Geological Observations on South AmericaDarwin, Charles
Science
Geological Observations on South America
Darwin, Charles
Beagle Expedition (1831-1836); Geology -- South America; Mollusks, Fossil -- South America; Paleontology
The clay-slate in many parts of Tierra del Fuego, is broken by dikes
and by great masses of greenstone, often highly hornblendic (In a
greenstone-dike in the Magdalen Channel, the feldspar cleaved with the
angle of albite. This dike was crossed, as well as the surrounding
slate, by a large vein of quartz, a circumstance of unusual
occurrence.): almost all the small islets within the clay-slate
districts are thus composed. The slate near the dikes generally becomes
paler-coloured, harder, less fissile, of a feldspathic nature, and
passes into a porphyry or greenstone: in one case, however, it became
more fissile, of a red colour, and contained minute scales of mica,
which were absent in the unaltered rock. On the east side of Ponsonby
Sound some dikes composed of a pale sonorous feldspathic rock,
porphyritic with a little feldspar, were remarkable from their
number,—there being within the space of a mile at least one
hundred,—from their nearly equalling in bulk the intermediate
slate,—and more especially from the excessive fineness (like the finest
inlaid carpentry) and perfect parallelism of their junctions with the
almost vertical laminae of clay-slate. I was unable to persuade myself
that these great parallel masses had been injected, until I found one
dike which abruptly thinned out to half its thickness, and had one of
its walls jagged, with fragments of the slate embedded in it.
In Southern Tierra del Fuego, the clay-slate towards its S.W. boundary,
becomes much altered and feldspathic. Thus on Wollaston Island slate
and grauwacke can be distinctly traced passing into feldspathic rocks
and greenstones, including iron pyrites and epidote, but still
retaining traces of cleavage with the usual strike and dip. One such
metamorphosed mass was traversed by large vein-like masses of a
beautiful mixture (as ascertained by Professor Miller) of green
epidote, garnets, and white calcareous spar. On the northern point of
this same island, there were various ancient submarine volcanic rocks,
consisting of amygdaloids with dark bole and agate,—of basalt with
decomposed olivine—of compact lava with glassy feldspar,—and of a
coarse conglomerate of red scoriae, parts being amygdaloidal with
carbonate of lime. The southern part of Wollaston Island and the whole
of Hermite and Horn Islands, seem formed of cones of greenstone; the
outlying islets of Il Defenso and D. Raminez are said to consist of
porphyritic lava. (Determined by Professor Jameson. Weddell’s “Voyage”
page 169.) In crossing Hardy Peninsula, the slate still retaining
traces of its usual cleavage, passes into columnar feldspathic rocks,
which are succeeded by an irregular tract of trappean and basaltic
rocks, containing glassy feldspar and much iron pyrites: there is,
also, some harsh red claystone porphyry, and an almost true trachyte,
with needles of hornblende, and in one spot a curious slaty rock
divided into quadrangular columns, having a base almost like trachyte,
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