Darwin and How We Know Where Lehi Landed – Part I

When South America is suggested as the Land of Promise, most people scoff at the idea, claiming it is too large an area for the distances suggested in the Book of Mormon and dismiss it out of hand. This is typically done without any effort to look into the information available and then make a decision. But mot theorists make up their mind that there is nothing to recommend Andean South America as the home of the Nephites and Chile as Lehi’s landing site.

The HMS Beagle, a Cherokee-class 19-gun brig-sloop of the British Royal navy that was adapted to a survey barque that took Darwin to South America 

    Some of the information that connects the Land of Promise to South America is found in, of all places, Charles Darwin, and his experiences. Darwin sailed on the HMS Beagle along the West Coast of South America in 1835 as well as traveling inland, as well as traveling over the Andes to Argentina where he found interesting artifacts in the heights of the Andes mountains.

Crossing the Andes between Santiago, Chile, and Mendoza, Argentina

    Darwin spent almost three years in southern Argentina and Chile, during which time he crossed the Andes on a trip from Santiago, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina, through the Uspallata o La Cumbre Pass, between the Piuquenes and Portillo passes. During this expedition he noted the episodic uplift of the Andes with the rise of the Principal Cordillera first and a later uplift of the Frontal Cordillera. He found numberless shells protruding from the same pale band of limestone. As Darwin gathered fossil shells in the mountains, he saw that they were similar to ones he had previously collected on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean far below, and also realized they had at some time in the past rested on the ocean bottom.
    In addition, he knew that at some unknown process of upheaval, the once low-lying beds of the Andes had been elevated to a height of 13,000 feet. He concluded that the Andes had not been wholly created by the molten outpourings of volcanoes, as geologists had then believed.
   Today, of course, we know that Darwin was right. The friction of the Earth's slowly drifting crustal plates has in many re­gions wrinkled the ocean floors and pushed up great mountain ranges along the edges of several continents, the highest in the western hemisphere and second only to the Himalayas.

Seas shells that Darwin found at 13,000 feet in the Andes that once were on the seashore of the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles away

The fossils Darwin collected on this high mountain helped to change his ideas and ultimately those of the world about the age of the Earth. For such shell-bear­ing sediment to have been uplifted from sea floor to mountain crest would have taken millions and millions of years, Darwin recognized.
    It should be noted that today we also know that the Andes are the youngest mountains in the world, having most recently been elevated to their present heights. It is also believed that It's been understood that the Andes mountain range has been growing as the Nazca oceanic plate slips underneath the South American continental plate, causing the Earth's crust to shorten (by folding and faulting) and thicken, moving upward beneath the Andes. In his journals he wrote about what he found there--and so much of it falls right in line with what we have learned from Nephi’s descriptions of where they landed, that it seems apropos to quote him and what he found and what is there.
    First of all, we have been suggesting that Nephi gave us several clues about his landing site and how he got there that are often ignored by Theorists touting their own pre-determined area for the Land of Promise as he told us:
1. Wind and waves that took his ship “driven forth before the wind” from Arabia to where he landed (1 Nephi 18:8-9);
2. He landed in an area where the Climate was conducive to planning seeds from the Mediterranean Climate of Jerusalem that grew exceedingly and provided an abundant harvest (1 Nephi 18:24);
3. A nearby forest where animals of every kind were found, both feral (one domesticated) and iwld animals (1 Nephi 18:25);
4. Nearby deposits of natural ore of gold, silver and copper were found (1 Nephi 18:25).
    26-year-old Charles Darwin arrived in Coquimbo on May 15, 1835 (June, July and August are the main winter months, with May, June and mostly July, the rainy months). He traveled overland from Valparaiso, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina, a journey of 255 miles (215 miles as the crow flies). He made this journey in 18 days, having left Valparaiso on April 27. While at Coquimbo, he was told there were about 6,000 inhabitants of the area (Coquimbo, La Serena, etc.)
    Darwin, basically a geologist from his University period, spent much time describing the geologic and mining properties of Chile. He wrote of the mines he visited, “They were mostly gold, silver and copper mines, though they also had iron, and non-metals of boron, lithium, sodium nitrate and potassium salts. [Also] there were silver mines near Coquimbo, as well as copper and gold mines.” He also wrote about the Chilean economy of Coquimbo and La Serena: “Like the other towns in the North of Chile, it depends for its support on the mines.” In fact, Darwin described the hills he passed “were so drilled through with mines, it seemed like banks of rabbits.”

Map of La Serena and Coquimbo along the Bay, as well as the major deposits of gold, silver and copper next to La Serena, and the Forest with wild and feral (domesticated) animals. Coquimbo means “calm waters,” and Coquimbo Bay means “calm waters of the bay"

Today, 18 miles from La Serena (20 miles from Lehi’s landing) is the Topado quartz-vein gold ore deposit along the Elqui River where three veins contain 50 million tons of ore, with about 175 tons of gold and 500,000 tons of copper (with a gold recovery ratio of 98%).
    A short distance to the north are three gold-silver-copper mines, the Inesita, Marianita, and Paguanta mines, and a little further is the Carmelita gold-silver-copper mine situated on 2,400 hectares, with Copper grades ranging from 4.59% to 0.83%, Gold grades ranging from 1/t (grams per ton) to 0.1 g/t and Silver grades ranging from 11 g/t to 1 g/t, and has a long history of mining dating back to the 1800's.
    In the past, artesian (small scale subsistence) miners known locally as piquineros (quarrymen from Coquimbo) mined the property for its rich high grade copper, silver and gold hosted breccias (rock of broken fragments), and vein structures. 20 miles to the south of La Serena is the Andacollo, an open-pit gold and copper mine. Andacolla, by the way, is a Quechua word (Anta-Goya) which means cobre-reina, or Copper Queen.

    Eleven miles east of La Serena is the Arqueros Ag Mining District (La Serena, Elqui Valley, and Coquimbo), a major silver mining area; 9 miles further is the Talcuna Mining District, with Copper and Silver mines, and 14 miles south of Coquimbo is the large copper mining district of Tambillos; 10 miles beyond that is the copper-silver mine of La Quebrada, and throughout the Coquimbo District are numerous other silver, copper and gold mines. 
    As Darwin recorded, “I spent half of the ensuring day in examining the mines—the mineral extends over a few miles of hilly country and abounds with silver mines [that] produced 2,000 pounds weight of silver a year.”
    All the large Chilean fortunes have been made by mines of the richer metals.” He went on to write that a Dr. Deward returned to England from the area taking with him the profits of a share of a silver mine that amounted to 120,000 pounds.”
    Darwin writes of another mining district up the Elqui valley, which is adjacent to La Serena, on the east side. Again, silver, gold and copper was found and mined there. In fact, from Coquimbo to Atacama, there are 339 gold, silver and copper mine projects in this 438-mile area.
    Inland from the coast are gold, silver and copper Condoriaco mine northeast of La Serena, also Pascua, Lama, El Indio-Tambo, Andacollo, Punitaqui, Rio Frio, and El Bronce de Petorce mines of the La Serena District Belt—there are numerous other mines to the north, east and south of this belt as well. 

Ore-bearing rocks in sight on the ground that have been gathered until only a few such areas can be found today. Such rocks would have been visible to Nephi for him to have knowledge of gold silver and copper as he journeyed in the wilderness 

All of this merely shows that Nephi knew what he was talking about when he described two things: 1) In the direct vicinity of where Lehi landed, were ores of precious and non-precious metals in abundance; and 2) Much of the ore in the area of landing contained both gold and silver (precious metals) and copper (non-precious metal).
(See the next post, “Darwin and How Do We Know Where Lehi Landed – Part II, ”for more on Darwin’s comments that support the book of Mormon.