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Updated: May 8, 2025
A compact heavy rock, not laminated, with an irregular, angular, highly crystalline, fracture; it abounds with distinct crystals of glassy feldspar, and the crystalline feldspathic base is mottled with a black mineral, which on the weathered surface is seen to be aggregated into small crystals, some perfect, but the greater number imperfect.
The gentle passage of the feldspathic slate, at Jajuel, into the porphyritic conglomerate, which is certainly of aqueous origin, should also be taken in account.
In some parts, where the basaltic ring has been breached, and the black ramparts stand detached, the feldspathic lavas have passed between them, and now overhang the sea-coast in lofty cliffs.
The trap-rocks alluded to consist chiefly of feldspathic porphyry and amygdaloid, the kernels of the latter being sometimes calcareous, often chalcedonic, and forming beautiful agates. We meet also with claystone, greenstone, compact feldspar, and tuff.
In endeavouring to make out the cause of the lamination of these igneous feldspathic rocks, let us return to the facts so minutely described at Ascension.
The submarine lavas in the lower part of the series are mostly feldspathic, whilst in the upper part, on the summit and western flank, they are mostly basaltic.
The rocks are of many kinds, white laminated, sometimes siliceous sandstone, purple and red sandstone, sometimes so highly calcareous as to have a crystalline fracture, argillaceous limestone, black calcareous slate-rock, like that so often described at Copiapo and other places, thinly laminated, fine-grained, greenish, indurated, sedimentary, fusible rocks, approaching in character to the so- called pseudo-honestone of Chile, including thin contemporaneous veins of gypsum, and lastly, much calcareous, laminated porcelain jasper, of a green colour, with red spots, and of extremely easy fusibility: I noticed one conformable stratum of a freckled-brown, feldspathic lava.
Relation between movements of subsidence and volcanic action. Pampean formation. Recent elevatory movements. Long-continued volcanic action in the Cordillera. Conclusion. I have already described the general nature of the rocks in the low country north of Valparaiso, consisting of granites, syenites, greenstones, and altered feldspathic clay-slate.
The strata of this ridge dip westward, the inclination becoming less and less towards the Flagstaff; and the upper feldspathic strata of this hill can be seen, though with some difficulty, to dip conformably to the W.S.W. Close to the Barn, the strata of the ridge are nearly vertical, but are much obscured by innumerable dikes; under this hill, they probably change from being vertical into being inclined into an opposite direction; for the upper or basaltic strata, which are about eight hundred or one thousand feet in thickness, are inclined north-eastward, at an angle between thirty and forty degrees.
The waste swept in by streams contains much feldspar and other minerals softer and more soluble than quartz, and where the waves have little opportunity to wear and winnow it, it comes to rest in beds of sandstone in which grains of feldspar and other soft minerals are abundant. Such feldspathic sandstones are known as ARKOSE.
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