The Landward Faces Of The Hills Are
Disposed At A Sloping Angle, Contrasting Strongly With The
Perpendicularity Of Their Seaward Sides, And I Found No Inner Range
Corresponding With, And Parallel To, The Maritime Chain.
Nowhere had I
seen a land in which Earth’s anatomy lies so barren, or one richer in
volcanic and primary formations.[FN#19] Especially
[P.74] towards the South, the hills were abrupt and highly vertical,
with black and barren flanks, ribbed with furrows and fissures, with
wide and formidable precipices and castellated summits like the work of
man. The predominant formation was basalt, called the Arabs’ Hajar
Jahannam, or Hell-stone; here and there it is porous and cellular; in
some places compact and black; and in others coarse and gritty, of a
tarry colour, and when fractured shining with bright points. Hornblende
is common at Al-Madinah and throughout this part of Al-Hijaz: it crops
out of the ground edgeways, black and brittle. Greenstone, diorite, and
actinolite are found, though not so abundantly as those above
mentioned. The granites, called in Arabic Suwan,[FN#20] abound. Some
are large-grained, of a pink colour, and appear in blocks, which,
flaking off under the influence of the atmosphere, form ooidal blocks
and boulders piled in irregular heaps. Others are grey and compact
enough to take a high polish when cut. The syenite is generally coarse,
although there is occasionally found a rich red variety of that stone.
I did not see eurite or euritic porphyry except in small pieces, and
the same may be said of the petrosilex and the milky and waxy
quartz.[FN#21] In some parts, particularly between Yambu’ and Al-Madinah,
there is an abundance of tawny
[p.75] yellow gneiss markedly stratified.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 91 of 630
Words from 24538 to 24832
of 175520
