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The gypsum, with its associated marls before described, is in greatest force towards the centre of the basin, where the calcaire grossier and calcaire silicieux are less fully developed. In some parts of the Paris basin, sands and marls, called the Gres de Beauchamp, or Sables moyens, divide the gypseous beds from the calcaire grossier proper.
Only at one spot on this western side, on a lofty pinnacle not far from the Cumbre, I saw strata apparently belonging to the gypseous formation, and conformably capping a pile of stratified porphyries.
"A warrior in armor with a gypseous pipe in his hand leans against a table and blows the smoke far away of himself." "A Dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses it till to the background." "Some peasants singing in a cottage. A woman lets drink a child out of a cup." "St. John's head as a boy painted in fresco on a brick."
These fossils seem to occupy nearly the same position with those at the Puente del Inca, namely, at the top of the porphyritic conglomerate, and at the base of the gypseous formation. A little above the Hacienda of Pluclaro, I made a detour on the northern side of the valley, to examine the superincumbent gypseous strata, which I estimated at 6,000 feet in thickness.
The principal divisions into which the lacustrine series may be separated are the following: first, Sandstone, grit, and conglomerate, including red marl and red sandstone; secondly, Green and white foliated marls; thirdly, Limestone, or travertin, often oolitic in structure; fourthly, Gypseous marls.
For the decoration of his monumental doorways and the lining of his richest apartments, the architect chose and committed to the sculptor those fine slabs of gypseous alabaster of which so many examples are to be seen in the Louvre and British Museum.
This gypseous formation, where first met with, lies in a broad valley or basin, a little southward of the mines of Los Hornos: the lower half alone contains gypsum, not in great masses as in the Cordillera, but in innumerable thin layers, seldom more than an inch or two in thickness. The gypsum is either opaque or transparent, and is associated with carbonate of lime.
In several other places also, during the accumulation of the gypseous formation, its basal parts and the underlying porphyritic conglomerate must likewise have been already partially upheaved and exposed to wear and tear; near the Puente del Inca and at Coquimbo, there must have existed masses of mica-schist or some such rock, whence were derived the many small pebbles of opaque quartz.
Only in one or two places, on this south-eastern side of the range, I noticed a narrow fringe of the upper gypseous strata brushed up and inclined south-eastward from it.
This land, or islands, in the northern part of the district of Copiapo, must have been almost exclusively composed, judging from the nature of the pebbles of granite: in the southern parts of Copiapo, it must have been mainly formed of claystone porphyries, with some mica-schist, and with much sandstone and jaspery rocks exactly like the rocks in the gypseous formation, and no doubt belonging to its basal series.
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