312 
GEOLOGY OF THE FIRST DISTRICT. 
47, From Colchester over the mountain south, down Spring brook,* thence down the Beaver 
kill to the Willewemock, and up this stream to the mouth of the Little Beaver kill,t 
the same grey and red rocks so often mentioned occur, the grey grits predominating. 
48. On the Little Beaver kill, the mountains are not high like those on the east and west 
branches of the Delaware, Willewemock and Beaver kill; the bottoms are broad, 
with good land, and the waters are yellow, tinged with peat and with hemlock bark, 
and are strikingly different in appearance from the pure limpid streams of the moun¬ 
tain region of Delaware county. The rocks were mostly grey grits, to near Berkeley, 
where the red rocks formed the surface. These red rocks were frequently seen 
covered by the thick-bedded grey grit and a conglomerate. Red rocks cap many of 
the hills ; others have a cap of grey grit, or a quartzose conglomerate. The soil is 
fertile wherever the red rocks form the surface, as they generally do near Liberty and 
Monticello. 
At Monticello, the court-house of Sullivan county stands on a red gritty micaceous shale, 
similar to that which forms most of the elevated grounds near that town ; but several of the 
swells of land are crowned with a stratum of thick-bedded grey grit and conglomerate twenty 
or thirty feet thick, and which in some places presents the appearance of enormous boulders, 
in consequence of the disintegration and removal of most of the stratum, A fine example of 
this may be seen sixty or seventy rods west-southwest of the court-house. The red rock 
is visible below, while large fragments of what seem to have been an uninterrupted stratum, 
and weighing from a few tons to more than a thousand tons, lie scattered around. These 
masses still show the process of continual disintegration, crumbling away in cavities, and 
pot-holes as they have been called, but the constant scaling olf of the rock can be distinctly 
seen. These rocks had been described to me as showing the wearing action of running 
water. 
The grey rocks are to be seen overlying the red, one and a half miles west of Bridgeville, 
on the road to Monticello, Below are the coarse red grits and conglomerate, closely resem¬ 
bling in external characters the red grits of Haverstraw, Tappan, New-Haven, Durham, 
&c. in the New Red-sandstone formation. Still lower in the mountain towards the Never- 
sink river, one-quarter to half a mile from Bridgeville, the red shale predominates ; and still 
lower, red grits and shales of various degrees of fineness. From Bridgeville to Thompson- 
ville, the grey grits predominated. 
The red rocks predominate from Monticello about two miles south, where the underlying 
grey grits emerge, and form the surface most of the way to the Delaware river. The strata 
dip slightly to the west-northwest, northwest and north. 
• Trout swarm in all these mountain streams. In the latter stream 1 caught twenty-five fine trout in forty minutes, and caught 
my bait of grasshoppers during that time. They made a delicious supper and breakfast for myself and party, including also 
my family who were with me, 
t On Burr’s county map of Delaware county, the upper part of Willewemock is called the Little Beaver kill. The latter 
stream flows from the south and southeast mostly from Liberty township. 
