IDDAH CLIFFS. 
279 
been looked forward to with some anxiety for the last 
two days. 
Throughout the entire night, the inharmonious wel- 
come was kept up beneath a huge monkey bread-fruit 
tree ('Adansonia diyitataj, whose wide-spreading 
branches were shewn in bold relief, and where we 
coidd imagine some native dance, or superstitious ritual, 
was going on. 
The ‘ Albert ’ and ‘ Soudan ’ had arrived a little 
before us. During the night, we had a delightfully 
refreshing breeze. On the following mor nin g, the red 
sandstone cliff* presented a new and agreeable feature, 
quite different to anything we had hitherto met with, 
* The cliffs of Iddah consist of beds of sandstone, from twelve to 
sixteen inches thick, inclining about 3“ to the south-east, each bed in 
itself stratified. The sandstone is entirely composed of pieces of 
quartz, with a few lamellae of mica and feltspar* The quartz hangs 
loosely together in the upper beds, while in the lower, a minute 
portion of clay helps to combine it. 
In a few of the strata above the water-mark, I found some fossil 
remains ; but, from the nature of the sandstone, in which the impres- 
sions only were left, as also the friable character of the formation, I 
could never obtain them in sufficient perfection to determine them 
The pieces of quartz are perfectly white ; proving that not even a 
solution of iron could have been present at the time the sediment was 
formed, which is the more surprising, as it abounds in the deposit at 
the mouth of the river. 
On the right bank, where exactly the same formation exists, I saw 
in the specimens collected for me, a combination with oxide of iron. 
The surface contains a layer of ferruginous sandstone, or iron conglo- 
merate, about four feet thick, which forms the table-land of the 
