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Where the bottom is loose sandy earth, the vacuum process, as it is termed, is often employed; that is, the air is pumped out from the interior, and the superincumbent pressure then causes the caisson to sink and the earth to rise within it.
Acres and acres of ruins, dating from the centuries immediately before our era, lie stretched along the valley here, just showing their heads above the weight of superincumbent sand which has invaded and overwhelmed the past glories of this district.
Unfortunately, the parts excavated, upon the removal of the objects of art discovered, were immediately filled up in lieu of pillars, or supports to the superincumbent mass being erected. As the work of disentombment had long since ceased, nothing remained to be seen but part of the theatre, the descent to which is by a staircase made for the purpose.
The red lava of deep revolutionary fires oozed up through many glowing cracks in the political crust, and all the social strata were shaken. That the wild outbursts of insurrection midway in the fifth decade failed and died away was not surprising, for the superincumbent deposits of tradition and convention were thick.
Nor let it be assumed that the Peuquenes and Portillo ranges have undergone only movements of elevation; for we shall hereafter see, that the bottom of the sea subsided several thousand feet during the deposition of strata, occupying the same relative place in the Cordillera, with those of the Peuquenes ridge; moreover, we shall see from the unequivocal evidence of buried upright trees, that at a somewhat later period, during the formation of the Uspallata chain, which corresponds geographically with that of the Portillo, there was another subsidence of many thousand feet: here, indeed, in the valley of Tenuyan, the accumulation of the coarse stratified conglomerate to a thickness of fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, offers strong presumptive evidence of subsidence; for all existing analogies lead to the belief that large pebbles can be transported only in shallow water, liable to be affected by currents and movements of undulation and if so, the shallow bed of the sea on which the pebbles were first deposited must necessarily have sunk to allow of the accumulation of the superincumbent strata.
This was the first intimation Miss Oldbuck had received that the young stranger was to be their guest for the night; and such was the surprise with which she was struck by a proposal so uncommon, that, had the superincumbent weight of her head-dress, such as we before described, been less preponderant, her grey locks must have started up on end, and hurled it from its position.
Whether that oil was produced from animal or vegetable substances, appears, even now, a matter of dispute. Some naturalists suppose that vast numbers of oil-giving creatures had been assembled in the districts in which these oil wells are now found, and the oil was pressed out of them by a superincumbent weight of rock.
Thus, at Navidad, the strata are about eight hundred feet in thickness, and the fossil shells are abundant both at the level of the sea and some way up the cliffs; having sent a list of these fossils to Professor E. Forbes, he thinks they must have lived in water between one and ten fathoms in depth: hence the bottom of the sea on which these shells once lived must have subsided at least 700 feet to allow of the superincumbent matter being deposited.
Because the ice is built into the glacier at a temperature considerably below the freezing point, it requires a great thickness of the mass before the superincumbent weight is sufficient to bring about melting in its lower parts.
In times of literary activity, as at the beginning of the present century, the atmosphere of passion or speculation envelop the entire island, and Scottish and English writers simultaneously draw from it what their peculiar natures prompt just as in the same garden the rose drinks crimson and the convolvulus azure from the superincumbent air.
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