94 THE TRIAS OR NEW RED SANDSTONE. 



and fresh, and contrasting strongly with the trap above and with the 

 trees and bushes that straggle down its sides, and nod over its deep 

 ravines, — constitute a combination of forms and colours equally striking if 

 seen in the distance from the hills of Horton or the shore of Parrsboro', 

 or more nearly fi'om the sea or the stony beach at its base. Blomidon is 

 a scene never to be forgotten by a traveller who has wandered around 

 its shores or clambered on its giddy precipices. 



From the shore of Blomidon, we may follow the trap formation in 

 a continuous ridge without a break to Annapolis Gut. On the south 

 side, the trap slopes down in rounded and abrupt eminences into the 

 red sandstone valley. On its summit it is somewhat level, though 

 divided into a number of long rolling ridges, probably the effect of 

 denuding agents on the edges of beds of trajD of unequal hardness. 

 The bay shore presents to the sea a range of cliffs and precipices often 

 overhanging or vertical, or rolled down into shapeless heaps of rubbish 

 by the frost and the undei'mining action of the waves. Huge land- 

 slips occur every spring from these causes, covering acres of the shore 

 with their ruins, and affording a rich harvest for the mineralogist who 

 may visit the shore after one of these falls. The amount of debris 

 annually thrown down and removed in this way is enormous. The 

 cliffs are usually composed of alternate layers of soft and hard trap 

 and tufa, they are traversed by innumerable fissures, and the general 

 dip is seaward. In addition to these circumstances, the ice annually 

 removes large quantities of fi'agments from the shore, so that a cliff 

 does not long continue to be protected by the masses that have fallen 

 from it. Hence the whole shore wastes rapidly, with the exception of 

 those places where beds of hard basaltic trap run down to the sea 

 level, and fonn inclined planes against which the sea rages in vain. 



A very remarkable deviation from the ordinary regularity of the 

 coast line of the trap occurs at Cape Split, which forms a prolongation 

 of the Blomidon shore to the north-westward. The dip of the 

 Blomidon basalt gradually brings it down to the sea-level, and toward 

 Cape Split it either thickens, or portions which have retired from the 

 cliff at Blomidon come forward into the shore precipices ; for toward 

 the cape a cliff more than 300 feet in height seems to be composed 

 of compact and columnar trap, which extends in a promontory and 

 series of islands and reefs far out into the bay. The appearances at 

 this place render it possible that a trappean dike or dikes, indicating 

 the point or line of ejection of the great basaltic bed of Blomidon, 

 may appear in these cliffs toward Cape Split. I have not, however, 

 been able to study them so closely as to ascertain decisively whether 

 this is the case. There seems no reason to doubt, at least, that the 



