In
these depths, the formerly dry land was covered by sedimentary
beds, and these again by enormous streams of submarine lava--one
such mass attaining the thickness of a thousand feet; and these
deluges of molten stone and aqueous deposits five times alternately
had been spread out. The ocean which received such thick masses
must have been profoundly deep; but again the subterranean forces
exerted themselves, and I now beheld the bed of that ocean, forming
a chain of mountains more than seven thousand feet in height. Nor
had those antagonistic forces been dormant, which are always at
work wearing down the surface of the land; the great piles of
strata had been intersected by many wide valleys, and the trees,
now changed into silex, were exposed projecting from the volcanic
soil, now changed into rock, whence formerly, in a green and
budding state, they had raised their lofty heads. Now, all is
utterly irreclaimable and desert; even the lichen cannot adhere to
the stony casts of former trees. Vast, and scarcely comprehensible
as such changes must ever appear, yet they have all occurred within
a period, recent when compared with the history of the Cordillera;
and the Cordillera itself is absolutely modern as compared with
many of the fossiliferous strata of Europe and America.
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