Note 51 — THE PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA: AND THE FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN, FROM THE CREST OF THE ANDES.
Elizabeth Juliana Sabine translation
p. 282.—“At upwards of twelve thousand feet above the sea we found fossil marine shells.”
See my Essai géognostique sur le Gisement des Roches, 1823, p. 236; and for the first zoological determination of the fossils contained in the cretaceous group in the chain of the Andes, see Léop. de Buch, Pétrifications recueillies en Amérique, par Alex. de. Humboldt et Charles Degenhardt, 1839 (in fol.), pp. 2-3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 18-22. Pentland found fossil shells of the Silurian formation in Bolivia, on the Nevado de Antakäua, at the height of 16400 French (17480 English) feet, (Mary Somerville, Physical Geography, 1849, Vol. i. p. 185).