7G 
Records of line Geological Survey of India. 
[VOL. V. 
coloured limestone. I had an opportunity from the deck of the steamer of seeing the cape 
itself and the little island of Massandim, from which the whole promontory derives the 
name by which it is chiefly known. 
Subsequently in Khor-as-Shem, or Elphinstone Inlet of the old charts, formerly a 
telegraph station of the Persian Gulf Cable, I was enabled to examine the rocks more 
closely. 
They consist of black, brown, dark-grey, and dark-buff limestone, hard, compact, and 
intersected by veins of calcite, with a few comparatively thin and subordinate beds of shale 
and! sandstone. These rocks are distinctly stratified, the slight variations in the colouring 
of the different beds rendering the stratification distinct up to the very summit of the 
huge precipitous mountains which rise from the shores of the inlet. As a rule, the beds 
roll about with a moderate dip not exceeding 20°; in places there is much disturbance and 
contortion. The thickness of the beds must be very great; some of the mountains on the 
inlet arc said to be 6,000 feet high, and they evidently consist entirely of the dark limestone ; 
indeed no trace of any other rock was to be seen in the neighbourhood. 
Fossils are far from scarce in the limestone, but it is unusually difficult to find any in a 
state in which they can be recognised. Sections of shells, both univalves and bivalves, 
fragments of corals, and apparently of cucriuites, are to be found in several beds, but it was 
only after much search that I found anything which may possibly be identified. 
These fossils have been submitted to careful examination by I)r. P. Stolicr.ka, Paleonto¬ 
logist to the Geological Survey of India, who states: “The limestone contains several 
specimens of a Myophortn, externally very closely resembling M. ckenopus, Laube, from 
the St. Cassian beds, and indicating upper triassic strata. This is the only fossil which can 
be even approximately determined. It occurs socially, and together with some casts of 
Gcisfropoda, resembling Chemulizut. 
“A few casts of a Pelecypod resemble in shape Anoplophora, also a triassic genus. 
There are two valves of an Exogyra of the shape of the neocoinien E. conica. As far as I 
know, this type is unknown in the Trias. 
“ A few fragments of a Pecten, undeterminable, occur; and several fragments of an 
Asteroid coral.” 
I suspect that this great limestone-formation must occupy a considerable area in ‘Oman ; 
and it is far from improbable that it forms part of the great dark-coloured mountain ranges 
behind Maskat. This is the more probable, because Dr. Carter obtained through Mr. Cole 
of the Indian Navy specimens of similar limestone from the mountains near Eas-el-Had. 
The most remarkable circumstance about the Massandim promontory is its form. The 
inlet I visited, Khor-as-Shem, runs from the Persian Gulf for, I believe, seventeen miles into 
the heart of the hills ; it is about 17 to 20 fathoms deep throughout, and in many places even 
close up to the rocks on each side. It is only separated by a holt of land less than a mile 
broad from another inlet called Ghubot Ghuzirah (Malcolm’s Inlet of the old charts), which 
enters from the eastern side of the promontory in the Gulf of ‘Oman, and which is still 
deeper. Other inlets occur, all very deep, and immediately off the rocky coast is the deepest 
part of the Persian Gulf. There is a curious resemblance of these inlets to the fiords of 
Norway, but the latter are undoubtedly of glacial origin, whilst no such cause can be 
suggested in one of the very hottest regions of the whole surface of the globe. The sea 
could never excavate such land-locked basins as that of Khor-as-Shem, barely a mile across 
in places and 20 fathoms deep. I can only suppose that the peculiar form of this coast is the 
result of subsidence, that the inlets were valleys on the land produced in the usual manner 
by rain and streams and then sunk beneath the sea, The great depth of the Gulf of ‘Oman 
