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The white pumiceous mudstone, with its abundant gypsum, belongs to the same general epoch with the underlying fossiliferous mass, as may be inferred from the shells included in the intercalated layers at Nuevo Gulf, S. Julian, and S. Cruz.
Turritella Patagonica, G.B. Sowerby. The fossiliferous strata, when not denuded, are conformably covered by a considerable thickness of the fine-grained pumiceous mudstone, divided into two masses: the lower half is very fine-grained, slightly unctuous, and so compact as to break with a semi-conchoidal fracture, though yielding to the nail; it includes laminae of selenite: the upper half precisely resembles the one layer at the Rio Negro, and with the exception of being whiter, the upper beds at San Josef and Nuevo Gulf.
This bed includes three layers of coarse, black, calcareous, somewhat slaty rock: the upper part passes into a compact red sandstone. The part of the valley in which the following beds are seen is near Potrero Seco. Bed 5, compact, fine-grained, pale greenish-grey, non- calcareous, indurated mudstone, easily fusible into a pale green and white glass.
Bed 8, a greenish mudstone, with several layers of gypsum. Bed 9, a highly indurated, easily fusible, white tuff, thickly mottled with ferruginous matter, and including some white semi-porcellanic layers, which are interlaced with ferruginous veins. This stone closely resembles some of the commonest varieties in the Uspallata chain.
At the head of the inner harbour of Port S. Julian, the fossiliferous mass is not displayed, and the sea-cliffs from the water's edge to a height of between one and two hundred feet are formed of the white pumiceous mudstone, which here includes innumerable, far-extended, sometimes horizontal, sometimes inclined or vertical laminae of transparent gypsum, often about an inch in thickness.
The longest stump stood seven feet out of the ground: the roots, if they are still preserved, are buried and concealed. No one layer of the mudstone appeared much darker than the others, as if it had formerly existed as soil, nor could this be expected, for the same agents which replaced with silex and lime the wood of the trees, would naturally have removed all vegetable matter from the soil.
The white indurated tuff, bed 11, here contains little or no gypsum, whereas on the northern and opposite side of the valley, it is of much greater thickness and abounds with layers of gypsum, some of them alternating with thin seams of crystalline carbonate of lime. The uppermost, dark-coloured, hard mudstone, bed 12, is in this neighbourhood the most constant stratum.
The white, pumiceous, trachytic tuff-like varieties are of rather greater specific gravity than the pumiceous mudstone on the coast to the north; some of the layers, especially the browner ones, are coarser, so that the broken crystals are distinguishable with a weak lens. The layers vary in character in short distances.
The sedimentary strata alternating with the lavas on the crest and western side, are of an almost infinitely varying nature; but a large proportion of them closely resemble those already described on the eastern flank: there are white and brown, indurated, easily fusible tuffs, some passing into pale blue and green semi-porcellanic rocks, others into brownish and purplish sandstones and gritstones, often including grains of quartz, others into mudstone containing broken crystals and particles of rock, and occasionally single large pebbles.
Bed 12, dull purplish or greenish or dark-grey, very compact and much indurated mudstone: estimated at 1,500 feet in thickness: in some parts this rock assumes the character of an imperfect coarse clay-slate; but viewed under a lens, the basis always has a mottled appearance, with the edges of the minute component particles blending together.
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