140 



ON THE TOPOGllAPHY ANTJ GlEOLOCJY 



traveller who sees a branch of it hanging from some projecting limb, puts np his 

 hand to defend his face and finds it, not scratched, but cut so as to draw blood ; the 

 wound being the more painful because made by a rough instead of a sharp edge. The 

 forest continues along and over the summit of the mountain which is nowhere 

 very high, though rising in higher peaks on both sides of the pass. "Within a 

 mile after passing the highest point the forest ends as abruptly as it began, and 

 the savana de la Puerta, into which the road opens, is a grassy hill side, bonnded 

 on all sides with trees, a beautiful rolling slope of prairie of two or three 

 hundred acres. ISleav the upper end there are many outcrops of quartz, and pieces 

 of milky white qnai'tz are not rare in the red soil. The Guananitos Creek, wdiich rises 

 in the main ridge and flows along the eastern and southern margins of this savana, con- 

 tains a little gold, though probably not enough to warrant any attempts at mining ; 

 although its body of water would be amply sufficient for such a purpose. Immedi- 

 ately on leaving the Puerta, the road becomes a mud-hole ; it runs for some dis- 

 tance through clay that is hardly ever dry, and is usually knee deep to horses ; it 

 crosses several small streams, in the beds of which angular cpiartz pebbles make the 

 greater part of the bottom, and runs down the valley of the Guananitos, a rich river 

 bottom, where the soil is of unknown depth — a black muck, always wet, and through 

 which the poor horses have to flounder often belly deep in mud. But this region 

 belongs more properly to the southern district, and will be described in that chapter. 



After leaving the fork, the Cotui road passes one or tw^o points of hills made up 

 of clay slates and the white and red taleose slate which often look like a thoroughl}^ 

 decomposed granite. But few other rock exposures occur until near the crossing of 

 the Yuna, when a range of low hills is encountered, made up of hai'd clay slate. These 

 show no outcrops, except little ones in the road where travel has worn away the thin 

 soil. The spui-s to the west of the road, bordering the savanas, are almost all low, 

 long points, wooded to their bases, and with long tongues of grassy land running up 

 between them. Some few are isolated and very steep and of fantastic forms. Before 

 i-eaching the Yuna, a little grey limestone crops out as flat exposures in the valley, 

 and one other such crosses the road about six miles from Cotui. After crossing 

 the rivei', there is a long hill a mile wide bordering its southern shore, made 

 up of gray taleose and magnesian slate, but with no ascertainable dip. From the 

 limestone outcrops, a strike can be deciphered running, as usual, nearly east and west. 

 A little cross trail thi'ough the woods, follows up the valley of the Yuna to the 

 Maimon, up its valley to the Hatillo de Maimon, and thence across the hills to Piedra 

 Blanca. This gives an excellent opportunity of ascertaining the geology of the 



