360 
VALLEY OF THE QUANGO. 
Chap. XIX. 
though so weak that I had to be led by my companions to pre¬ 
vent my toppling over in walking down. It was annoying to feel 
myself so helpless, for I never liked to see a man, either sick or 
weU, giving in effeminately. Below us lay the valley of the 
Quango. If you sit on the spot where Mary Queen of Scots 
viewed the battle of Langside, and look down on the vale of 
Clyde, you may see in miniature the glorious sight which a much 
greater and richer vaUey presented to our view. It is about a 
hundred miles broad, clothed with dark forest, except where 
the light-green gTass covers meadow-lands on the Quango, which 
here and there glances out in the sun as it wends its way to 
the north. The opposite side of this great vaUey appears like 
a range of lofty mountains, and the descent into it about a mile, 
wliich, measured perpendicularly, may be from a thousand to 
twelve hundred feet. Emerging from the gloomy forests of Londa, 
this magnificent prospect made us aU feel as if a weight had 
been lifted off our eyehds. A cloud was passing across the 
middle of the vaUey, from which rolling thunder pealed, while 
above aU was glorious sunlight; and when we went down to the 
part where we saw it passing, we found that a very heavy 
thunder-shower had faUen under the path of the cloud: and the 
bottom of the vaUey, which from above seemed quite smooth, we 
discovered to be intersected and furrowed by great numbers of 
deep-cut streams. Lookmg back from below, the descent appears 
as the edge of a table-land, with numerous indented deUs and 
spurs jutting out aU along, giving it a serrated appearance. Both 
the top and sides of the sierra are covered with trees, but large 
patches of the more perpendicular parts are bare, and exhibit the 
red soU, wliich is general over the region we have now entered. 
The hoUow affords a section of this part of the country; and 
we find that the uppermost stratum is the ferruginous conglo¬ 
merate already mentioned. The matrix is rust of iron (or 
hydrous peroxide of iron and h£ematite), and in it are embedded 
water-worn pebbles of sandstone and quartz. As this is the rock 
underlying the soU of a large part of Londa, its formation must 
have preceded the work of denudation by an arm of the sea, 
which washed away the enormous mass of matter requfred, before 
the vaUey of Cassange could assume its present form. The strata 
under the conglomerate are all of red clay shale of different 
