Finally, we have seen that in the extreme eastern point of Tierra del Fuego, the cleavage and coast-lines extend W. and E. and even W.S.W. and E.N.E.: over a large area westward, the cleavage, the main range of mountains, and some subordinate ranges, but not the outlines of the coast, strike W.N.W., and E.S.E.: in the central and western parts of the St. of Magellan, the stratification, the mountain-ranges, the outlines of the coast, and the cleavage all strike nearly N.W. and S.E. North of the strait, the outline of the coast, and the mountains on the mainland, run nearly north and south. Hence we see, at this southern point of the continent, how gradually the Cordillera bend, from their north and south course of so many thousand miles in length, into an E. and even E.N.E. direction.
WEST COAST, FROM THE SOUTHERN CHONOS ISLANDS TO NORTHERN CHILE.
The first place at which we landed north of the St. of Magellan was near Cape Tres Montes, in latitude 47 degrees S. Between this point and the Northern Chonos Islands, a distance of 200 miles, the "Beagle" visited several points, and specimens were collected for me from the intermediate spaces by Lieutenant Stokes. The predominant rock is mica-slate, with thick folia of quartz, very frequently alternating with and passing into a chloritic, or into a black, glossy, often striated, slightly anthracitic schist, which soils paper, and becomes white under a great heat, and then fuses. Thin layers of feldspar, swelling at intervals into well crystallised kernels, are sometimes included in these black schists; and I observed one mass of the ordinary black variety insensibly lose its fissile structure, and pass into a singular mixture of chlorite, epidote, feldspar, and mica. Great veins of quartz are numerous in the mica-schists; wherever these occur the folia are much convoluted. In the southern part of the Peninsula of Tres Montes, a compact altered feldspathic rock with crystals of feldspar and grains of quartz is the commonest variety; this rock exhibits occasionally traces of an original brecciated structure, and often presents (like the altered state of Tierra del Fuego) traces of cleavage- planes, which strike in the same direction with the folia of mica-schist further northward. (The peculiar, abruptly conical form of the hills in this neighbourhood, would have led any one at first to have supposed that they had been formed of injected or intrusive rocks. At Inchemo Island, a similar rock gradually becomes granulo-crystalline and acquires scales of mica; and this variety at S. Estevan becomes highly laminated, and though still exhibiting some rounded grains of quartz, passes into the black, glossy, slightly anthracitic schist, which, as we have seen, repeatedly alternates with and passes into the micaceous and chloritic schists. Hence all the rocks on this line of coast belong to one series, and insensibly vary from an altered feldspathic clay-slate into largely foliated, true mica-schist.
The cleavage of the homogeneous schists, the foliation of those composed of more or less distinct minerals in layers, and the planes of alternation of the different varieties or so-called stratification, are all parallel, and preserve over this 200 miles of coast a remarkable degree of uniformity in direction. At the northern end of the group, at Low's Harbour, the well- defined folia of mica-schist everywhere ranged within eight degrees (or less than one point of the compass) of N. 19 degrees W. and S. 19 degrees E.; and even the point of dip varied very little, being always directed to the west and generally at an angle of forty degrees; I should mention that I had here good opportunities of observation, for I followed the naked rock on the beach, transversely to the strike, for a distance of four miles and a half, and all the way attended to the dip. Along the outer islands for 100 miles south of Low's Harbour, Lieutenant Stokes, during his boat- survey, kindly observed for me the strike of the foliation, and he assures me that it was invariably northerly, and the dip with one single exception to the west.