20 GYPSUM COUNTRY AND QUARRIES. 



Romish clergy from the islands or borders of the Medi- 

 terranean ? 



Windsor, which we reached after another hour's drive 

 is a neat, clean, well-built little town, standing on the 

 estuary of the Avon, and within a short distance of the 

 mouth of the St Croix river. Both of these rivers 

 empty themselves into the Bay of Minas, and are dis- 

 tinguished by the lofty white cliffs of gypsum which are 

 seen at various places along their banks. The country 

 adjoining the lower pai't of both rivers is in many places 

 gypsiferous, and the undulating appearance of its sur- 

 face, the rounded hills, and the sudden hollows which 

 here and there appear, are in great part to be ascribed 

 to the numerous swallow holes and sinkings which have 

 been produced through the gradual solution and removal, 

 by surface water or by springs, of the gypsum from 

 beneath, A similar surface of rounded hills and hollows 

 afterwards attracted my attention along the shores of 

 the Cumberland basin, in some parts of New Brunswick, 

 and on the gypsiferous strata along the out-crop of the 

 upper beds of the Onondaga salt group, and the base of 

 the Ilelderberg limestone in Western New York. 



After a hasty dinner, at the small but clean town of 

 Windsor, I paid a hurried visit to the plaster quarry of 

 Judge Hallburton, which affords the principal article 

 of export from the river Avon. The gypsum occurred 

 and was worked very much as our limestones are, forming 

 a face of rock in which different layers were visible of 

 various degrees of whiteness, and crystalline structure. 

 The whitest and purest is quarried and conveyed, by 

 an economical railway to the river, where it is shipped 

 chiefly for the United States. 



At Windsor, it is usual to embark in the steamer for 

 St John in New Brunswick. In favourable weather 

 this is a run of twelve or fourteen hours with the 

 steamers now on the station. That I might see a por- 



