362 THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE 
of spruce and fir, and emerges upon the crest of the ridge, this 
lovely plain lies spread out beneath like a picture. With white 
Jure clouds sailing across a blue sky, patches of shadow and 
sunlight sweeping across the squares and parallelograms of deep 
brown ploughed-land, pink and white apple-orchards and grass- 
green marsh to the purple slopes of tidal flats and blue sparkling 
waters of the basin, this plain presents a picture to the onlooker 
that is in the strongest contrast to the rough hard lines and 
sombre coloring of the land and life at his back, for the life 
necessarily reflects the character of the land whence it draws 
its sustenance. 
Here again, to the underlying rock, hidden by its own debris 
except where tidal scour has swept away the crumbling fragments 
from the shore, is due the soil and surface that makes Cornwallis 
the garden of Nova Scotia. It is red sandstone, in some parts 
coarse and gravelly but mainly fine-grained, rapidly breaking up 
with rain and frost and forming a sandy loam particularly 
adapted to the growth of root-crops and fruit trees, 
The southern edge of this plain meets the northern edge of a 
gentle slope which, within a mile or two, rises to an older loftier 
plain some five hundred or six hundred feet above the sea, 
Although carved and sculptured along its borders by water- 
courses, the uniform elevation of the detached ridges and the 
main mass, and the regular and even sky-line when viewed from 
the crest of the North Mountain opposite, point to it as a base- 
leveled and then elevated and dissected plain, and to the essential 
unity of the separated ridges and the central portion. 
This third band stretches for about seven miles to, and then 
beyond, the southeast county line. Towards the eastern border 
ot the county it descends somewhat and is abruptly truncated 
by the Avon River, forming the well-known Horton Bluffs. Its 
southwestern extension forms the central watershed of the 
province. 
Within this strip the surface is generally level, with low hills, 
sluggish drainage and abundant lakes in the inner portions, steep 
slopes, rapid streams and deep water-courses along the borders: 
