of apart of the Saguenay Country. — 87 
to work freely in any direction. We had no leisure to ascer- 
tain the quantity in which this matble occurs, but this defici- 
ency of information is fully supplied by the following anony- 
mous communication, which there is reason to think generally 
correct :— 
* ‘T’'apousac, Sept. 14, 1826. 
_ We walked this morning along the beach to Moulin a 
Baude, about four miles below this Post, to see the bed of mar- 
ble there. Point Rouge, forming the south-east promontory 
of the harbour of Tadousac, is chiefly composed of a very hard 
close-grained red granite. The granite alternates for a few paces 
with, andis then followed as far as Pointe-aux-Vaches, by several 
varieties of primitive rocks, principally gneiss, &'c. until they 
are there met by a bed of clay, apparently one hundred and 
fifty feet thick above the level of the river, and cut down nearly 
perpendicularly by the beating of the waters for a distance of 
about two hundred yards, which is the whole breadth of the 
bed. © This clay is of the same character as that at Pointe-aux- 
Bouleaux.(*) The primitive rocks of the same description which 
were found laying against the clay, almost immediately succeed 
it, and the action of the water discloses to the passenger that 
fantastic and beautiful intermixture of layers of different coe 
lours, so common between Malbay and the Saguenay. The 
shore is then indented, and a bed of gneiss, stretching out-into 
the St. Lawrence, has been cut off by the water and forms a 
little island ; opposite to it is a bay, and in the dry sand throwu 
up 
(*) “ The clay at Pointe aux Bouleaux and Pointe aux Vaches, the two 
outermost tongues of the benks of the Saguenay atits mouth, occurs in 
immense beds, of which that at the first place is about thirty or forty feet in 
thickness above ground, and thatat the last place probably two bundred feet; 
both together extending in superticies apparently ten or iwelve miles. It is 
extremely fine in its texture, contains a good deal of lime and some iron. 
It has the property of crambling when water is thrown upon it, as ansiaked 
does, and might by being merely spread out and exposed to the falls of 
rain, answer as an excellent manure for a soil having an excess of acid, 
such as that of swamps, &c."’ Samuel Neilson, Esq. 
