Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
The multiplier effect of the rattling stones, like Argentina’s institutional multiplier
Charles Darwin wrote:
CHAPTER XV
PASSAGE OF THE CORDILLERA
Valparaiso – Portillo Pass – Sagacity of Mules – Mountain-torrents – Mines, how discovered – Proofs of the gradual Elevation of the Cordillera – Effect of Snow on Rocks – Geological Structure of the two Main Ranges, their distinct Origin and Upheaval – Great Subsidence – Red Snow – Winds – Pinnacles of Snow – Dry and clear Atmosphere – Electricity – Pampas – Zoology of the opposite sides of the Andes – Locusts – Great Bugs – Mendoza – Uspallata Pass – Silicified Trees buried as they grew – Incas Bridge – Badness of the Passes exaggerated – Cumbre – Casuchas – Valparaiso.
… March 19th 1835. – We rode during this day to the last, and therefore most elevated house in the valley. The number of inhabitants became scanty; but wherever water could be brought on the land, it was very fertile. All the main valleys in the Cordillera are characterized by having, on both sides, a fringe or terrace of shingle and sand, rudely stratified, and generally of considerable thickness. These fringes evidently once extended across the valleys, and were united; and the bottoms of the valleys in northern Chile, where there are no streams, are thus smoothly filled up. On these fringes the roads are generally carried, for their surfaces are even, and they rise with a very gentle slope up the valleys: hence, also, they are easily cultivated by irrigation. They may be traced up to a height of between 7000 and 9000 feet, where they become hidden by the irregular piles of debris. At the lower end or mouths of the valleys, they are continuously united to those land-locked plains (also formed of shingle) at the foot of the main Cordillera, which I have described in a former chapter as characteristic of the scenery of Chile, and which were undoubtedly deposited when the sea penetrated Chile, as it now does the more southern coasts.
No one fact in the geology of South America interested me more than these terraces of rudely-stratified shingle. They precisely resemble in composition, the matter which the torrents in each valley would deposit, if they were checked in their course by any cause, such as entering a lake or arm of the sea; but the torrents, instead of depositing matter, are now steadily at work wearing away both the solid rock and these alluvial deposits, along the whole line of every main valley and side valley. It is impossible here to give the reasons, but I am convinced that the shingle terraces were accumulated, during the gradual elevation of the Cordillera, by the torrents delivering, at successive levels, their detritus on the beach-heads of long narrow arms of the sea, first high up the valleys, then lower and lower down as the land slowly rose. If this be so, and I cannot doubt it, the grand and broken chain of the Cordillera, instead of having been suddenly thrown up, as was till lately the universal, and still is the common opinion of geologists, has been slowly upheaved in mass, in the same gradual manner as the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific have risen within the recent period. A multitude of facts in the structure of the Cordillera, on this view receive a simple explanation.
The rivers which flow in these valleys ought rather to be called mountain-torrents. Their inclination is very great, and their water the colour of mud. The roar which the Maypu made, as it rushed over the great rounded fragments, was like that of the sea. Amidst the din of rushing waters, the noise from the stones, as they rattled one over another, was most distinctly audible even from a distance. This rattling noise, night and day, may be heard along the whole course of the torrent. The sound spoke eloquently to the geologist; the thousands and thousands of stones, which, striking against each other, made the one dull uniform sound, were all hurrying in one direction. It was like thinking on time, where the minute that now glides past is irrecoverable. So was it with these stones; the ocean is their eternity, and each note of that wild music told of one more step towards their destiny.
It is not possible for the mind to comprehend, except by a slow process, any effect which is produced by a cause repeated so often, that the multiplier itself conveys an idea, not more definite than the savage implies when he points to the hairs of his head. As often as I have seen beds of mud, sand, and shingle, accumulated to the thickness of many thousand feet, I have felt inclined to exclaim that causes, such as the present rivers and the present beaches, could never have ground down and produced such masses.
But, on the other hand, when listening to the rattling noise of these torrents, and calling to mind that whole races of animals have passed away from the face of the earth, and that during this whole period, night and day, these stones have gone rattling onwards in their course, I have thought to myself, can any mountains, any continent, withstand such waste?
In this part of the valley, the mountains on each side were from 3000 to 6000 or 8000 feet high, with rounded outlines and steep bare flanks. The general colour of the rock was dullish purple, and the stratification very distinct. If the scenery was not beautiful, it was remarkable and grand. …
… Whatever the cause may be, the quantity of crumbling stone on the Cordillera is very great. Occasionally in the spring, great masses of this detritus slide down the mountains, and cover the snow-drifts in the valleys, thus forming natural ice-houses. We rode over one, the height of which was far below the limit of perpetual snow.
As the evening drew to a close, we reached a singular basin-like plain, called the Valle del Yeso. It was covered by a little dry pasture, and we had the pleasant sight of a herd of cattle amidst the surrounding rocky deserts. The valley takes its name of Yeso from a great bed, I should think at least 2000 feet thick, of white, and in some parts quite pure, gypsum. We slept with a party of men, who were employed in loading mules with this substance, which is used in the manufacture of wine. We set out early in the morning (21st), and continued to follow the course of the river, which had become very small, till we arrived at the foot of the ridge, that separates the waters flowing into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The road, which as yet had been good with a steady but very gradual ascent, now changed into a steep zigzag track up the great range, dividing the republics of Chile and Mendoza. …
HMS Beagle, by Conrad Martens (1832-1836)
The Source:
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle (1859, 1845), with an introduction by Richard Dawkins (2003), Everyman's Library Classics 1906, 1928
[MGH: During a year in the mid-1990s when I was working at loggerheads with stubborn statists and bloody-minded bureaucrats in Argentina I enjoyed reading this book (two books really) as I explored the areas near Mendoza which Darwin had traversed on horseback. While admiring the freedom of the (Chilean?) condors soaring in the sky and scavenging prey, I was conscious of Latin America’s centuries-long inability to escape its recurrent cycles of underdevelopment, a multiplier effect produced by an institutional cause repeated so often over such a long period. Night and day, the deadweight of these institutional ‘stones’ went rattling onwards in their course. Darwin’s words rang true: “How can any continent withstand such waste?”]
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.