or SANTO DOMINGO. 



175 



dip of 35° south is seen, and directly afterwards the horizontal edges of the white 

 Miocene limestone present themselves, the beds containing occasional corals of well- 

 known species. This continues to the base of the high range. Ascending the ridge. 

 Cretaceous limestones again appear with low southern dips. These form the whole 

 range, and are seen cropping out continuously along the canon down which the road 

 descends towards the bay. Iseav the base they lie as low as 10° and finally dip under 

 the horizonta.l Miocene shale. This is less than half a mile wide at los Robalos and 

 V contains some seams of lignite which from time to time have induced explorations 

 for coal. During the last Spanish occupation of the country, before 1806, an attempt 

 was made to open a mine in the bed of a sti-eam near this })oint. The water course 

 was deflected and a pit sunk, which resulted in the exposure of a five inch vein ; but 

 nothing more was found. Still more recently, in 1870, a Mr. Kell, an English mining- 

 engineer, spent considerable time and money in opening a pit at another spot. Al- 

 though he jealously refilled his excavation, enough signs remained there and at out- 

 crops in the vicinity to show that his success had been no better than that of his 

 Spanish predecessors. The " coal " differs in no important respect from that at the 

 Angostura of the Yaqui or that of the Yaguajal near Savaneta. It is a very impure 

 soft material, of a dull earthy black, and shrinks, cracks and eventually crumbles on 

 exposure to the atmosphere. From the number of outcrops known it probably ex- 

 tends continuously along the whole of the western half of the north shore of Samana 

 Bay. 



East of the Limon is the Arroyo Salado, or salt creek, which rises in a spring near 

 the middle of the Island. About twenty yards below the head, the stream is fifteen 

 feet wide and a foot deep in the middle. The water can hardly be called salt, but is 

 decidedly brackish. It empties into the sea midway between the Limon and the 

 Caiias. From the Salado to the San Juan the coast is an almost continuous sand 

 beach ; the hills retiring a little inland. But the trail from Limon parallel Avith the 

 sea to the Salado is one of the roughest and rockiest so-called horse-trails in the 

 country. JSTothing but a mountain horse or a goat would dare to cross it without risk 

 of broken legs. It is over the usual blue limestones such as that found at the mouths 

 and alono- the courses of either the Limon or the San Juan Rivers. 



The sand beach reaches to the mouth of the latter stream, ending there abru})tl}- 

 against a high wall of nearly black limestone, which dips about 40° to the north. 

 Following up the river the same rock is observed in the hills on both sides Avith a 

 regular east and west strike, but with a constantly diminishing northern dip, bt'coiuing 

 almost horizontal on ihv siiiiunit. Mixed with (lie linu'stont- is a little mica slalc and 



