312 Postelsia 
the feet and make hob-nailed boots a necessity of 
Station comfort. Thus shod and equipped witha 
good hammer, one starts out to investigate this 
bottommost rock of the shore. 
Through the woods eastward to Providence 
Cove one passes on the way a beautiful cascade 
formed where a small stream crosses a hard 
ridge of shale, and also several rock masses 
which show, beneath the accumulations of grow- 
ing and decaying vegetation, the existence every- 
where of this omnipresent shale. On clambering 
down into a charming glen formed where a 
mountain stream for ages has been plunging 
into the river and the sea, the same rocks are 
found but with a somewhat changed structure. 
One is in Providence Cove. 
Here the rocks are compact, hardened 
throughout and made crystalline until they ring 
under the stroke of the hammer. ‘They stand 
out in high, almost vertical walls, instead of re- 
clining as a sloping shore. Where fragments 
loosen and fall into the sea under the action of 
the waves, they wear into strikingly symmet- 
rical pebbles and boulders. Glancing across the 
