n 



of the southern sky, (the Centaur, Can opus, and 

 the innumerable nebulae with which the Ship 

 is resplendent,) had not reminded us, that we 

 were only eight degrees distant from the equa- 

 tor. 



A phenomenon, which had already fixed the at- 

 tention of Deluc, and which in these latter years 

 has exercised the sagacity of geologists, occupied 

 us much during our journey across the steppes. 

 I allude, not to those blocks of primitive rocks, 

 which occur, as in the Jura, on the slope of lime- 

 stone mountains, but to those enormous blocks 

 of granite and syenite, which, in limits very dis- 

 tinctly marked by nature, are found scattered in 

 the north of Holland, Germany, and the coun- 

 tries of the Baltic. It seems to be now proved, 

 that, distributed as in radii, they came, at the 

 time of the ancient revolutions of our globe, 

 from the Scandinavian peninsula toward the 

 south, and did not primitively belong to the 

 granitic chains of the Harz and Erzgeberg, which 

 they approach, without however reaching their 

 foot *. Born in the sandy plains of the Baltic 

 regions, and having till the age of eighteen 

 known the existence of a rock only by these 

 scattered blocks, I was doubly curious to see, 

 whether the New World would shew me any 

 analogous phenomenon. I was surprised at not 



* Leopold de Buch, Voyage en Norwege, vol. i,p. 30. 



