In South America, everything has taken place on a grand scale, and all geological phenomena are still in active operation.We know how violent at the present day the earthquakes are, we have seen how great an area is now rising, and the plains of tertiary origin are of vast dimensions; an almost straight line can be drawn from Tierra del Fuego for 1,600 miles northward, and probably for a much greater distance, which shall intersect no formation older than the Patagonian deposits; so equable has been the upheaval of the beds, that throughout this long line, not a fault in the stratification or abrupt dislocation was anywhere observable.Looking to the basal, metamorphic, and plutonic rocks of the continent, the areas formed of them are likewise vast; and their planes of cleavage and foliation strike over surprisingly great spaces in uniform directions.The Cordillera, with its pinnacles here and there rising upwards of twenty thousand feet above the level of the sea, ranges in an unbroken line from Tierra del Fuego, apparently to the Arctic circle.This grand range has suffered both the most violent dislocations, and slow, though grand, upward and downward movements in mass; I know not whether the spectacle of its immense valleys, with mountain-masses of once liquified and intrusive rocks now bared and intersected, or whether the view of those plains, composed of shingle and sediment hence derived, which stretch to the borders of the Atlantic Ocean, is best adapted to excite our astonishment at the amount of wear and tear which these mountains have undergone.
The Cordillera from Tierra del Fuego to Mexico, is penetrated by volcanic orifices, and those now in action are connected in great trains.The intimate relation between their recent eruptions and the slow elevation of the continent in mass, appears to me highly important, for no explanation of the one phenomenon can be considered as satisfactory which is not applicable to the other.(On the Connection of certain Volcanic Phenomena in South America: "Geological Transactions" volume 5 page 609.) The permanence of the volcanic action on this chain of mountains is, also, a striking fact; first, we have the deluges of submarine lavas alternating with the porphyritic conglomerate strata, then occasionally feldspathic streams and abundant mineral exhalations during the gypseous or cretaceo-oolitic period: then the eruptions of the Uspallata range, and at an ancient but unknown period, when the sea came up to the eastern foot of the Cordillera, streams of basaltic lava at the foot of the Portillo range;then the old tertiary eruptions; and lastly, there are here and there amongst the mountains, much worn and apparently very ancient volcanic formations without any craters; there are, also, craters quite extinct, and others in the condition of solfataras, and others occasionally or habitually in fierce action.Hence it would appear that the Cordillera has been, probably with some quiescent periods, a source of volcanic matter from an epoch anterior to our cretaceo-oolitic formation to the present day; and now the earthquakes, daily recurrent on some part of the western coast, give little hope that the subterranean energy is expended.
Recurring to the evidence by which it was shown that some at least of the parallel ridges, which together compose the Cordillera, were successively and slowly upthrown at widely different periods; and that the whole range certainly once, and almost certainly twice, subsided some thousand feet, and being then brought up by a slow movement in mass, again, during the old tertiary formations, subsided several hundred feet, and again was brought up to its present level by a slow and often interrupted movement; we see how opposed is this complicated history of changes slowly effected, to the views of those geologists who believe that this great mountain-chain was formed in late times by a single blow.I have endeavoured elsewhere to show, that the excessively disturbed condition of the strata in the Cordillera, so far from indicating single periods of extreme violence, presents insuperable difficulties, except on the admission that the masses of once liquified rocks of the axes were repeatedly injected with intervals sufficiently long for their successive cooling and consolidation.
("Geological Transactions" volume 5 page 626.) Finally, if we look to the analogies drawn from the changes now in progress in the earth's crust, whether to the manner in which volcanic matter is erupted, or to the manner in which the land is historically known to have risen and sunk: or again, if we look to the vast amount of denudation which every part of the Cordillera has obviously suffered, the changes through which it has been brought into its present condition, will appear neither to have been too slowly effected, nor to have been too complicated.