96 LOCAL VALUE OF GYPSUM EOCKS. 



of sequence among the red and grey rocks of which its 

 surface consists. 



Red marls, with vast deposits of gypsum, occur within 

 a few miles of the shores of the bay. Dr Robb, at my 

 request, ascended the stream which falls into the bay at 

 Cape Desmoiselles for ten or twelve miles, and there 

 found cliffs of gypsum eighty to a hundred feet high. 

 It will surprise some of my readers, perhaps while it 

 will give them an idea of the abundance of this mineral 

 substance, and the small estimation in which it is con 

 sequently held to learn, that the owner of one of the 

 farms in which these cliffs occur was said to have sold 

 the right of working, or his interest in the future mines 

 of gypsum on his own land, for a barrel of flour ! One 

 of the purest white deposits of gypsum known in this 

 neighbourhood is the property of a Yankee, who exports 

 it to Eastport in Maine, there burns and crushes it, packs 

 it into casks, and transmits it to the more southern 

 {States, and even back again to New Brunswick, whence 

 the raw material is derived. The shipment to, and 

 manufacture in Maine, is for the purpose of avoiding the 

 heavy duty upon manufactured articles in the United 

 States. 



An unexpected substance found in the vicinity of these 

 gypsum-beds was presented to Dr Robb by a farmer, 

 who turned it up with his plough. It consisted of large 

 brilliant fragments of solid bitumen, which were brittle, 

 easily cut with a knife, softened and swelled in a close 

 tube over a lamp, but did not perfectly melt, though they 

 yielded a thick dark-coloured oil by distillation. This 

 bitumen, partially dissolved in oil of turpentine, burned 

 readily and with a smoky flame, leaving only one-eighth 

 of a per cent of ash. Distilled in a close retort, it left 

 about forty per cent of a light spongy coke, and yielded at 

 the rate of 15,000 cubic feet of gas per ton. It may, there 

 fore, be used with advantage for the manufacture of gas. 



