year 1817. The only sudden elevation of which there is any record occurred
in 1822, and this seems to have been less than three feet. Since that year,
I was assured by several competent observers, that part of an old wreck,
which is firmly embedded near the beach, has sensibly emerged; hence here,
as at Chiloe, a slow rise of the land appears to be now in progress. It
seems highly probable that the rocks which are corroded in a band at the
height of fourteen feet above the sea were acted on during the period, when
by tradition the base of S. Augustin church, now nineteen feet six inches
above the highest water-mark, was occasionally washed by the waves.

VALPARAISO TO COQUIMBO.

For the first seventy-five miles north of Valparaiso I followed the coast-
road, and throughout this space I observed innumerable masses of upraised
shells. About Quintero there are immense accumulations (worked for lime) of
the Mesodesma donaciforme, packed in sandy earth; they abound chiefly about
fifteen feet above high-water, but shells are here found, according to Mr.
Miers, to a height of 500 feet, and at a distance of three leagues from the
coast ("Travels in Chile" volume 1 pages 395, 458. I received several
similar accounts from the inhabitants, and was assured that there are many
shells on the plain of Casa Blanca, between Valparaiso and Santiago, at the
height of 800 feet.): I here noticed barnacles adhering to the rocks three
or four feet above the highest tides. In the neighbourhood of Plazilla and
Catapilco, at heights of between two hundred and three hundred feet, the
number of comminuted shells, with some perfect ones, especially of the
Mesodesma, packed in layers, was truly immense: the land at Plazilla had
evidently existed as a bay, with abrupt rocky masses rising out of it,
precisely like the islets in the broken bays now indenting this coast. On
both sides of the rivers Ligua, Longotomo, Guachen, and Quilimari, there
are plains of gravel about two hundred feet in height, in many parts