Period in Northeastern America. 315 
At Portland, the crystalline limestone appears in a very thick 
bed, and constitutes the ridge on which stands Fort Howe. Its 
colors are white and grey, with dark graphitic lamine; and it 
Contains occasional bands of olive-colored shale. It dips at a 
very high angle to the southeast. Three beds of impure gra- 
phite appear in its upper portion. The highest is about a foot 
in thickness, and rests on a sort of underclay. The middle bed 
is thinner and less perfectly exposed. The lower bed, in which 
a shaft has been sunk, seems to be three or four feet in thickness. 
It is very earthy and pyritous. The great bed of limestone is 
seen to rest on flinty slate and syenitic gneiss, beneath which, 
however, there appears a minor bed of limestone. Above the 
great limestone are beds of a hard grey metamorphic rock, ap- 
parently an indurated volcanic ash, associated with some sand- 
Stone; and this is succeeded by the great series of gray, olive, 
and black shales and flags which underlie the city of St. John. 
hese rocks are well exposed on both sides of ‘Courtney Bay, in 
the city of St. John, and in Carlton. Though somewhat con- 
torted, they have a general dip to the southeast, at angles of 50° 
to 70°. In some of the beds there are great numbers of Lingula, 
The comparatively coarse shales above described are succeeded 
by a thick band of black papyraceous shale, much contorted, and 
with a few thin seams of calcareous matter arranged in the con- 
of a greenish rock, consisting of coe igeee 
paste, or 
an amy gdaloid trap or a mass of fragments of such material too 
: = Gesner’s Second Report. 
