RED-SANDSTONE DIVISION. 
291 
above the ocean in the latitude of New-Jersey, they underwent no permanent elevation above 
the tide in the region further to the southwest, between the Chesapeake and the Roanoke. 
“ That the almost universal inclination of the planes of deposition in the red shale and 
sandstone formation is the result of the oblique or slanting mode in which the sediment has 
been laid down by a rapid and steady current, and is not due to any upheaving action, admits, 
I conceive, of very little doubt. If it were a consequence of the latter cause, the vast width 
of the region in New-Jersey over which this northwest dip prevails would imply a thickness 
for the deposit so enormous as to be beyond all precedent among stratified formations. But 
we have conclusive evidence of the comparative shallowness of this group of beds, in the 
fact that in several localities, even in the interior of the belt, it has been washed off in patches 
by denudation, so as to expose the subjacent Appalachian limestone, which appears in these 
places to have been the original floor of the basin. The denudation along the southeastern 
border of the tract has, in like manner, in many neighborhoods, cut away the coarse sand¬ 
stone and conglomerate beds (the first deposited, and undermost, by order of dip), making 
the now undermost layers to consist of the red shales. This could obviously not occur if the 
materials had been precipitated in a nearly level position, as in that case they would have 
spread themselves along the bottom of the trough too far to the northwest to be removed by 
local denudation along its southeastern margin. 
“ The very general dip of the strata towards the northwest and north seems plainly to im¬ 
ply the side from which the sedimentary matter chiefly entered this valley. That the lateral 
influx was principally from the belt of country immediately bordering the basin upon the 
southeast, there can be little doubt; and we have only to observe the nature of the rocks 
skirting that side of the belt in a broad tract, the whole length from the Susquehannah to 
North-Carolina, to find at once the red soil of which these strata consist. Throughout this 
distance, talcose, chloritic and hornblendic rocks compose nearly the entire zone of country 
lying immediately southeast of the red shale ; and the red soil which they produce is so iden¬ 
tical in aspect and composition with the shales, and is at the same time so copiously fur¬ 
nished by their disintegration, as to point plainly to these primary strata as the source of most 
of the matter of this middle secondary trough. If we conceive the northwestern side of the 
valley next the base of the hills to have been, as it probably was, the deepest portion, and 
the red ferruginous materials to have entered this large river from the neighboring talcose 
rocks by currents setting obliquely across and down the channel, we may at once explain, not 
only the origin of these beds, but their inclined position, and their predominant northwestern 
and northern dip. 
“ In attempting thus to account for the prevailing dip of the red shale and sandstone strata, 
I am aware of the local exception to be found in the southeastern inclination of the beds be¬ 
tween Middlebrook and Repack, and its seeming incompatibility with the above views. I 
would direct the reader’s attention, however, to the peculiar position of the Mine mountain, 
jutting out into the estuary of the red shale, considerably to the southeast of the general line 
of coast. It is easy to conceive that its influence must have been to intercept the regular 
northward current, and to deflect it over a certain area into a species of eddy, in which the 
