BS} LIMONITE AND LIMESTONES—GILPIN, 
Carboniferous measures rise to a lesser height, in gentle undula- 
tions, and present a pleasing succession of well cultivated fields, 
backed by the dark wall of the hemlock and spruce woods. 
Between these two landscapes, so widely differing, runs the 
East River in graceful curves, presenting alike to each broad 
elm shaded intervale, as if desirous of hiding the fact that ages 
ago it must have cut its channel chiefly in the softer Carboni- 
ferous measures, 
However, we must leave these lighter studies of the Geologist, 
and confine ourselves to the more prosaic subject of Iron ores 
and Limestones. 
On entering the County of Pictou by the Intercolonial Rail- 
way, the Lower Carboniferous are met near Glengarry Station, 
and from that point their line of contact with the Silurian runs 
in a general N. E. course, toward the Gulf, with a long funnel- 
shaped arm following the valley of the east branch of the East 
River, toward the south. 
The Lower Carboniferous measures of Pictou County, as met 
in the various natural exposures, are largely made up of highly 
arenaceous red shales, breaking with a conchoidal uneven fracture, 
and seldom holding fossils. These shales pass on one hand into 
massive bedded white and grey Sandstones, yielding many frag- 
ments of Carbonized plants, and on the other, into fine fissile 
clays, frequently calcareous, full of fossils, and holding nodular 
bands of impure Limestone. There are also beds of Gypsum, 
red and purple marls, and Limestones of various thickness and 
purity, and.a few beds of black bituminous shales. 
At one point these measures are penetrated by Diorite dykes, 
and in many places the traces of metamorphic action are shown 
by veins of specular ore. 
Conglomerates are rare in the district more immediately under 
consideration, and one insensibly imagines that the beds belong- 
ing to the shores of the Lower Carboniferous ocean have all been 
in great’ measure swept off. 
These measures rest: unconformably on the edges of the Silurian 
‘strata, with a general dip varying from N. E.'to N. W.,.or away 
from the older rocks, This inclination is :preserved, with oceca- 
