ANTALO LIMESTONES. 177 



of Antalo. These sandstones differ in character from 

 the Adigrat beds. They are less quartzose, being both 

 more earthy in composition and darker in colour, and 

 they contain large quantities of conglomerate.^ 



The trap is always doleritic, and usually compact 

 basalt. Beds of it are seen at Mai Makdam, between 

 Agula and Dolo, but they are irregular, and have rather 

 the appearance of outliers of a higher formation, depo- 

 sited on an irregular surface of limestone, than of inter- 

 stratified lava flows. Farther south, however, and 

 especially between the camp at Buya, near Antalo, and 

 Meshek, there can be no question of the basalts being 

 contemporaneous. One bed at Masgi, the first camping- 

 ground south of Antalo, is about one hundred feet thick, 

 as nearly as could be measured with an aneroid on the 

 hill-side. 



As a rule, the Antalo limestone is horizontal. It does 

 not, however, preserve the same unbroken lines as the 

 sandstone near Adigrat, but rolls about slightly every- 

 where. In places it is much disturbed, as at Meshek. 



The scenery is peculiar. The limestone forms cliffs, of 



1 There is, of course, the bare possibility that these sandstones at the top 

 of the Antalo group, and not those of Dongolo, represent the Adigrat beds. 

 For the reasons given in the text, I tMnk this highly improbable. The sand- 

 stones of Antalo and Meshek have every appearance of being an integral 

 portion of the Antalo beds, and limestone more or less impure is mixed with 

 them. No limestone whatever occurs either at Dongolo or in the Adigrat 

 beds. The only reason I am acquainted with for supposing the limestone to 

 be of higher antiquity than the sandstone of Adigrat is, that the former is less 

 persistently horizontal than the latter, the beds usually rolling about slightly. 

 This may be due to local causes, but it is almost universally the case in thick 

 groups of beds, when the strata themselves are not massive, and especially so 

 amongst limestones. 



N 



