AND QUARTZ DEPOSITS OF ASSYNT. 347 
from the wild ruggedness of a gneiss region, to the level fields, 
swelling moors, and long undulating ridges of a sandstone one. 
But in the interior of the country, where the sandstone occurs 
chiefly in detached hills, it lends to the prospect features of 
surpassing boldness and grandeur. Rising over a basement of 
rugged gneiss hills, that present the appearance of a dark 
tumbling sea, we descry a line of stupendous pyramids from 
two to three thousand feet in height, which, though several 
miles distant in the background, dwarf, by their great size, the 
nearer eminences into the mere protuberances of an uneven 
plain. Their mural character has the effect of adding to their 
apparent magnitude. Almost devoid of vegetation, we see 
them barred by the lines of the nearly horizontal strata, as 
edifices of man’s erection are barred by their courses of dressed 
stone; and, while some of their number, such as the peaked 
hill of Suilvein, rise at an angle at least as steep and nearly as 
regular as that of an Egyptian pyramid, in height and bulk 
they surpass the highest Egyptian pyramid many times. Their 
color, too, lends to the illusion. Of a deep red hue, which in 
the light of the setting sun brightens into a glowing purple, 
they contrast as strongly with the cold gray tone of the gneiss 
tract beneath as a warm-colored building contrasts with the 
earth-tinted street or roadway over which it rises. The stone 
of which they are composed is a hard, compact, arenaceous 
rock, usually of a chocolate tint, and varying in grain from an 
ordinary sandstone to a conglomerate. But the pebbles which 
it encloses, and which usually occur in thin beds, are greatly 
smaller than those of the Great Old Red conglomerate on the 
east coast,— ranging in bulk from the size of a pea to that of 
an egg. ‘They are almost all water-rolled, — usually quartzose 
or feldopathic in their composition, though in considerable pro- 
portion jasperous ; and, as I have often remarked of the peb- 
ples of the Great Conglomerate, the prevailing color among 
