188 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



streams. Such streams taking their rise on one or the 

 other side of a range, the number of them must in 

 some measure modify the plan of the whole, although 

 the breadth of the entire range is not affected. What 

 is called the Great Swamp of the region is in itself an 

 extensive and high-lying tract observable especially 

 from the last long slope. One has no opportunity to 

 examine the different rocks except in so far as these 

 appear along the road, only six feet wide ; everything 

 else being covered with stumps, roots, trees, leaves, 

 grass, and swamp. What most commonly appears at 

 the surface is the often mentioned laminated sandstone, 

 which is everywhere of a very fine grain but pretty 

 hard ; the eye seldom discovers micaceous constituents ; 

 the smell shows the clay content. The color is of many 

 sorts : white, grey, blueish, reddish, reddish-brown 

 &c. Each particular fragment, solid as it may appear 

 at the first glance, is made up of divers and diversly 

 thick plates, close bound together ; such is the appear- 

 ance on breaking. All these hills are superficially 

 overlaid with this sort of stone. Not only along the 

 roads, but in the few open and level spots there are 

 seen millions of fragments or scales of this stone ; it 

 is rarely found at the surface in a dense stratified for- 

 mation. What was the cause of this general shatter- 

 ing of the uppermost layers ? Frost and weather may 

 have done somewhat ; but the explanation of the people 

 hereabouts is not entirely from the purpose. They 

 liken this burst upper shell of the mountains to the 

 bark of a tree split by its growth, and a few form the 

 erroneous conclusion that their mountains grow. But 

 that by some ancient convulsion of these mountains 

 their shell may have been so cracked to fragments, 

 this may be indeed supposed. 



