Beagle Expedition (1831-1836); Geology -- South America; Volcanoes
Other fragments of the scoriaceous rock from this hill, when broken,
are often seen marked with short and irregular white streaks, which are
owing to a row of separate cells being partly, or quite, filled with
white calcareous powder. This structure immediately reminded me of the
appearance in badly kneaded dough, of balls and drawn-out streaks of
flour, which have remained unmixed with the paste; and I cannot doubt
that small masses of the lime, in the same manner remaining unmixed
with the fluid lava, have been drawn out when the whole was in motion.
I carefully examined, by trituration and solution in acids, pieces of
the scoriae, taken from within half-an-inch of those cells which were
filled with the calcareous powder, and they did not contain an atom of
free lime. It is obvious that the lava and lime have on a large scale
been very imperfectly mingled; and where small portions of the lime
have been entangled within a piece of the viscid lava, the cause of
their now occupying, in the form of a powder or of a fibrous
reticulation, the vesicular cavities, is, I think, evidently due to the
confined gases having most readily expanded at the points where the
incoherent lime rendered the lava less adhesive.
A mile eastward of the town of Praya, there is a steep-sided gorge,
about one hundred and fifty yards in width, cutting through the
basaltic plain and underlying beds, but since filled up by a stream of
more modern lava. This lava is dark grey, and in most parts compact and
rudely columnar; but at a little distance from the coast, it includes
in an irregular manner a brecciated mass of red scoriae mingled with a
considerable quantity of white, friable, and in some parts, nearly pure
earthy lime, like that on the summit of Red Hill. This lava, with its
entangled lime, has certainly flowed in the form of a regular stream;
and, judging from the shape of the gorge, towards which the drainage of
the country (feeble though it now be) still is directed, and from the
appearance of the bed of loose water-worn blocks with their interstices
unfilled, like those in the bed of a torrent, on which the lava rests,
we may conclude that the stream was of subaerial origin. I was unable
to trace it to its source, but, from its direction, it seemed to have
come from Signal Post Hill, distant one mile and a quarter, which, like
Red Hill, has been a point of eruption subsequent to the elevation of
the great basaltic plain. It accords with this view, that I found on
Signal Post Hill, a mass of earthy, calcareous matter of the same
nature, mingled with scoriae. I may here observe that part of the
calcareous matter forming the horizontal sedimentary bed, especially
the finer matter with which the embedded fragments of rock are
whitewashed, has probably been derived from similar volcanic eruptions,
as well as from triturated organic remains: the underlying, ancient,
crystalline rocks, also, are associated with much carbonate of lime,
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