1850.] DAWSON — METAMORPHIC ROCKS OF NOVA SCOTIA. 353 



to Amherst, and also on Wallace River, the lowest rocks of the car- 

 boniferous system, consisting of reddish-brown conglomerates, are 

 seen at the base of the hills. Their dip is to the northward at a high 

 angle. On ascending the hills, masses of red, flesh-coloured, and 

 grey syenite are seen, and rise rapidly to the height of several hundred 

 feet ; the northern side of the range being steeper and more lofty 

 than the southern. The syenite of this part of the hills has often 

 been described as a granite ; but wherever I have observed it, it is a 

 true syenite, containing reddish or white felspar, black hornblende, 

 and nearly colourless quartz. Some of the red varieties are large- 

 grained and very beautiful. The grey varieties are often fine-grained, 

 and appear to pass into greenstone. On the summits of some of the 

 highest ridges in this part of the range are numerous angular blocks 

 of brownish sandstone, drifted from the lower carboniferous district 

 lying to the northward. 



Penetrating further into the range, we find thick dykes of green- 

 stone, associated with slate and quartzite. The greenstone is of 

 various degrees of coarseness, and at some points is penetrated by a 

 network of syenitic or felspathip veins. The general course of the 

 greenstone dykes coincides with that of the range of hills. Toward 

 the southern side of the hills, grey quartzite, and grey, olive, and 

 black slate prevail, almost to the exclusion of igneous rocks. The 

 strike of these beds is nearly S.W. and N.E., with high dips to the 

 southward. On the south they are bounded and overlaid uncon- 

 formably by carboniferous conglomerate and sandstone. 



The southern slope of the Cobequid hills is traversed by many 

 deep transverse ravines, apparently due in great part to denudation. 

 From the ridges dividing these ravines, as well as from the openings 

 of some of them, extend long and sometimes very regular slopes of 

 debris, made up of the fragments of the rocks of the hills ; including 

 the red syenite of their northern side, which was probably denuded 

 in part by the same currents which deposited upon it the blocks of 

 sandstone mentioned above. 



The syenitic group of metamorphic rocks includes the most elevated 

 land of eastern Nova Scotia. The Cobequid range, attaining at 

 several points a height of 1000 feet, is probably the most elevated 

 chain of hills in the province ; and forms, in its whole length, the 

 watershed dividing the streams flowing into Northumberland Strait 

 and Chiegnecto Bay from those flowing into Cobequid Bay and Mines 

 Basin and Channel. In like manner, the complicated group of hills 

 extending westward from Cape Porcupine and Cape St. George, 

 though less elevated than the Cobequid hills, contains the sources of 

 all the principal rivers of the counties through which it extends. The 

 largest of these is the St. Mary's River. Its western branch origi- 

 nating in the same elevated gromid that gives rise to the Musquodo- 

 boit, the Stewiacke, and the Middle River of Pictou, flows for about 

 thirty miles nearly due east along the valley which here separates the 

 granitic and syenitic groups. Its east branch flowing from the hills 

 in the rear of Merigomish, and passing near the lakes from which 

 the principal branch of the East River of Pictou flows, receives 



