Mineralogy and Geology of Nova Scotia. 221 
are kept upon it. Thus driven from the soil, the hardy inhabi- 
tants of the island resort to fishing as their chief employment. 
But this remark cannot be applied, as it unjustly has been, to 
many other parts of the Province, which, as respects soil and 
climate, are not surpassed, we believe, by any section of New 
England. 
The columnar or basaltiform structure of the trap is exhibited 
in greater perfection and to a much greater extent, on this island 
than upon the opposite; but this is owing in a great degree to 
its being more exposed to the ravages of the ocean, which 
have developed the columns to a greater extent, and probably 
not so much to any intrinsic deficiency of the rock itself in 
exhibiting, externally, all its characteristic marks. They usu- 
ally present five or seven sides, very smooth and perfect, and are 
very variable in their length and proportions, no less than in their 
internal characters; but as far as we traced them, they did not 
exhibit in their superposition, the depressions and corresponding 
convexities, so common to the trap of some regions. It is merely 
for the want of these characters, and a greater compactness in 
the mechanical arrangement of its particles, that this trap comes 
short of the genuine basalt of the most noted European localities. 
Indeed, the difference in respect to internal characters, on com- 
parison with masses of basalt from the Hebrides, is found too 
slight to be made a point of distinction between them. No min- 
erals were observed on this island, excepting a few narrow veins 
of red jasper occasionally encircling the columns ; the amygdaloid, 
their usual gangue, not appearing along the coast so far as we 
followed it. We regret that foggy weather prevented us from 
passing round to the opposite shore of the island, where, as we 
were informed by the inhabitants, the cliffs rise to a more remark- 
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