“...after ascending some rocks there is a great level plain, which extends in every direction but is divided by vallies. I thought I had seen some desart looking country near B. Blanca; but the land in this neighbourhead so far exceeds it in sterility, that this alone deserves the name of a desart. The plain is composed of gravel with very little vegetation & not a drop of water… It is remarkable that on the surface of this plain there are shells of the same sort which now exist…It is therefore certain that within no great number of centuries all this country has been beneath the sea”.
Charles Darwin The Journal of a Voyage in H.M.S. Beagle
December 24th 1833
