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.
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