Bd. III: 2) CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS. 1 7 
Their little inclination i.s the most remarkable circumstance in these ‘streams 
of stones’. On the hill-sides I have seen them sloping at an angle of ten degrees 
with the horizon; but in some of the level, broad-bottomed valleys, the inclination 
is only just sufficient to be clearly perceived. On so rugged a surface there was no 
means of measuring the angle; but to give a common illustration, I may say that 
the slope alone would not have checked the speed of an English mail-coach. In 
some places, a continuous stream of these fragments followed up the course of a 
valley, and even extended to the very crest of the hill. On these crests huge 
masses, exceeding in dimensions any small building, seemed to stand arrested in their 
headlong course: there, also, the curved strata of the archways lay piled over each 
other, like the ruins of some vast and ancient cathedral. In endeavouring to de- 
scribe these scenes of violence, one is tempted to pass from one simile to another. 
We may imagine that streams of white lava had flowed from many parts of the 
mountains into the lower country, and that, when consolidated, they had been rent 
by some enormous convulsion into myriads of fragments. The expression, ‘streams 
of stones’, which immediately occurred to every one, conveyed the same idea. These 
scenes are, on the spot, rendered more striking by the contrast of the low, rounded 
forms of the neighbouring hills. 
I was much interested by finding on the highest peak of one range (about 700 
feet above the sea) a great arched fragment, lying on its convex or upper surface. 
Must we believe that it was fairly pitched up in the air, and thus turned? Or, with 
more probability, that there existed formerly a part of the same range more eleva- 
ted than the point on which this monument of a great convulsion of nature now 
lies. As the fragments in the valleys are neither rounded nor the crevices filled up 
with sand, we must infer that the period of violence was subsequent to the land 
having been raised above the waters of the sea. In a transverse section within 
these valleys the bottom is nearly level, or rises but very little towards either side. 
Hence the fragments appear to have travelled from the head of the valley; but in 
reality it seems most probable, either that they have been hurled down from the 
nearest slopes, or that masses of rock were broken up in the position they formerly 
occupied; and that since, by a vibratory movement of overwhelming force, the 
fragments have been levelled into one continuous sheet. If during the earthquake 
which in 1835 overthrew Conception, in Chile, it was thought wonderful that small 
bodies should have been pitched a few inches from the ground, what must we say 
to a movement which has caused fragments, many tons in weight (like so much 
sand on a vibrating board) to move onwards and find their level? I have seen, in 
the Cordillera of the Andes, the evident marks where stupendous mountains have 
been broken into pieces like so much thin crust, and the strata thrown on their 
vertical edges; but never did any scene, like the ‘streams of stones’, so forcibly con- 
‘^57/07. Schwedische Südpolar-Expediiiott içoi — igoj. 3 
