686 Boring Operations in Fort William. [No. 103. 



This also failed, and unfortunately in raising the cylinder, to endea- 

 vour to discover the cause of failure, the lifting rope gave way, and it 

 became necessary to haul on the conductor. This had been done 

 once or twice before, without any bad effects, but on this occasion the 

 junction of the wires at the collar of the cylinder was not sufficiently 

 strong to bear the weight, and the case after being raised for some 

 distance dropped back to the bottom of the bore. All hopes of benefit 

 from this expedient being thus summarily disappointed, it only re- 

 mains to be stated, that the operations of the Committee were finally 

 closed on the 20th of April, 1840. 



Throughout the course of the preceding narrative, all reference 

 to the geological information the labours of the Committee have been 

 instrumental in eliciting, has been avoided, from a desire to render the 

 mechanical details as continuous as possible, but as few such oppor- 

 tunities as the present have ever been given for observing the struc- 

 ture of alluvial Deltas, a condensed summary of the various points 

 of interest to the geologist is now appended. 



After penetrating through the surface soil to a depth of about 

 ten feet, a stratum of stiff blue clay, fifteen feet in thickness, was met 

 with. Underlaying this was a light coloured sandy clay, which 

 became gradually darker in colour from the admixture of vegetable 

 matter, till it passed into a bed of peat, at a distance of about eighty 

 feet from the surface. Beds of clay and variegated sand, intermixed 

 with kunkur, mica, and small pebbles, alternated to a depth of 

 120 feet, when the sand became loose, and almost semifluid in its 

 texture. At 152 feet the quicksand became darker in colour and 

 coarser in grain, intermixed with red water- worn nodules of hydra- 

 ted oxide of iron, resembling to a certain extent the laterite of South 

 India. At 159 feet a stiff clay with yellow veins occurred, altering 

 at 163 feet remarkably in colour and substance, and becoming dark, 

 friable, and apparently containing much vegetable and ferruginous 

 matter. A fine sand succeeded at 170 feet, and this gradually be- 

 came coarser and mixed with fragments of quartz and felspar to a 

 depth of 180 feet. At 196 feet, clay impregnated with iron was passed 

 through, and at 221 feet, sand recurred, containing fragments of lime- 

 stone with nodules of kunkur and pieces of quartz and felspar ; the 

 same stratum continued to 340 feet, and at 350 feet a fossil bone, 

 conjectured to be the humerus of a dog, was extracted. At 360 feet a 



