Beagle Expedition (1831-1836); Geology -- South America; Volcanoes
The actual junction between the granitic and clay-slate districts
extends over a width of about two hundred yards, and consists of
irregular masses and of numerous dikes of granite, entangled and
surrounded by the clay- slate: most of the dikes range in a N.W. and
S.E. line, parallel to the cleavage of the slate. As we leave the
junction, thin beds, and lastly, mere films of the altered clay-slate
are seen, quite isolated, as if floating, in the coarsely crystallised
granite; but although completely detached, they all retain traces of
the uniform N.W. and S.E. cleavage. This fact has been observed in
other similar cases, and has been advanced by some eminent geologists
(See M. Keilhau “Theory on Granite” translated in the “Edinburgh New
Philosophical Journal” volume 24 page 402.), as a great difficulty on
the ordinary theory, of granite having been injected whilst liquified;
but if we reflect on the probable state of the lower surface of a
laminated mass, like clay-slate, after having been violently arched by
a body of molten granite, we may conclude that it would be full of
fissures parallel to the planes of cleavage; and that these would be
filled with granite, so that wherever the fissures were close to each
other, mere parting layers or wedges of the slate would depend into the
granite. Should, therefore, the whole body of rock afterwards become
worn down and denuded, the lower ends of these dependent masses or
wedges of slate would be left quite isolated in the granite; yet they
would retain their proper lines of cleavage, from having been united,
whilst the granite was fluid, with a continuous covering of clay-slate.
Following, in company with Dr. A. Smith, the line of junction between
the granite and the slate, as it stretched inland, in a S.E. direction,
we came to a place, where the slate was converted into a fine-grained,
perfectly characterised gneiss, composed of yellow-brown granular
feldspar, of abundant black brilliant mica, and of few and thin laminae
of quartz. From the abundance of the mica in this gneiss, compared with
the small quantity and excessively minute scales, in which it exists in
the glossy clay-slate, we must conclude, that it has been here formed
by the metamorphic action—a circumstance doubted, under nearly similar
circumstances, by some authors. The laminae of the clay-slate are
straight; and it was interesting to observe, that as they assumed the
character of gneiss, they became undulatory with some of the smaller
flexures angular, like the laminae of many true metamorphic schists.
SANDSTONE FORMATION.
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