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
[2] The concretions containing lime, which I have described at
Ascension, as formed in a bed of ashes, present some degree of
resemblance to this substance, but they have not a resinous fracture.
At St. Helena, also, I found veins of a somewhat similar, compact, but
non-resinous substance, occurring in a bed of pumiceous ashes,
apparently free from calcareous matter: in neither of these cases
could heat have acted.
To return to the two craters: one of them stands at the distance of a
league from the coast, the intervening tract consisting of a calcareous
tuff, apparently of submarine origin. This crater consists of a circle
of hills some of which stand quite detached, but all have a very
regular,
quâ-quâ versal dip, at an inclination of between thirty and forty
degrees. The lower beds, to the thickness of several hundred feet,
consist of the resin-like stone, with embedded fragments of lava. The
upper beds, which are between thirty and forty feet in thickness, are
composed of a thinly stratified, fine-grained, harsh, friable,
brown-coloured tuff, or peperino.[3] A central mass without any
stratification, which must formerly have occupied the hollow of the
crater, but is now attached only to a few of the circumferential hills,
consists of a tuff, intermediate in character between that with a
resin-like, and that with an earthy fracture. This mass contains white
calcareous matter in small patches. The second crater (520 feet in
height) must have existed until the eruption of a recent, great stream
of lava, as a separate islet; a fine section, worn by the sea, shows a
grand funnel-shaped mass of basalt, surrounded by steep, sloping flanks
of tuff, having in parts an earthy, and in others a semi-resinous
fracture. The tuff is traversed by several broad, vertical dikes, with
smooth and parallel sides, which I did not doubt were formed of basalt,
until I actually broke off fragments. These dikes, however, consist of
tuff like that of the surrounding strata, but more compact, and with a
smoother fracture; hence we must conclude, that fissures were formed
and filled up with the finer mud or tuff from the crater, before its
interior was occupied, as it now is, by a solidified pool of basalt.
Other fissures have been subsequently formed, parallel to these
singular dikes, and are merely filled with loose rubbish. The change
from ordinary scoriaceous particles to the substance with a
semi-resinous fracture, could be clearly followed in portions of the
compact tuff of these dikes.
[3] Those geologists who restrict the term of “tuff” to ashes of a
white colour, resulting from the attrition of feldspathic lavas, would
call these brown-coloured strata “peperino.”
No. 12
[Illustration: The Kicker Rock.]
The Kicker Rock, 400 feet high.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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