60 



Notes, chiefly Geological, of a Journey 



[Jan. 



The black soil in this locality, as in other places, has a substratum of 

 nodular kankar, besides the tufaceous kind scattered on the soil. In 

 the dry bed of a brook, I saw enormous blocks of this last mentioned 

 rock jutting forth. 



Cotteepollium, Feb. 18. — We left Canada this morning at half-past 

 four. I employed about an hour in examining a hill to the north of the 

 road, not more than two miles from this place. It is rather steep, about 

 four hundred feet from the ground, formed of gneiss abounding in gar- 

 nets. At the summit I looked for lateritic ferruginous clay-stone, but I 

 did not see a trace of it, nor in the declivities, except a few erratic 

 pieces in the talus. It is in this locality, that I first saw some blocks 

 of gametic gneiss, with strata very much distorted, their parallelism 

 being not affected. Those on the summit were vertical ; at least the 

 bassets of vertical strata were seen running in a direction N. and S., 

 while those on the eastern and western sides appeared to diverge (hav- 

 ing the same direction as those of the summit) anticlinally, the western 

 dipping west, the eastern to the east. This hill, and another near,were 

 surrounded with a talus at their base, an unusual occurrence in India. 

 The kankar is abundant. 



Chicacole, Feb. 19. — As it was hardly day-light when we left Cotta- 

 pollium, I could not distinguish the character of the rocks, projecting 

 here and there close to the road, which appeared of a black colour, and 

 probably were greenstone, or basalt. On arriving at the camp I saw 

 many masses similar in appearance to those passed early in the morn- 

 ing. These were hornblende slate, and those previously seen were pro- 

 bably the same rock, both being in immense tabular masses laid one 

 over the other horizontally, or placed in an erect position, the raised 

 extremities leaning against each other, or heaped together, without any 

 regularity or order ; when the quartz was scanty, the rock became cha- 

 racteristic hornblende slate (No. 45). 



The highest hill, about five hundred feet above the plain of Chica- 

 cole, is composed of gametic gneiss in a state of decomposition, the 

 strata nearly vertical. From the north side of this hill, is seen pro- 

 jecting along the plain, in the manner of a dyke, many blocks of horn- 

 blende rock ; and at the foot, facing north, is an enormous vein, or rather 

 bed, of quartz rock, many yards thick, whose outgoings form a kind of 

 shelly projection at the base of the hill; the direction of this bed being 

 east and west. Most of this latter rock consists of the intimate agglu- 

 tination of angular pieces of transparent quartz, without any apparent 

 cement (No. 46) ; although in some parts they are united by a clayey 

 ferruginous paste, producing a kind of silicious puddingstone (No. 4/), or 

 clay stone porphyry. 



