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The conchiferous calcareous beds at Coquimbo, and at a few isolated points northward, offer the most marked exception to this statement; for these beds are from twenty to thirty feet in thickness, and they stretch for some miles along shore, attaining, however, only a very trifling breadth.
The churches were plundered of their ornaments and relics, and the storehouses of the city laid under contribution of all things desired. Sailing again on the 19th of December, they touched to the southward of the town of Coquimbo, where fourteen of them landed.
APRIL 27th. I set out on a journey to Coquimbo, and thence through Guasco to Copiapo, where Captain Fitz Roy kindly offered to pick me up in the Beagle. The distance in a straight line along the shore northward is only 420 miles; but my mode of travelling made it a very long journey. I bought four horses and two mules, the latter carrying the luggage on alternate days.
I observed similar low sloping fringes on several parts of the coast, both northward of Valparaiso and near Coquimbo; but at this latter place, from the change in form which the coast has undergone since the old escarpments were worn, it may be doubted whether the sea, acting for any length of time at its present level, would eat into the land; for it now rather tends to throw up great masses of sand.
He had hardly started before a mutiny broke out on board the last-named vessel, which compelled him to halt at Coquimbo long enough to try and punish the mutineers.
In the evening, talking with the mayor-domo of these mines about the number of foreigners now scattered over the whole country, he told me that, though quite a young man, he remembers when he was a boy at school at Coquimbo, a holiday being given to see the captain of an English ship, who was brought to the city to speak to the governor.
The inhabitants heard with the greatest envy of the rain at Coquimbo; from the appearance of the sky they had hopes of equally good fortune, which, a fortnight afterwards, were realized. I was at Copiapo at the time; and there the people, with equal envy, talked of the abundant rain at Guasco.
A mutiny having broken out on board the Chacabuco, it became necessary to enter Coquimbo, where the leading mutineers were landed, tried, and punished. I shall here narrate an incident which occurred on our departure. Lady Cochrane, with her children, had returned from Santiago to Valparaiso, to take leave of me on embarkation.
This was the first true desert which I had seen: the effect on me was not impressive; but I believe this was owing to my having become gradually accustomed to such scenes, as I rode northward from Valparaiso, through Coquimbo, to Copiapo.
From this circumstance, and from not finding, upon careful examination, near Coquimbo any shells at a greater height than 252 feet, I believe that the recent elevation there has been much less than at Valparaiso, where it has been 1,300 feet, and I may add, than at Concepcion.