Charles Darwin – The Voyage of the BeagleIn May 1834, the Beagle cleared Tierra del Fuego to enter the Pacific Ocean and
headed north to Valparaiso where it began its hydrographic surveys up down the west
coast of South America. While anchored off the island of Chiloe, they observed the
snow-covered cone of the Orsono volcano spewing huge volumes of ash and smoke
and Darwin describes the erupting volcano:
At midnight the sentry observed something like a large star, which gradually increased in
size till about three o’clock, when it presented a magnificent spectacle. By the aid of a glass,
dark objects, in constant succession, were seen, in the midst of a great glare of red light,
to be thrown up and fall down. The light was sufficient to cast on the water a long bright
reflection.One month later while he was resting in a wood outside Valdivia, Darwin felt the
ground shake. Leaping to his feet he had no difficulty standing upright but the motion
made him giddy and he wrote:
A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of
solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid – one second of time has
created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity which hours of reflection would not have
produced ... and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the
insignificance of his boasted power.Darwin was standing near the junction where the Nazca Plate slides gradually
beneath the western edge of the continental South American Plate, causing the uplift
of the Andes Mountains and volcanic eruptions down the west coast of South America.
The South American continental plate was on the move and arriving in the harbour
of Concepcion the crew of the Beagle found that not a house was left standing, as the
tsunami wave generated by the earthquake had washed them away and the coast was
strewn with timber and furniture. Darwin saw the human tragedy of the collapsed
homes and the smashed buildings caused by the earthquake, but significantly he
observed how these geological forces had driven the land higher:
The most remarkable effect of this earthquake was the permanent elevation of the land,
though it would probably be more correct to speak of it as the cause. There can be no doubt
that the land round the Bay of Concepcion was raised two or three feet ... and at the island
of San Maria (about thirty miles distant) the elevation was greater; on one part, Captain75