CASTLE ISLAND. 1 35 



looking out towards Belle Isle, the flesh-colored syenitic 

 rocks present a rough and broken front to the ceaseless 

 swell of the Atlantic, rising from seventy-five to a hun- 

 dred feet above the waves, the beetling crags broken and 

 pierced by deep ocean caves ; with jutting headlands and 

 little pebbly beaches nestling between them — all the 

 characteristic scenic features of this syenite, whether at 

 Nahant, or Mt. Desert, or on the Labrador coast. 



The southern end of Castle Island repeats the geology 

 and scenery of Henley Island; but a little farther down, 

 away from the sea-cliffs, the syenite and gneiss meet, and 

 seemed splashed together, like two masses of paste or 

 dough which has been stirred up and baked. In places, 

 both rocks were interstratified, dipping north and south 

 in much disturbed strata, but with a general inclination 

 towards the north. 



The first of July saw us released from our prison ; the 

 day was clear and delightful, and a light southwesterly 

 breeze bore us along a remarkably bold and picturesque 

 coast. About two miles from our harbor is another trap 

 overflow capping and, at the southwest end, concealing 

 from view the syenitic base ; at the northern end the 

 basalt is columnar. 



We soon came up to our first iceberg, a magnificent 

 pyramid of ice perhaps a hundred and fifty feet high, 

 white as Carrara marble, smooth, as if fresh snow had 

 fallen on it during the past night, lending it a virgin 

 whiteness, here and there brought more clearly into re- 

 lief by the subtle azure blue reflected from the sea. 

 Across its base ran several suggestive cracks, and though 

 we sailed within two hundred yards of it, it was rather 

 risky, and we remembered Scoresby's stories of the dis- 



