Coral Reefs; Volcanic Islands; South American Geology — CompleteDarwin, Charles
Science
Coral Reefs; Volcanic Islands; South American Geology — Complete
Darwin, Charles
Beagle Expedition (1831-1836); Coral reefs and islands; Geology -- South America; Islands; Volcanoes
_Fernando Noronha._—During our short visit at this and the four
following islands, I observed very little worthy of description.
Fernando Noronha is situated in the Atlantic Ocean, in lat. 3° 50′ S.,
and 230 miles distant from the coast of South America. It consists of
several islets, together nine miles in length by three in breadth. The
whole seems to be of volcanic origin; although there is no appearance
of any crater, or of any one central eminence. The most remarkable
feature is a hill 1,000 feet high, of which the upper 400 feet consist
of a precipitous, singularly shaped pinnacle, formed of columnar
phonolite, containing numerous crystals of glassy feldspar, and a few
needles of hornblende. From the highest accessible point of this hill,
I could distinguish in different parts of the group several other
conical hills, apparently of the same nature. At St. Helena there are
similar, great, conical, protuberant masses of phonolite, nearly one
thousand feet in height, which have been formed by the injection of
fluid feldspathic lava into yielding strata. If this hill has had, as
is probable, a similar origin, denudation has been here effected on an
enormous scale. Near the base of this hill, I observed beds of white
tuff, intersected by numerous dikes, some of amygdaloidal basalt and
others of trachyte; and beds of slaty phonolite with the planes of
cleavage directed N.W. and S.E. Parts of this rock, where the crystals
were scanty, closely resembled common clay-slate, altered by the
contact of a trap-dike. The lamination of rocks, which undoubtedly have
once been fluid, appears to me a subject well deserving attention. On
the beach there were numerous
fragments of compact basalt, of which rock a distant façade of columns
seemed to be formed.
_Terceira in the Azores._—The central parts of this island consist of
irregularly rounded mountains of no great elevation, composed of
trachyte, which closely resembles in general character the trachyte of
Ascension, presently to be described. This formation is in many parts
overlaid, in the usual order of superposition, by streams of basaltic
lava, which near the coast compose nearly the whole surface. The course
which these streams have followed from their craters, can often be
followed by the eye. The town of Angra is overlooked by a crateriform
hill (Mount Brazil), entirely built of thin strata of fine-grained,
harsh, brown-coloured tuff. The upper beds are seen to overlap the
basaltic streams on which the town stands. This hill is almost
identical in structure and composition with numerous crateriformed
hills in the Galapagos Archipelago.
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