Although I examined so
many hundred miles of coast on the Pacific, as well as Atlantic
side of the continent, I found no regular strata containing
sea-shells of recent species, excepting at this place, and at a few
points northward on the road to Guasco. This fact appears to me
highly remarkable; for the explanation generally given by
geologists, of the absence in any district of stratified
fossiliferous deposits of a given period, namely, that the surface
then existed as dry land, is not here applicable; for we know from
the shells strewed on the surface and embedded in loose sand or
mould, that the land for thousands of miles along both coasts has
lately been submerged. The explanation, no doubt, must be sought in
the fact, that the whole southern part of the continent has been
for a long time slowly rising; and therefore that all matter
deposited along shore in shallow water must have been soon brought
up and slowly exposed to the wearing action of the sea-beach; and
it is only in comparatively shallow water that the greater number
of marine organic beings can flourish, and in such water it is
obviously impossible that strata of any great thickness can
accumulate.
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