1859.] BAUEBMAN VANCOUVER ISLAND. 199 



with a N.E. dip of 35°-45°. Between Victoria and Esquimalt, 

 along the coast, the section shows a series of highly altered rocks, 

 confusedly intermingled with intrusive traps and porphyries. These 

 igneous rocks occur in large dykes, generally splitting and ramifying 

 into small veins near the contact with the rocks into which they are 

 intruded : their general composition is of hard white and green 

 felspar, often mixed up with quartz, forming the rock known as 

 " Petrosilex" or "Hornfels." Other conditions are induced by the 

 addition of crystalline quartz and hornblende, forming quartz- 

 porphyry and syenite. These different varieties of composition are 

 often seen in the same section, — the porphyritic character of the 

 centre of the dyke shading down into the hard, white, flinty trap 

 which fills the small veins thrown out at the sides. These rocks do 

 not in any case appear to be interstratified ; the impression they 

 convey is that of being offshoots from a granitic mass immediately 

 below. 



The metamorphic character of the sedimentary rocks must be 

 ascribed entirely to chemical action, as no traces of slaty cleavage or 

 other mechanical action are anywhere observable. I have not been 

 able to obtain any evidence of their thickness or probable geological 

 position. I have examined the limestones and softer shales for fossils, 

 but without effect. 



To the westward of Esquimalt, the older rocks are covered by 

 drift-deposits for some miles, and reappear in the form of black 

 cherty sandstones ; which are succeeded by a red porphyritic rock, 

 very much altered by infiltration of water : it is very earthy from 

 the partial change of the felspathic base, contains large patches of 

 chlorite, and is feebly magnetic from containing magnetite in minute 

 quantity. In a soft clay-slate adjoining, a large lode occurs, dipping 

 to the N.E. at an angle of 75° ; it is about five feet in thickness, but 

 contains no mineral of economic value. The serpentinous rocks in 

 Esquimalt Harbour arc in many places coated with a bright-green 

 incrustation resembling a carbonate or silicate of copper ; but it 

 proves to be a hydratcd protoxide-silicate of iron when closely 

 examined. 



To the eastward of Victoria Harbour, the metamorphic and igneous 

 rocks arc concealed by the drift. They arc seen in Stewart's [aland, 

 in the Gulf of Georgia : and in Saturna, the next island to the north, 

 their junction with a conglomerate of large angular fragments is 

 seen, which is succeeded by coarse grits and sandstones of the 

 tertiary period. 



2. Cretaceous Hocks. — The section at Nanaimo, farther to the 

 northward, exposes a scries of beds containing cretaceous fossils, 

 underlying the coal-bearing grits. I have had no opportunity <>f 

 examining these deposits; hut as far as I can ascertain from 

 descriptions by Mr. Lord (the naturalist t<> the expedition), who 

 collected most of the fossils, the] 'moist of dark argillaceous shales, 

 full of casts of a small species of Tnoct ramus, and Bofl blue marls full 

 of septariao nodules, containing fossils. These consisl chiefly of 

 Ammonites and Baculites: the lattei the most abundant. The 



