245 



Owing to the favorable slope of the strata, beds of sandstone 

 are here easily split up and removed, so that building stones are 

 obtained at a very low cost. 



On examining the "posts" of the quarry, we found that 

 stones of from one foot to eight feet in thickness, and of any 

 desired length and width could be obtained, and that the supply 

 of uniform colored stones could be procured in abundance. 



At present, most of the stones sent from Mary's Point are 

 sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, no agency hav- 

 ing been yet established in Boston for the sale of them. 



ACADIAN IRON MINES, IN LONDONDERRY, N. S. 



Travelling around the head of Cumberland Bay, we pass over 

 the rich dyked meadows originally reclaimed from the tidal 

 overflowing by the first French settlers, and at length reach the 

 Cobequid Mountains, which consist of sienite and greenstone 

 rocks of igneous origin, and highly metamorphic olive-colored 

 slates which immediately underlie the gray sandstones of the 

 coal formation. 



Mr. Dawson, in his Acadian Geology, describes these slates as 

 Devonian, which their stratigraphic position seems to indicate, 

 but we find no fossils in the metamorphic rocks, to aid us in 

 determining their precise equivalency. The line of their uplift 

 is nearly east and west, and does not run parallel with that of 

 the south mountains of Nova Scotia, which will presently be 

 described, as belonging to the N. E.-S. W. system, and which 

 are Silurian, and of the same age as the Niagara and Clinton 

 groups of the New York system. On the southern slope of the 

 Cobequid range, in these olive-colored slates, exist innumerable 

 and extensive deposits of ochreous oxide of iron, amorphous and 

 botryoidal hrematite, specular iron ore, and a mixture of spathose 

 iron ore, and magnesian carbonate of lime, known under the 

 name of Ankerite, which is also penetrated by abundant small 

 veins, and investing masses of micaceous specular iron ore, 

 which appears to have been introduced by plutonic sublimation. 

 There is geological evidence of the igneous origin of the numer- 

 ous veins of Ankerite, and it is highly probable, as has been 

 suggested by Mr. Dawson, that the immense deposits of yellow 



