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
[5] M. Constant Prevost (“Mém. de la Soc. Géolog.,” tome ii) observes
that “les produits volcaniques n’ont que localement et rarement même
dérangé le sol, à travers lequel ils se sont fait jour.”
No. 9
[Illustration: Prosperous Hill and The Barn.]
The double lines represent the basaltic strata; the single, the basal
submarine strata; the dotted, the upper feldspathic strata.
_Turk’s Cap and Prosperous Bays._—Prosperous Hill is a great, black,
precipitous mountain, situated two miles and a half south of the Barn,
and composed, like it, of basaltic strata. These rest, in one part, on
the brown-coloured, porphyritic beds of the basal series, and in
another part, on a fissured mass of highly scoriaceous and amygdaloidal
rock, which seems to have formed a small point of eruption beneath the
sea, contemporaneously with the basal series. Prosperous Hill, like the
Barn, is traversed by many dikes, of which the greater number range
north and south, and its strata dip, at an angle of about 20 degrees,
rather obliquely from the island towards the sea. The space between
Prosperous Hill and the Barn, as represented in figure No. 9, consists
of lofty cliffs, composed of the lavas of the upper or feldspathic
series, which rest, though unconformably, on the basal submarine
strata, as we have seen that they do at Flagstaff Hill. Differently,
however, from in that hill, these upper strata are nearly horizontal,
gently rising towards the interior of the island; and they are composed
of greenish-black, or more commonly, pale brown, compact lavas, instead
of softened and highly coloured matter. These brown-coloured, compact
lavas, consist almost entirely of small glimmering scales, or of minute
acicular crystals, of feldspar, placed close by the side of each other,
and abounding with minute black specks, apparently of hornblende. The
basaltic strata of Prosperous Hill project only a little above the
level of the gently-sloping, feldspathic streams, which wind round and
abut against their upturned edges. The inclination of the basaltic
strata seems to be too great to have been caused by their having flowed
down a slope, and they must have been tilted into their present
position before the eruption of the feldspathic streams.
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