36 THE BUII-DING OF AN ISLAND. 



eastern and western borders of the town of Christiansted, at Judith's Fancy 

 and at many other places, such a dip may be observ^ed. High dips are, in fact, 

 general, in whatever direction the rocks may slope. Although occasionally less 

 than 45 degrees, it is in some places much greater ; near West End, for ex- 

 ample, where the road past " Wheel of Fortune " runs over the upturned edges 

 of these rocks, the dip reaches as high as 70 or 80; at " Waiter's Point," south 

 of Christiansted, on the southern shore, some of the layers are absolutely iip- 

 rio/d ; while along the south shore of " Buck Island " the tilting of the strata 

 has been carried further still, so that some of the layers, which at one place are 

 vertical, are, at a short distance farther on along the shore, carried so far over 

 that they actually pass the upright and so come to dip in the opposite direc- 

 tion, showing what the geologists call a "reversed dip." 



Relative Positions of the Two Formations. 



There is no spot known to the present writer where the limestone forma- 

 tion mav be seen in actual contact with the rocks of the older formation. 

 While, however, there does not appear to be any exhibition of the actual con- 

 tact of the two formations, there are many places where the relative positions 

 of the two sets of rocks are plain enough. For example, on the Bulow's 

 Minde hill, where the limestone which caps the hill is succeeded lower down by 

 "blue-beach" rocks, as shown in "gravel pits" and by the gravelly character 

 of the soil. The same is seen at a point further south namely, on the hill 

 near Granard, where the brow of the hill looking east shows limestone beds, 

 while lower down these are succeeded by gravelly soil derived from the older 

 formation. Again at West End (Frederiksted) the limestone formation extends 

 eastwards to include the small hill back of the town, and then gives way to the 

 gravelly deposits derived from and extending towards the "blue-beach" hills. 

 The neighbourhood of West End presents, indeed, a most interesting exhibi- 

 tion of the relations between the two sets of rocks. It has already been men- 

 tioned that the layers of the older rocks have been lifted to very high angles 

 (70 or 80 degrees), and thev may be seen in a gravel pit and in the road 

 trenches from near Concordia to near Wheel of Fortune. They dip at the 

 steep angles named towards south by east, and the roadway runs on the up- 

 turned edges, as shown in the diagram (Fig. 14). These layers are very dis- 

 tinct as seen in the trenches, and are sometimes shown on the roadway itself 

 in a very interesting manner; the differences in the composition of the various 

 layers have given rise to differences in the rates of their decomposition, so that 

 it has gone deeper into the edges of some of the strata than into the edges of 

 others; hence, some of these edges retain water better than others, and when 

 the road is drying after rain these more absorbent strata arc indicated by damp 

 bands across the roadway. For the same reason vegetation is sometimes seen 

 to be more vigorous along some edges than along others, and in this way a 

 field of guinea-grass east of the town of Frederiksted not infrequently shows 

 the direction of the edges of the strata by alternating bands of a darker and a 



