s of the range; and lastly, the smooth,
conical piles of fine and brightly-coloured detritus, which slope up
sometimes to a height of more than 2,000 feet.

It is an old story, but not less wonderful, to see shells which were
once crawling at the bottom of the sea now standing nearly 14,000 feet
above its level. But there must have been a subsidence of several
thousand feet as well as the ensuing elevation. Daily it is forced home
on the mind of the geologist that nothing, not even the wind that blows,
is so unstable as the level of the crust of the earth.

From Valparaiso to Coquimbo, and thence to Copiapo, in Northern Chile,
the country is singularly broken and barren. On some of the terraced
plains rising to the Cordilleras, covered with cacti, there were large
herds of llamas. At one point in the coast range great prostrate
silicified trunks of fir trees were very numerous, embedded in a
conglomerate. I discovered convincing proof that this part of the
continent of South America has been elevated near the coast from 400
feet to 1,300 feet since the epoch of existing shells; and further
inland the rise possibly may have been greater. From the evidence of
ruins of Indian villages at very great altitude, now absolutely barren,
and some fossil human relics, man must have inhabited South America for
an immensely long period.

From the port of Iquique, in Peru, a visit was made across the desert to
the nitrate of soda mines. The nitrate stratum, between two and three
feet thick, lies close to the surface, and follows for 150 miles the
margin of the plain. From the troubled state of the country, I saw very
little of the rest of Peru.

A month was spent in the Galapagos Archipelago--a group of volcanic
islands situated on the Equator between 500 and 600 miles westward of
the coast of America. The little archipelago is a little world within
itself. Hence, both in time and space, we seemed to be brought somewhere
near to that great fact, that mystery of mysteries, the first appearance
of new beings on this earth. The vegetation is scanty. The principal
animals are the giant tortoises, so large that it requires six or eight
men to lift one. The most remarkable feature of the natural history of
this archipelago is that the different islands are inhabited by
different kinds of tortoises; and so with the birds, insects, and
plants. One is astonished at the amount of creative force, if such an
expression may be used, displayed