62 A GEOLOGICAL HISTORY. 



At the above promontory* or bluff there is a 

 remarkable chasm called " Purgatory," the opening 

 of which faces the ocean and is about ten or twelve 

 feet wide, and is open up to the top of the rock, 

 and runs in from the sea about one hundred feet 

 or more ; this rock projects out in the ocean, and 

 is some seventy or eighty feet higher than the 

 level of the water, the top is covered with diluvium 



* In the summer of 1840, I visited this romantic spot, and standing on 

 the top, looked on the vast sheet of the ocean, which continually rolled 

 in its boisterous waves, the sound of which gave a peculiar echo, like the 

 dull ring of a metallic basin. There were some thousands of the white 

 bellied swallow, (Hirundo Bicolor, of Audubon,) who after skimming the 

 beach and ocean, would dart up and down, through this chasm, with 

 swallow swiftness, while on the sod about the top, hundreds more sat 

 perched, uttering their sharp note (wit, wit, wit,) the echo from the wave 

 below, the bass roar of old ocean, the diamond brillancy of the spray 

 sparkling in the sunshine, and the fresh breeze, all contributed to make 

 this spot pleasingly sublime. Near this chasm, and on the top of the 

 rock, are many irregularly shaped cavities, or impressions, filled with a 

 dark blood red, argillaceous oxide of iron, these marks have a vermiform 

 and confused appearance, and can be distorted in any form the imagina- 

 tion chooses, one of these is as large as a human body would occupy, of 

 which a legend is told — It is said, that about the time the white man. first 

 came to these parts, and long before Roger William's or William 

 Coddington's days, that an Indian, who was jealous of his squaw, took 

 her to this rock*and there killed and left her, that the great spirit of the 

 red people, was vexed at the act and opening this chasm threw in the 

 murderer, and that the metallic, echoing, moaning sound has been ever 

 since heard at the place. They who tell this story imagine they see the 

 impression of the body, which is supposed to have decayed on the spot, 

 and that the brownish red oxide of Iron is the congealed blood of the 

 victim- 



