Note 6 — Chapter I · ON THE ELEVATION OF THE EASTERN COAST OF SOUTH AMERICA.

Before proceeding to the districts southward of La Plata, it may be worth while just to state, that there is some evidence that the coast of Brazil has participated in a small amount of elevation. Mr. Burchell informs me, that he collected at Santos (lat. 24° S.) oyster-shells, apparently recent, some miles from the shore, and quite above the tidal action. Westward of Rio de Janeiro, Captain Elliot is asserted (see Harlan, “Med. and Phys. Res.,” p. 35, and Dr. Meigs, in “Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc.”), to have found human bones, encrusted with sea-shells, between fifteen and twenty feet above the level of the sea. Between Rio de Janeiro and Cape Frio I crossed sandy tracts abounding with sea-shells, at a distance of a league from the coast; but whether these tracts have been formed by upheaval, or through the mere accumulation of drift sand, I am not prepared to assert. At Bahia (lat. 13° S.), in some parts near the coast, there are traces of sea-action at the height of about twenty feet above its present level; there are also, in many parts, remnants of beds of sandstone and conglomerate with numerous recent shells, raised a little above the sea-level. I may add, that at the head of Bahia Bay there is a formation, about forty feet in thickness, containing tertiary shells apparently of fresh-water origin, now washed by the sea and encrusted with Balini; this appears to indicate a small amount of subsidence subsequent to its deposition. At Pernambuco (lat. 8° S.), in the alluvial or tertiary cliffs, surrounding the low land on which the city stands, I looked in vain for organic remains, or other evidence of changes in level.