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Updated: June 20, 2025
His aim in life is to gain possession of the helmet, the ring, and the treasure, and through them to obtain that Plutonic mastery of the world under the beginnings of which he himself writhed during Alberic's brief reign.
But as some Cretaceous and even Tertiary rocks have been raised to the height of more than 9000 feet in the Pyrenees, we must not assume that plutonic formations of the same periods may not have been brought up and exposed by denudation, at the height of 2000 or 3000 feet on the flanks of that chain. Junction of granite with Jurassic or Oolite strata in the Alps, near Champoleon.
I shall endeavour, in a subsequent chapter on the Plutonic rocks, to explain the manner in which certain masses belonging to each of the four classes of rocks may have originated simultaneously at every geological period, and how the earth's crust may have been continually remodelled, above and below, by aqueous and igneous causes, from times indefinitely remote.
Near Santo Domingo they had been traced for two miles in length, and probably they extend much further. They are what are called fissure-veins, owing their origin to cracks or fractures in the rocks that have been filled up with mineral substances through chemical, thermal, aqueous, or plutonic agencies.
We must not, however, imagine that heat alone, such as may be applied to a stone in the open air, can constitute all that is comprised in Plutonic action. We know that volcanoes in eruption not only emit fluid lava, but give off steam and other heated gases, which rush out in enormous volume, for days, weeks, or years continuously, and are even disengaged from lava during its consolidation.
In the valley of Coquimbo, near to the H. of Gualliguaca, similar plutonic rocks are met with, apparently a southern prolongation of the above chain; and eastward of it we have an escarpment of the porphyritic conglomerate, with the strata inclined at a small angle eastward, which makes the third escarpment, including that nearest the coast.
There was an age in the physical history of the world when great ranges of mountains bound together in everlasting chains the islands which had already grown to continental dimensions, when wide tracts of land, hitherto insular in character, became soldered into one by the upheaval of Plutonic masses which stretched across them all and riveted them forever with bolts of granite, of porphyry, and of basalt.
This defect of nomenclature is to be regretted as likely to mislead the student, because it seems to refer to time; whereas it no longer signifies the age of the rocks, but simply their character. The name Plutonic or Massive rocks is, however, now almost universally substituted for that of Primary.
The Plutonic formations also agree with the volcanic in having veins or ramifications proceeding from central masses into the adjoining rocks, and causing alterations in these last, which will be presently described.
Crystallizing as they cooled, they have stereotyped in imperishable characters the aspect formerly presented by the whole Moon's surface under the influences of recent plutonic upheaval. Our travellers were far more fortunate than the photographers.
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