CHAP. XXL] BLOCKS OF GRANITE AND GNEISS. 21 



who came himself to bargain about the price, which 

 was high compared to that asked in the North. 



The site of Milledgeville is 577 feet above the 

 level of the sea, and, like Macon, it stands on the 

 boundary of the tertiary and granitic region. Dr. J. 

 R. Getting, who had been employed by the State to 

 make a geological survey of part of Georgia, showed 

 me in the State House some fossils collected by him, 

 and he accompanied me in an excursion into the 

 neighbourhood of the capital. It is well worthy of 

 remark, that here, as everywhere in Georgia and Ala 

 bama, there are loose blocks of granite and gneiss 

 strewed over the granitic area ; but no fragments of 

 them are ever seen to cross the boundary into the 

 area composed of the tertiary strata, where small 

 pebbles only are seen washed out of the sands. 

 Farther to the north, in Massachusetts, for example, 

 and the island of Martha s Vineyard, we see enor 

 mous erratics of granite, twenty-five and thirty feet 

 in diameter, which must have come from the north, 

 probably from the mountains of New Hampshire, rest 

 ing on the tertiary clays and rocks*; and in Long 

 Island (New York), a variety of transported blocks 

 repose upon, or are interstratified with, very modern 

 deposits. In the Southern States the same causes 

 have not been in action, and if we suppose . ice 

 bergs to have been the transporting power in the 

 north, it seems natural that their action should not 

 have extended to the Southern States, so as to carry 

 fragments of crystalline rocks out of the granitic 



Travels in K&quot;. America, vol. i. p. 259. cliap. 



xu. 



