230 UPPER SANDSTONES. 



it with safety, by examining the sandy deserts on a 

 map ; since, wherever these have been described by 

 travellers, it is invariably found that salt occurs in 

 them. There seems no reason to doubt that all the 

 sandy deserts of the world belong to this stratum ; 

 and hence the salt pools and the brackish water that 

 make so conspicuous a figure in the narrations of tra- 

 vellers. I may name, out of many, the salt range of 

 hills crossing the Indus at Karrabah, and extending 

 to Jellapoor, the desert of salt between Taheran and 

 Ispahan, that which extends from the Heirmund river 

 in Seistan to the range which divides that province from 

 lower Mekran, of four hundred miles in length, and 

 another, of equal dimensions, which reaches from 

 Koom and Kashan, to the provinces of Mazandaran 

 and Khorasan. But the most singular tract of it, 

 hitherto undescribed, is found occupying the shores of 

 the Persian Gulf in the neighbourhood of Ormuz, not 

 less remarkable for its immense thickness, than for its 

 configuration and colour. It is presumed to be this 

 deposit from the gypsum and salt which it contains, 

 and from its connexion with the sandy and salt deserts ; 

 while the visible depth in the vertical cliffs exceeds 

 four thousand feet, and the beds are divided into co- 

 lumns grouped into castellated and architectural forms, 

 the whole mass being of a pure white colour, and the 

 general effects singularly magnificent and picturesque. 

 The accounts of all travellers decide its presence in 

 Africa, where gypsum and salt both abound ; and here 

 also we shall probably form a correct conclusion, in 

 considering the sandy deserts of this quarter of the 

 world as appertaining to the same rock. If America 

 has been yet but partially explored, the existence of 

 the same rock is ascertained in the territories of Hud- 

 son's Bay, and in the great plain of the Missisbipi, 



