Stone Runs

In many parts of the island the bottoms of the valleys are covered in an extraordinary manner by myriads of great loose angular fragments of the quartz rock, forming ‘streams of stones’.  These have been mentioned with surprise by every voyager since the time of Pernety.  The blocks are not waterworn, their angles being only a little blunted; they vary in size from one or two feet in diameter to ten, or even more than twenty times as much. ….  

In a valley south of Berkeley Sound, which some of our party called the ‘great valley of fragments’, it was necessary to cross an uninterrupted band half a mile wide, by jumping from one pointed stone to another.  So large were the fragments, that being overtaken by a shower of rain, I readily found shelter beneath one of them. ….  

In some places a continuous stream of these fragments followed up the course of a valley, and even extended to the very crest of the hill.  On these crests huge masses, exceeding in dimensions any small building, seemed to stand arrested in their headlong course; there, also, the curved strata of the archways lay piled on each other, like the ruins of some vast and ancient cathedral. ….

We may imagine that streams of white lava had flowed from many parts of the mountains into the lower country, and that when solidified they had been rent by some enormous convulsion into myriads of fragments.  The expression ‘stream of stones’, which immediately occurred to everyone, conveys the same idea.  These scenes are on the spot rendered more striking by the contrast of the low, rounded forms of the neighbouring hills.

Charles Darwin, Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by HMS Beagle under the command of Captain FitzRoy RN from 1832 to 1836

Source: ‘The Future of the Falkland Islands and its People’ by Lyubomir Ivanov et. al. published by Double T. Publishers (2003)

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