Port S. Julian is the most southerly point (latitude 49 degrees to 50 degrees) at which salinas are known to occur. (According to Azara "Travels" volume 1 page 56, there are salt-lakes as far north as Chaco (latitude 25 degrees), on the banks of the Vermejo. The salt-lakes of Siberia appear (Pallas "Travels" English Translation volume 1 page 284) to occur in very similar depressions to those of Patagonia.) The depressions, in which these salt-lakes lie, are from a few feet to sixty metres, as asserted by M. d'Orbigny, below the surface of the surrounding plains ("Voyage Geolog." page 63.); and, according to this same author, near the Rio Negro they all trend, either in the N.E. and S.W. or in E. and W. lines, coincident with the general slope of the plain. These depressions in the plain generally have one side lower than the others, but there are no outlets for drainage. Under a less dry climate, an outlet would soon have been formed, and the salt washed away. The salinas occur at different elevations above the sea; they are often several leagues in diameter; they are generally very shallow, but there is a deep one in a quartz-rock formation near C. Blanco. In the wet season, the whole, or a part, of the salt is dissolved, being redeposited during the succeeding dry season. At this period the appearance of the snow-white expanse of salt crystallised in great cubes, is very striking. In a large salina, northward of the Rio Negro, the salt at the bottom, during the whole year, is between two and three feet in thickness.
The salt rests almost always on a thick bed of black muddy sand, which is fetid, probably from the decay of the burrowing worms inhabiting it. (Professor Ehrenberg examined some of this muddy sand, but was unable to find in it any infusoria.) In a salina, situated about fifteen miles above the town of El Carmen on the Rio Negro, and three or four miles from the banks of that river, I observed that this black mud rested on gravel with a calcareous matrix, similar to that spread over the whole surrounding plains: at Port S. Julian the mud, also, rested on the gravel: hence the depressions must have been formed anteriorly to, or contemporaneously with, the spreading out of the gravel. I was informed that one small salina occurs in an alluvial plain within the valley of the Rio Negro, and therefore its origin must be subsequent to the excavation of that valley. When I visited the salina, fifteen miles above the town, the salt was beginning to crystallise, and on the muddy bottom there were lying many crystals, generally placed crossways of sulphate of soda (as ascertained by Mr. Reeks), and embedded in the mud, numerous crystals of sulphate of lime, from one to three inches in length: M. d'Orbigny states that some of these crystals are acicular and more than even nine inches in length ("Voyage Geolog." page 64.); others are macled and of great purity: those I found all contained some sand in their centres. As the black and fetid sand overlies the gravel, and that overlies the regular tertiary strata, I think there can be no doubt that these remarkable crystals of sulphate of lime have been deposited from the waters of the lake. The inhabitants call the crystals of selenite, the padre del sal, and those of the sulphate of soda, the madre del sal; they assured me that both are found under the same circumstances in several of the neighbouring salinas; and that the sulphate of soda is annually dissolved, and is always crystallised before the common salt on the muddy bottom. (This is what might have been expected; for M. Ballard asserts "Acad. des Sciences" October 7, 1844, that sulphate of soda is precipitated from solution more readily from water containing muriate of soda in excess, than from pure water.) The association of gypsum and salt in this case, as well as in the superficial deposits of Iquique, appears to me interesting, considering how generally these substances are associated in the older stratified formations.
Mr. Reeks has analysed for me some of the salt from the salina near the Rio Negro; he finds it composed entirely of chloride of sodium, with the exception of 0.26 of sulphate of lime and of 0.22 of earthy matter: there are no traces of iodic salts.