vi.

NOTES ON PANAMA, PEARL TRADE, &C. .

ST. THOMAS AND OTHER WEST INDIAN ISLES AND PEOPLE

ST. DOMINGO-CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, &c.

Page. 279

283

294

SANTIAGO DE CUBA-SLAVE LIfe-PhosphorESCENT SEA 298

ΟΝ

COPIAPO, SILVER MINING,

MACHINERY, &c.

N Monday evening, 12th December, 1864, a lecture on the above subject was delivered to the members of the Literary and Scientific Institution, Kendal, by Henry Swinglehurst, Esq., of Hincaster House, Milnthorpe. John Whitwell, Esq., presided. The lecture had been looked forward to with much interest, and was well attended. Many of the lecturer's "points" were warmly applauded, whilst a vein of good humour and pleasantry running through the lecture kept up a genial feeling throughout. Mr. Swinglehurst said:-

The port of Copiapó and the main entrance to the mining region of Atacama (which is about 27° south of the equator, on the shores of the Pacific, in the Republic of Chili), presents physically the arid and desert monotony peculiar to the whole Pacific coast 2000 miles north of Valparaiso. No green spot meets us to please the eye or soothe the spirit; and unless life be sweetened by the prospect of gain, it must be weary and uninspiring to the human heart and intellect. There is neither church, chapel, theatre, promenades, rides, nor ought but sandy and hot plains and hills to the east, and the ever calm Pacific Ocean to the west, between which man seems bounded in a dreary and parched solitude.

GEOLOGY NEAR CALDERA.

After a few hours examination the curious amateur in geology finds, in this otherwise dull port, geological features which afford him interest; on the Pacific coast the primary granite and porphyritic rocks predominate; but here we see peeping out of the water a portion of fawn coloured sandstone, similar in manner but less in extent than on the eastern shores of Scotland, near Dunbar, where the red sandstone crops out of the German ocean. Some twenty to thirty

A

yards from the northern part of the rocky shore the ground rises rather abruptly from the sea, having the aspect of land lately recovered from the ocean; a portion of this has been cut for the railway station; a few yards further east the earth's crust is a mass of hard granite, but here it is a conglomerate sandstone, full of fossil shells strongly cemented, and requiring considerable force with a heavy hammer to break it.

BED OF SHELLS ON THE RAILWAY.

On leaving Caldera for the mining districts we take our ticket by the Copiapó Railway (which pays dividends of 15 per cent. per annum), and we pass over a district where the work of the engineer has been little more than to dig away a few cubic yards of loose desert sand or shells and place his sleepers. From Caldera for several miles, but terminating abruptly on the northern side, we run along a bed of loose marine shells several feet in depth, the valley being a depository of fossil remains of a not very remote period; this bed extends towards the old port of Copiapó over the course of the river mentioned by Darwin, and terminates some six or eight leagues from the coast towards the mountains, until the granitic and gneiss rocks begin to rise above the level of the plain, and roll up step by step on all sides of the narrowing valley, introducing us fairly into the mountain ranges. This large bed of shells the builder uses, en masse, for making lime; and the iron moulder as a flux for his metals. When in connection with a stream the shells make the water very prejudicial to locomotive boilers, and in the absence of more effective means of decomposing the lime, the water is distilled before being used.

To illustrate this bed of shells, I had four small boxes of them taken, without special selection, from the bed of the railway at four different elevations; Mr. Taggart, the superintendent of the line, having run a special engine for the purpose, as a trip on foot in the desert sand is difficult in hot weather and horses at Caldera rather scarce. These shell deposits show, in some measure, the gradual elevation of the coast, whilst every footstep from the sea to the Cordilleras speaks of millions of untold ages, during which, in the wonderful order of events, the world has been preparing for human residence.