RAISED BEACHES A SAN DIEGO AND SAN PEDRO-FOSSILS. 
129 
of large and small shells near the top of one of the hanks bordering the beach, and about twenty- 
feet above the water. These may have been taken there by men or birds, but were imbedded in 
the soil, and looked like the remains of an old beach. An immense quantity of kelp is thrown 
SAN DIEGO FROM THE BAX. 
up on the clean, sandy beach by the waves, and forms a beautiful object when spread out to its 
full length. The only hills adjoining the bay are those of Punta Loma, and thus no sections 
of the strata were obtained. All the low banks were sandy. 
SAN DIEGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. 
December 23 .—San Diego to San Pedro .—We left San Diego for San Francisco in the steamer 
Southerner in the afternoon and reached San Pedro the next morning. A high bank or bluff, 
of nearly horizontal strata, was seen to overhang the beach; and, on landing, it was found to be 
composed of argillaceous beds and sandstone, together with shales. The bank was highest to 
the right of the landing, and appeared to be from forty to sixty feet or more in height. It was 
nearly vertical; and, at high tide, the surf must reach its very foot. One of the beds near the 
base was very dark colored—a greenish-black, or dark olive-green—and was evidently bitu¬ 
minous, giving off the odor readily when struck by the hammer. Higher in the series, the strata 
were lighter in color, but were much stained with peroxide of iron distributed through the 
earth and aggregated into nodules or concretions, which, at many places, protruded from the 
vertical bank. At the base of the bluff, and on the sand of the beach, a great number of loose 
tabular blocks of calcareous sandstone—three, four, and even six or eight feet across—showed 
the presence of a hard stratum in the vicinity, and it was believed to be near the top of the 
series, although not made evident by overhanging tables. These blocks were very hard, and 
not rapidly worn away by the surf. The flat surfaces were marked by sun-cracks, as if they 
had been exposed to the sun and air while in a soft and unconsolidated state. 
A gentle flexure in the lines of stratification of these strata, as exposed in the bank, showed 
that they had been subjected to disturbance by the injection of igneous rocks or otherwise At 
the point, the dip was nearly five degrees, and the trend of the flexure, apparently, north 50° 
west. 
Still further to the right the bank became lower, and the beach more broad. Other and ap¬ 
parently more modern accumulations took the place of the high bluff, and were found to con¬ 
tain vast quantities of marine shells in a layer about thirty feet above the tide-level. The bank 
presented the following succession of layers, from the top downwards: 
1. Dark soil, containing fragments of shells..____ 4 feet. 
2. Coarse sand, with shells and beach-shingle at the base_ 6 “ 
3. Sea-sand, in layers, with seams of broken shells____ 20 “ 
At the base of No. 2 there was a layer of pebbles and masses of a calcareous and argillaceous 
IT F 
