Above this great conglomerate, we have from two to three hundred feet in thickness of red sandstone; and above this, a stratum of black calcareous slate-rock, like that which alternates with and replaces the underlying yellowish-white, siliceous sandstone.Close to the junction between this upper black slate-rock and the upper red sandstone, I found the Gryphaea Darwinii, the Turritella Andii, and vast numbers of a bivalve, too imperfect to be recognised.Hence we see that, as far as the evidence of these two shells serves--and the Turritella is an eminently characteristic species--the whole thickness of this vast pile of strata belongs to the same age.Again, above the last-mentioned upper red sandstone, there were several alternations of the black, calcareous slate-rock; but I was unable to ascend to them.All these uppermost strata, like the lower ones, vary extremely in character in short horizontal distances.The gypseous formation, as here seen, has a coarser, more mechanical texture, and contains much more siliceous matter than the corresponding beds lower down the valley.Its total thickness, together with the upper beds of the porphyritic conglomerate, I estimated at least at 8,000 feet; and only a small portion of the porphyritic conglomerate, which on the eastern flank of the fourth axis of elevation appeared to be from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet thick, is here included.As corroborative of the great thickness of the gypseous formation, I may mention that in the Despoblado Valley (which branches from the main valley a little above the town of Copiapo) I found a corresponding pile of red and white sandstones, and of dark, calcareous, semi-jaspery mudstones, rising from a nearly level surface and thrown into an absolutely vertical position; so that, by pacing, I ascertained their thickness to be nearly two thousand seven hundred feet; taking this as a standard of comparison, I estimated the thickness of the strata ABOVE the porphyritic conglomerate at 7,000 feet.
The fossils before enumerated, from the limestone-layers in the whitish siliceous sandstone, are now covered, on the least computation, by strata from 5,000 to 6,000 feet in thickness.Professor E.Forbes thinks that these shells probably lived at a depth of from about 30 to 40 fathoms, that is from 180 to 240 feet; anyhow, it is impossible that they could have lived at the depth of from 5,000 to 6,000 feet.Hence in this case, as in that of the Puente del Inca, we may safely conclude that the bottom of the sea on which the shells lived, subsided, so as to receive the superincumbent submarine strata: and this subsidence must have taken place during the existence of these shells; for, as I have shown, some of them occur high up as well as low down in the series.That the bottom of the sea subsided, is in harmony with the presence of the layers of coarse, well-rounded pebbles included throughout this whole pile of strata, as well as of the great upper mass of conglomerate from 2,000 to 3,000 feet thick; for coarse gravel could hardly have been formed or spread out at the profound depths indicated by the thickness of the strata.The subsidence, also, must have been slow to have allowed of this often-recurrent spreading out of the pebbles.Moreover, we shall presently see that the surfaces of some of the streams of porphyritic lava beneath the gypseous formation, are so highly amygdaloidal that it is scarcely possible to believe that they flowed under the vast pressure of a deep ocean.The conclusion of a great subsidence during the existence of these cretaceo-oolitic fossils, may, I believe, be extended to the district of Coquimbo, although owing to the fossiliferous beds there not being directly covered by the upper gypseous strata, which in the section north of the valley are about 6,000 feet in thickness, I did not there insist on this conclusion.
