Чарльз Дарвин
Volcanic Islands
The percolation of rain-water has consolidated parts of these beds into a solid rock, and has formed masses of dark brown, stalagmitic limestone. At the Sugar-Loaf quarry, fragments of rock on the adjoining slopes have been thickly coated by successive fine layers of calcareous matter. (In the earthy detritus on several parts of this hill, irregular masses of very impure, crystallised sulphate of lime occur. As this substance is now being abundantly deposited by the surf at Ascension, it is possible that these masses may thus have originated; but if so, it must have been at a period when the land stood at a much lower level. This earthy selenite is now found at a height of between six hundred and seven hundred feet.) It is singular, that many of these pebbles have their entire surfaces coated, without any point of contact having been left uncovered; hence, these pebbles must have been lifted up by the slow deposition between them of the successive films of carbonate of lime. Masses of white, finely oolitic rock are attached to the outside of some of these coated pebbles. Von Buch has described a compact limestone at Lanzarote, which seems perfectly to resemble the stalagmitic deposition just mentioned: it coats pebbles, and in parts is finely oolitic: it forms a far-extended layer, from one inch to two or three feet in thickness, and it occurs at the height of 800 feet above the sea, but only on that side of the island exposed to the violent north-western winds. Von Buch remarks, that it is not found in hollows, but only on the unbroken and inclined surfaces of the mountain. ("Description des Isles Canaries" page 293.) He believes, that it has been deposited by the spray which is borne over the whole island by these violent winds. It appears, however, to me much more probable that it has been formed, as at St. Helena, by the percolation of water through finely comminuted shells: for when sand is blown on a much-exposed coast, it always tends to accumulate on broad, even surfaces, which offer a uniform resistance to the winds. At the neighbouring island, moreover, of Feurteventura, there is an earthy limestone, which, according to Von Buch, is quite similar to specimens which he has seen from St. Helena, and which he believes to have been formed by the drifting of shelly detritus. (Idem pages 314 and 374.)
The upper beds of the limestone, at the above-mentioned quarry on the Sugar-Loaf Hill, are softer, finer-grained and less pure, than the lower beds. They abound with fragments of land-shells, and with some perfect ones; they contain, also, the bones of birds, and the large eggs, apparently of water-fowl. (Colonel Wilkes, in a catalogue presented with some specimens to the Geological Society, states that as many as ten eggs were found by one person. Dr. Buckland has remarked ("Geolog. Trans." volume 5 page 474) on these eggs.) It is probable that these upper beds remained long in an unconsolidated form, during which time, these terrestrial productions were embedded. Mr. G.R. Sowerby has kindly examined three species of land-shells, which I procured from this bed, and has described them in detail. One of them is a Succinea, identical with a species now living abundantly on the island; the two others, namely, Cochlogena fossilis and Helix biplicata, are not known in a recent state: the latter species was also found in another and different locality, associated with a species of Cochlogena which is undoubtedly extinct.
BEDS OF EXTINCT LAND-SHELLS.
Land-shells, all of which appear to be species now extinct, occur embedded in earth, in several parts of the island. The greater number have been found at a considerable height on Flagstaff Hill. On the N.W. side of this hill, a rain-channel exposes a section of about twenty feet in thickness, of which the upper part consists of black vegetable mould, evidently washed down from the heights above, and the lower part of less black earth, abounding with young and old shells, and with their fragments: part of this earth is slightly consolidated by calcareous matter, apparently due to the partial decomposition of some of the shells. Mr. Seale, an intelligent resident, who first called attention to these shells, gave me a large collection from another locality, where the shells appear to have been embedded in very black earth. Mr. G.R. Sowerby has examined these shells, and has described them. There are seven species, namely, one Cochlogena, two species of the genus Cochlicopa, and four of Helix; none of these are known in a recent state, or have been found in any other country. The smaller species were picked out of the inside of the large shells of the Cochlogena aurisvulpina. This last-mentioned species is in many respects a very singular one; it was classed, even by Lamarck, in a marine genus, and having thus been mistaken for a sea-shell, and the smaller accompanying species having been overlooked, the exact localities where it was found have been measured, and the elevation of this island thus deduced! It is very remarkable that all the shells of this species found by me in one spot, form a distinct variety, as described by Mr. Sowerby, from those procured from another locality by Mr. Seale. As this Cochlogena is a large and conspicuous shell, I particularly inquired from several intelligent countrymen whether they had ever seen it alive; they all assured me that they had not, and they would not even believe that it was a land animal: Mr. Seale, moreover, who was a collector of shells all his life at St. Helena, never met with it alive. Possibly some of the smaller species may turn out to be yet living kinds; but, on the other hand, the two land- shells which are now living on the island in great numbers, do not occur embedded, as far as is yet known, with the extinct species. I have shown in my "Journal" ("Journal of Researches" page 582.), that the extinction of these land-shells possibly may not be an ancient event; as a great change took place in the state of the island about one hundred and twenty years ago, when the old trees died, and were not replaced by young ones, these being destroyed by the goats and hogs, which had run wild in numbers, from the year 1502. Mr. Seale states, that on Flagstaff Hill, where we have seen that the embedded land-shells are especially numerous, traces are everywhere discoverable, which plainly indicate that it was once thickly clothed with trees; at present not even a bush grows there. The thick bed of black vegetable mould which covers the shell-bed, on the flanks of this hill, was probably washed down from the upper part, as soon as the trees perished, and the shelter afforded by them was lost.
ELEVATION OF THE LAND.
Seeing that the lavas of the basal series, which are of submarine origin, are raised above the level of the sea, and at some places to the height of many hundred feet, I looked out for superficial signs of the elevation of the land. The bottoms of some of the gorges, which descend to the coast, are filled up to the depth of about a hundred feet, by rudely divided layers of sand, muddy clay, and fragmentary masses; in these beds, Mr. Seale has found the bones of the tropic-bird and of the albatross; the former now rarely, and the latter never visiting the island. From the difference between these layers, and the sloping piles of detritus which rest on them, I suspect that they were deposited, when the gorges stood beneath the sea. Mr. Seale, moreover, has shown that some of the fissure- like gorges become, with a concave outline, gradually rather wider at the bottom than at the top; and this peculiar structure was probably caused by the wearing action of the sea, when it entered the lower part of these gorges. (A fissure-like gorge, near Stony-top, is said by Mr. Seale to be 840 feet deep, and only 115 feet in width.) At greater heights, the evidence of the rise of the land is even less clear: nevertheless, in a bay-like depression on the table-land behind Prosperous Bay, at the height of about a thousand feet, there are flat-topped masses of rock, which it is scarcely conceivable, could have been insulated from the surrounding and similar strata, by any other agency than the denuding action of a sea- beach. Much denudation, indeed, has been effected at great elevations, which it would not be easy to explain by any other means: thus, the flat summit of the Barn, which is 2,000 feet high, presents, according to Mr. Seale, a perfect network of truncated dikes; on hills like the Flagstaff, formed of soft rock, we might suppose that the dikes had been worn down and cut off by meteoric agency, but we can hardly suppose this possible with the hard, basaltic strata of the Barn.
COAST DENUDATION.
The enormous cliffs, in many parts between one and two thousand feet in height, with which this prison-like island is surrounded, with the exception of only a few places, where narrow valleys descend to the coast, is the most striking feature in its scenery. We have seen that portions of the basaltic ring, two or three miles in length by one or two miles in breadth, and from one to two thousand feet in height, have been wholly removed. There are, also, ledges and banks of rock, rising out of profoundly deep water, and distant from the present coast between three and four miles, which, according to Mr. Seale, can be traced to the shore, and are found to be the continuations of certain well-known great dikes. The swell of the Atlantic Ocean has obviously been the active power in forming these cliffs; and it is interesting to observe that the lesser, though still great, height of the cliffs on the leeward and partially protected side of the island (extending from the Sugar-Loaf Hill to South West Point), corresponds with the lesser degree of exposure. When reflecting on the comparatively low coasts of many volcanic islands, which also stand exposed in the open ocean, and are apparently of considerable antiquity, the mind recoils from an attempt to grasp the number of centuries of exposure, necessary to have ground into mud and to have dispersed the enormous cubic mass of hard rock which has been pared off the circumference of this island. The contrast in the superficial state of St. Helena, compared with the nearest island, namely, Ascension, is very striking. At Ascension, the surfaces of the lava-streams are glossy, as if just poured forth, their boundaries are well defined, and they can often be traced to perfect craters, whence they were erupted; in the course of many long walks, I did not observe a single dike; and the coast round nearly the entire circumference is low, and has been eaten back (though too much stress must not be placed on this fact, as the island may have been subsiding) into a little wall only from ten to thirty feet high. Yet during the 340 years, since Ascension has been known, not even the feeblest signs of volcanic action have been recorded. (In the "Nautical Magazine" for 1835 page 642, and for 1838 page 361, and in the "Comptes Rendus" April 1838, accounts are given of a series of volcanic phenomena – earthquakes – troubled water – floating scoriae and columns of smoke – which have been observed at intervals since the middle of the last century, in a space of open sea between longitudes 20 degrees and 22 degrees west, about half a degree south of the equator. These facts seem to show, that an island or an archipelago is in process of formation in the middle of the Atlantic: a line joining St. Helena and Ascension, prolonged, intersects this slowly nascent focus of volcanic action.) On the other hand, at St. Helena, the course of no one stream of lava can be traced, either by the state of its boundaries or of its superficies; the mere wreck of one great crater is left; not the valleys only, but the surfaces of some of the highest hills, are interlaced by worn-down dikes, and, in many places, the denuded summits of great cones of injected rock stand exposed and naked; lastly, as we have seen, the entire circuit of the island has been deeply worn back into the grandest precipices.
CRATERS OF ELEVATION.
There is much resemblance in structure and in geological history between St. Helena, St. Jago, and Mauritius. All three islands are bounded (at least in the parts which I was able to examine) by a ring of basaltic mountains, now much broken, but evidently once continuous. These mountains have, or apparently once had, their escarpments steep towards the interior of the island, and their strata dip outwards. I was able to ascertain, only in a few cases, the inclination of the beds; nor was this easy, for the stratification was generally obscure, except when viewed from a distance. I feel, however, little doubt that, according to the researches of M. Elie de Beaumont, their average inclination is greater than that which they could have acquired, considering their thickness and compactness, by flowing down a sloping surface. At St. Helena, and at St. Jago, the basaltic strata rest on older and probably submarine beds of different composition. At all three islands, deluges of more recent lavas have flowed from the centre of the island, towards and between the basaltic mountains; and at St. Helena the central platform has been filled up by them. All three islands have been raised in mass. At Mauritius the sea, within a late geological period, must have reached to the foot of the basaltic mountains, as it now does at St. Helena; and at St. Jago it is cutting back the intermediate plain towards them. In these three islands, but especially at St. Jago and at Mauritius, when, standing on the summit of one of the old basaltic mountains, one looks in vain towards the centre of the island, – the point towards which the strata beneath one's feet, and of the mountains on each side, rudely converge, – for a source whence these strata could have been erupted; but one sees only a vast hollow platform stretched beneath, or piles of matter of more recent origin.
These basaltic mountains come, I presume, into the class of Craters of elevation: it is immaterial whether the rings were ever completely formed, for the portions which now exist have so uniform a structure, that, if they do not form fragments of true craters, they cannot be classed with ordinary lines of elevation. With respect to their origin, after having read the works of Mr. Lyell ("Principles of Geology" fifth edition volume 2 page 171.), and of MM. C. Prevost and Virlet, I cannot believe that the great central hollows have been formed by a simple dome-shaped elevation, and the consequent arching of the strata. On the other hand, I have very great difficulty in admitting that these basaltic mountains are merely the basal fragments of great volcanoes, of which the summits have either been blown off, or more probably swallowed up by subsidence. These rings are, in some instances, so immense, as at St. Jago and at Mauritius, and their occurrence is so frequent, that I can hardly persuade myself to adopt this explanation. Moreover, I suspect that the following circumstances, from their frequent concurrence, are someway connected together, – a connection not implied in either of the above views: namely, first, the broken state of the ring; showing that the now detached portions have been exposed to great denudation, and in some cases, perhaps, rendering it probable that the ring never was entire; secondly, the great amount of matter erupted from the central area after or during the formation of the ring; and thirdly, the elevation of the district in mass. As far as relates to the inclination of the strata being greater than that which the basal fragments of ordinary volcanoes would naturally possess, I can readily believe that this inclination might have been slowly acquired by that amount of elevation, of which, according to M. Elie de Beaumont, the numerous upfilled fissures or dikes are the evidence and the measure, – a view equally novel and important, which we owe to the researches of that geologist on Mount Etna.
A conjecture, including the above circumstances, occurred to me, when, – with my mind fully convinced, from the phenomena of 1835 in South America, that the forces which eject matter from volcanic orifices and raise continents in mass are identical, – I viewed that part of the coast of St. Jago, where the horizontally upraised, calcareous stratum dips into the sea, directly beneath a cone of subsequently erupted lava. (I have given a detailed account of these phenomena, in a paper read before the Geological Society in March 1838. At the instant of time, when an immense area was convulsed and a large tract elevated, the districts immediately surrounding several of the great vents in the Cordillera remained quiescent; the subterranean forces being apparently relieved by the eruptions, which then recommenced with great violence. An event of somewhat the same kind, but on an infinitely smaller scale, appears to have taken place, according to Abich ("Views of Vesuvius" plates 1 and 9), within the great crater of Vesuvius, where a platform on one side of a fissure was raised in mass twenty feet, whilst on the other side, a train of small volcanoes burst forth in eruption.) The conjecture is that, during the slow elevation of a volcanic district or island, in the centre of which one or more orifices continue open, and thus relieve the subterranean forces, the borders are elevated more than the central area; and that the portions thus upraised do not slope gently into the central, less elevated area, as does the calcareous stratum under the cone at St. Jago, and as does a large part of the circumference of Iceland, but that they are separated from it by curved faults. (It appears, from information communicated to me in the most obliging manner by M. E. Robert, that the circumferential parts of Iceland, which are composed of ancient basaltic strata alternating with tuff, dip inland, thus forming a gigantic saucer. M. Robert found that this was the case, with a few and quite local exceptions, for a space of coast several hundred miles in length. I find this statement corroborated, as far as regards one place, by Mackenzie in his "Travels" page 377, and in another place by some MS. notes kindly lent me by Dr. Holland. The coast is deeply indented by creeks, at the head of which the land is generally low. M. Robert informs me, that the inwardly dipping strata appear to extend as far as this line, and that their inclination usually corresponds with the slope of the surface, from the high coast-mountains to the low land at the head of these creeks. In the section described by Sir G. Mackenzie, the dip is 120. The interior parts of the island chiefly consist, as far as is known, of recently erupted matter. The great size, however, of Iceland, equalling the bulkiest part of England, ought perhaps to exclude it from the class of islands we have been considering; but I cannot avoid suspecting that if the coast-mountains, instead of gently sloping into the less elevated central area, had been separated from it by irregularly curved faults, the strata would have been tilted seaward, and a "Crater of elevation," like that of St. Jago or that of Mauritius, but of much vaster dimensions, would have been formed. I will only further remark, that the frequent occurrence of extensive lakes at the foot of large volcanoes, and the frequent association of volcanic and fresh-water strata, seem to indicate that the areas around volcanoes are apt to be depressed beneath the level of the adjoining country, either from having been less elevated, or from the effects of subsidence.) We might expect, from what we see along ordinary faults, that the strata on the upraised side, already dipping outwards from their original formation as lava-streams, would be tilted from the line of fault, and thus have their inclination increased. According to this hypothesis, which I am tempted to extend only to some few cases, it is not probable that the ring would ever be formed quite perfect; and from the elevation being slow, the upraised portions would generally be exposed to much denudation, and hence the ring become broken; we might also expect to find occasional inequalities in the dip of the upraised masses, as is the case at St. Jago. By this hypothesis the elevation of the districts in mass, and the flowing of deluges of lava from the central platforms, are likewise connected together. On this view the marginal basaltic mountains of the three foregoing islands might still be considered as forming "Craters of elevation;" the kind of elevation implied having been slow, and the central hollow or platform having been formed, not by the arching of the surface, but simply by that part having been upraised to a less height.
