From Our Commanding Position I Had Observed A Peculiar Mound With A
Cliff-Face Half A Mile To The West, Which Exhibited The Unusual Colour
Of A Bright Lemon Yellow In Close Conjunction With Red Of Various
Shades.
Upon crossing numerous fields of barley, which the reapers had
just attacked (14th April), I descended a ravine at the foot of this
peculiar formation, which I carefully examined.
Since we had crossed the plain of Morphu and quitted the compact
limestone of the Carpas range we had entered upon an interesting
geological change. Eruptive rocks had burst through the marls and
calcareous sedimentary limestone of the coast and had produced very
curious examples of metamorphous rocks, where the marls and limestone
had been in immediate contact with the plutonic. The cliff above me was
about fifty feet high, as I stood at its base within a shallow gorge
that formed a brook during the rainy season.
The bottom upon which I stood was a mass of debris of bright colours,
varying from pure white to different shades of yellow and red. This
material appeared to have fallen recently, as the blocks did not exhibit
the dull exterior that would have resulted from atmospherical exposure.
I climbed up the steep face of crumbled matter with some difficulty, as
the sharply inclined surface descended with me, emitting a peculiar
metallic clink like masses of broken porcelain. On arrival at the top I
remarked that only a few inches of vegetable mould covered a stratum of
white marl about a foot thick, and this had been pierced in many places
by the heat that had fused the marl and converted it into a clinker or
sharply-edged white slag, mixed with an ochreous yellow and bright red.
I had never met with anything like this singular example of igneous
action upon marls. In the neighbourhood there were considerable masses
of the same clinker-like material exhibiting a honeycombed appearance,
that would have been well adapted for millstones. The natives informed
me that all the millstones of the northern coast were imported from
Athens. I had heard while at Kythrea that the stones for the very
numerous mills of that neighbourhood were supplied from Alexandretta,
and that none of native origin were employed. There can be no doubt that
some of the specimens I examined of this material combined the
requirements of extreme hardness, porosity, and sharpness of interior
edges around the honeycombed cavities. I walked over the mountain, and
quickly lost the marl in masses of plutonic rocks that had been upheaved
and entirely occupied the surface. Although vast blocks lay heaped in
the wildest confusion, they exhibited the peculiar characteristics of
all Cyprian rocks (excepting the calcareous limestone) in their utter
want of compactness. I have never seen in Cyprus any hard rock (except
jurassic limestone), whether gneiss, syenite, or others, that would
yield an unblemished stone to the mason's chisel of ten feet in length
by a square of two feet. This peculiarity is not the result of decay,
but the entire mass has been fractured by volcanic disturbance and by
the rapid cooling of molten matter upheaved from beneath the sea.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 129 of 274
Words from 66919 to 67448
of 143016