418 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



Perhaps the last, ho\A'ever, might be forced upon their notice when they 

 arrived at the capital of the province, for (/ra/nlvi' carru rcs de Maastricht are 

 too vast and too famous to e^cape the aUcniuai of Mght-seers. 



The fortress on St. Peter's Mount towers high above the sinuous walls ami 

 forts of the strong bulwarks which dffend tlie ancient tov^ii, while in the hill 

 below it are cavernous passages of such intricate and dark extent that tlie 

 wanderer into them needs the guiiling tlu'cad of Ariadne to insure his return 

 to the light of day. 



To the geologist this mountain and its quarries have a higher interest than 

 the wonderment they excite as mere giga.ntic excavations : the strata of 

 which they are composed iU'c the last formed of a great geological age before 

 another vast geological period began — they are the termination of tlie 

 secondary epoch, the Moy en-age, so to call it, of geological history. They are 

 the last-formed patches of the old crt'taecotis sea before the da^\n of recent 

 forms of life commenced %^'ith the earliest Tertiary beds. 



The soil of the Duchy of Lhnburg covers rocks of older and of younger age, 

 from the carboniferous to the cpiaternary ; but the chief purpose uf the work 

 under notice is to miiuitely detail those upper cretaceous beds — the cinilk of 

 Maestricht — where the cliie'f geological interest centres, and which have for many 

 years attracted general attention, but which only a resident could work out 

 in their minntite, and so give to science the exact limitations of the members of 

 its rciiuirkable frauia to the special zones or beds to which they are restricted, 

 or which they serve to characterize, or to liirk with other cretaceous deposits 

 in other parts of the globe. Already a catalogue of eight hundred species of 

 fossils has been noted down, and the superposition of the deposits tolerably 

 well made out. 



To the scientific importance of these quarries but few could refrain from 

 adding some woi-ds upon their historictd associations and their antiquity. M. 

 Paujas St. Pond, in his history of tliis mountain, prefaced his geological investi- 

 gations with such an accoiait, and Herr Binkhorst has made a like digression. 



Associated Avith the changing fortunes and vicissitudes of the successive 

 generations that liave resided on its soil from Roman days — perhaps days even 

 more remote — unto our own, what wonder that to an inliabitant the legends of 

 these gloomy caves should have an iiTCsistible attraction. "When were they 

 first AATought out r AVho were theii" first excavators ? Man cannot answer, 

 and history is silent. 



"When persecutions with pagan fury were carried on against Christianity and 

 civilization, religion, violently banished from the light of day, found an asylum 

 in these catacombs of the north, and the ministers of God, protected by the 

 secrecy and devotion of the Limboiirgese, celebrated their divine services sur- 

 rounded by their enemies. 



AVe pass by too the brigandages in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Bohe- 

 mian banditti revelled inassailable ui these subterranean recesses ; and we leave 

 untold scriies and incidents which have happened in these caverns "vast and 

 gloomy'' during the many seiges Maestricht has had to sustain; we forbear to 

 tell the kind or sinister ofliees of gnomes or fairies with which superstition and 

 fancy have peopled these obscure places ; we tell not the stories of all the 

 gaunt skeletons of man, woman, or child vdio, lost in their wanderings, have 

 ])erished there of want ; nor do we detail the oft -told torch-light combat of the 

 Austrians and Prench in these darksome passages during the siege of 1791. 



AU these anecdotes and more our author repeats ; and in his introductory 

 cpisotle, as well as throughout the work, he appears to have gleaned materials 

 from every available source. In this respect, in the geological portion of this 

 ])art of his book, our author has shown extreme industn- ; and had the arrange- 

 ment of the matter thus collected been more uicthodicai, the reader would have 



