362 THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE 



of spruce and fir, and emerges upon the crest of the ridge, this 

 lovely plain lies spread out beneath like a picture. With white 

 Jure clouds sailing across a blue sky, patches of shadow and 

 sunlight sweeping across the squares and parallelograms of deep 

 brown ploughed-land, pink and white apple-orchards and grass- 

 green marsh to the purple slopes of tidal flats and blue sparkling 

 waters of the basin, this plain presents a picture to the onlooker 

 that is in the strongest contrast to the rough hard lines and 

 sombre coloring of the land and life at his back ; for the life 

 necessarily reflects the character of the land whence it draws 

 its sustenance. 



Here again, to the underlying rock, hidden by its own debris 

 except where tidal scour has swept away the crumbling fragments 

 from the shore, is due the soil and surface that makes Cornwallis 

 the garden of Nova Scotia. It is red sandstone, in some parts 

 coarse and gravelly but mainly fine-grained, rapidly breaking up 

 with rain and frost and forming a sandy loam particularly 

 adapted to the growth of root-crops and fruit trees. 



The southern edge of this plain meets the northern edge of a 

 gentle slope which, within a mile or two, rises to an older loftier 

 plain some five hundred or six hundred feet above the sea. 

 Although carved and sculptured along its borders by water- 

 courses, the uniform elevation of the detached ridges and the 

 main mass, and the regular and even sky-line when viewed from 

 the crest of the North Mountain opposite, point to it as a base- 

 leveled and then elevated and dissected plain, and to the essential 

 unity of the separated ridges and the central portion. 



This third band stretches for about seven miles to, and then 

 beyond, the southeast county line. Towards the eastern border 

 of the county it descends somewhat and is abruptly truncated 

 by the Avon River, forming the well-known Horton Bluffs. Its 

 south westetn extension forms the central watershed of the 

 province. 



Within this strip the surface is generally level, with low hills, 

 sluggish drainage and abundant lakes in the inner portions, steep 

 slopes, rapid streams and deep water-courses along the borders- 



