advanced in life, with long locks of 

 black and gray hair hanging straight from under a low-crown- 

 ed narrow-rimmed straw hat, rather worse for wear. He wore 

 a short jacket and still shorter trowsers of old blue cloth, and 

 the particolored remains of a poncho girded his loins. A 

 dark copper colored skin covered his face and neck, and 

 though far from being embonpoint^ as Bolivians generally 

 are, he might be called muscular. His nose was flattened and 

 pinched in, just as it joined the os frontis, but it did not pre- 

 sent the African flatness ; and the angle of his face was that 

 common to the Caucasian or European race. His eyes were 



