280 
EDWIN JAMES 
tions were too limited to justify us in asserting that this is not the 
case, nor can we adduce a single fact, from which it could be in¬ 
ferred, that these rocks have been deposited, like the accompanying 
strata of sandstone, from suspension in water. We saw no instance 
of their alternation with the sandstones, and no appearance of the 
gradual transition of these rocks into each other. 
The country occupied by this formation presents scenery of a very 
peculiar and interesting character. It is remarked by Humboldt, 
that in the Canary Islands, in the mountains of Auvergne, in the 
Mittelgebirge of Bohemia, in Mexico, and on the banks of the Ganges, 
and we may add in the United States, the formation of trap is in¬ 
dicated by a symmetrical disposition of the mountains, by truncated 
cones, sometimes insulated, sometimes grouped, and by elevated 
plains, both extremities of which are crowned by a comical rising. 
In some of the [our] unpublished drawings by Mr. Seymour, these 
peculiar features of the scenery of the Floetz Trap formation have 
been preserved. 
\ 
Had the expedition of which he was a party chanced to pass 
a few miles farther south, instead of hugging so closely the 
Arkansas River, and thus had penetrated the interior of the Mesa 
de Maya lava-fields there would have been found on every hand 
innumerable and incomparable examples of those very “whin- 
stone dykes’’ of Scotland which James so longed to touch, and 
trap flows would have been seen to have metamorphosed the strata 
on which they rested; and perhaps some of those situations would 
have been encountered where ancient lignite beds were trans¬ 
formed by the once molten and mobile lavas into anthracite and 
even graphite^ It is a singular fact that no spot in all this 
region was reached where the porous amygdaloids, of which so 
much was made, and the compact greenstones were not discovered 
in such close juxtaposition as to leave no uncertainty that the 
former was but the surface portion of the latter. So near some¬ 
times do we come without realizing it at the time upon the 
solutions of the great problems of life. 
Certain minor geological records made by Doctor James on 
this famous Long’s Expedition are not without great interest 
especially when taken in connection with the rather remarkable 
developments of many years afterwards. In southeastern Colo¬ 
rado he observed some strange porous soils [adobe] which he 
compared with pumice, and which he thought were identical with 
the fine silts brought down by the muddy waters of the Missouri 
