A, FE. Verrill— The Bermuda Islands; Geology. 103 
This, however, is rendered less improbable when we see the small 
amount of erosion and decay on some of the stone work of the 
ancient ruins of stone forts, built by the early settlers. The purity 
of the air and absence of the sulphur acids, derived from the com- 
bustion of coal, is favorable to the duration of such objects here, as 
contrasted with the rapid decay of marble in our large cities, or near 
factories and smelting works. 
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Figure 13.—Ancient inscription on ‘‘ Spanish Rock,” after Lefroy, 1879. 
However, the remarkable durability of limestones of this kind, 
away from cities, and especially when hardened by the stalagmitic 
coating, is well known in other countries. 
On the Mingan Islands, south coast of Labrador, and especially on 
Niapisca Island, there are many tall and often slender columns of 
Lower Silurian limestone, standing on and near the shore. The 
limestone forming them is in nearly horizontal strata of varying 
hardness, and some of them are mushroom-shaped at the top and 
undercut below, very much like some of the columns at Tobacco 
Bay, in Bermuda, but taller and larger, for some of those at Niapisca 
Island are 60 feet high. They were thus eroded during the Cham- 
plain period, when the land there stood much lower and those islands 
were submerged. So that at one time those columns must have been 
much like the tall narrow reefs off Murray Anchorage. That they 
have stood so many thousands of years, exposed to the storms and 
