TRAVELS FORTH AMERICA, IN THE YEARS 1841-2 ; WITH GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND NOVA SCOTIA. BY CHARLES LYELL, ESQ., F.R. S. AUTHOB OF THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW-YORK: WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 18 4 5. TO GEORGE TICKNOR, ESQ., OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. My dear Mr. Ticknor, I am glad to have your permission to dedicate these volumes to you, in remembrance of the many happy days spent in your society, and in that of your family and literary friends at Boston; a remembrance which would be without alloy, were it not for my frequent regrets that the broad Atlantic should sep¬ arate so many congenial souls whom we both of us number among our friends in Europe and America. Believe me, With feelings of great regard, Ever faithfully yours, Charles Lyell. London, June 12, 1845. PREFACE. The reader is reminded that the general map of the geology of the United States and Canada forms the frontispiece of the second volume, and that the line of my route is traced upon it in the manner described in the explanation of the map at VoL II. p. 238 As the present work embraces a great variety of subjects to which my thoughts were turned during my travels in North America, I have endeavoured to confine myself as far as possi¬ ble to the communication of such scientific matter as I thought might be of interest to the general reader. For a more detailed account of my geological observations alluded to in the course of these volumes, I must refer to the following published papers and abstracts of memoirs read to the Geological Society of Lon¬ don. 1. Letter to Dr. Fitton on the Blossberg Coal District and Stigmaria: Proceedings of the Geological Society , vol. iii. p. 554. 1841. 2. Recession of the Falls of Niagara: Ihid. vol. iii. p. 595. 1842. Resumed, vol. iv. p. 19. 1843. 3. Tertiary Formations in Virginia and other parts of the United States: Ihid. vol. iii. p. 735. 1842. 4. Fossil Foot-Prints of Birds and Impressions of Rain-drops in Connecticut Valley. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 793. 1842. 5. Tertiary Strata of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts: Ihid. vol. iv. p. 31. 1843. 6. On the Geological Position of the Mastodon giganteus, and other Remains at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, and other Localities in the United States. Ibid. vol. iv. p. 36. 1843. 1 * vi PREFACE. 7. On upright Fossil Trees found in the Coal Strata of Cum¬ berland, Nova Scotia: Silliman's Journal , vol. xlv. No. 2. p. 353. 1843. 8. Coal Formations, Gypsum, and Marine Limestones of Nova Scotia: Ibid. p. 356. 9. Bed of Plumbago and Anthracite in Mica-schist, near Wor¬ cester, Massachusetts, with Appendix containing Analyses by Dr. Percy: Quarterly Journ. of Geol. Soc. No. 2. p. 416. May, 1845. 10. Cretaceous Strata of New Jersey, with Appendix, on the Fossil Corals of the same, by Mr. Lonsdale: Ibid. No. 1. p. 301. Feb. 1845. 11. Miocene Formations of Virginia and North Carolina, &c., with Appendix, on Fossil Corals, by Mr. Lonsdale: read to the Geol. Soc., March, 1845. Preparing for publica¬ tion, Ibid. No. 4. 12. On the White Limestone of South Carolina and Georgia, and the Eocene Strata of other parts of the U. S., with Appendix, on the Corals, by Mr. Lonsdale : read to the Geol. Soc., March, 1845. Preparing for publication, Ibid. No. 4. Abstracts of most of these papers have also appeared in Sil- liman’s “ American Journal of Science and Arts,” for the cor¬ responding years. London, June 14th, 1845. For the Description of the Plates and Maps , see Vol. II. p. 198. •** CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. CHAPTER I. PAGE Voyage.—Harbour of Halifax.—Excursions near Boston.—Dif¬ ference of Plants from European Species, and Correspon¬ dence of Marine Shells.—Resemblance of Drift, Erratics, and Furrowed Rocks, to those of Sweden.—Springfield.— New Haven.—Scenery of the Hudson.—Albany.—Geologi¬ cal Surveys.—Mohawk Valley.—Ancient or Silurian Forma¬ tions.—Prosperity and rapid Progress of the People.— Lake Ontario.—Tortoises.—Fossil Remains of Mastodon. 1 CHAPTER II. Distant and near View of the Falls of Niagara.—Whether the Falls have receded from Queenston to their present Site.—Geographical Features of the Region.—Course of the River above and below the Falls.—Recent Proofs of Erosion.—Historical Data in the Works of Hennepin and Kalm.—Geological Evidence derived from Fluviatile Strata or Remnants of an old River-bed in Goat-Island and else¬ where.—Difficulty of computing the Rate of the Retrograde Movement.—Varying Hardness and Thickness of the Rocks undermined.—Future Recession.—Age of the Drift and Lime¬ stone Escarpments.—Successive changes which preceded and accompanied the origin of the Falls.—Reflections on the Lapse of past Time... 22 CHAPTER III. Tour from the Niagara to the Northern Frontier of Pennsyl¬ vania.—Ancient Gypsiferous Formation of New York.— Fossil Mastodon at Geneseo.—Scenery.—Sudden Growth of New Towns.—Coal of Blossberg, and resemblance to British ??!?$ PAGB Coal-Measures— Stigmaria.—Humming Birds.—Nomencla¬ ture of Places—Helderberg Mountains and Fossils.—Re¬ fractory Tenants.—Travelling in the States.—Politeness of Women.—Canal Boat.-Domestic Service.—Progress of Civilisation.—Philadelphia.—Fire-engines. 44 CHAPTER IV. Excursion to New Jersey.—Cretaceous Rocks compared to European.—General Analogy of Fossils, and Distinctness of Species.—Tour to the Anthracite Region of the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania.—Long parallel Ridges and Valleys of these Mountains.— Pottsville.— Absence of Smoke.—Fossil Plants same as in Bituminous Coal.—Stigmariae.—Great Thickness of Strata.—Origin of Anthracite.—Vast Area of the Appala¬ chian Coal-Field.—Progressive Debituminization of coal from West to East.—General Remarks on the different Groups of Rocks between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. Law of Structure of the Appalachian chain discovered by the Professors Rogers.—Increased Folding and Dislocation of Strata on the South-eastern flank of the Appalachians. Theory of the Origin of this Mountain chain. 62 CHAPTER V. Wooded Ridges of the Alleghany Mountains.—German Patois in Pennsylvania.—Lehigh Summit Mine.—Effects of Ice during a Flood in the Delaware.—Election of a Governor at Trenton and at Philadelphia.—Journey to Boston.— Autumnal Tints of the Foliage.—Boston the Seat of Com¬ merce, of Government, and of a University.—Lectures at the Lowell Institute.—Influence of Oral Instruction in Litera¬ ture and Science.—Fees of Public Lecturers.—Education Funds sunk in costly Buildings.—Advantages of anti-build¬ ing clauses —Blind Asylum.—Lowell Factory.—National Schools.—Equality of Sects.—Society in Boston. 81 CHAPTER VI. Fall of Snow and Sleigh-driving at Boston.—Journey to New Haven.—Ichthyolites of Durham, Connecticut.—Age of Red Sandstone.—Income of Farmers.—Baltimore.—Wash¬ ington.—National Museum.—Natural Impediments to the Growth of Washington.—Why chosen for the Capital.— Richmond, Virginia.—Effects of Slave Labour.—Low Region CONTENTS. T faq a on the Atlantic Border, occupied by Tertiary Strata.—In fusorial Bed at Richmond.—Miocene Shells and Corals in the Cliffs of the James River compared with Fossils of the European Crag and Faluns.—Analogy of Forms and Differ¬ ence of Species—Proportion of Species-Commencement of the present Geographical Distribution of Mollusca. CHAPTER VII. Pine Barrens of Virginia and North Carolina—Railway Train stopped by Snow and Ice—The great Dismal Swamp- Soil formed entirely of Vegetable Matter—Rises higher than the contiguous firm Land—Buried Timber—Lake in the Middle—The Origin of Coal illustrated by the Great Dis¬ mal-Objections to the Theory of an ancient Atmosphere highly charged with Carbonic Acid. CHAPTER VIII. Tour to Charleston, South Carolina—Facilities of Locomo¬ tion—Augusta—Voyage down the Savannah River—Shell Bluff—Slave Labour—Fever and Ague—Millhaven—Pine Forests of Georgia—Alligators and Land Tortoises—Warmth of Climate in January.—Tertiary Strata on the Savannah._ Fossil Remains of Mastodon and Mylodon near Savannah._ Passports required of Slaves.—Cheerfulness of the Negroes. 122 CHAPTER IX. Return to Charleston—Fossil Human Skeleton—Geographical Distribution of Quadrupeds in North America—Severe Frost in 1835 in South Carolina—White Limestone of the Cooper River and Santee Canal—Referred to the Eocene Period, not intermediate between Tertiary and Chalk.__ Lime-sinks—Species of Shells common to Eocene Strata in America and Europe.—Causes of the increased Insalubrity of the Low Region of South Carolina—Condition of the Slave Population—Cheerfulness of the Negroes, their Vanity.—State of Animal Existence —Invalidity of Mar¬ riages—The coloured Population multiply faster than the Whites. Effect of the Interference of Abolitionists.—Law against Education.—Gradual Emancipation equally desirable for the Whites and the Coloured Race, 136 VI CONTENTS. PAGE. CHAPTER X. Wilmington, North Carolina.—Mount Vernon.—Return to Philadelphia.—Reception of Mr. Dickens.—Museum and Fossil Human Bones.—Penitentiary.—Churches.—Religious Excitement.—Coloured People of Fortune.—Obstacles to their obtaining Political and Social Equality.—No natural Antipathy between the Races.—Negro Reservations. 156 CHAPTER XI. Philadelphia.—Financial Crisis.—Payment of State Dividends suspended.—General Distress and Private Losses of the Americans.—Debt of Pennsylvania.—Public Works.—Direct Taxes.—Deficient Revenue.—Bad Faith and Confiscations.— Irresponsible Executive.—Loan Refused by European Capi¬ talists in 1842.—Good Faith of Congress during the War in 1S12-14.—Effects of Universal Suffrage.—Fraudulent Vot¬ ing.—Aliens.—Solvency and Good Faith of the Majority of the States.—Confidence of American Capitalists.—Reform of the Electoral Body.—General Progress of Society, and Prospects of the Republic. 171 CHAPTER XII. New York City.—Geology.—Distribution of Erratic Rocks in Long Island.—Residence in New York.—Effects on Society of increased Intercourse of distant States.—Separation of the Capital and Metropolis.—Climate.—Geology of the Taconic Mountains.—Stratum of Plumbago and Anthracite in the Mica Schist of Worcester —Theory of its Origin.—Lectures for the Working Classes.—Fossil Foot-Prints of Birds in Red Sandstone.—Mount Holyoke.—Visit to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard.—Fossil Walrus.—Indias. 189 CHAPTER XIII. Meeting of Association of American Geologists at Boston.— Popular Libraries in New England.—Large Sale of Literary Works in the United States.—American Universities.— Harvard College, near Boston.—English Universities.—Pecu¬ liarities of their System.—Historical Sketch of the Causes of the Peculiarities not of Medieval Origin.—Collegiate Corporations.—Their altered Relations to the English Uni¬ versities after the Reformation.—Constitution given to Oxford by Leicester and Laud.—System of Public Teaching, CONTENTS. VII PAQB how superseded by the Collegiate.—Effects of the Change.— Oxford Examination Statute of 1800.—Its subsequent Modi¬ fication and Results.—Rise of Private Tutors at Oxford and Cambridge.—Consequences of this Innovation.—Struggle at Oxford in 1839 to restore the Professional System.—Causes of its Rejection.—Tractarianism.—Supremacy of Ecclesias¬ tics.—Youthful Examiners.—Cambridge, advocacy of the System followed there.—Influence of the English Academi¬ cal Plan on the Cultivation of the Physical Sciences, and all Branches of Progressive Knowledge.—Remedies and Reforms... 208 JOURNAL OF A TOUR IN NORTH AMERICA, IN 1841—2. CHAPTER I. Voyage.—Harbour of Halifax.—Excursions near Boston. — Differ¬ ence of Plants from European Species, and Correspondence of Marine Shells.—Resemblance of Drift, Erratics, and furrowed Rocks, to those of Sweden. — Springfield.—New Haven.—Scenery of the Hudson. — Albany.—Geological Surveys.—Mohawk Valley.— Ancient or Silurian Formations.—Prosperity and rapid Progress of the People.—Lake Ontario. — Tortoises.—Fossil Remains of Mastadon. July 20, 1841.—Sailed from Liverpool for Boston, U. S., in the steam-ship Acadia, which held her course as straight as an arrow from Cape Clear in Ireland to Halifax in Nova Scotia, making between 220 and 280 miles per day. After the monotony of a week spent on the open sea, we were amused when we came near the great banks which extend from the southern point of New¬ foundland, by the rapid passage of the steamer through alternate belts of stationary fog and clear spaces warmed and lighted up with bright sunshine. Look¬ ing at the dense fog from the intermediate sumiy * Chap. i. 2 HARBOUR OF HALIFAX. regions, we could hardly be persuaded that we were not beholding land, so distinct and well-defined was its outline, and such the varieties of light and shade, that some of our Canadian fellow-passengers compared it to the patches of cleared and uncleared country on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. These fogs are caused by the meeting, over the great banks, of the warm waters of the gulf stream flowing from the south, and colder currents, often charged with floating ice, from the north, by which very opposite states in the relative temperature of the sea and atmosphere are pro¬ duced in spaces closely contiguous. In places where the sea is warmer than the air, fogs are generated. When the eye has been accustomed for many days to the deep blue of the central Atlantic, the greener tint of the sea over the banks is refreshing. We were within 150 miles of the southern point of Newfound¬ land when we crossed these banks, over which the shallowest water is said to be about thirty-five fathoms deep. The bottom consists of fine sand, which must be often ploughed up by icebergs, for several of them were seen aground here by some of our passengers on the 31st of July last. The captain tells us that the worst months for crossing the Atlantic to and from Halifax are February and March, and the most agree¬ able ones, July, August, and September. The nearer we approached the American coast, the more beautiful and brilliant were the sunsets. We sometimes com¬ pared the changing hues of the clouds and sky to the blue and red colours in a pigeon’s neck. July 31.—On the eleventh day of our voyage we sailed directly into the harbour of Halifax, which by its low hills of granite and slate, covered with birch and Chap. i. ARRIVAL AT BOSTON. 3 spruce fir, reminded me more of a Norwegian fiord, such as that of Christiania, than any other place I had seen. I landed here for six hours, with my wife, du¬ ring which we had time to drive about the town, and see the museum, where I was shown a large fossil tree filled with sandstone, recently sent from strata contain¬ ing coal in the interior. I resolved to examine these before returning to England, as they appeared, by the description given us, to afford the finest examples yet known in the world of petrified trees occurring in their natural or erect position. Letters, which we had written on the voyage, being now committed to the post-office at Halifax, were taken up next day by the Caledonia steam-ship for England, and in less than a month from the time of our quitting London, our friends in remote parts of Great Britain (in Scotland and in Devonshire) were reading an account of the harbour of Halifax, of the Micmac Indians with their Esquimaux features, paddling about in canoes of birch bark, and other novelties seen on the shores of the New World. It required the aid of the recently established railroads at home, as well as the Atlantic steam-packets, to render such rapid correspond¬ ence possible. August 2.—A run of about thirty hours carried us to Boston, which we reached in twelve and a half days after leaving Liverpool. The heat here is intense, the harbour and city beautiful, the air clear and entirely free from smoke, so that the shipping may be seen far off, at the end of many of the streets. The Tremont Hotel merits its reputation as one of the best in the world. Recollecting the contrast of every thing French when I first crossed the straits of Dover, I am aston- 4 EXCURSIONS NEAR BOSTON. Chap. i. ished, after having traversed the wide ocean, at the re¬ semblance of every thing I see and hear to things familiar at home. It has so often happened to me in our own island, without travelling into those parts of Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, where they talk a perfectly distinct language, to encounter provincial dialects which it is difficult to comprehend, that I wondei at finding the people here so very English. If the metropolis of New England be a type of a large part of the United States, the industry of Sam Slick, and other writers, in collecting together so many diverting Americanisms and so much original slang, is truly great, or then inventive powers still greater. I made excursions to the neighbourhood of Boston, through Roxbury, Cambridge, and other places, with a good botanist, to whom 1 had brought letters of intro¬ duction. Although this is not the best season for wild flowers, the entire distinctness of the trees, shrubs, and plants, from those on the other side of the Atlantic, affords a constant charm to the European traveller. We admired the drooping American elm, a picturesque tree ; and saw several kinds of sumach, oaks with deeply indented leaCes, dwarf birches, and several wild roses. Large commons without heaths reminded me of the singular fact that no species of heath is indige¬ nous on the American continent. We missed also the small “ crimson-tipped ” daisy on the green lawns, and were told that they have been often cultivated with care, but are found to wither when exposed to the dry air and bright sun of this climate. When weeds so common with us cannot be reared here, we cease to wonder at the dissimilarity of the native flora of the New World Ye . whenever the aboriginal forests are Chap. i. MARINE SHELLS. 5 cleared, we see orchards, gardens, and arable lands, filled with the same fruit trees, the same grain and vegetables, as in Europe, so bountifully has Nature provided that the plants most useful to man should be capable, like himself, of becoming cosmopolites. Aug. 5.—Went by railway to deliver letters and pay some visits at Nahant, situated on a promontory of the coast, about ten miles N.E. of Boston, where I examined the rocks of hornblende and syenite, trav¬ ersed by veins of greenstone and basalt which often intersect each other. The surface of the rocks, wher¬ ever the incumbent gravel or drift has been recently removed, is polished, furrowed, and striated, as in the north of Europe, especially in Sweden, or in Switzer¬ land, near the great glaciers. On the beach or bar of sand and shingle, which unites the peninsula with the main land, I collected many recent shells, and was immediately struck with the agreement of several of the most abundant species with our ordinary British littoral shells. Among them were Purpura lapillus, Turbo {Lilt or in a) rudis, Mytilus edulis, Modiola papuana, Mya arenaria , besides others which were evidently geographical rep¬ resentatives of our common species; such as Nassa trivittata , allied to our N. reticulata, Turbo palliatus Say, allied to, if not the same as, our common Turbo neritoides, 6c c. I afterwards added largely to the list of corresponding species and forms, and Dr. Gould of Boston showed me his collection of the marine shells of Massachusetts' and the adjoining ocean, and gave me a list of 70 out of 197 species which he regarded as identical with shells from ‘Europe. After comparing these on my return, with the aid of several able con- 1 * 6 RESEMBLANCE OF DRIFT ROCKS Chap. i. chologists, I am convinced that the greater part of these identifications are correct; and, in the place of some considered as doubtful, there are others not enumera¬ ted in Dr. Gould’s catalogue, which may be substituted, so as to establish a result for which few geologists were prepared, viz. that one third, or about 35 per cent, of the marine shells of this part of America are the same as those on the opposite side of the Atlantic ; a large part of the remainder consisting of geographical repre¬ sentatives, and a fraction only of the whole affording characteristic or peculiar forms. I shall have many opportunities of pointing out the geological bearing of this curious, and to me very unexpected, fact. Several excavations made for railways in the neigh¬ bourhood of Boston, through mounds of stratified and unstratified gravel and sand, and also through rock, enabled me to recognise the exact resemblance of this part of New England to the less elevated regions of Norway and Sweden, where granitic rocks are strewed over irregularly with sand and blocks of stone, forming a gently undulating country with numerous ponds and small lakes. Indeed, had I not been constantly re¬ minded that I was in America, by the distinctness of the plants, and the birds flying about in the woods, the geological phenomena would have led me to suppose myself in Scotland, or some other part of Northern Europe. These heaps of sand and pebbles are en¬ tirely devoid of shells or organic remains, and occasion¬ ally huge rounded blocks, brought from a great distance, rest upon them, or are buried in them. The heaps are mainly composed, however, of the materials of neigh¬ bouring rocks. At some points the superficial gravel has been pierced to the depth of 100, and even more Chap. i. TO THOSE OF SWEDEN. 7 than 200, feet, without the solid rock being reached; but more commonly the loose detritus is of moderate thickness, and, when removed, a polished surface of granite, gneiss, or mica schist, is exposed, exhibiting a smooth surface, with occasional scratches or straight parallel furrows. Here and there, rounded and flat¬ tened domes of smoothed rock, similar in shape to the “ roches moutonnees” which border the Alpine glaciers, are observable. The day after I landed, an excava¬ tion recently made for the monument now erecting on Bunker’s Hill, enabled me to recognise the likeness of this drift to that of Scandinavia, and every day since I have seen fresh proofs of the complete correspondence of these remote districts. Professor Hitchcock has shown that in New England the parallel grooves or furrows have a general direction nearly north and south, but usually ten or fifteen degrees to the west of north. I have already seen, at Nahant and elsewhere, some marked deviations from this rule, which, however, is correct in the main, and these markings have been found to prevail at all heights in New England, even in mountains more than 2000 feet high. I have already observed several rounded boulders with one flat side scratched and furrowed, as if it had been held firmly in one position when frozen into ice, and rubbed against a hard rocky bottom. There is here, as in Sweden, so great an extent of low country remote from any high mountains, that we cannot attribute the effects above described to true gla¬ ciers descending in the open air from the higher regions to the plains. If we adopt the glacial theory, we must suppose the country to have been submerged, and that the northern drift was brought here by large bodies of 8 DEPARTURE FOR NEW HAVEN. Chap. i. floating ice, which, by repeatedly running aground on the bottom of the sea for thousands of years, and for¬ cing along the sand under their enormous weight, pol¬ ished and furrowed the rocky bottom, and on the melt¬ ing of the ice, let fall their burden of stones or,erratic blocks, together with mud and pebbles. When we recollect that Boston is situated in the lat¬ itude of Rome, or in that of the north of Spain, and that the northern drift and erratic blocks in .Europe are first met with about the 50th degree of latitude, and then increase as we travel towards the pole; theie seems ground for presuming, that the greater cold which now marks the climate of North America had begun to prevail long before the present distribution of land and sea in the northern hemisphere, and before the present climates were established. Perhaps, even in the glacial period of geology, the lines of equal win¬ ter’s cold, when drawn from Europe to North America, made a curve of about 10° to the southward, as in our own times. Aug. 9.—After a week spent very agreeably at Bos¬ ton, we started for New Haven in Connecticut, going the first hundred miles on an excellent railway in about five hours, for three dollars each. The speed of the railways in this State, the most populous in the Union, is greater than elsewhere, and I am told that they are made with American capital, and for the most part pay good interest. There are no tunnels, and so few embankments that they afford the traveller a good view of the country. The number of small lakes and ponds, such as are seen in the country be¬ tween Lund and Stockholm, in Sweden, affords a pleasing variety to the scenery, and they are as useful Chap. i. SPRINGFIELD. 9 as they are ornamental. The water is beautifully clear, and when frozen to the depth of many feet in winter, supplies those large cubical masses of ice, which are sawed and transported to the principal cities throughout the Union, and even shipped to Calcutta, crossing the equator twice in their outward voyage. It has been truly said, that this part of New England owes its wealth to its industry, the soil being sterile, the timber small, and there being no staple commodities of native growth, except ice and granite. In the inland country between Boston and Spring- field, we saw some sand-hills like the dunes of blown sand near the coast, which were probably formed on the sea-side before the country was elevated to its pres¬ ent height. We passed many fields of maize, or In¬ dian corn, before arriving at Springfield, which is a beautiful village, with fine avenues of the American elm on each side of the wide streets. From Spring- field we descended the river Connecticut in a steam¬ boat. Its banks were covered with an elegant species of golden rod ( Solido,go ), with its showy bright yellow flowers. I have been hitherto disappointed in seeing no large timber, and I am told that it was cut down originally in New England without mercy, because it served as an ambush for the Indians, since which time it has never recovered, being consumed largely for fuel. The Americans of these.Eastern States who visit Eu ope have, strange to say, derived their ideas of nobL rees more from those of our principal English parks han from the native forests of the New World. -A I visited Rocky Hill, near Hartford in Connecticut, where the contact is seen of a large mass of columnar trap with red sandstone. In a large quarry, the dis- / 10 new haven. Chap. I. tinct joints which divide the sandstone contrast finely with the divisional planes which separate the basalt into pillars. The evidence of alteration by heat at the point of contact is very marked, and has been well c e- scribed by Dr. Silliman in a paper on the rocks of tins place. „ The city of New Haven, with a population o 14,000 souls, possesses, like Springfield, fine avenues o trees in its streets, which mingle agreeably with the buildings of the university, and the numerous churches, of which we counted near twenty steeples. When attending service, according to the Presbyterian form, in the College chapel on Sunday, I could scarcely believe I was not in Scotland. In an expedition to the north of the town, accom¬ panied by Professor Silliman, his son, and Mr. Percival, a geologist to whom the execution of the State Survey of Connecticut was entrusted, I examined the red sand¬ stone {New Red) and intrusive volcanic rocks (basalt and greenstone) of this neighbourhood. Dykes of various sizes intersect the stratified rocks, and occasion¬ ally flow in great tabular masses nearly parallel to the strata, so as to have the picturesque effect of cappings of columnar basalt, although Mr. Percival has shown that they are in reality intrusive, and alter the strata in contact both above and below. The East and West Rocks near New Haven, crowned with trap, bear a strong resemblance in their outline and general as¬ pect to Salisbury Crags, and other hills of the same structure near Edinburgh. We saw in Hampden parish, lat. 41° 19', on the summit of a high hill of sandstone, a huge erratic block of greenstone, 100 feet in circumference, and pro- Chap. i. PASSAGE TO NEW YORK. 11 jecting 11 feet above ground. Other large trans¬ ported fragments have been met with more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, and every where straight parallel furrows appear on the smooth surface of the rocks, where the superficial gravel and sand are re¬ moved. In a garden at New Haven (August 13.) I saw, for the first time, a humming bird on the wing. It was fluttering round the flowers of a Gladiolus. In the suburbs we gathered a splendid wild flower, the scarlet Lobelia, and a large sweet-scented water-lily. The only singing bird which we heard was a thrush with a red breast, which they call here the robin. The grass¬ hoppers were as numerous and as noisy as in Italy. As we returned in the evening over some low marshy ground, we saw several fire-flies, showing an occasional bright spark. They are small beetles resembling our male glow-worms (Lampyris Linn., Pyrolampis scin- tillans Say). Aug. 13.—A large steamer carried us from New Haven to New York, a distance of about ninety miles, in less than six hours. We had Long Island on the one side, and the main land on the other, the scenery at first tame from the width of the channel, but very lively and striking when this became more contracted, and at length we seemed to sail into the very suburbs of the great city itself, passing between green islands, some of them covered with buildings and villas. We had the same bright sunshine which we have enjoyed ever since we landed, and an atmosphere unsullied by the chimnies of countless steam-boats, factories, and houses, of a population of more than 300,000 souls, 12 SCENERY OF THE HUDSON. Chap. i. thanks to the remoteness of all fuel save anthracite and wood. Next day, I went with Mr. Redfield, well known by his meteorological writings, across the Passaic river to Newark in New Jersey, where we examined quarries of the New Red Sandstone, and saw the surfaces of the strata ripple-marked, and with impressions of rain¬ drops. They also exhibit casts on their under sides of cracks, which have been formed by the shrinking of the layers of clay when drying. These appearances, together with imbedded fragments of carbonized fossil wood, such as may have been drifted on a beach, be¬ speak the littoral character of the formation on which, in many places in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the fossil footsteps of birds, to which I shall afterwards al¬ lude, have been found imprinted. Aug. 16.—Sailed in the splendid new steam-ship the Troy, in company with about 500 passengers, from New York to Albany, 145 miles, at the rate of about 16 miles an hour. When I was informed that “ seven¬ teen of these vessels went to a mile,” it seemed incred¬ ible, but I found that in fact the deck measured 300 feet in length. To give a sufficient supply of oxygen to the anthracite, the machinery is made to work two bellows, which blow a strong current of air into the fur¬ nace. The Hudson is an arm of the sea or estuary, about twelve fathoms deep, above New York, and its waters are inhabited by a curious mixture of marine and fresh-water plants and mollusca. At first on our left, or on the western bank, we had a lofty precipice of columnar basalt from 400 to 600 feet in height, called the Palisades, extremely picturesque. This basalt rests on sandstone, which is of the same age as Chap. i. ALBANY. 13 that before mentioned near New Haven, but has an op¬ posite or westward dip. On arriving at the Highlands, the winding channel is closed in by steep hills of gneiss on both sides, and the vessel often holds her course as if bearing directly on the land. The stranger cannot guess in which direction he is to penetrate the rocky gorge, but he soon emerges again into a broad valley, the blue Catskill mountains appearing in the distance. The scenery deserves all the praise which has been lavished upon it, and when the passage is made in nine hours it is full of variety and contrast. At Albany, a town finely situated on the Hudson, and the capital of the State of New York, I found sev¬ eral geologists employed in the Government survey, and busily engaged in forming a fine museum, to illus¬ trate the organic remains and mineral products of the country. This State is divided into about the same number of counties as England, and is not very inferior to it in extent of territory. The legislature four years ago voted a considerable sum of money, more than 200,000 dollars, or 40,000 guineas, for exploring its Nat¬ ural History and mineral structure ; and at the end of the first two years several of the geological surveyors, of whom four principal ones were appointed, reported, among other results, their opinion, that no coal would ever be discovered in their respective districts. This announcement caused no small disappointment, espe¬ cially as the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania was very rich in coal. Accordingly, during my tour, I heard frequent complaints that, not satisfied with their inability to find coal themselves, the surveyors had de¬ cided that no one else would ever be able to detect any, having had the presumption to pass a sentence of future 2 14 GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS. Chap. i. sterility on the whole land. Yet, in spite of these expres¬ sions of ill-humour, it was satisfactory to observe that the rashness of private speculators had received a wholesome check; and large sums of money, which for twenty years previously had been annually squan¬ dered in trials for coal in rocks below the carboniferous series, were henceforth saved to the public. There can be little doubt that the advantage derived to the re sources of the State by the cessation of this annual outlay alone, and the more profitable direction since given to private enterprise, is sufficient to indemnify the country, on mere utilitarian grounds, for the sum so munificently expended by the government on geologi¬ cal investigations. The resemblance of certain Silurian rocks on the banks of the Hudson river to the bitumi¬ nous shales of the true Coal formation was the chief cause of the deception which misled the mining adven¬ turers of New York. I made an excursion southwards from Albany, with a party of geologists, to Normans- kill Creek, where there is a waterfall, to examine these black slates, containing graptolites, trilobites, and other Lower Silurian fossils. By persons ignorant of the or¬ der of superposition and of fossil remains, they might easily be mistaken for Coal measures, especially as some small particles of anthracite, perhaps of animal origin, do actually occur in them. On leaving Albany, I determined so to plan my route to the Falls of Niagara and back again to the Hudson, as to enable me to see by the way the entire succession of mineral groups from the lowest Silurian up to the coal of Pennsylvania. Mr. James Hall, to whose hands the north-west division of the geological survey of New York had been confided, kindly offered himself as my Chap. i. ANCIENT OR SILURIAN FORMATIONS. 15 guide. Taking the railway to Schenectady, and along the Mohawk valley, we first stopped at Little Falls, where we examined the gneiss and the lowest Silurian sandstone resting upon it. We then pursued our jour¬ ney along the line of the Erie Canal and the Mohawk River, stopping here and there to examine quarries of limestone, and making a short detour through the beau¬ tiful valley of Cedarville in Herkimer County, where there is a fine section of the strata. Afterwards we ex¬ plored the picturesque ravine through which the Gene¬ see flows at Rochester, the river descending by a suc¬ cession of cataracts over the same rocks which are ex¬ posed farther westward on the Niagara. The excava¬ tions also made for the grand canal at Lockport afforded us a fine opportunity of seeing these older fossiliferous rocks laid open to view. At this point the barges laden with merchandise climb up, by a series of locks placed one above the other, to the table land in which Lake Erie is situated. In the course of this short tour, I be¬ came convinced that we must turn to the New World if we wish to see in perfection the oldest monuments of the earth’s history, so far at least as relates to its earli¬ est inhabitants. Certainly in no other country are these ancient strata developed on a grander scale, 01 more plentifully charged with fossils 5 and, as they aie nearly horizontal, the order of their relative position is always clear and unequivocal. They exhibit, moie- over, in their range from the Hudson River to the Ni¬ agara, some fine examples of the giadual manner in which certain sets of strata thin out when followed for hundreds of miles, while others previously wanting be¬ come intercalated in the series. Thus, for example, some of the limestones which are several hundred feet 16 ANCIENT OR SILURIAN FORMATIONS. Chap. i. thick ill the Helderberg Hills, near Albany, are scarcely forty feet thick in the Niagara district; and on the other hand, the rocks over which the cataract of Ni¬ agara is precipitated, dwindle away to such insignificant dimensions when followed eastward to the hills S. W. of Albany, that their place in the series there can scarcely be recognised. Another interesting fact may be noticed as the result even of a cursory survey of the fossils of these North American rocks, namely, that while some of the species agree, the majority of them are not identical with those found in strata, which are their equivalents in age and position on the other side of the Atlantic. Some fossils which are identical, such as Atrypa affinis, Leptcena depressa, and L. eugly- pha , are precisely those shells which have a great ver¬ tical and horizontal range in Europe,—species which were capable of surviving many successive changes in the earth’s surface, and for the same reason enjoyed at certain periods a wide geographical range. It has been usually affirmed that in the rocks older than the car¬ boniferous, the fossil fauna in different parts of the globe was almost every where the same; but, judging from the first assemblage of organic remains which I have seen here, it appears to me, that however close the general analogy of forms may be, there is evidence of the same law of variation in space as now prevails in the living creation. A few years ago, it was a fatiguing tour of many weeks to reach the Falls of Niagara from Albany. We are now carried along at the rate of sixteen miles an hour, on a railway often supported on piles, through large swamps covered with aquatic trees and shrubs, or through dense forests, with occasional clearings where Chap. i. PROSPERITY OF THE PEOPLE. 17 orchards are planted by anticipation among the stumps, before they have even had time to run up a log-house. The traveller views with surprise, in the midst of so much unoccupied land, one flourishing town after an¬ other, such as Utica, Syracuse, and Auburn. At Roches¬ ter he admires the streets of large houses, inhabited by 20,000 souls, where the first settler built his log-cabin in the wilderness only twenty-five years ago. At one point our train stopped at a handsome new built sta¬ tion-house, and, looking out at one window, we saw a group of Indians of the Oneida tribe, lately the owners of the broad lands around, but now humbly offering for sale a few trinkets, such as baskets ornamented with porcupine quills, moccasins of moose-deer skin, and boxes of birch-bark. At the other window stood a well- dressed waiter handing ices and confectionary. When we reflect that some single towns, of which the founda¬ tions were laid by persons still living, can already num¬ ber a population, equal to all the aboriginal hunter tribes who possessed the forests for hundreds of miles around, we soon cease to repine at the extraordinary revolution, however much we may commiserate the unhappy fate of the disinherited race. They who are accustomed to connect the romance of their travels in Europe or Asia with historical recollections and the monuments of former glory, with the study of lnastei- pieces in the fine arts, or with grand and magnificent scenery, will hardly believe the romantic sensations which may be inspired by the aspect of this region, where very few points of picturesque beauty meet the eye, and where the aboriginal forest has lost iis chaim of savage wildness by the intrusion of railways and ca¬ nals. The foreign naturalist indeed sees novelty m 2 * 18 PROSPERITY OF THE PEOPLE. Chap. i. every plant, bird, and insect; and the remarkable re¬ semblances of the rocks at so great a distance from home are to him a source of wonder and instruction. But there are other objects of intense interest, to en¬ liven or excite the imagination of every traveller. Here, instead of dwelling on the past, and on the signs of pomp and grandeur which have vanished, the mind is filled with images of coming power and splendour. The vast stride made by one generation in a brief mo¬ ment of time, naturally disposes us to magnify and ex¬ aggerate the rapid rate of future improvement. The contemplation of so much prosperity, such entire ab¬ sence of want and poverty, so many school-houses and churches, rising every where in the woods, and such a general desire of education, with the consciousness that a great continent lies beyond, which has still to be ap¬ propriated, fills the traveller with cheering thoughts and sanguine hopes. He may be reminded that there is another side to the picture, that where the success has been so brilliant and where large fortunes have been hastily realised, there will be rash speculations and bit¬ ter disappointments; but these ideas do not force them¬ selves into the reveries of the passing stranger. He sees around him the solid fruits of victory, and forgets that many a soldier in the foremost ranks has fallen in the breach ; and cold indeed would be his temperament if he did not sympathise with the freshness and hope¬ fulness of a new country, and feel as men past the prime of life are accustomed to feel when in company with the young, who are full of health and buoyant spirits, of faith and confidence in the future. Aug. 24.—In the suburbs of Rochester, Mr. Hall and I visited a spot where the remains of the great Chap. i. LAKE ONTARIO.—TORTOISES. 19 Mastodon had been dug up from a bed of white shell- marl. I found fragments of the fossil teeth and ivory of one tusk, and ascertained that the accompanying shells were of recent species of the genera Limnea , Planor- bis, Valvata, Cyclas , &c. We also examined the narrow ridge composed of sand and gravel between Rochester and Lake Ontario, which has been traced for a hundred miles, running nearly parallel to the lake, and from three to eight miles distant from it. It rises from ten to twenty feet above the general level of the surrounding plain of clay, and presents a steep slope to the north and south, affording an excellent road, like the sand-ridges or osars which I have seen in Sweden, and which are doubtless of similar origin. Geologists are all agreed that these and other similar ridges sur¬ rounding the great Canadian lakes, and occurring at different heights above them, were once lines of beach surrounding great bodies of water. Whether these con¬ sisted of lakes or seas,—how the water came to stand at so many different levels, and whether some of the ridges were not originally banks and bars of sand formed under water, are points which I shall discuss in the sequel. While we were roaming along the shore of Lake On¬ tario, to compare the old ridge road with the modem beach, we saw several tortoises of different species bask¬ ing in the sun on logs of drift wood in the shallow ponds connected with the lake. We caught one of these (Testudo picta), which has a gaily coloured shell, and I afterwards carried it a day’s journey in the carriage, and then turned it out, to see whether, as I was told, it would know its way back to Lake On¬ tario. I am bound to admit that its instinct on this 20 NEW SETTLERS. Chap. i. occasion did not fail, for it made directly for a ravine, in the bottom of which was a stream that would lead it in time to the Genesee River, and this would carry it to its native lake, if it escaped destruction at the falls below Rochester, where the celebrated diver, Sam Patch, perished, after he had succeeded in throwing' himself with impunity down several other great water¬ falls. There is a fresh-water tortoise in Europe ( Ter- rapena Europea), found in Hungary, Prussia, and Silesia, as far north as lat. 50° to 52°. It also occurs near Bordeaux, and in the north of Italy, 44° and 45 e N. lat., which precisely corresponds with the latitude of Lake Ontario. In moist places along the lake shore, and in the lanes and high roads, we saw numerous yellow butterflies (Colias philodice — C. Europorna of some authors) very like a British species. Sometimes forty clustering on a small spot resembled a plot of primroses, and as they rose altogether, and flew off slowly on every side, it was like the play of a beautiful fountain. On our way home through the woods we stopped at the cabin of some new settlers near the lake, many miles from any neighbours, in the midst of a square clearing covered with blackened stumps, where not a single tree or shrub had been spared. The view was bounded on every side by a dense wall of dark wood striped with white by the vertical lines of the numerous tall and straight trees without side branches, and sup¬ porting a dark canopy of foliage. When we admired the forest, the settler’s wife was pleased, but said, sigh¬ ing, that she could not get her children to see any beauty in trees. They had never known the old Chap. i. NEW SETTLERS. 21 country, nor other friends, and were happier than she and her husband could be, though in their worldly concerns they were thriving, and had every reason to feel content, except when attacked by the ague, so common in the newly-cleared grounds. 22 FALLS OF NIAGARA: Chap. n. CHAPTER II. Distant and near View of the Falls of Niagara.—Whether the Falls have receded from. Queenston to their present Site.—Geographical Features of the Region.—Course of the River above and below the Falls.—Recent Proofs of Erosion.—Historical Data in the Works of Hennepin and Kalm.—Geological Evidence derived *rom Fluviatile Strata or Remnants of an old River-bed in Goat Island and elsewhere.—Difficulty of computing the Rate of the retrograde Movement.—Varying Hardness and Thickness of the Rocks undermined.—Future Recession.—Age of the Drift and Limestone Escarpments.—Successive Changes which preceded and accompanied the Origin of the Falls.—Reflections on the Lapse of past Time. Aug. 27 .—We first came in sight of the Falls of Niagara when they were about three miles distant. The sun was shining full upon them—no building in view—nothing but the green wood, the falling water, and the white foam. At that moment they appeared to me more beautiful than I had expected, and less grand; but after several days, when I had enjoyed a nearer view of the two cataracts, had listened to their thundering sound, and gazed on them for hours from above and below, and had watched the river foaming over the rapids, then plunging headlong into the dark pool,—and when I had explored the delightful island which divides the falls, where the solitude of the an¬ cient forest is still unbroken, I at last learned by de¬ grees to comprehend the wonders of the scene, and to feel its full magnificence. Early in the morning after our arrival, I saw from the window of our hotel, on the American side, a long train of white vapoury clouds hanging over the deep MMMMHMNM MNMNHMR Chap. ii. THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES. 23 chasm below the falls. They were slightly tinted by the rays of the rising sun, and blown slowly north¬ wards by a gentle breeze from the pool below the cat¬ aract, which was itself invisible from this point of view. No fog was rising from the ground, the sky was clear above ; and as the day advanced, and the air grew warm, the vapours all disappeared. This scene re¬ minded me of my first view of Mount Etna from Catania, at sunrise in the autumn of 1828, when I saw dense volumes of steam issuing from the summit of the highest crater in a clear blue sky, which, at the height of more than two miles above the sea, assumed at once the usual shape and hues of clouds in the up¬ per atmosphere. These, too, vanished before noon, as soon as the sun’s heat increased. Etna presents us not merely with an image of the power of subterranean heat, but a record also of the vast period of time during which that power has been exerted. A majestic mountain has been produced by volcanic action, yet the time of which the volcano forms the register, however vast, is found by the geol¬ ogist to be of inconsiderable amount, even in the mod¬ ern annals of the earth’s history. In like manner, the Falls of Niagara teach us not merely to appreciate the power of moving water, but furnish us at the same time with data for estimating the enormous lapse of ages during which that force has operated. A deep and long ravine has been excavated, and the river has required ages to accomplish the task, yet the same region affords evidence that the sum of these ages is as nothing, and as the work of yesterday, when com¬ pared to the antecedent periods, of which there are monuments in the same district. 24 COURSE OF THE RIVER Chap, ii It ] i a ,s long* been a favourite subject of discussion whether the Falls were once situated seven miles farther north, or at Queenston. The ideal bird’s-eye view given in the frontispiece may assist the reader who has not visited the spot to form a tolerably collect general notion of the geographical configuration of this coun¬ try, which is very simple. The view has been con¬ structed from a sketch published by Mr. Bakewell, in Loudon’s Magazine for 1830, into which the geological representation of the rocks, as they appear on the sur¬ face and in the ravine of the Niagara, has been intro¬ duced from the State Survey by Mr. Hall.* The plat¬ form, in a depression of which Lake Erie is situated, is more than 330 feet above Lake Ontario, and the de¬ scent from a higher to a lower level is sudden and ab¬ rupt at the escarpment called the Queenston heights. The strata throughout this whole region are nearly horizontal, but they have a gentle dip to the south of 25 feet in a mile. This inclination is sufficient to cause the different groups of rock to crop out one from beneath the other, or come up to the surface in parallel zones, which may be traced for a great distance east and west through the state of New York and Canada. (See Map.) They all consist of different members of the Silurian series, the uppermost or newest being those nearest to Lake Erie. (See section fig. 4., p. 37.) In the bird’s-eye view, the Niagara is seen bounded by * Mr. Bakewell gave me his original sketches in 1841, and I con¬ ceived the idea of combining his pictorial view with a geological repre¬ sentation of the rocks before I gave a lecture on the Niagara district at Boston, in October, 1841, in which, and in planning some of the other diagrams, and in discussing the theory of recession, I was as¬ sisted by Mr. Hall. Black Rock: r hivpWH _ Creek UeviLrU " 1 Qaeenstoji FLUB aFaJls J \iv/ Brammondville Muddy ti lUh rfodrlpool 3 . }l on* Rid0 e II? ©F fI!S 30A©MA B>3t STRICT -, Belderherg *- -1 limestone Niagara shale -I Onondaga -* salt group Niagara limestone Clinton group Medina Sandstone Chap. ii. ABOVE AND BELOW THE FALLS. 25 low banks where it issues from Lake Erie, and varying 1 in width from one to three miles. It here resembles a prolongation of the tranquil lake, being interspersed with low wooded islands. This lake-like scenery con¬ tinues for about fifteen miles, during which the fall of the river scarcely exceeds as many feet, but on reaching the rapids, it descends over a limestone bed about 50 feet in less than a mile, and is then thrown down about 165 feet perpendicularly at the Falls. The largest of these, called the Horseshoe Fall, is 1800 feet, or more than a thiid of a mile, broad, the island in the midst somewhat less in width, and the American Fall about 600 feet wide. The deep narrow chasm below the great cata¬ ract is from 200 to 400 yards wide, and 300 feet deep; and here in seven miles the river descends 100 feet, at the end of which it emerges from the gorge into the open and flat country, so nearly on a level with Lake Ontario that there is only a fall of about four feet in the seven additional miles which intervene between Queens ton and the Lake. The great ravine is wind¬ ing, and makes a turn nearly at right angles to itself at the whirlpool, where the Niagara sweeps round a large circular basin, but it is represented in the frontispiece as nearly straight, for the sake of showing the stratifica¬ tion ; and its proportional height is purposely exagger¬ ated. At some points the boundary cliffs are under¬ mined on one side by the impetuous stream, but there is usually a talus at the base of the precipice, support¬ ing a very ornamental fringe of trees. It has long been the popular belief, from a mere cur¬ sory inspection of this district, that the Niagara once flowed in a shallow valley across the whole platform from the present site of the Falls to the Queenston 3 26 RECENT PROOFS OF EROSION. Chap. II. heights, where it is supposed the cataract was first sit¬ uated, and that the river has been slowly eating its way backwards through the rocks for a distance of seven miles. According to this hypothesis, the falls must have had originally nearly twice their present height, and must have been always diminishing in grandeur from age to age, as they will continue to do in future so long as the retrograde movement is pro¬ longed. It becomes, therefore, a matter of no small curiosity and interest to inquire at what rate the woik of excavation is now going on, and thus to obtain a measure for calculating how many thousands of years or centuries have been required to hollow out the chasm already excavated. It is an ascertained fact, that the Falls do not re¬ main absolutely stationary at the same point of space, ajul that they have shifted their position slightly du¬ ring the last half century. Every observer will also be convinced that the small portion of the gieat ravine, which has been eroded within the memory of man, is so precisely identical in character with the whole gorge for seven miles below, that the river supplies an ade¬ quate cause for executing the task assigned to it, pro¬ vided we grant sufficient time for its completion. The waters, after cutting through strata of limestone, about fifty feet thick in the rapids, descend perpendic¬ ularly at the Falls over another mass of limestone about ninety feet thick, beneath which lie soft shales of equal thickness, continually undermined by the ac¬ tion of the spray driven violently by gusts of wind against the base of the precipice. In consequence of this disintegration, portions of the incumbent rock are left unsupported, and tumble down from time to time, Chap. ii. RECENT PROOFS OF EROSION. 27 so that the cataract is made to recede southwards. The sudden descent of huge rocky fragments of the undermined limestone at the Horseshoe Fall, in 1828, and another at the American Fall, in 1818, are said to have shaken the adjacent country like an earthquake. According to the statement of our guide in 1841, Sam¬ uel Hooker, an indentation of about forty feet has been produced in the middle of the ledge of limestone at the lesser fall since the year 1815, so that it has begun to assume the shape of a crescent, while within the same period the Horseshoe Fall has been altered so as less to deserve its name. Goat Island has lost sev¬ eral acres in area in the last four years, and I have no doubt that this waste neither is, nor has been, a mere temporary accident, since I found that the same reces¬ sion was in progress in various other waterfalls which I visited with Mr. Hall, in the state of New York. Some of these intersect the same rocks as the Niagara—for example, the Genesee at Rochester; others are cutting ■their way through newer formations, as Allan’s Creek below Le Roy, or the Genesee at. its upper falls at Por¬ tage. Mr. Bakewell calculated that, in the forty years preceding 1830, the Niagara had been going back at the rate of about a yard annually, but I conceive that one foot per year would be a much more probable con¬ jecture, in which case 35,000 years would have been required for the retreat of the Falls from the escarp¬ ment of Gueenston to their present site, if we could as¬ sume that the retrograde movement had been uniform throughout. This, however, could not have been the case, as at every step in the process of excavation the height of the precipice, the hardness of the materials at its base, and the quantity of fallen matter to be re- 28 DATA IN THE WORKS OF HENNEPIN. Chap. 11. moved, must have varied. At some points it may have receded much faster than at present, at others much slower, and it would be scarcely possible to decide whe¬ ther its average progress has been more or less rapid than now. Unfortunately our historical evidence of the former condition of the cataract is meagre and scanty in the extreme. Sixty years ago, the whole district between Lakes Erie and Ontario was a wilderness in which the Indian hunter chased the bear and the buffalo. When at Boston, my attention was called by Mr. Ingraham to a work translated from the original French of Father Hennepin, a missionary who gave a description of the grand cataract and a plate of it, as it appeared in the year 1678. It is not wonderful that coming suddenly upon the Falls which no European traveller had ever seen before, he should have believed them to be twice their real height. “ Betwixt the lakes Ontario and Erie,” he says, “ there is a vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls after an astonishing manner, inso¬ much that the universe does not afford its parallel. As to the waters of Italy and Swedeland, they are but sorry patterns of it, and this wonderful downfall is com¬ pounded of two great falls, with an isle in the middle, and there is another cascade less than the other two which falls from west to east. I wished a hundred times that somebody had been with us, who could have described the wonders of this frightful fall. In the mean time, accept the following draught such as it is.”—From his plate it appears that this third cascade was produced by what he terms “ the elbow” caused by the projection of the table rock, which must then have been more prominent than now. - r -. SSlpisll *P :#tm 3f -HuDnisndei X 1 "VVVLtouLilh-O gra^h-ei FA !• SIMI]L.3B ©.P A HLEW DF AIACARA FAL.LK by Eatker Louis Henaepiu. •7i in c/n' t.Tt'fi-rud/''truck fcs ofatiiito UM 7 . Chap. ii. 29 kalm’s description. Seventy-three years afterwards, or in 1751, a letter was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine for that year by Kahn, the Swedish botanist, on the Falls of Niagara. His description is also illustrated by a plate, in which the proportional height and breadth of the Falls are given more correctly. The lesser Fall on the left bank of the river is omitted; but at the place where it had been represented in Father Hennepin’s sketch, Kalm inserts the letter “ a,” referring to a note in which he says, “ Here the water was .formerly forced out of its direct course by a projecting rock, which when standing turned the water off obliquely across the other Fall.” t n This observation confirms the reality of Hennepin’s oblique cascade, and shows that some waste had been going on in the intermediate seventy-three years, ma¬ king a visible alteration in the scene, and leading us to infer that the rocks have been suffering continual di¬ lapidation for more than the last century and a half. In the absence of more ample historical data, we are fortunately not without geological evidence of the for¬ mer existence of a channel of the Niagara at a much higher level, before the table-land was intersected by the great ravine. Long before my visit to the Niagara, I had been informed of the existence on Goat Island of beds of gravel and sand containing fluviatile shells, and some account had been given of these by Mr. Hall in his first report in 1839; I therefore proposed to him that we should examine these carefully, and see if we could trace any remnants of the same along the edges of the river-cliffs below the Falls. We began by col¬ lecting in Goat Island shells of the genera Unio, Cy- clas, Melania , Valvata, Limnea , Planorbis, and 3 * 30 REMNANT OF AN OLD RIVER-BED. Chaf. ii. Helix , all of recent species, in the superficial deposit. They form regular beds, and numerous individuals of the Unio and Cyclas have both their valves united. We then found the same formation exactly opposite to Fig. 1. Wpst.. /. Ancient drift. the Falls on the top of the cliff (at d', fig. 1.) on the American side, where two river-terraces, one twelve and the other twenty-four feet above the Niagara, have been cut in the modern deposits. In these we observed the same fossil shells as in Goat Island, and learnt that the teeth and other remains of a mastodon, some of which were shown us, had been found thirteen feet be¬ low the surface of the soil. We were then taken by our guide to a spot farther north, where similar gravel and sand with fluviatile shells occurred near the edge of the cliff overhanging the ravine, resting on the solid limestone. It was about half a mile below the piin- cipal Fall, and extended at some points 300 yards in¬ land, but no farther, for it was then bounded by the bank of more ancient drift (f, fig. 1.). This deposit pre¬ cisely occupies the place which the ancient bed and al¬ luvial plain of the Niagara would naturally have filled, Chap. ii. IN GOAT ISLAND. 31 if the river once extended farther northwards, at a level sufficiently high to cover the greater part of Goat Is¬ land. At that period the ravine could not have ex¬ isted, and there must have been a barrier, several miles lower down, at or near the whirlpool. Fig. 2. North. South. Section of Goat Island from North to South, 2500 feet in length. A. Massive compact portion of the Niagara limestone. B. Upper thin-bedded portion of the Niagara limestone, strata slightly inclined to the South. c. Horizontal freshwater beds of gravel, sand, and loam, with shells. D, E. Present surface of the river Niagara at the Rapids. The supposed original channel, through which the waters flowed from Lake Erie to Q,ueenston or Lewis¬ ton, was excavated chiefly, but not entirely, in the su¬ perficial drift, and the old river-banks cut in this drift are still to be seen facing each other, on both sides of the ravine, for many miles below the Falls. A section of Goat Island from south to north, or parallel to the course of the Niagara (see fig. 2.), shows that the limestone (B) had been greatly denuded before the flu- viatile beds (c) were accumulated, and consequently when the Falls were still several miles below their pres¬ ent site. From this fact I infer that the slope of the river at the rapids was principally due to the original shape of the old channel, and not, as some have con¬ jectured, to modern erosions on the approach of the Falls to the spot. 32 ANCIENT FLUVIATILE. Chap. is. The observations made in 1841 induced me in the following year (June, 1842) to re-examine diligently both sides of the river from the Falls to Lewiston and Queenston, to ascertain if any other patches of the an¬ cient river-bed had escaped destruction. Accordingly, following first the edge of the cliffs on the eastern bank, I discovered, with no small delight, at the sum¬ mer-house (E, fig. 3.), above the whirlpool, a bed of Fig. 3. Section at the Summer-house above Whirlpool, east bank of Niagara* A. Thick-bedded limestone, same as at Falls. b. Ancient drift. c. Boulders at base of steep bank formed by ohm. d. Freshwater strata forty feet thick. E. Summer-house. stratified sand and gravel, forty feet thick, containing fluviatile shells in abundance. Fortunately, a few yards from the summer-house a pit had been recently dug for the cellar of a new house to the depth of nine feet in the shelly sand, in which I found shells of the genera Unio , Cyclas, Melania , Helix , and Pupa, not only identical in species with those which occui in a fresh state in the bed of the Niagara, near the ferry, Chap. ii. DEPOSIT WITH SHELLS. 33 but corresponding also in the proportionate number of individuals belonging to each species, the valves of Cyclas similis, for example, being the most numerous. The same year I found also a remnant of the old river¬ bed on the opposite or Canadian side of the river, about a mile and a half above the whirlpool, or two miles and a half below the Falls. These facts appear con¬ clusive as, to the former extension of a more elevated valley, foui miles, at least, below the Falls j and at this point the old river-bed must Have been so high as to be capable ol holding back the waters which covered all the patches of fluviatile sand and gravel, including that of Goat Island. As the table-land or limestone-platform lises gently to the north, and is highest near Q.ueenston, there is no reason to suppose that there was a greater fall in the Niagara when it flowed at its higher level, than now between Lake Erie and the Falls ; and ac¬ cording to this view, the old channel might well have furnished the required barrier. I have stated that on the left, or Canadian bank of the Niagara, below the Falls, I succeeded in detecting sand with freshwater shells at one point only, near the mouth of the muddy river. The ledge of limestone on this side is usually laid bare, or only covered by ve¬ getable mould (as at 03 ?, i p ,C! rf ° g ■£ is m 03 ^ 03 g a £ © CO '■gfc'S B O 23 ° § $ ° e5 Td q« ’S ’o 8 g« O ■** 2 o .s © § s ££ <5 d ^ . © o • »■* o rg -• ce’S • 0 03 © &gaa »-. -© „L ^3 -fj ^ i S H bred « a o> ex g rh +3 C S P< o 25 • ro > >3 '—' rj I&lsJ&giia B| ill nil Ssi§Sga2o| .2 §£'3 Shops *1 G$ «*5 ^ Chap. iv. THE APPALACHIAN CHATN. 75 number of details. Starting from the shores of the Atlantic, on the eastern side of the Continent, we first come to a low region (a, b), which was called the allu¬ vial plain by the first geographers. It is occupied by tertiary and cretaceous strata nearly horizontal, and containing in general no hard and solid rocks, and is usually not more than from 50 to 100 feet high, from New Jersey to Virginia. In these states this zone is not many leagues in breadth, but it acquires a breadth of 100 and 150 miles in the Southern States, and a height of several hundred feet towards its west¬ ern limits. The next belt, from b to c, consists of granitic rocks (hypogene), chiefly gneiss and mica- schist, covered occasionally with unconformable red sandstone, No. 4 (New Red ?), repiarkable for its orni- thicnites. Sometimes also this sandstone rests on the edges of the disturbed paleozoic rocks (as seen in the Section). The region (b, c), sometimes called the “At¬ lantic Slope,” corresponds nearly in average width with the low and flat plain (a, b), and is characterised by hills of moderate heiglit, contrasting strongly, in their lounded shape and altitude, with the long, steep, and lofty parallel ridges of the Alleghany mountains. The out-crop of the strata in these ridges, like the two belts of hypogene and newer rocks (a. b, and b, c), above alluded to, when laid down on a geological map, ex¬ hibit long stripes of different colours, running in a N. E. and S. W. direction, in the same way as the lias, chalk, and other secondary formations in the mid¬ dle and eastern half of England. The narrow and parallel zones of the Appalachians here mentioned consist of strata, folded into a succes¬ sion of convex and concave flexures, subsequently laid 76 STRUCTURE AND ORIGIN OP Chap, iv open by denudation. The component rocks are of great thickness, all referable to the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous formations. There is no principal or central axis, as in the Pyrenees and many other chains—no nucleus to which all the minor ridges con¬ form ; but the chain consists of many nearly equal and parallel foldings, having what the geologists term an anticlinal and synclinal arrangement. This sys¬ tem of hills extends, geologically considered, from Ver¬ mont to Alabama, being more than 1000 miles long, from 50 to 150 miles broad, and varying in height from 2000 to 6000 feet. Sometimes the whole assem¬ blage of ridges runs perfectly straight for a distance of more than 50 miles, after which all of them wheel round together, and take a new direction, at an angle of 20 or 30 degrees to the first. Mr. R. C. Taylor had made considerable progress in unravelling the structure of certain portions of this chain, before the commencement of the State Surveys of Virginia and Pennsylvania, the former conducted by Professor W. B. Rogers, the latter by his brother, Professor H. D. Rogers, both aided by a numerous corps of assistants. To these elaborate and faithful surveys we owe the discovery of the clue to the general law of structure prevailing throughout this important range of mountains, which, however simple it may ap¬ pear when once made out and clearly explained, might long have been overlooked, amidst so great a mass of complicated details. It appears that the bending and fracture of the beds is greatest on the south-eastern or Atlantic side of the chain, and the strata become less and less disturbed as we go westward, until at length they regain their original or horizontal position. By Chap. iv. ' THE APPALACHIAN CHAIN. 77 reference to the section (fig. 5.), it will be seen that on the eastern side, or on the ridges and troughs nearest the Atlantic, the south-eastern dips predominate, in consequence of the beds having been folded back upon themselves, as in i, those on the north-western side of each arch having been inverted. The next set of arches (such as 7r) are more open, each having its western side steepest; the next (7) opens out still more widely, the next (m) still more, and this continues un¬ til we arrive at the low and level part of the Appalachi¬ an coal-field (d, e). In nature, or in a true section, the number of bend¬ ings or parallel folds is so much greater that they could Hot be expressed in a diagram without confusion. It is also cleai that laige quantities of rock have been re¬ moved by aqueous action or denudation, as will appear if we attempt to complete all the curves in the manner indicated by the dotted lines at i and k. The movements which imparted so uniform an order of arrangement to this vast system of rocks must have been contemporaneous, or belonging to one and the same series, depending on some common cause. Their geological date is unusually well defined. We may declare them to have taken place after the deposition of the carboniferous strata (No. 5.), and before the formation of the red sandstone (No. 4.). The greatest disturbing and denuding forces have evidently been ex¬ erted on the south-eastern side of the chain, and it is here that igneous or plutonic rocks are observed to have invaded the strata, forming dykes, some of which run for miles in lines parallel to the main direction of the Appalachians, or N.N.E. and S.S.W. According to tire theory of the Professors Rogers, the 78 STRUCTURE AND ORIGIN OF Chap, iv wave-like flexures, above alluded to, are explained by supposing the strata, when in a plastic state, to have rested on a widely-extended surface of fluid lava, and elastic vapours and gases. The billowy movement of this subterranean sea of melted matter imparted its undulations to the elastic overlying crust, which was enabled to retain the new shapes thus given to it by the consolidation of the liquid matter injected into fissures.* For my own part, I cannot imagine any real con¬ nection between the great parallel undulations of the rocks and the real waves of a subjacent ocean of liquid matter, on which the bent and broken crust may once have rested. That there were great lakes, or seas of lava, retained by volcanic heat for ages, in a liquid state beneath the Alleghanies, is highly probable, for the simultaneous eruptions of distant vents in the Andes leave no doubt of the wide subterranena areas permanently occupied by sheets of fluid lava in our own times. It is also consistent with what we know of the laws governing volcanic action to assume that the force operated in a linear direction, for we see trains of volcanic vents breaking out for hundreds of miles along a straight line, and we behold long parallel fissures, often filled with trap or consolidated lava, hold¬ ing a straight course for great distances through rocks of all ages. The causes of this peculiar mode of de¬ velopment are as yet obscure and unexplained; but the existence of long narrow ranges of mountains, and of great faults and vertical shifts in the strata prolonged for great distances in certain directions, may all be re¬ sults of the same kind of action. It also accords well * Trans, of Ass. of Araer. Geol., 1840— 2 , p. 515. Chap. iv. THE APPALACHIAN CHAIN. 79 with established facts to assume that the solid crust overlying a region where the subterranean heat is in¬ creasing in intensity, becomes gradually upheaved, fractured, and distended, the lower part of the newly opened fissures becoming filled with fused matter, which soon consolidates and crystallizes. These up¬ lifting movements may be propagated along narrow belts, placed side by side, and may have been in prog¬ ress simultaneously, or in succession, in one narrow zone after another. When the expansive force has been locally in opera¬ tion for a long period, in a given district, there is a ten¬ dency in the subterranean heat to diminish;—the vol¬ canic energy is spent/ and its position is transferred to some new region. Subsidence then begins, in conse¬ quence of the cooling and shrinking of subterranean seas of lava and gaseous matter : and the solid strata collapse in obedience to gravity. If this contraction take place along narrow and parallel zones of country, the incumbent flexible strata would be forced, in pro¬ portion as they were let down, to pack themselves into a smaller space, as they conformed to the circumfer¬ ence of a smaller arc. The manner in which undula¬ tions may be gradually produced in pliant strata by subsidence is illustrated on a small scale by the creeps in coal-mines; there both the overlying and underlying shales and clays sink down from the ceiling, or rise up from the floor, and fill the galleries which have been left vacant by the abstraction of the fuel.* In like manner the failure of support arising from subterranean causes may enable the force of gravity, though origi ■ * See “ Elements of Geology,” by the author. 2d ed. vol. i., p. 110.—Boston ed. vol. i. p. 108. 80 THK APPALACHIAN CHAIN. Chap. ip. nally exerted vertically, to bend and squeeze the rocks as if they had been subjected to lateral pressure. “ Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale. And gulphs the mountain’s mighty mass entomb d, And where th’ Atlantic rolls, wide continents have bloom’d.” In applying these lines to the physical revolutions ox the territory at present under consideration, we must remember that the continent which bloomed to the eastward, or where the Atlantic now rolls its waves (see p. 70.), was anterior to the origin of the carbonifer¬ ous strata which were derived from its ruins ; whereas the elevation and subsidence supposed to have given rise to the Appalachian ridges was subsequent to the deposition of the coal-measures. But all these great movements of oscillation were again distinct fiom the last upheaval which brought up the whole region above the level of the sea, laying dry the horizontal New Red Sandstone (No. 4., fig. 5.), as well as a great part of, if not all, the Appalachian chain. The largest amount of denudation is found, as might have been expected, on the south-eastern side of the chain, where the force of expansion and contraction, of elevation and subsidence, has been greatest. The first set of denuding operations may have taken place when the strata, including the carboniferous, were first raised above the sea; a second, when they sank again; a third, when the Red Sandstone (No. 4.), after it had been thrown down on the truncated edges of the oldei strata, participated in the waste. The great extent of solid materials thus removed, must add, in no small degree, to the difficulty of restoring in imagination the successive changes which have occurred, and of ac¬ counting in a satisfactory manner for the origin of this mountain chain. Chap. v. WOODED RIDGES OF ALLEGHANIES. 81 CHAPTER Y. Wooded Ridges of the Alleghany Mountains.—German Patois in Pennsylvania.—Lehigh Summit Mine.—Effects of Ice during a Flood on the Delaware.—Election of a Governor at Trenton and at Philadelphia.—Journey to Boston.—Autumnal Tints of the Foliage.—Boston the Seat of Commerce, of Government, and of a University.—Lectures at the Lowell Institute.—Influence of oral Instruction in Literature and Science.—Fees of Public Lecturers. Educational lands sunk in costly Buildings.—Advantages of anti-building Clauses.—Blind Asylum.—Lowell Factories.—Na¬ tional Schools.—Equality of Sects.—Society in Boston. October 7. 1841.— The steep slopes, as well as the summits of the ridges in the anthracite region of Penn¬ sylvania, are so densely covered with wood, that the surveyors were obliged to climb to the of tops trees, in order to obtain general views of the country, and con¬ struct a geographical map on the scale of two inches to a mile, on which they laid down the result of their ge¬ ological observations. Under the trees, the ground is covered with the Rhododendron, Kalmia and another evergreen called Sweet Fern (Comptonia asplenifolia), the leaves of which have a very agreeable odour, re¬ sembling that of our bog-myrtle (Myrica Gale), but fainter. The leaves are so like those of a fern or Pteris in form, that the miners call the impressions of the fos¬ sil Pecopteris, in the coal-shales “ sweet fern.” We found the German language chiefly spoken in this mountainous region, and preached in most of the churches, as at Reading. It is fast degenerating into a patois, and it is amusing to see many Germanized English words introduced even into the newspapers, 82 EFFECTS OF ICE DURING A FLOOD. CuAr. v. such as turnpeik for turnpike, fense for fence, Jlauer for flour, or others, such els jail, which have been adopt¬ ed without alteration. From the Lehigh Summit Mine, we descended for nine miles on a railway impelled by our own weight, in a small car at the rate of twenty miles an hour. A man sat in front checking our speed by a drag on the steeper declivities, and oiling the wheels without stopping. The coal is let down by the same railroad, sixty mules being employed to draw up the empty cars every day. In the evening the mules themselves are sent down standing four abreast, and feeding out of mangers the whole way. We saw them start in a long train of waggons, and were told, that so completely do they ac¬ quire the notion that it is their business through life to pull weights up hill, and ride down at their ease, that if any of them are afterwards taken away from the mine and set to other occupations, they willingly drag heavy loads up steep ascents, but obstinately re¬ fuse to pull any vehicle down hill, coming to a dead halt at the commencement of the slightest slope. The general effect of the long unbroken summits of the ridges of the Alleghany Mountains is very monoto¬ nous and unpicturesque : but the scenery is beautiful, where we meet occasionally with a transverse gorge through: which a large river escapes. After visiting the Beaver Meadow coal field, we left the mountains by one of these openings, called the Lehigh Gap, wooded on both sides, and almost filled up by the Lehigh River, a branch of the Delaware, the banks of which we now followed to Trenton in New Jersey. On our way, we heard much of a disastrous flood which occurred last spring on the melting of the snow, Chap. v. ELECTION OF GOVERNORS. 83 and swept away several bridges, causing the loss of many lives. I observed the trees on the right bank of the Delaware at an elevation of about twenty-four feet above the present surface of the river, with their bark worn through by the sheets of ice which had been driv¬ en against them. The canal was entirely filled up with gravel and large stones to the level of the towing path, twenty feet above the present level of the stream, which appeared to me to be only explicable by suppo¬ sing the stones to have been frozen into and carried by the floating ice. Oct. 11.—Reaching Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, late in the evening, we found the town in all the bustle of a general election. A new governor and representatives for the State legislature were to be chosen. As parties are nearly balanced, and the suf¬ frage universal, the good order maintained was highly creditable. Processions, called “ parades,” were peram¬ bulating the streets headed by bands of music, and car¬ rying transparencies with lights in them, in which the names of different counties, and mottoes, such as Union, Liberty, and Equality, were conspicuously inscribed. Occasionally a man called out with a stentorian voice, “ The ticket, the whole ticket, and nothing but the tick¬ et,” which was followed by a loud English hurra, while at intervals a single blow was struck on a great drum, as if to imitate the firing of a gun. On their tickets were printed the names of the governor, officers, and members for whom the committee of each party had determined to vote. The next day on our return to Philadelphia, we found that city also in the ferment of an election, bands of music being placed in open carriages, each drawn 84 JOURNEY TO BOSTON. Chap. v. by four horses, and each horse decorated with a flag, attached to its shoulder, which has a gay effect. All day a great bell tolls at the State house, to remind the electors of their duties. It sounded like a funeral; and on my inquiring of a bystander what it meant, one of the democratic party answered, “ It is the knell of the whigs.” In their popular addresses, some candidates ask the people whether they will vote for the whigs who will lay on new taxes. As it is well known, that such taxes must be imposed, if the dividends on the State bonds are to be paid, these popular appeals are ominous. The rapid fall in the value of State securi¬ ties shows that the public generally have no confidence that the majority of the electors will be proof against the insidious arts of these demagogues. Oct. 14.—We came from Philadelphia by New York to Boston, 300 miles, without fatigue in twenty- four hours, by railway and steam-boat, having spent three hours in an hotel at New York, and sleeping soundly for six hours in the cabin of a commodious steamer as we passed through Long Island Sound. The economy of time in travelling here is truly admi¬ rable. On getting out of the cars in the morning, we were ushered into a-spacious saloon, where with 200 .others we sat down to breakfast, and learnt with sur¬ prise, that, while thus agreeably employed, we had been carried rapidly in a large ferry-boat without per¬ ceiving any motion across a broad estuary to Provi¬ dence in the State of Rhode Island. Many trees in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massa¬ chusetts, have now begun to assume their autumnal tints, especially the maples, while the oaks retain their vivid green colour. I can only compare the brightness Chap, v- BOSTON. 85 of the faded leaves, scarlet, purple, and yellow, to that of tulips. It is now the Indian summer, a season of warm sunny weather, which often succeeds to the first frost and rain, a time which the Indians employed in hunting and laying up a store of game for the winter. Boston , Oct. 14. to Dec. 3. 1841.—It is fortunafi- that Boston is at once a flourishing commercial port, and the seat of the best endowed university in Ameri¬ ca, for Cambridge, where Harvard College is situated, is so near, that it may be considered as a suburb of the metropolis. The medical lectures, indeed, are delivered in the city, where the great hospitals are at hand. The mingling of the professors, both literary and sci¬ entific, with the eminent lawyers, clergymen, physicians, and principal merchants of the place, forms a societj. of a superior kind ; and to these may be added several persons, who, having inherited ample fortunes, have* successfully devoted their lives to original researches in history, and other departments. It is also a political advantage of no small moment that the legislature as¬ sembles here, as its members, consisting in great part of small proprietors farming their own land, are thus brought into contact with a community in a very ad¬ vanced state of civilisation, so that they are under the immediate check of an enlightened public opinion. It is far more usual to place the capital, as it is called, in the centre of the State, often in some small village or town of no importance, and selected from mere geogra¬ phical consideratians, which might well be disregarded in a country enjoying such locomotive facilities. An immense sacrifice is then required from those men of independent fortune, who, for patriotic motives, must leave the best society of a large city, to spend the win- 8 86 LECTURES AT THE LOWELL INSTITUTE. Chap. V. ter in some remote spot in the discharge of public du* ties. I had been invited when in 'England by Mr. Lowell, trustee and director of a richly endowed literary and scientific institution in this city, to deliver a course of twelve lectures on geology during the present autumn. According to the conditions of the bequest, the public have gratuitous admission to these lectures; but by several judicious restrictions, such as requiring applica¬ tions for tickets to be made some weeks before, and .compliance with other rules, the trustee has obviated much of the inconvenience arising from this privilege, for it is well known that a class which pays nothing is irregular and careless in its attendance. As the num¬ ber of tickets granted for my lectures amounted to 4500, and the class usually attending consisted of more than 3000 persons, it was necessary to divide them into two sets, and repeat to one of them the next afternoon the lecture delivered on the preceding evening. It is by no means uncommon for professors who have not the attraction of novelty, or the advantage which I happened to enjoy, of coming from a great distance, to command audiences in this institution as numerous as that above alluded to. The subjects of their discourses are various, such as natural history, chemistry, the fine arts, natural theology, and many others. Among my hearers were persons of both sexes, of every station in society, from the most affluent and eminent in the va¬ rious learned professions to the humblest mechanics, all well dressed and observing the utmost decorum. The theatres were never in high favour here, and most of them have been turned to various secular and ecclesiastical uses, and among others into lecture Chap. v. INFLUENCE OF ORAL INSTRUCTION. 87 rooms, to which many of the public resort for amuse¬ ment as they might formerly have done to a play, after the labours of the day are over. If the selection of teachers be in good hands, institutions of this kind can¬ not fail to exert a powerful influence in improving the taste and intellectual condition of the people, especially where college is quitted at an early age for the business of ac¬ tive life, and where there is always danger in a com¬ mercial community that the desire of money-making may be carried to excess. It is, moreover, peculiarly desirable in a democratic state, where the public mind is apt to be exclusively absorbed in politics, and in a country where the free competition of rival sects has a tendency to produce not indiflferentism, as some at home may be disposed to think, but too much excite¬ ment in religious matters. We are informed by Mr. Everett, late governor of Massachusetts (since minister of the U. S. in England), that before the existence of the Lowell Foundation, twenty-six courses of lectures were delivered in Boston, without including those which consisted of less than eight lectures, and these courses were attended in the 'aggregate by about 13,500 persons. But notwithstand¬ ing the popularity of this form of instruction, the means of the literary and scientific institutions of the city were wholly inadequate to hold out a liberal and certain reward to men of talent and learning. There were some few instances of continuous courses deliver¬ ed by men of eminence; but the task more commonly devolved upon individuals who cultivated the art of speaking merely to become the vehicles of second¬ hand information, and who were not entitled to speak 88 INFLUENCE OF ORAL INSTRUCTION. Chaf. v. with authority, and from the fulness of their own knowledge.* The rich who have had a liberal education, who know how to select the best books, and can alfoi d to purchase them, who can retreat into the quiet of their libraries from the noise of their children, and, if they please, obtain the aid of private tuition, may doubt the utility of public lectures on the fine arts, history, and the physical sciences. But oral instruction is, in fact, the only means by which the great mass of the middling and lower classes can have their thoughts turned to these subjects, and it is the fault of the high¬ er classes if the information they receive be unsound, and if the business of the teacher be not held in high honour. The whole body of the clergy in every coun¬ try, and, under popular forms of government, the leading politicians, have been in all ages convinced that they must avail themselves of this method of teaching, if they would influence both high and low. No the¬ ological dogma is so abstruse, no doctrine of political economy or legislative science so difficult, as to be deemed unfit to be preached from the pulpit, or incul¬ cated on the hustings. The invention of printing, fol¬ lowed by the rapid and general dispersion of the cheap daily newspaper, or the religious tract, have been by no means permitted to supersede the instrumentality of oral teaching, and the powerful sympathy and excite¬ ment created by congregated numbers. If the leading patrons and cultivators of literature and physical science neglect this ready and efficacious means of interesting the multitude in their pursuits, they are wanting to * See “ Everett’s Memoir of John Lowell.” Boston, 1840. Chap. V. FUNDS SUNK IN COSTLY BUILDINGS. 89 themselves, and have no right to complain of the apa¬ thy or indifference of the public. To obtain the services of eminent men engaged in original researches, for the delivery of systematic courses of lectures, is impossible without the command of much larger funds than are usually devoted to this object. When it is stated that the fees at the Lowell Institute at Boston are on a scale more than three times higher than the remuneration awarded to the best literary and scientific public lecturers in London, it will at first be thought hopeless to endeavour to carry similar plans into execution in other large cities, whe¬ ther at home or in the United States. In reality, how¬ ever, the sum bequeathed by the late Mr. John Lowell for his foundation, though munificent, was by no means enormous, not much exceeding 70,000/., which, according to the usual fate awaiting donations for edu¬ cational objects, would have been all swallowed up in the erection of costly buildings, after which the learned would be invited to share the scanty leavings of the “ Committee of Taste,” and the merciless architect, “ reliquias Danaum atque immitis Achillei.” But in the present case, the testator provided in his will that not a single dollar should be spent in brick and mortar, in consequence of which proviso, a spacious room was at once hired, and the intentions of the donor carried immediately into effect, without a year’s delay. If there be any who imagine that a donation might be so splendid as to render an anti-building clause su¬ perfluous, let them remember the history of the Girard bequest in Philadelphia. Half a million sterling, with the express desire of the testator that the expenditure on architectural ornament should be moderate! Yet 8 * 90 SINKING OF EDUCATIONAL FUNDS Chap. V. this vast sum is so nearly consumed, that it is doubtful whether the remaining funds will suffice for the com¬ pletion of the palace— splendid, indeed, but extremely ill-fitted for a school-house ! It is evident that when a passion so strong as that for building is to be resisted, total abstinence alone, as in the case of spirituous li¬ quors, will prove an adequate safeguard. In the “ old country,” the same fatal propensity has stood in the way of all the most spirited efforts of modern times to establish and endow new institutions for the diffusion of knowledge. It is well known that the sum expended in the purchase of the ground, and in the erection of that part of University College, London, the exterior of which is nearly complete, exceeded 100,000^., one-third of which was spent on the portico and dome, or the purely ornamental, the rooms tinder the dome having remained useless, and not even fitted up at the expira¬ tion of fifteen years. When the professor of chemistry enquired for the chimney of his laboratory, he was in¬ formed that there was none, and to remove the defect, a flue was run up which encroached on a handsome staircase, and destroyed the symmetry of the architect’s design. Still greater was the dismay of the anatomical professor on learning that his lecture room was to con¬ form to the classical model of an ancient theatre, de¬ signed for the recitation of Greek plays. Sir Charles Bell remarked that an anatomical theatre, to be perfect, should approach as nearly as possible to the shape of a well, that every student might look down and see dis¬ tinctly the subject under demonstration. At a consider¬ able cost the room was altered, so as to serve the ends for which it was wanted. The liberal sums contributed by the public for the Chap. v. IN COSTLY BUILDINGS. 91 foundation of a rival college were expended in like manner long before the academical body came into ex¬ istence. When the professor of chemistry at King’s College asked for his laboratory, he was told it had been entirely forgotten in the plan, but that he might take the kitchen on the floor below, and by ingenious machinery carry up his apparatus for illustrating ex¬ periments, through a trap door into an upper story, where his lecture room was placed. Still these collegiate buildings, in support of which the public came forward so liberally, were left, like the Girard College, half finished; whereas, if the same funds had been devoted to the securing of teachers of high acquirements, station, character, and celebrity; and if rooms of moderate dimensions had been at first hired, while the classes of pupils remained small, a generation would not have been lost, the new Institu¬ tions would have risen more rapidly to that high rank which they are one day destined to attain, and testa¬ mentary bequests would have flowed in more copiously for buildings well adapted to the known and ascertain¬ ed wants of the establishment. None would then grudge the fluted column, the swelling dome, and the stately portico; and literature and science would con¬ tinue to be the patrons of architecture, without being its victims. Prescott, in his admirable work on the Conquest of Mexico, remarks, when discussing the extent of the ancient Aztec civilisation, that the progress made by the Mexicans in astronomy, and especially the fact of their having a general board for public education and the fine arts, proves more in favour of their advance¬ ment, than the noble architectural monuments which 92 BLIND ASYLUM. Chap. v. they and their kindred tribes erected. u Architecture,” he observes, “ is a sensual gratification, and addresses it¬ self to the eye ; it is the form in which the resources of a semi-civilised people are most likely to be lavished.”* Mr. John Lowell, a native of Massachusetts, after having carefully studied the educational establishments of his own country, visited London in 1833, and having sojourned there some months, paying a visit to the Uni¬ versity of Cambridge and other places, he pursued his travels in the hope of exploring India and China. On his way he passed through Egypt, where, being at¬ tacked, while engaged in making a collection of an¬ tiquities, by an intermittent fever, of which he soon af¬ terwards died, he drew up his last will in 1835, amidst the ruins of Thebes, leaving half of his noble fortune for the foundation of a Literary Institute in his na¬ tive city. It has already appeared how admirably he appreciated the exact point of u semi-civilisation” which the Anglo-Saxon race had then attained on both sides of the Atlantic. I spent an agreeable day at Cambridge, visiting sev¬ eral of the professors at Harvard University, and hear¬ ing one of them, Henry Ware, author of “ The Chris¬ tian Character,” a work reprinted, and much read in England, preach a sermon in the College Chapel. His text, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” led him to treat of self-love, and to explain how this natu¬ ral passion might be indulged to any extent, provided, in obedience to the divine commandment, our love for others increases in the like ratio. I heard afterwards, with great regret, of the death of this able and amiable man. In the Blind Asylum I saw Laura Bridgman, now * Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. p. 155. Chap. v. LOWELL FACTORIES. 93 in her twelfth year. At the age of two she lost her sight and hearing by a severe illness, but although deaf, dumb, and blind, her mind has beep so ad¬ vanced by the method of instruction pursued by Dr. Howe, that she shows more intelligence and quickness of feeling than many girls of the same age who are in full possession of all their senses. The excellent reports of Dr. Howe, on the gradual development of her mind, have been long before the public, and have recently been cited by Mr. Dickens, together with some judicious observations of his own. Perhaps no one of the cases of a somewhat analogous nature, on which Dugald Stewart and others have philosophised, has furnished so many new and valuable facts illustrating the extent to which all intellectual development is dependent on the instrumentality of the senses in discerning external objects, and, at the same time, in how small a degree the relative acuteness of the organs of sense determine the moral and intellectual superiority of the individual. Nov. 15.—Went twenty-six miles to the north of Boston, by an excellent railway, to the manufacturing town of Lowell, which has sprung up entirely in the last sixteen years, and now contains about 20,000 in¬ habitants. The mills are remarkably clean, and well warmed, and almost all for making cotton and woollen goods, which are exported to the West. The young women from the age of eighteen to twenty-five, who attend to the spinning-wheels, are good-looking and neatly dressed, chiefly the daughters of New England farmers, sometimes of the poorer clergy. They belong, therefore, to a very different class from our manufac¬ turing population, and after remaining a few years in the factory, return to their homes, and usually marry. 94 LOWELL FACTORIES. Chap. v. We are told that, to work in these factories is consid¬ ered far more eligible for a young woman than domes¬ tic service, as they can save more, and have stated hours of work (twelve hours a day !), after which they are at liberty. Their moral character stands very high, and a girl is paid off, if the least doubt exists on that point. Boarding-houses, usually kept by widows, are attached to each mill, in which the operatives are re¬ quired to board; the men and women being separate. This regard for the welfare and conduct of the work¬ people when they are not on actual duty is compara¬ tively rare in England, where the greater supply of labour would render such interference and kind su¬ perintendence much more practicable. Still we could not expect that the results would be equally satisfactory with us, on account of the lower grade of the opera¬ tives, and the ignorance of the lower classes in Eng¬ land. In regard to the order, dress, and cleanliness of the people, these merits are also exemplified in the rural districts of Lancashire, and it is usually in our large towns alone, that the work people are unhealthy and squalid, especially where a number of the poor Irish live crowded together in bad dwellings. The factories at Lowell are not only on a great scale, but have been so managed as to yield high prof¬ its, a fact which should be impressed on the mind of every foreigner who visits them, lest, after admiring the gentility of manner and dress of the women and men employed, he should go away with the idea that he had been seeing a model mill, or a set of gentlemen and ladies, playing at factory for their amusement. There are few children employed, and those under fifteen are compelled by law to go to school three months in the Chap. v. NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 95 year, under penalty of a heavy fine. If this regulation is infringed, informers are not wanting, for there is a strong sympathy in the public mind with all acts of the legislature, enforcing education. The Bostonians submit to pay annually for public instruction in their city alone, the sum of 30,000/. sterling, which is about equal to the parliamentary grant of this year (1841) for the whole of England, while the sum raised, for free schools in the state this year, by taxes for wages of teachers, and their board, and exclusive of funds for building, exceeds 100,000/. sterling. The law ordains, that every district containing fifty families shall maintain one school, for the support of which the inhabitants are required to tax themselves, and to appoint committees annually for managing the funds, and choosing their own schoolmasters. The Bible is allowed to be read in all, and is actually read in nearly all the schools ; but the law prohibits the use of books “ calculated to favour the tenets of any par¬ ticular sect of Christians.” Parents and guardians are expected to teach their own children, or to procure them to be taught, what they believe to be religious truth, and for this purpose, besides family worship and the pulpit, there are Sunday-schools. The system works well among this church-building and church¬ going population. As there is no other region in Anglo-saxondom, con¬ taining 750,000 souls, where national education has been carried so far, it is important to enquire to what combination of causes its success is mainly to be attrib¬ uted. First, there is no class in want or extreme pov¬ erty here, partly because the facility of migrating to the west, for those who are without employment, is so 96 EQ.UALITY OF SECTS. Chap, v great, and also, in part, from the check to improvi¬ dent marriages, created by the high standard of living to which the lowest work-people aspire, a standard which education is raising higher and higher from day to day. Secondly, I have often heard politicians of op¬ posite parties declare, that there is no safety for the re¬ public, now that the electoral suffrage has been so much extended, unless every exertion is made to raise the moral and intellectual condition of the masses. The fears entertained by the rich of the dangers of igno¬ rance, is the only good result which I could discover tending to counterbalance the enormous preponderance of evil arising in the United States from so near an ap¬ proach to universal suffrage. Thirdly, the political and social equality of all religious sects,—a blessing which the New Englanders do not owe to the Ameri¬ can revolution, for it was fully recognised and enjoyed under the supremacy of the British crown. This equal¬ ity tends to remove the greatest stumbling block, still standing in the way of national instruction in Great Britain, where we allow one generation after another of the lower classes to grow up without being taught good morals, good behaviour, and the knowledge of things useful and ornamental, because we cannot all agree as to the precise theological doctrines in which they are to be brought up. The religious toleration of the different sects towards each other in Massachusetts is, I fear, accompanied by as little Christian charity as at home, and families are often divided, and the best relations of private life disturbed, by the bitterness of sectarian dogmatism and jealousy; but, politically, all sects are ready to unite against the encroachments of any other, and a great degree of religious freedom Chap. v. THANKSGIVING-DAY. 97 is enjoyed, in consequence of there being no sect to which it is ungenteel to belong, no consciences sorely tempted by ambition to conform to a more fashionable creed. In New York the Roman Catholic priests have re¬ cently agitated with no small success for a separate al¬ lotment of their share of the education fund. They have allied themselves, as in the Belgian revolution, with the extreme democracy to carry their point, and may materially retard the general progress of educa¬ tion. But there is no reason to apprehend that any one sect in New England will have power to play the same game: and these states are the chief colonizers of the West —gentis cunabula, by the rapidity of whose multiplication and progress in civilization the future prospects of the whole confederacy of republics will be mainly determined. During our stay at Boston the citizens gave a splen¬ did ball to the Piince de Joinville, and the Mayor po¬ litely sent us tickets of invitation, which gave me an opportunity of satisfying myself that foreigners have not said too much of the beauty of the young Ameri¬ can ladies. In general I was so much occupied with my lectuies, or in communicating' to the Geological So¬ ciety of London some of the results of my observations duiing my late tour, that I had no time to enter into society, or to accept the hospitalities of the inhabitants. As soon as it was understood that I wished to live qui¬ etly, all pressing invitations were politely abstained from until I had finished my course of lectures ; and, aftenvaids, when I found it necessary to decline a large number of them, no offence was taken. The twenty-fifth of November was appointed by the 9 gg SOCIETY IN BOSTON. Chap v. Governor of the State to be what is here called Thanks¬ giving-Day—an institution as old as the times of the Pilgrim Fathers, one day in the year being set apart for thanksgiving for the mercies of the past year. As a festival it stands very much in the place of Christmas Day as kept in England and Germany, being always in the winter, and every body going to church in the morning and meeting in large family parties in the evening. To one of these we were most kindly wel¬ comed ; and the reception which we met with here and in the few families to which we had letters of introduc¬ tion, made us entirely forget that we were foreigners. Several of our new acquaintances indeed had travelled in England and on the Continent, and were in con¬ stant correspondence with our own literary and scien¬ tific friends, so that we were always hearing from them some personal news of those with whom we were most intimate in Europe, and we often reflected with sur¬ prise in how many parts of England we should have felt less at home. I remember an eminent English writer once saying to me, when he had just read a recently-published book on the United States, “ I wonder the author went so far to see disagreeable people, when there are so many of them at home.”' It would certainly lie strange if persons of refined habits, even without being fastidious, who travel to see life, and think it their duty, with a view of studying character, to associate indiscriminately with all kinds of people, visiting the first strangers who ask them to their houses, and choosing their com¬ panions without reference to congeniality of taste, pur¬ suits, manners, or opinions, did not find society in their own or any other country in the world intolerable. Chap, vi SLEIGH-DRIVING AT BOSTON. 99 CHAPTER VI. Fall of Snow and Sleigh-driving at Boston.—Journey to New Ha¬ ven.—Ichthyolites of Durham, Connecticut.—Age of Red Sand¬ stone.—Income of Farmers. — Baltimore. — Washington.—National Museum.—Natural Impediments to the Growth of Washington .—• Why chosen for the Capital.-—Richmond, Virginia.—Effects of Slave-labour.—Low Region on the Atlantic Border, occupied by Tertiary Strata.—Infusorial Bed at Richmond,—Miocene Shells and Corals in the Cliffs of the James River compared with Fossils of the European Crag and Faluns,—Analogy of Forms and Dif¬ ference of Species.—Proportion of Species.—Commencement of the present Geographical Distribution of Mollusca. Nov. 29.1841.—Although we were in the latitude of Rome, and there were no mountains near us, we had a heavy fall of snow at Boston this day, followed by bright sunshine and hard frost. It was a cheerful scene to see the sleighs gliding noiselessly about the stieets, and to hear the bells, tied to the horses’ heads, warning the passer-by of their swift approach. As it was now the best season to geologise in the southern States, I determined to make a flight in that direction; and we had gone no farther than New Haven before we found that all the snow had disappeared. I accord- in gty took the opportunity when there of making a ge¬ ological excursion, with Mr. Silliman, jun., Professor Hubbard, and Mr. Whelpley, to examine the red sand¬ stone strata, containing Ichthyolites, by the side of a small waterfall at Middlefield, one mile from Durham, in Connecticut. The remains of fish occur in a fine¬ grained slaty sandstone, black and bituminous, about six feet thick, which alternates with a coarse conglom- 100 AGE OF RED SANDSTONE. Chap. vi. erate, some of the quartz pebbles being two or three inches in diameter. Small fragments of fossil wood and a ripple-marked surface were observed in some of the strata near the fossil-fish. This sandstone is newer than the coal, but we have not yet sufficient data to pronounce very decidedly on its true age. The loot- steps of numerous species of birds afford no indication, because in Europe we have as yet no traces of birds in rocks of such high antiquity, and consequently no cor¬ responding term of comparison. As to the fish, they have most of them been referred to the genus Paleo- ni.scus, and have been supposed, therefore, by analogy, to imply that the Connecticut deposit is of the age of the Magnesian limestone (Lower JNew Red or Peimian Group of Europe). But Mr. Redfield has expressed some doubt whether these American fossils might not constitute a new, though allied genus, having the scales, and apparently the vertebrae, prolonged to a more limited extent into the upper lobe of the tail than in the European species. In the language of M. Agassiz, they are less lieterocercal than the European Paleoniscus, and, therefore, less closely related to that type which is universal in the more ancient or paleozo¬ ic formations. Sir P. Egerton, who confirms these le- marks of Mr. Redfield, and adds other distinctions, such as the strong and conical teeth, and the smallness of the oral aperture, informs me that in the five or six distinct species obtained by me from Durham, Connec¬ ticut, he finds the scales to be smoother than in the Paleonisci of the Magnesian limestone; for the latter have their scales more or less striated and serrated on the posterior margins. The American fossils approxi¬ mate in the character above alluded to, or in having Chap. vi. INCOME OF FARMERS. 101 smooth scales, to the coal-measure species, so that the evidence derived ftom Ichthyology is very conflicting. Professor H. D. Rogers infers from his brother’s dis¬ covery in Virginia of shells in this formation, referred to the Posidonia Keuperi. a characteristic species of the European Trias, that the Connecticut sandstone be¬ longs to the Upper New Red or Triassic system. In the neighbourhood of Durham we learnt that a snow-storm, which occurred there in the first week of October, had seriously injured the woods, weighing down the boughs then in full leaf, and snapping off the leading shoots. For the first time in the United States I heard great concern expressed for the damage sus¬ tained by the timber, which is beginning to grow scarce in New England, where coal is dear. The valley of the Connecticut presents a pleasing picture of a rural population, where there is neither poverty nor great wealth. I was told by well-informed persons, that if the land and stock of the farmers or small proprietors were sold off and invested in securities giving six per cent, interest, their average incomes would not exceed more than from 80/. to 120/. a year. An old gentleman who lately re-visited Durham, his na¬ tive place, after an absence of twenty-five years, told me that in this interval the large families, the equal sub¬ division of the paternal estates among children, and the efforts made for the outfit of sons migrating to the West, had sensibly lowered the fortunes of the Con¬ necticut yeomanry, so that they were reduced nearer to the condition of labourers than when he left them. Pursuing my course southwards, I found that (he snow-storm had been less heavy at New York, still less at Philadelphia, and after crossing the Susquehanna 9* 102 WASHINGTON.—NATIONAL MUSEUM. Chap. vi. (Dec. 13.) the weather began to resemble that of an English spring. In the suburbs of Baltimore, the lo¬ comotive engines being detached, our cars were drawn by horses on a railway into the middle of the town. Maryland was the first slave state we had visited; and at Baltimore we were reminded for the first time of the poorer inhabitants of a large European city by the mean dwellings and dress of some of the labouring class, both coloured and white. At Washington I was shown the newly-founded na¬ tional museum, in which the objects of natuial histoiy and other treasures collected during the late voyage of discovery to the Antarctic regions, the South Seas, and California, are deposited. Such a national repository would be invaluable at Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, but here there is no university, no classes of students in science or literature, no philosophical socie¬ ties, no people who seem to have any leisure. The members of Congress rarely have town residences in this place, but, leaving their families in large cities, where they may enjoy more refined society, they live here in boarding-houses until their political duties and the session are over. If the most eminent legislators and statesmen, the lawyers of the supreme courts, and the foreign ambassadors, had all been assembled here for a great part of the year with their families, in a wealthy and flourishing metropolis, the social and po¬ litical results of a great centre of influence and author¬ ity could not have failed to be most beneficial. Cir¬ cumstances purely accidental, and not the intentional jealousy of the democracy, have checked the growth of the capital, and deprived it of the constitutional ascen¬ dency which it might otherwise have exerted. Con- Chap. vi. WASHINGTON, WHY THE CAPITAL. 103 gress first assembled in Philadelphia, where the decla¬ ration of independence was signed ; but after the close of the revolutionary war in June, 1783, a party of the disbanded army marched to that city to demand their arrears of pay, and surrounded the building in which the representatives of the people were sitting, with fixed bayonets for about three hours. This alarm caused them to adjourn and meet at Princeton, New Jersey, and afterwards to seek some permanent seat of gov¬ ernment. But for this untoward event, Philadelphia might have remained the federal metropolis, and in that case would certainly have lifted up her head above other cities in the New World— “ Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.” General Washington is said to have selected the present site of the capital as the most central spot on the Atlantic border, being midway between Maine and Floiida, and being also at the head of the navigation of a great river. He had observed that all the other principal cities eastward of the Alleghany mountains had sprung up on similar sites; but unfortunately the estuary of the Potomac is so long and winding, that to ascend from its mouth to Washington is said often to take a vessel as long as to cross from Liverpool to the mouth of the river. Had Annapolis, which is only thirty miles distant, been chosen as the capital, it is be¬ lieved that it would, ere this, have contained 100,000 inhabitants. We were present at an animated debate in the House of Representatives, on the proposed protective taiiff, and a discussion in the senate on u Ways and Means, both carried on with great order and decorum. After being presented to the President, and visiting 104 EFFECTS OF SLAVE-LABOUR. Chap. vt. several persons to whom we had letters, we were warned by a slight sprinkling of snow that it was time to depart and migrate further southwards. Crossing the Potomac, therefore, I proceeded to Richmond, in Virginia, where 1 resolved to sail down the James River, in order to examine the geology of the tertiary strata on its shores. On entering the station-house of a railway which was to carry us to our place of embarkation, we found a room with only two chairs in it. One of these was occupied by a respectable-looking woman, who imme¬ diately rose, intending to give it up to me, an act be¬ traying that she was English, and newly-arrived, as an American gentleman, even if already seated, would have felt it necessary to rise and offer the chair to any woman, whether mistress or maid, and she, as a mat¬ ter of course, would have accepted the proffered seat. After 1 had gone out, she told my wife that she and her husband had come a few months before from Hert¬ fordshire, hoping to get work in Virginia, but she had discovered that there was no room here for poor white people, who were despised by the very negroes if they laboured with their own hands. She had found herself looked down upon, even for carrying her own child, for they said she ought to hire a black nurse. These poor emigrants were now anxious to settle in some free state. As another exemplification of the impediments to im¬ provement existing here, I was told that a New Eng¬ land agriculturist had bought a farm on the south side of the James river, sold off all the slaves, and intro¬ duced Irish labourers, being persuaded that their ser¬ vices would prove more economical than slave-labour. Chap. vr. MIOCENE STRATA OF VIRGINIA. 105 The scheme was answering well, till, by the end of the third year, the Irish became very much dissatisfied with their position, feeling degraded by losing the respect of the whites, and being exposed to the contempt of the surrounding negroes. They had, in fact, lowered them¬ selves by the habitual performance of offices which, south of the Potomac, are assigned to hereditary bondsmen. Miocene Tertiary Strata of Virginia. We have already seen that between the hilly coun¬ try and the Atlantic there occurs in the United States, a low and nearly level region (a, b, fig. 5, p. 74.), occu¬ pied principally by beds of marl, clay, and sand of the cretaceous and tertiary formations. Maclure, in 1817, in his work on geology, laid down with no small accu¬ racy on a coloured map the general limits of this great plain, and of the granitic district lying immediately to the westward. He also pointed out that at the junc¬ tion of these great geological provinces (a, b, and b, c, fig. 5.), at the point A, as indicated in the section, al¬ most all tiie great rivers descend suddenly by falls or rapids of moderate height, as the Delaware at Trenton, the Schuylkill near Philadelphia, the Potomac near Washington, the James river at Richmond, Virginia, the Savannah at Augusta in Georgia, and many others. At these points, therefore, the navigation is stopped, and a great many large cities have sprung up precisely at this limit, so that the line which marks the western boundary of the tertiary, and the eastern of the grani¬ tic region, is one of no small geological, geographical, and political interest. 106 MIOCENE STRATA OP VIRGINIA. Chap. vi. The general elevation of the great plain does not exceed a hundred feet, although sometimes considera¬ bly higher. Its width in the middle and southern states is very commonly from 100 to 150 miles. The tide, except in the more southern states, flows entirely across it, and the rivers intersecting it form large estu¬ aries, which may have been due to the facility with which the incoherent materials of the cliffs were un¬ dermined and swept away, a process of waste which is still going on. . Throughout the greater part of the Atlantic plain, the cretaceous rocks, if present, are concealed by the overlying tertiary deposits, which consist chiefly of Mi¬ ocene strata, extending from Delaware bay to the Cape Fear river, and occupying portions of Delaware, Mary¬ land, Virginia, and North Carolina, an area about 400 miles long from north to south, and varying in breadth from 10 to 70 miles. There are, besides, some patches of the Miocene formation in South Carolina and Geoi- gia, where the Eocene or older tertiary deposits pre¬ dominate almost exclusively. I began my examination of these tertiary strata in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, where I saw in Shockoe creek some Eocene marls with characteristic shells, on which reposed Miocene red clay and sand. Between the two formations a remarkable bed of yel¬ low siliceous clay intervenes, from twelve to twenty- five feet thick, marked on the surface by a band of meagre vegetation. This clay was found by Professor W. B. Rogers to be entirely composed of the siliceous cases of Infusoria;, so minute as only to be detected by a powerful microscope, and yet exhibiting distinct spe- Chap. vi. HOSPITALITY OP THE PLANTERS. 107 cific characters, enabling us to refer them to the Mio¬ cene period. Going down the James river about twenty miles be¬ low Richmond, I found, at a place called City Point, on the right bank, a cliff thirty feet high, in which yellow and white sands appear, with shells very analogous to those of the Suffolk crag, and referable to the same age; resting on Eocene marl and green earth. Several miles lower, at Evergreen, I collected abundance of shells in the upper or Miocene formation, with great numbers of an Astarte, resembling one of the com¬ monest kinds of the Suffolk crag, and accompanied by the teeth of sharks, and bones of cetacea. Landing then at Coggin’s Point, several miles farther eastward on the Virginian shore, I was conducted by Mr. Ruffin, son of the editor of the Farmer’s Register, to a locality where shell-marl is procured and used for improving light soils, just as in Suffolk and on the Loire, strata of the same age, called crag and falun , have for cen¬ turies afforded a fertilizing mixture. Here, and at Evergreen before mentioned, large flat¬ tened masses several feet wide, of a lamelliform coral resembling an Astrcca, were lying on the beach, washed out of the Miocene marls. The species has been called by Mr. Lonsdale Columnaria sexradiata, and differs from the genus Astreea, as defined by Ehrenberg, in the stars not being subdivided. All the planters in this part of Virginia, to whose houses I weht without letters of introduction, received me most politely and hospitably. To be an English¬ man engaged in scientific pursuits was a sufficient pass¬ port, and their servants, horses, and carriages, were most liberally placed at my disposal. 10S WILLIAMSBURG. Chap. vr. I then crossed to the north side of the James river, being rowed out at sunrise far from the shore to wait for a steamer. The hour of her arrival being some¬ what uncertain, we remained for some time in the cold, muffled up in our cloaks, in a small boat moored to a single wooden pile driven into a shoal, with three ne¬ groes for our companions. The situation was desolate in the extreme, both the banks of the broad estuaiy appearing low and distant, and as wild and uninhabited as when first discovered in 160/, by Captain Smith, be¬ fore he was taken prisoner, and his life saved by the Indian maiden Pocahontas. At length we gladly hailed the large steamer as she came down rapidly towards us, and my luggage was immediately taken charge of by two of the sable crew, who called themselves Lord Wellington and Julius Caesar. We disembarked in a few hours near the old desert¬ ed village of Jamestown, at the Grove Landing, seven miles south of Williamsburg. Here I found the beach strewed over with innumerable fossil shells, washed out of the sandy Miocene marls of a cliff forty feet high. Some large varieties of the genus Pecten were most abundant, closely packed together in a dense bed, above which was another layer composed almost wholly of the shells of a Chama (C. congregata ), both valves being united in each individual. From the same cliff I also procured shells of the genera Conus , Oliva , Marginella, Fusus, Pyrula, Murex , Natica, and others. We then visited Williamsburg, where there is a Uni¬ versity founded by William and Mary, and therefore very ancient for this country. In the neighbourhood I procured a rich harvest of fossil shells, collecting in one Chap. vi. MIOCENE FOSSILS. 109 morning with my own hands no less than seventy dis¬ tinct species, besides several corals, in a pit at Burwell’s Mill. Upon the whole, I procured 147 species of shells, exclusive of Balani and corals, from this formation in the United States, and chiefly during the present expe¬ dition and near the banks of the .Tames river. That they belong to the same age as the Miocene deposits of Europe may be inferred :—first, from their position, as they overlie the Eocene marls containing shells, resembling those of the London and Paris ba¬ sins :—secondly, from the close affinity of many of the most abundant species to fossils of the crag of Suffolk and the French falunsthirdly, from the proportion of the fossil shells, identical in species with mollusca, now inhabiting the American coast, the proportion be¬ ing about one sixth of the whole, or about seventeen per cent., in those compared by me, for I have been able to identify 23 out of 147 with living shells. This re¬ lation of the fossil and recent fauna had already led Mr. Conrad and the Professors Rogers to the same con¬ clusions, and they had correctly called these deposits Miocene. Fourthly, the corals, of which I obtained thirteen species, agree all generically with those of the Miocene beds of Europe, and some specifically, as a lunulite, the same as one from the Suffolk crag, and Ant hop hy llum breve, common in the faluns of Tou- raine. Fifthly, the cetacea also agree generically, and the fish in many cases specifically, with European Mi¬ ocene fossils, and no remains of reptiles have been found on either side of the Atlantic in this formation. When we consider how remarkably the species of the Suffolk crag differ from the shells of the contem¬ poraneous faluns of the Loire, the geologist will not be 10 110 MIOCENE FOSSILS. Chap. vi. surprised to learn that I have only met with nine American Miocene shells, agreeing with fossils of the same period in Europe. It is also worthy of notice that the shells identified with recent species agree with testacea, now living on the western side of the Atlan¬ tic, some of which, as some kinds of Fulgur, a sub¬ genus of Pyrula , and Gnathodon, an estuary shell, are forms peculiar to America. In like manner, the fossil shells found in the Miocene strata of Europe, which agree with recent kinds, belong to species in¬ habiting the British seas, the Mediterranean, or the African coast of the Atlantic. Hence it follows that at the remote period called Miocene, the seas were not only divided as now into distinct geographical provinces, but already that peculiar distribution of the living mol- lusca which now exists had begun to prevail. This conclusion is remarkable when we recollect that at the geological era alluded to, the fauna was so distinct from the present, that four fifths of the species now living had not yet come into existence. In regard to the climate of the Miocene period it is not uninteresting to observe that the fossil shells of Maryland and Virginia resemble those of Touraine and Bourdeaux more nearly than the fossils of Suffolk. This might have been expected from the nearer cor¬ respondence in latitude; and it is the presence of such genera as Conus , Oliva , Marginella , and Crassatella (represented by large species), forms belonging to warmer seas, which assimilate the American and French deposits, and contrast both of them with the English, where no representatives of these genera are met with. Nevertheless, it is singular that there should be so much resemblance between the Miocene shells of Chap. vi. MIOCENE FOSSILS. Ill the Loire and Gironde and those of the James river and other estuaries in the United States which he ten degrees of latitude farther south than the French fa- luns, the latter being in the 4/ th, while the American strata of the same age are in the 37th of north lati¬ tude. This circumstance may probably be accounted for by curves in the isothermal lines similar in theii prolongation east and west, to those now existing as pointed out by Humboldt, in his essay on Climate. / 112 PINE BARRENS OF VIRGINIA. Chap. vii. CHAPTER VII. Pine Barrens of Virginia and North Carolina.—Railway Train stopped by Snow and Ice .— The Great Dismal Swamp.—Soil formed entirely of Vegetable Matter.—Rises higher than the con¬ tiguous firm Land.—Buried Timber.—Lake in the Middle .— The Origin of Coal illustrated by the Great Dismal.-—Objections to the Theory of an ancient Atmosphere highly charged with Car¬ bonic Acid. Dec. 23. 1841.—From Williamsburg we went to Norfolk in Virginia, passing down the James river in a steamer, and from Norfolk by railway to Weldon in North Carolina, passing for eighty miles through a low level country, covered with fir trees, and called the Pine Barrens. On our way we were overtaken by rain, which turned to sleet, and in the evening formed a coating of ice on the rails, so that the wheels of the en¬ gine could take no hold. There was a good stove and plenty of fuel in the car, but no food. After a short pause, the engineer backed the locomotive for half a mile over that part of the rail from which the snow and ice had just been brushed and scraped away by the pas¬ sage of the train; then, returning rapidly, he gained sufficient momentum to carry us on two or three miles farther, and, by several repetitions of this manoeuvre, he brought us, about nightfall, to a small watering station, where there was no inn, but a two-storied cottage not far off. Here we were made welcome, and as we had previ¬ ously dropped by the way all our passengers except two, were furnished with a small room to ourselves, and a Chap. vii. THE PINE BARRENS. 113 clean comfortable bed. We soon made a blazing wood- fire, and defied the cold, although we could see plainly the white snow on the ground through openings in the unplastered laths of which the wall of the house was made. Before morning all the snow was melted, and we again proceeded on our way through the Pine Barrens. Our car, according to the usual construction in this country, was in the shape of a long omnibus, with the seats transverse, and a passage down the middle, where, to the great relief of the traveller, he can stand upright with his hat on, and walk about, warming himself when he pleases at the stove, which is in the centie of the car. There is often a private room fitted up for the ladies, into which no gentleman can intrude, and where they are sometimes supplied with rocking-chairs, so essential to the comfort of the Americans, whether at sea or on land, in a fashionable drawing-room or in the cabin of a ship. It is singular enough that this luxury, after being popular for ages all over Lancashire, required transplantation to the New World beiore it could be improved and become fashionable, so as to be reimported into its native land. The Pine Barrens, on which the long-leafed or pitch pines flourish, have for the most part a siliceous soil, and form a broad belt many hundred miles in length, running parallel to the coast, in the region called the Atlantic Plain, before alluded to. The sands, as we follow this region from New Jersey to Georgia, are de¬ rived from strata of more than one tertiary period, and there are interstratified beds of clay, which, whenever they come to the surface in valleys, cause swamps, where peculiar kinds of evergreen oaks, the cypress or 10 * 114 GREAT DISMAL SWAMP. Chap. vii. cedar, tall canes, and other plants abound. Many climbers, called here wild vines, encircle the trunks of the trees, and on the banks of the Roanoke, near Wel¬ don, I saw numerous missletoes with their white berries. The Pine Barrens retain much of their verdure in win¬ ter, and were interesting to me from the uniformity and monotony of their general aspect, for they consti¬ tute, from their vast extent, one of the marked features in the geography of the globe, like the Pampas of South America. There are many swamps or morasses in this low flat region, and one of the largest of these occurs between the towns of Norfolk and Weldon. We traversed sev¬ eral miles of its northern extremity on the railway, which is supported on piles. It bears the appropriate and very expressive name of the “ Great Dismal,” and is no less than forty miles in length from north to south, and twenty-five miles in its greatest width from east to west, the northern half being situated in Virginia, the southern in North Carolina. I observed that the water was obviously in motion in several places, and the mo¬ rass has somewhat the appearance of a broad inundated river-plain, covered with all kinds of aquatic trees and shrubs, the soil being as black as in a peat-bog. The accumulation of vegetable matter going on here in a hot climate, over so vast an area, is a subject of such high geological interest, that I shall relate what I learnt of this singular morass. The best account yet published of it is given by Mr. Edmund Ruffin, the able editor of the Farmer’s Register (see vol iv., No. 9. January 7. 1837). It is one enormous quagmire, soft and muddy, except where the surface is rendered partially firm by a cover- Chap. vii. GREAT DISMAL SWAMP. 115 ing of vegetables and their matted roots ; yet, strange to say, instead of being lower than the level of the sur¬ rounding country, it is actually higher than nearly all the firm and dry land which encompasses it, and, to make the anomaly complete, in spite of its semi-fluid character, it is higher in the interior than towards its margin. The only exceptions to both these statements is found on the western side, where, for the distance of about twelve or fifteen miles, the streams flow from slightly elevated but higher land, and supply all its abundant and overflowing water. Toryards the north, the east, and the south, the waters flow from the swamp to dif¬ ferent rivers, which give abundant evidence, by the rate of their descent, that the Great Dismal is higher than the surrounding firm ground. This fact is also confirmed by the measurements made in levelling for the railway from Portsmouth to Suffolk, and for two canals cut through different parts of the morass, for the sake of obtaining timber. The railway itself, when traversing the Great Dismal, is literally higher than when on the land some miles distant on either side, and is six to seven feet higher than where it passes over dry ground, near to Suffolk and Portsmouth. Upon the whole, the centre of the morass seems to lie more than twelve feet above the flat country round it. If the streams which now flow in from the west, had for ages been bringing down black fluid mire, instead of water, over the firm subsoil, we might suppose the ground so inundated to have acquired its present configuration. Some small ridges, however, of land must have existed in the original plain or basin, for these now rise like W islands in various places above the general surface. 116 SOIL FORMED OF VEGETABLE MATTER. Chap. vn. But the streams to the westward do not bring down li¬ quid mire, and are not charged with any sediment. The soil of the swamp is formed of vegetable matter, usually without any admixture of earthy particles. We have here, in fact, a deposit of peat from ten to fifteen feet in thickness, in a latitude where, owing to the heat of the sun, and length of the summer, no peat mosses like those of Europe would be looked for under ordi¬ nary circumstances. In countries like Scotland and Ireland, where the climate is damp, and the summer short and cool, the natural vegetation of one year does not rot away du¬ ring the next in moist situations. If water flows into such land, it is absorbed, and promotes the vigorous growth of mosses and other aquatic plants, and when they die, the same water arrests their putrefaction. But as a general rule, no such accumulation of peat can take place in a country like that of Virginia, where the summer’s heat causes annually as large a quantity of dead plants to decay as is equal in amount to the vegetable matter produced in one year. It has been already stated that there are many trees and shrubs in the region of the Pine Barrens (and the same may be said of the United States generally), which, like our willows, flourish luxuriantly in water. The juniper trees, or white cedar (Cupressus thy¬ oid es), stand firmly in the softest part of the quag¬ mire, supported by their long tap-roots, and afford, with many other evergreens, a dark shade, under which a multitude of ferns, reeds, and shrubs, from nine to eighteen feet high, and a thick carpet of moss¬ es, four or five inches high, spring up and are pro¬ tected from the rays of the sun. When these are most Chap. vii. GREAT DISMAL SWAMP. 117 powerful, the large cedar (Cupressus disticha) and many other deciduous trees are in full leaf. The black soil formed beneath this shade, to which the mosses and the leaves make annual additions, does not per¬ fectly resemble the peat of Europe, most of the plants being so decayed as to leave little more than soft black mud, without any traces of organization. This loose soil is called sponge by the labourers ; and it has been ascertained that, when exposed to the sun, and thrown out on the bank of a canal, where clearings have been made, it rots entirely away. Hence it is evident that it owes its preservation in the swamp to moisture and the shade of the dense foliage. The evaporation con¬ tinually going on in the wet spongy soil during summer cools the air, and generates a temperature resembling that of a more northern climate, or a region more ele¬ vated above the Level of the sea. Numerous trunks of large and tall trees lie buried in the black mire of the morass. In so loose a soil they are easily overthrown by winds, and nearly as many have been found lying beneath the surface of the peaty soil, as standing erect upon it. When thrown down, they are soon covered by water, and keeping wet they never decompose, except the sap wood, which is less than an inch thick. Much of the timber is obtained by sounding a foot or two below the surface, and it is sawn into planks while half under water. The Great Dismal has been described as being high¬ est towards its centre. Here, however, there is an ex¬ tensive lake of an oval form, seven miles long, and more than five wide, the depth, where greatest, fifteen feet; and its bottom, consisting of mud like the swamp, but sometimes with a pure white sand, a foot deep, cov- 118 ORIGIN OF COAL. Chap. vii. ering the mud. The water is transparent, though tinged of a pale brown-colour, like that of our peat¬ mosses, and contains abundance of fish. This sheet of water is usually even with its banks, on which a thick and tall forest grows. There is no beach, for the bank sinks perpendicularly, so that if the waters are lowered several feet it makes no alteration in the breadth of the lake. Much timber has been cut down and carried out from the swamp by means of canals, which are per¬ fectly straight for long distances, with the trees on each side arching over and almost joining their branches across, so that they throw a dark shade on the water, which of itself looks black, being coloured as before mentioned. When the boats emerge from the gloom of these avenues into the lake, the scene is said to be “ as beautiful as fairy land.” The bears inhabiting the swamp climb trees in search of acorns and gum berries, breaking off large boughs of the oaks in order to draw the acorns near to them. These same bears are said to kill hogs and even cows. There are also wild cats, and occasionally a solitary wolf, in the morass. That the ancient seams of coal were produced for the most part by terrestrial plants of all sizes, not drift¬ ed, but growing on the spot, is a theory more and more generally adopted in modern times, and the growth of what is called sponge in such a swamp, and in such a climate as the Great Dismal, ahead covering so many square miles of a low level region bordering the sea, and capable of spreading itself indefinitely over the adjacent country, helps us greatly to conceive the manner in which the coal of the ancient Carboniferous Chap. vii. ORIGIN OP COAL. 119 rocks may have been formed. The heat, perhaps, may not have been excessive when the coal-measures origi¬ nated, but the entire absence of frost, with a warm and damp atmosphere, may have enabled tropical forms to flourish in latitudes far distant from the line. Huge swamps in a rainy climate, standing above the level of the surrounding firm land, and supporting a dense forest, may have spread far and wide, invading the plains, like some European peat-mosses when they burst; and tire frequent submergence of these masses of vegetable matter beneath seas or estuaries, as often as the land sunk down during subterranean move¬ ments, may have given rise to the deposition of strata of mud, sand, or limestone, immediately upon the vegetable matter. The conversion of successive sur¬ faces into dry land, where other swamps supporting trees may have formed, might give origin to a continu¬ ed series of coal-measures of great thickness. In some kinds of coal, the vegetable texture is apparent through¬ out under the microscope ; in others, it has only par¬ tially disappeared; but even in this coal the flattened trunks of trees of the genera Lepulodendron , Sigil- laria, and others, converted into pure coal, are occa¬ sionally met with, and erect fossil trees are observed in the overlying strata, terminating downwards in seams of coal. The chemical processes by which vegetable matter buried in the earth is gradually turned into coal and anthracite has been already explained (see above, p. 72.). Before concluding the remarks which are naturally suggested by a visit to the Great Dismal, I shall say a few words on a popular doctrine, favoured by some ge¬ ologists, respecting an atmosphere highly charged with 120 THEORY OF ATMOSPHERE Chap. vii. carbonic acid, in which the coal plants are supposed to have flourished. Some imagine the air to have been so full of choke-damp during the ancient era alluded to, that it was unfitted for the respiration of warm-blooded quadrupeds and birds, or even reptiles, which require a more rapid oxygenation of their blood than creatures lower in the scale of organization, such as have alone been met with hitherto in the Carboniferous and older strata. It is assumed that an excess of oxygen was set free when the plants which elaborated the coal sub¬ tracted many hundred million tons of carbon from the carbonic acid gas which previously loaded the air. All this carbon was then permanently locked up in solid seams of coal, and the chemical composition of the earth’s atmosphere essentially altered. But they who reason thus are bound to inform us what may have been the duration of the period in the course of which so much carbon was secreted by the powers of vegetable life, and, secondly, what accession of fresh carbonic acid did the air receive in the same. We know that in the present state of the globe, the air is continually supplied with carbonic acid from several sources, of which the three principal are, first, the daily putrefactien of dead animal and vegetable substances ; secondly, the disintegration of rocks char¬ ged with carbonic acid and organic matter; and, thirdly, the copious evolution of this gas from mineral springs and the earth, especially in volcanic countries. By that law which causes two gases of different specific gravity, when brought into contact, to become uni¬ formly diffused and mutually absorbed through the whole space which they occupy, the heavy carbonic acid finds its way upwards through all parts of the at- Chap. VII. CHARGED WITH CARBONIC ACID. 121 mosphere, and the solid materials of large forests are given out from the earth in an invisible form, or in bubbles rising through the water of springs. Peat¬ mosses of no slight depth, and covering thousands of square miles, are thus fed with their mineral constitu¬ ents without materially deranging the constituents of the atmosphere breathed by man. Thousands of trees grow up, float down to the delta of the Mississippi, and other rivers, and are buried, and yet the air, at the end of many centuries, may be as much impregnated with carbonic acid as before. Coral reefs are year after year growing in the ocean —springs and rivers feed the same ocean with carbonic acid and lime; but we have no reason to infer that when mountain masses of calcareous rock have thus been gradually formed in the sea, any essential change in the chemical composition of its waters has been brought about. We have no accurate data as yet for measuring whether in our own time, or at any remote geological era, the relative supply and consumption of carbon in the air or the ocean causes the amount of those elements to vary greatly; but the variation, if admitted, would not have caused an excess, but rather a deficit of carbon in the periods most productive of coal or peat, as compared to any subsequent or antecedent epochs. In fact, a climate favouring the rank and lux¬ urious growth of plants, and at the same time check¬ ing their decay, and giving rise to peat or accumula¬ tions of vegetable matter, might, for the time, diminish the average amount of carbonic acid in the atmosphere —a state of things precisely the reverse of that assu¬ med by those to whose views I am now objecting. 11 122 tour to charleston. Chap, viis CHAPTER VIII. Tour to Charleston, South Carolina—Facilities of ^ como ^~ Augusta—Voyage down the Savannah River—Shell Bluff. Slave-labour.—Fever and Ague-Millhaven-Pme Forests of Georgia.—Alligators and Land-Tortoises-Warmth of Climate in January—Tertiary Strata on the Savannah—Fossil Remains of Mastodon and Mylodon near Savannah—Passports lequne of Slaves—Cheerfulness of the Negroes. Dec. 28.— Charleston, South Carolina. We ai- rived here after a journey of 160 miles through the pine forests of North Carolina, between Weldon and Wilmington, and a voyage of about IT hours, m a steam ship, chiefly in the night between Wilmington and this place. Here we find ourselves in a genial cli¬ mate, where the snow is rarely seen, and never lies above an hour or two upon the ground. The rose, tie narcissus, and other flowers, are still lingering m the gardens, the woods still verdant with the magnolia, live oak, and long-leaved pine, while the dwarf fan palm or palmetto, frequent among the underwood, marks a more southern region. In less than four weeks since we left Boston, we have passed from the 43d to the 3 deo-ree of latitude, carried often by the power of steam fo°several hundred miles together through thinly peo¬ pled wildernesses, yet sleeping every night at good mns, and contrasting the facilities of locomotion m this new country with the difficulties we had contended with the year before when travelling in Europe, throug r populous parts of Touraine, Brittany, and other prov¬ inces of France. Chap. viii. AUGUSTA. 123 At Charleston I made acquaintance with several persons zealously engaged in the study of natural his¬ tory, and then went by an excellent railway 136 miles through the endless pine woods to Augusta, in Georgia. This journey, which would formerly have taken a week, was accomplished between sunrise and sunset; and, as we scarcely saw by the way any town or vil¬ lage, or even a clearing, nor any human habitation ex¬ cept the station houses, the spirit of enterprise displayed in such public works filled me with astonishment which increased the farther I went South. Starting from the sea-side, and imagining that we had been on a level the whole way, we were surprised to find in the evening, on reaching the village of Aikin, sixteen miles from Augusta, that we were on a height several hundred feet above the sea, and that we had to descend a steep inclined plane to the valley of the Savannah river. The strata cut through here in making the railway consist of vermilion-coloured earth and clay, and white quartzose sand, with masses of pure white kaolin in¬ termixed. These strata belong to the older or Eocene tertiary formation, which joins the clay-slate and gra¬ nitic region a few miles above Augusta, where I visited the rapids of the Savannah. I had been warned by my scientific friends in the North, that the hospitality of the planters might greatly interfere with my schemes of geologizing in the South¬ ern states. In the letters, therefore, of introduction fur¬ nished to me at Washington, it was particularly re¬ quested that information respecting my objects, and fa¬ cilities of moving speedily from place to place, should be given me, instead of dinners and society. These injunctions were every where kindly and politely com- 124 SHELL BLUFF. Chap. vnl. plied with. It was my intention, for the sake of get¬ ting a correct notion of the low country between the granitic region and the Atlantic, to examine the cliffs bounding the Savannah river from its rapids to neai its mouth, a distance, including its windings, of about 250 miles. After passing a few days at Augusta, where, for the first time, I saw cotton growing in the fields, I embarked in a steam-boat employed in the cotton trade, and went for forty miles down the great river, which usually flows in a broad alluvial plain, with an aver¬ age fall of about one foot per mile, or 250 feet between Augusta and the sea. Like the Mississippi and al large rivers, which, in the flood season, are densely charged with sediment, the Savannah has its immedi¬ ate banks higher than the plain intervening between them and the high grounds beyond, which usually, however distant from the river, present a steep cliff or “ bluff” towards it. The low flat alluvial plain, over¬ flowed in great part at this rainy season, is covered with aquatic trees, and an ornamental growth of tall canes, some of them reaching a height of twenty feet, being from one to two inches in diameter, and with their leaves still green. The lofty cedar (Cupressus disti- cha ), now leafless, towers above them, and is remarka¬ ble for the angular bends of the top boughs, and the large thick roots which swell out near the base. I landed first at a cliff about 120 feet high, called Shell Bluff, from the large fossil oysters which are con¬ spicuous there. About forty miles below Augusta, at Demery’s Ferry, the place where we disembarked, the waters were so high that we were carried on shore by two stout negroes. In the absence of the proprietor to whom I had letters, we were hospitably received by his Chap. vm. SLAVE LABOUR. 12b overseer, who came down to the river bank, with two led horses, on one of which was a lady’s saddle. He conducted us through a beautiful wood, where the ver¬ dure of the evergreen oaks, the pines, and hollies, and the mildness of the air, made it difficult for us to be¬ lieve that it was mid-winter, and that we had been the month before in a region of snow storms and sledges. We crossed two creeks, and after riding several miles reached the house, and were shown into a spacious room, where a great wood fire was kept up constantly on the hearth, and the doors on both sides left open day and night. Returning home to this hospitable mansion in the dusk of the evening of the day following, I was sur¬ prised to see, in a grove of trees near the court-yard of the farm, a large wood-fire blazing on the ground. Over the fire hung three cauldrons, filled, as I after¬ wards learned, with hog’s lard, and three old negro wo¬ men, in their usual drab-coloured costume, were leaning over the cauldrons, and stirring the lard to clarify it. The red glare of the fire was reflected from-their faces, and I need hardly say how much they reminded me of the scene of the witches in Macbeth. Beside them, moving slowly backwards and forwards in a rocking- chair, sat the wife of the overseer, muffled up in a cloak, and suffering from a severe cold, but obliged to watch the old slaves, who are as thoughtless as chil¬ dren, and might spoil the lard if she turned away hex- head for a few minutes. When I inquired the mean¬ ing of this ceremony, I was told it was “ killing time,” this being the coldest season of the year, and that since I left the farm in the morning thirty hogs had been sacrificed by the side of a running stream not far off. 11 * FEVER AND AGUE. ChaI’. vill. 126 £'EiVHiXV xxi.'t*-' -- These were destined to serve as winter provisions fot the negroes, of whom there were about a hundred on this plantation. To supply all of them with food, clothes, and medical attendants, young, old, and impo¬ tent, as well as the able-bodied, is but a portion of the expense of slave-labour. They must be continually superintended by trustworthy whites, who might often perform no small part of the task, and far more effec¬ tively, with their own hands. ,, I fossilized for three days very diligently at She Bluff, obtaining more than forty species of she s, c ne y casts, referable to the Eocene formation; of which shall speak by-and-by. „ . , Resuming our voyage, thirty miles further down the river, in another large cotton steam-boat, we weie landed at Stony Bluff, in Georgia, where I wished to examine the rocks of burr-stone. There was no living being or habitation in sight. The large steamer van¬ ished in an instant, sweeping down the swollen river at the rate of seventeen miles an hour, and ft seeme as if we had been dropped down from a balloon, with our luggage, in the midst of a wilderness. I began by ex¬ ercising my hammer on the burr-stone of this low bluff, a cellular kind of flint, sometimes used for millstones and full of silicified corals and minute shells, and, as I afterwards found, by aid of a powerful microscope, of sponges. It is an Eocene formation, and alternates with beds of red loam. After making a collection of specimens, I walked about the wood, and found a lone house, at the door of which a woman was sitting, in a languid state of health. She said she had just recov¬ ered from the fever, or chill; and among other inqui¬ ries, asked when we had last had this complaint. On Chap. viii. PINE FORESTS OF GEORGIA. 127 being told we had never had it, she said, “ I should like to live in your country, for among the Whites there is not one in this section of Georgia that has escaped.” It is true, that consumption, so common in the North¬ ern states, and so often fatal, is unknown here ; but the universality of the ague makes these low districts in the Southern states most unenviable dwelling-places. The best season for a geological tour in this part of Georgia and South Carolina, east of the mountains, is from December to April inclusive. I waited for the return of the owner of the lone house, and told him I wished to visit the plantation of Colonel Jones, at Millhaven. He consented to let me hire his barouche with one horse, telling me I must send it back the best way I could, after finding my own way for twelve miles through the pine forests, as he could spare me no driver. The lanes through the wood were numerous, and a storm had blown down so many tall pines across the road, each of which it was neces¬ sary to circumnavigate, that we thought ourselves for¬ tunate when we arrived safe at the destined haven. My new host added to the kindness and frankness of a Southern planter, what I had little expected in the midst of this forest, a strong love for my favourite pursuits, and guided me at once to Jacksonborough, and other neighbouring places, best worthy the attention of a ge¬ ologist. We had many long rides together through those woods, there being no underwood to prevent a horse from galloping freely in every direction. The long¬ leaved pines emit a faint odour somewhat resembling that of the hyacinth, and their bright-green foliage was finely brought out against the clear blue sky. The air 123 LAND T0RT0ISK. Chap. vin. was balmy, and unusually warm, even for Georgia m the first week of January. We saw several butterflies, one of a bright yellow colour, and bats flying about m the evening. The croaking of the fiog and t,ie c 11 1 inn- of the cricket were again heard. They had been silent a few days before, when the air was cooler. 1 he sheep, which remain out in these woods all the wmtei are now followed by lambs about three weeks old saw many black squirrels here, but only heard of the opossum, racoon, bear, and alligator, without seeing any A few days ago, an alligator was shot fourteen feet long, in the act of carrying off a pig ; and the spoils¬ men complain to me that they devour their dogs when they Mow the deer, which, on the first alarm, usually take to the Savannah river. I frequently observed the holes of the gopher, a kmc of land-tortoise, which burrows in the sand, and is now hybemating below ground. Four or flee inhabit one hole ; their eggs are rather smaller than a hen s. They are gregarious, and in summer are seen feeding ten or twelve together on the low shrubs. They are said to be very strong for their size, and a negro-woman as¬ sured a lady of our party that she was so light that she might be “toted by a gopher.” We also saw small hillocks, such as are thrown up by our moles, made by a very singular animal, which they call a salamandei, because, I believe, it is often seen to appear when t e woods are burnt. It is not a reptile, but a species of rat (.Pseudostoma pinetorum ), with pouches on is On quitting Millhaven, instead of continuing my voyage down the river, I hired a carriage to convey us to the town of Savannah, a distance of nearly one hum Chap. tiii. TURKEY-BUZZARDS. 129 dred miles. Here and there I went down from the high road to examine the river-cliffs, consisting of bright red-coloured loam, red and grey clay, and white sand. At Hudson’s Reach and other points I found Eo¬ cene shells and fishes’ teeth, chiefly of the genera My- liobates and Lanina. One day, on returning from the river, I came suddenly in the wood on some turkey- buzzards feeding on a dead hog. I had often seen since we crossed the Potomac these large black and grey birds soaring at a great height in the air, but I was now sur¬ prised to see one of them perch on a stump a few yards from me, and seem perfectly fearless. In our last day’s journey, I remarked, for the first time in America, a large flight of rooks, some wheeling about in the air, others perched on trees. Near the village of Ebenezer we passed over a long causeway, made of logs, which for three quarters of a mile was under water. The tall cedars (Cupressus disticha ), and other trees arching over and forming a long aisle, reminded me exactly of the descriptions given of the canals in the Great Dismal • Swamp. Some of the myrtles in these wet grounds are very fragrant. We were pursuing a line of road not much frequent¬ ed of late, since the establishment of the railway from Augusta to Charleston. Our arrival, therefore, at the inns was usually a surprise, and instead of being wel¬ comed, we were invariably recommended to go on far¬ ther. When once admitted, we were made very com¬ fortable, having our meals with the family, and being treated more like guests than customers. On one occa¬ sion our driver, to whose brother our carriage and horses belonged, fell in with the son of a neighbouring planter, 130 ARRIVAL at savannah. Chap.viii. who reproached him in a friendly manner for not hav¬ ing come to his house the night before, and brought us with him. The social equality which prevails here arises not so much from the spirit of a republican gov¬ ernment, as from the fact of the whites consulting an aristocracy for whom the negroes wor . a availed ourselves of letters of introduction freely offered to us, we might have passed from the house of one hos¬ pitable planter to another, and heard as little of reckon¬ ings at inns as Don duixote expected, after his study of the histories of knights errant. . . j an 10 . 1842.—On the tenth day after leaving gusta, we arrived at Savannah, from which town I im¬ mediately set out on an excursion through a fl , swampy country, resembling a^ torge delta, to Beau y and the Vernon river, about fifteen mite, to t east. I went by Heyneds Bridge, on the creek to see a spot about twelve miles from Savannah, where I had learnt from Dr. Habersham that boneso the mastodon and other extinct ■““mate had W discovered. The bed of clay, about six feet thick, con taining them, can only he seen at low water .and 1 de¬ scended to it in a boat when the tide was out, an y the aid of the negroes, obtained the grinder of common American mastodon. The stratum enctemg these and other bones rests immediately on sand c - taining marine shells of living species, and is covered by the mud of a freshwater swamp, in winch trees grow, and when thrown down by the winds, become occasionally imbedded. One of the teeth given to me from this place by Dr. Habersham was ascertain , y Mr. Owen, to be referable to his new genus, Mplodon. Mr. Hamilton Couper afterwards sent me from a similar Chap. yih. FOSSIL REMAINS. 131 I geological position, farther south in Georgia, near the mouth of the Altamaha, the tooth of a megatherium. It is evident, from his observations and my own, that at a comparatively recent period since the Atlantic was inhabited by the existing species of marine testacea, there was an upheaval and laying dry of the bed of the ocean in this region. The new land supported forests in which the megatherium, mylodon, mastodon, elephant, a species of horse different from the common one, and other quadrupeds, lived, and were occasion¬ ally buried in the swamps. There have also been sub¬ sidences on the coast, and perhaps, far inland; for in many places near the sea there are signs of the forest having become submerged, the remains of erect trees being seen enveloped in stratified mud and sand: I even suspect that this coast is now sinking down, at a slow and insensible rate, for the sea is encroaching and gaining at many points on the freshwater marshes. Thus at Beauly I found upright stumps of trees of the pine, cedar, and ilex covered with live oysters and bar¬ nacles, and exposed at low tide ; the deposit in which they were buried having been recently washed away from around them by the waves. I also observed, that the flat country of marshes was bounded on its western or inland side by a steep bank or ancient cliff cut in the sandy tertiary strata, and there are other inland cliffs of the same kind at different heights implying the suc¬ cessive elevation above the sea of the whole tertiary region. Not only in South Carolina and Georgia, but also m the low region of North Carolina, as, for example, fif¬ teen miles below Newbern, the remains of extinct quadrupeds have been met with. The tooth of a 132 FOSSIL REMAINS. Chap. viii. \ horse found in the latter place, with the bones of mas¬ todon, elephant, and other mammalia, was presented to me by Mr. Conrad, remarkably curved, and agreeing, in this respect, with a fossil tooth discoveied by Mr. Darwin on the north side of the Plata, in Entre Rios, in South America, where it accompanied the mastodon and megatherium. As no species of equus existed in the New World when it was discovered in the fifteenth century, naturalists were inclined, at first, to be in¬ credulous in regard to the real antiquity of this fossil, but as the tooth is more curved than in the recent horse, ass, or zebra, the fossil species may have differed as widely from any living representative of this genus, as the zebra or wild ass from the horse of Arabia. It is a fact well worthy of attention that in the southern states of the Union so many extinct quadru¬ peds, such as the mastodon, elephant, megatherium, mylodon, and horse, should occur, agreeing, some spe- cificially and others in generic characters, with those found in corresponding latitudes in South America near the river Plata, and in Patagonia, or between latitudes 31° and 50° S., and that in both hemispheres they should be accompanied by marine fossil shells of recent species, as Mr. Darwin has shown to be the case in the Pampas. Yet, although these quadrupeds are so modern, geologically speaking, as to have co-existed with the present testaceous fauna, we cannot attribute their extermination to the agency of man ; for it is not the huge beasts alone, but quadrupeds as small as the rat, which have become extinct in South America within the same period, as Mr. Lund, the Danish nat¬ uralist, has shown in reference to Brazil. On the beach at Beauly I saw numerous foot-tracks Chap. viii. LAND CRABS. 133 of racoons and opossums on the sand, which had been made during the four hours immediately preceding, or since the ebbing of the tide. Already some of them were half filled with fine blown sand, showing the pro¬ cess by which distinct casts may be formed of the foot¬ steps of animals in a stratum of quartzose sandstone. I remarked that the tracks of the racoons could be traced at several points to beds of oysters, on which these animals are said to feed. The negroes told me, that sometimes a large oyster closes his shell suddenly, and holds the racoon fast by his paw till the returning tide comes up and drowns him. The surface of the beach for half a mile was cover¬ ed with small round pellets of mud as thick as hail¬ stones, of the size of currants and peas, and arranged for the most part in small heaps. These are made by thousands of land crabs (Gelasimus vocans ?), which they call fiddlers, because the motion of their claws is compared to the arm of a player on the violin. By the side of each heap was a perpendicular hole several inches deep, into which when alarmed the crab retreats sideways, sometimes disappearing, but often leaving the larger claw projecting above for want of room. They make these holes by rolling the wet sand into pellets, and then bringing up each ball separately to the sur¬ face. A planter of this country told me it was amusing to see a flock of turkies driven down for the first time from the interior to feed on the crabs in the marine marshes. They, at first, walk about in a ludicrous state of alarm, expecting their toes to be pinched, but after a time, one bolder than the rest is tempted by hunger to snap up a small fiddler, after which the rest fall to and devour 12 134 PASSPORTS REQUIRED FOR SLAVES. Chap.vUI. them by thousands. On my way through the woods in this low region near Savannah, I saw some fine magnolias ninety feet high, palmettos six feet high in tufts, and oaks hung with white pendant wreaths, sometimes ten feet long, of the wiry parasitic Tillandsia usneeoides. This climber, which also festoons the woods in South America, much resembles the lichen called in England “ old man’s beard,” but is a pheno- gamous plant. In order to see the bed of clay containing the bones of the mastodon at Heyner’s Bridge, it was necessary for me to be on the ground by daybreak at low tide. With this view, I left Savannah in the middle of the night. The owner of the property kindly lent me his black servant as a guide, and I found him provided with a passport, without which no slave can go out af¬ ter dusk. The exact streets through which he was to pass in his way to me were prescribed, and had he strayed from this route he might have been committed to the guard-house. These and other precautionary regulations, equally irksome to the slaves and their mas¬ ters, are said to have become necessary after an insur¬ rection brought on by abolitionist missionaries, who are spoken of here in precisely the same tone as incendi¬ aries, or beasts of prey whom it would be meritorious to shoot or hang. In this savage and determined spirit I heard some planters speak who were mild in their man¬ ners, and evidently indulgent to their slaves. Nearly half the entire population of this state are of the coloured race, who are said to be as excitable as they are ignorant. Many proprietors live with their wives and children quite isolated in the midst of the slaves, so * CuAr vm. NEGRO COACHMAN. 135 that the danger of any popular movement is truly ap¬ palling. The negroes, so far as I have yet seen them, whe¬ ther in domestic service or on the farms, appear very cheerful and free from care, better fed than a large part of the labouring class of Europe ; and, though meanly dressed, and often in patched garments, never scantily clothed for the climate. We asked a woman in Georgia, whether she was the slave of a family of our acquaintance. She replied, merrily, “ Yes, I belong to them, and they belong to me.” She was, in fact, born and brought up on the estate. On another occasion we were proceeding in a well- appointed carriage with a planter, when we came un¬ expectedly to a dead halt. Inquiring the cause, the black coachman said he had dropped one of his white gloves on the road, and must drive back and try to find it. He could not recollect within a mile where he had last seen it: we remonstrated, but in vain. As time pressed, the master in despair took off his own gloves, and saying he had a second pair, gave them to him. When our charioteer had deliberately put them on, we started again. 136 RETURN TO CHARLESTON. Chap. ix. CHAPTER IX. Return to Charleston.—Fossil Human Skeleton.—Geographical Dis¬ tribution of Quadrupeds in North America.—Severe Frost in 1835 in South Carolina.—White Limestone of the Cooper River and Santee Canal.—Referred to the Eocene Period, not intermediate between Tertiary and Chalk. — Lime-sinks.—Species of Shells com¬ mon to Eocene Strata in America and Europe.—Causes of the in¬ creased Insalubrity of the Law Region of South Carolina. — Con¬ dition of the Slave Population.—Cheerfulness of the Negroes : their Vanity.—State of Animal Existence.—Invalidity of Mar¬ riages.—The Coloured Population multiply faster than the Whites. —Effects of the Interference of Abolitionists.—Laws against Edu¬ cation.—Gradual Emancipation equally desirable for the Whites and the Coloured Race. Jan. 13. 1842.— From Savannah we returned to Charleston in a steam-ship, on board of which we found an agreeable party, consisting chiefly of officers of the U. S. army returning from Florida, where they had nearly brought to a close a war of extermination carried on for many years against the Seminole Indians. They gave a lively picture of the hardships they underwent in the swamps and morasses during this inglorious campaign, in the course of which the lives of perhaps as many whites as Seminoles were sacrificed. The war is said to have been provoked by the attacks of the In¬ dians on new settlers. In the Museum at Charleston, I was shown a fossil human skull from Guadaloupe, imbedded in solid lime¬ stone, which they say belongs to the same skeleton of a female as that now preserved in the British Museum, where the skull is wanting. Chap. ix. SEVERE FROST. 137 Dr. Bachman, whom I saw here, is engaged in a great work on the quadrupeds of North America. He pointed out to me the boundary of several distinct zones of indigenous mammalia, extending east and west on this continent, where there are no great natural barri¬ ers running in the same direction, such as mountain ridges, deserts, or wide arms of the sea to check the migrations of species. The climate alone has been suf¬ ficient to limit their range. The mammiferous fauna of the State of New York, comprising about forty spe¬ cies, is distinct from that of the arctic region 600 miles north of it, and described by Dr. Richardson. It is equally distinct from that of South Carolina and Geor¬ gia, a territory about as far distant to the south. In Texas, where frosts are unknown, another assemblage of species is met with. The opossum, for example, of that country (Didelphis cancrivora ) is different from that of Virginia. The latter (Didelphis virginiana) is one of those species which is common to many prov¬ inces, extending from Florida as far north as Penn¬ sylvania, where it has been observed while the snow was lying two feet deep on the ground. The racoon has a still wider habitation, ranging as did the buffalo originally (Bison americanus ) from the north ol Can¬ ada to the Gulf of Mexico. But these are exceptions to the general rule. Similar restrictions seem to have prevailed in the era of extinct quadrupeds, the great mastodon (iff. giganteus) having evidently abounded in Canada and New York, as well as Kentucky and Georgia, while the megatherium and mylodon were al¬ most entirely confined to the Southern States. When discoursing here on the influence of climate, many accounts were given me of a frost which visited 12 * 138 TERTIARY FORMATIONS. Chap. ix. Charleston n February, 1835, so severe that wine was frozen in bottles. The tops of the Pride-of-India tree, of Chinese origin, were killed: all the oranges, of which there were large orchards, were destroyed. Beds of oysters, exposed between high and low water maik, perished in the estuaries, and the effluvia from them was so powerful as to injure the health of the inhabi¬ tants. Several planters attribute the failure of the cotton crop this year (1842) to the unusual size and number of the icebergs, which floated southwards last spring from Hudson’s and Baffin’s Bays, and may have cooled the sea and checked the early growth of the cotton plant. So numerous and remote are the disturbing causes in meteorology ! Forty degrees of latitude in¬ tervene between the region where the ice-floes are generated and that where the crops are raised, whose death-warrant they are supposed to have carried with them. Before I visited the Southern States, I had heard from several American geologists that calcareous rocks occurred there intermediate in age between the chalk and the tertiary formations, and helping to fill the void which separates those two well-marked eras in the Eu¬ ropean series. Having satisfied myself that all the white limestone of the Savannah river was referable to the Eocene epoch, I now set out to determine whether the same could be said of that exposed to view on the Cooper river and Santee canal, about thirty miles north of Charleston. I was accompanied in an excursion of a week by Dr. Ravenel, who kindly offered to be my guide ; and we first visited a plantation of his, called “The Grove,” near the mouth of the Cooper river, Chap, ix- FOSSIL MASTODON. 139 where, in the marshes, there are deep deposits of clay and sand, enclosing the stools and trunks of the cy¬ press, hickory, and cedar, often imbedded in an erect position, which must have grown in fresh water, but are now sunk six and even sixteen feet below the level of high water. Every where there are proofs of the coast having sunk, and the subsidence seems to have gone on in very modern times ; for some old cedars still standing on the surface have been killed by the encroach¬ ment of the salt water. We had come from Charles¬ ton in a small private steam-boat, and after passing Strawberry Ferry and entering the Santee Canal, were allowed by favour to pass through the locks without paying tolls, and, contrary to the usual regulations, which exclude steam-boats. The thoughtless negroes allowed the chimney of our vessel to get so choked up with soot that we were soon forced to quit this convey¬ ance, and travel by land. The barges on the canal are constructed of different sizes, so that, after going down laden with cotton, they are put one into another when returning empty, and thus escape a large part of the tolls at the locks. The slaves are fond of cock- fighting ; and on the prow of each barge there stood usually a game-cock, perched as if he were the ensign of the vessel. We passed the Brygon Swamp, about forty miles north of Charleston, where the remains of the masto¬ don were found when the canal was cut. Wild ani¬ mals might still be mired in the same morass, latitude 33° 20' N., showing that these fossils in the Southern States occur in precisely the same geological position as in New York and Canada. We slept at Wantcot, and then went by Eutaw to Yance’s Ferry on the Santee 140 EOCENE SHELLS. Chap. ix. river, then to Cave Hall, examining the tertiary white marl and limestone, and collecting the shells and corals contained in it. Lime-sinks, or funnel-shaped cavities, are frequent in this country, arising from natural tun¬ nels and cavities in the subjacent limestone, through some of which subterranean rivers flow. An account was given me of a new hollow which opened about fif¬ teen years ago, about two miles south of the Santee river, into which a mule drawing a plough sank sud¬ denly. About a hundred yards from the same spot, I saw a large cavern sixty feet high at its entrance in the white limestone, from the mouth of which flowed a small stream. The undermining effect of such rivers explains the linear arrangement so common in lime- sinks in South Carolina and Georgia. The walls of such “sinks” are vertical, and the strata exposed to view consist usually of clay and sand, which rest upon the limestone. From Cave Hall we went in a north-westerly direc¬ tion to Stoudenmire Creek, a tributary of the Santee, where the siliceous burr-stone and brick-red loam ap¬ pear above the white limestone. In the course of this examination,. I satisfied myself that the limestone and white marl, a formation which must sometimes amount to 120 feet in thickness, in the low region of Cooper river and the Santee canal, are a continuation of the same Eocene deposit which I had seen at Shell Bluff, at Jacksonboro’, and other places on the Savannah riv¬ er, and which I afterwards observed at Wilmington, in North Carolina. I found many species in all these places, common to those of Claiborne, in Alabama, where the largest number (more than 200) of Eocene shells in a good state of preservation have been met Chap. ix. EOCENE FOSSILS. 141 with; and are described and figured in the works of Mr. Conrad and Mr. Lea of Philadelphia. Dr. Ra- venel pointed out to me some remarkable new species of Scutella at the Grove, near the mouth of the Coop¬ er river, and these were accompanied by several well- known Eocene shells like those of Claiborne. The same white limestone and marl may be said to be continuous for forty miles, from the Grove to the San¬ tee river. At Eutaw and other points, corals of the genera Jdmonea, Acystis, Pustulopora, Vincularia, and Es¬ char a occur, with a species of Scalaria, and other shells. These fossils, and the rock containing them, reminded me so much of the straw-coloured limestone of the cretaceous formation seen on the banks of Tim¬ ber Creek in New Jersey, that I do not wonder that some errors had arisen from confounding the tertiary and secondary deposits of the south. The species, however, prove on closer inspection to be different. This lithological resemblance of the rocks seems to have led to the admission into Dr. Morton’s list of the cretaceous fossils of North America; a list for the most part very correct, of the following seven tertiary species which really came from the Eocene strata of South Carolina. These are, Balanus peregrinus, Pecten calvatus, P. membranosus, Terebratula la- chryma, Conus gyratus, Scutella Lyelli , and Echi¬ nus infulatus (see Morton’s Synopsis, pi. 10.). The belief that all these species were common to the chalk and tertiary strata led naturally to the opinion that in the Southern States a formation existed intermediate in character between the rocks of the secondary and those of the tertiary periods. 142 EOCENE SHELLS. Chap, i* I consider the burr-stone and associated clays and sands of Stoudenmire and Aikin, South Carolina, and of Augusta, Millhaven, and Stony Bluff, in Georgia, to belong also to an Eocene deposit, and to be higher in the series than the white limestone formation. Out of 125 species of Eocene shells which I collected in the Southern States, or which were presented to me, I have only been able to identify seven with European species of the same epoch. These are Trochus ag- glutinans , Solarium canaliculatum -, Bonellia tei e- bellata, Infundibulum trochifor me , Lithodomus dac- tylus , Cardita planicosta, and Ostrea bellovacina. But there are a considerable number of representa¬ tive species, and an equal number of forms peculiar to these older tertiary strata of America. The Ostrea sellceformis, which may be considered as representing the O. Jlabellula of the Paris and London basins, appears to be one of the most charac¬ teristic and widely disseminated Eocene shells in Vir¬ ginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, for I found it at Shell Bluff and on the Santee river, and the James riv¬ er, in Virginia. On the banks of the Cooper river, we heard occa¬ sionally the melodious and liquid note of the mocking¬ bird in the woods. It is of a fearless disposition, and approaches very near to the houses. I can well imagine that in summer, when the leaves are out, and the flow¬ ers in full splendour, this region must be most beautiful. But it is then that the planters are compelled by the fever and ague to abandon their country seats. It was not so formerly. When the English army was cam¬ paigning on the Cooper and Santee rivers in the revo¬ lutionary war, they encamped with impunity in places. Chap. ix. MALARIA IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 143 where it would now be death to remain for a few days in the hot season. I inquired what could have caused so great a change, and found the phenomenon as much a matter of controversy as the origin of the malaria in Italy. The clearing away of the wood from large spaces is the chief alteration in the physical condition of tins region in the course of the last sixty years, whereby the damp and swampy grounds undergo an¬ nually the process of being dried up by a burning sun. Marshes which are overflowed by the tide twice in every twenty-four hours near the neighbouring coast, both in South Carolina and Georgia, are perfectly healthy. Dr.- Arnold remarks, in his Roman History, that Rome was more healthy before the drainage of the Campagna, and when there was more natural wood in Italy and in northern Europe generally. In the southern States of the Union there are no fevers in winter, at a season when there is no large extent of damp and boggy soil exposed to a hot sun, and undergoing desiccation. On our way home from Charleston, by the railway from Orangeburg, I observed a thin black line of charred vegetable matter exposed in the perpendicular section of the bank. " The sand cast out in digging the railway had been thrown up on the original soil, on which the pine forest grew; and farther excavations had laid open the junction of the rubbish and the soil. As geologists, we may learn from this fact how a thin seam of vege¬ table matter, an inch or two thick, is often the only monument to be looked for of an ancient surface of dry land, on which a luxuriant forest may have grown for thousands of years. Even this seam of friable matter may be washed away when the region is submerged, and, if not, rain-water percolating freely through the 144 CHEERFULNESS OF THE NEGROES. Chap. ix . sand may, in the course of ages, gradually carry away the carbon. As there were no inns in that part of South Carolina through which we passed in this short tour, and as we were everywhere received hospitably by the planters, I had many opportunities of seeing their mode of life, and the condition of the domestic and farm slaves. In some rich houses maize, or Indian corn, and rice were entirely substituted for wheaten bread. The usual style of liv¬ ing is that of English country gentlemen. They have well-appointed carriages and horses, and well-trained black servants. The conversation of the gentlemen turned chiefly on agricultural subjects, shooting, and horse-racing. Several of the mansions were surrounded with deer-parks. . Arriving often at a late hour at our quarters in the evening, we heard the negroes singing loudly and joy¬ ously in chorus after their day’s work was over. On one estate, about forty black children were brought up daily before the windows of the planter’s house, and fed in sight of the family, otherwise, we were told, the old women who have charge of them might, in the absence of the parents, appropriate part of their allowance to themselves. All the slaves have some animal food daily. When they are ill, they sometimes refuse to take medicine, except from the hands of the master or mistress; and it is of all tasks the most delicate for the owners to decide when they are really sick, and when only shamming from indolence. After the accounts I had read of the sufferings of slaves, I w T as agreeably surprised to find them, in genei- al, so remarkably cheerful and light-hearted. It is true that I saw no gangs working under overseers on sugar- Chap. is. NEGRO VANITY. 145 plantations, but out of tv» r o millions and a half of slaves in the United States, the larger proportion are engaged in such farming occupations and domestic services as I witnessed in Georgia and South Carolina. I was often for days together with negroes who served me. as guides, and found them as talkative and chatty as children, usually boasting of their master’s wealth, and their own peculiar merits. At an inn in Virginia, a female slave asked us to guess for how many dollars a year she was let out by her owner. We named a small sum, but she told us exultingly, that we were much under the mark, foi the landlord paid fifty dollars, or ten guineas a year for her hire. A good-humoured butler, at another inn in the same state, took care to tell me that his owner got 30Z. a year for him. The coloured steward¬ ess of a steam-vessel was at great pains to tell us her value, and how she came by the name of Queen Vic¬ toria. When we recollect that the dollars are not their own, we can hardly refrain from smiling at the childlike simplicity with which they express their satisfaction at the high price set on them. That price, however, is a xaii test oi their intelligence and moral worth, of which they have just reason to feel proud, and their pride is at least fiee from all sordid and mercenary considerations. Vy e might even say that they labour with higher mo¬ tives than the whites—a disinterested love of doing their duty. I am aware that we may reflect and phi¬ losophise on this peculiar and amusing form of vanity, until we perceive in it the evidence of extreme social degiadation; but the first impression which it made upon my mind was very consolatory, as I found it impossible to feel a painful degree of commiseration for persons so exceedingly well satisfied with themselves. 13 146 NEGRO WEDDING. Chap. ix. South Carolina is one of the few states where there is a numerical preponderance of slaves. One night, at Charleston, I went to see the guard-house, where there is a strong guard kept constantly in arms, and on the alert. Every citizen is obliged to serve in person, or find a substitute; and the maintenance of such a force, the strict laws against importing books relating to eman¬ cipation, and the prohibition to bring back slaves who have been taken by their masters into free states, show that the fears of the owner, whether well-founded or not, are real. During our stay at Charleston, we were present at a negro wedding, where the bride and bridegroom, and nearly all the company, were of unmixed African race. They were very merry. The bride and bridemaids all dressed in white. The marriage service performed by an Episcopal clergyman. Not long afterwards, when staying at a farm-house in North Carolina, I happened to ask a planter if one of his negroes with whom we had been conversing was married. He told me, Yes, he had a wife on that estate, as well as another, her sistei, on a different property which belonged to him; but that there was no legal validity in the marriage cere¬ mony. I remarked, that he must be mistaken, as an Episcopal minister at Charleston would not have lent himself to the performance of a sacred rite, if it were nugatory in practice, and in the eye of the law. lie replied, that he himself was a lawyer by profession, and that no legal validity ever had been, or ought to be, given to the marriage tie, so long as the right of sale could separate parent and child, husband and wife Such separations, he said, could not always be prevented when slaves multiplied fast, though they were avoided Ciiap. ix. INCREASE OP SLAVES. 147 by the masters as far as possible. He defended the custom of bringing up the children of the same estate in common, as it was far more humane not to cherish domestic ties among slaves. On the same farm I talked with several slaves who had been set to fell timber by task-work, and had finished by the middle of the day. They never appeared to be overworked; and the ra¬ pidity with which they increase beyond the whites in the United States shows that they are not in a state of discomfort, oppression, and misery. Doubtless, in the same manner as in Ireland and parts of Great Britain, the want of education, mental culture, and respect for themselves, favours improvident marriages among the poor; so the state of mere animal existence of the slave, and his low moral and intellectual condition, coupled with kind treatment and all freedom from care, promote their multiplication. The effect of the institution on the progress of the whites is most injurious, and, after travelling in the northern States, and admiring their iapid advance, it is most depressing to the spirits. Theie appears to be no place in society for poor whites. If they are rich, their slaves multiply, and from motives of kindly feeling towards retainers, and often from false pride, they are very unwilling to sell them. Hence t ey are constantly tempted to maintain a larger estab¬ lishment than is warranted by the amount of their capi¬ tal, and they often become involved in their circum¬ stances, and finally bankrupt. The prudence, temper, and decision of character required to manage a planta¬ tion successfully is very great. It is notorious that the ardest taskmasters to the slaves are those who come from the northern free States. I often asked myself, when in the midst of a large i 148 CONVERSATION WITH PLANTERS. Ciiap. IX. plantation, what steps I would take if I had inherited such a property from British ancestors. I thought, first, of immediately emancipating all the slaves, hut I was reminded that the law humanely provides, in that case, that I should still support them, so that I might ruin myself and family; and it would still be a question whether those whom I had released from bondage would be happier, or would be prepared for freedom. I then proposed to begin with education as a preliminary step. Here I was met with the objection that, since the abolition movement and the fanatical exertions of missionaries, severe statutes had been enacted, making it penal to teach slaves to read and write. I must first, therefore, endeavour to persuade my fellow slave¬ holders to repeal these laws against improving the moral and intellectual condition of the slaves. I re¬ marked that, in order to overcome the apathy and re¬ luctance of the planters, the same kind of agitation, the same “ pressure from without,” might be indispensable, which had brought about our West Indian emancipa¬ tion. To this my American friends replied, that the small number of our slaves, so insignificant in com¬ parison to their two and a half millions, had made an indemnity to the owner possible ; also that the free ne¬ groes, in small islands, could always be held in subjec¬ tion by the British fleets ; and, lastly, that England had a right to interfere and legislate for her own colonies, whereas the northern States of the Union, and foreign¬ ers, had no constitutional right to intermeddle with the domestic concerns of the slave States. Such interven¬ tion, by exciting the fears and indignation of the plant¬ ers, had retarded, and must always be expected to re¬ tard, the progress of the cause. They also reminded Ghaf. ix. ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 149 me how long and obstinate a straggle the West Indian piopiietors had made against the emancipationists in the British House of Commons; and they hinted, that if the different islands had been directly represented in -the Lower House, and there had been Dukes of Ja¬ maica, Marquises of Antigua, and Earls of Barbadoes in the Upper House, as the slave states are represented in Congress, the measure would never have been car¬ ried to this day. The more I reflected on the condition of the slaves, and endeavoured to think on a practicable plan for hast¬ ening the period of their liberation, the more difficult the subject appeared to me, and the more I felt aston¬ ished at the confidence displayed by so many anti-slavery speakers and writers on both sides of the Atlantic. The course pursued by these agitators shows that, next to the positively wicked, the class who are usually called well-meaning persons ” are the most mischievous in society. Before the year 1830, a considerable number of the planters were in the habit of regarding slavery as a great moral and political evil, and many of them opeiriy proclaimed it to be so in the Virginia debates of 1831-2. The emancipation party was gradually gain- ing giound, and not unreasonable hopes were enter¬ tained that the States of Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland would soon fix on some future day for the manumission of their slaves. This step had already been taken in most of the States north of the Potomac, and slavery was steadily retreating southwards. From the moment that the abolition movement began, and that missionaries were sent to the southern States, a re-action was perceived—the planters took the alarm—■ laws were passed against education—the condition of 13* 150 CONDITION OP THE SLAVES. Chap. IX. the slave was worse ; and not a few of the planters, by dint of defending their institutions against the argu¬ ments and misrepresentations of their assailants, came actually to delude themselves into a belief that slavery was legitimate, wise, and expedient a positive good in itself. There were many, indeed, who thought dif¬ ferently, but who no longer dared to expiess their opin¬ ions freely on the subject. It is natural that those planters who are of benevo¬ lent dispositions, and indulgent to their slaves, and who envy the northern proprietor, who, now that the Indians have passed away, has the good fortune not to share his country with another race, should be greatly iiiitated when the cruelty of the slave-holders, as a class, is held up to the reprobation of mankind. A deep sense of in¬ justice, and a feeling of indignation, disinclines them to persevere in advocating the cause of emancipation. I was so much occupied and absorbed in my scientific pursuits that I never felt tempted to touch on this ex¬ citing subject, and therefore, perhaps, the planters spoke out their i sentiments to me more freely. “Labour,” they said, “is as compulsory in Europe as here; but in Europe they who refuse to work have the alterna¬ tive of starvation; here the slave who is idle has the alternative of corporal punishment; for, whether he works or' not, he must always be fed and clothed.'’ They complained to me much of the manner in which the escape of runaway slaves was favoured in the free States. Their innocence, they said, is always as¬ sumed, and the cruelty and harshness of their owners, taken for granted; whereas the fugitives often consist of good-for-nothing characters, who would have been put into gaol in Europe, but who here are left at large, Chap. IX. EFFECTS OF SUDDEN EMANCIPATION. 151 because their masters are unwilling to lose their ser¬ vices by imprisonment, while they are compelled to support them. If the same delinquents, they say, were flying from the constable in a free State, the pub¬ lic would sympathise with the police and the magis¬ trate, and if they bore on their backs the marks of for¬ mer chastisement in gaol, the general desire to appre¬ hend them would be still more eager. These apolo¬ gies, and their assurance that they found it to their interest to treat their slaves kindly, had no effect in inducing me to believe that, where such great power is intrusted to the owner, that power will not be fre¬ quently abused ; but it has made me desire to see a fair statement of the comparative statistics of crimes and punishments in slave states and free countries. If we could fairly estimate the misery of all offenders in the prisons, penitentiaries, and penal settlements of some large European province, and then deduct the same from the sufferings of the slaves in a large south¬ ern state of the Union, the excess alone ought, in fair¬ ness, to be laid to the charge of the slave-owners. While pointing out the evil unreservedly, we should do the owner the justice to remember that the system of things which we deprecate has been inherited by him from his British ancestors, and that it is rarely possible or safe to bring about a great social reform in a few years. Had the measure of emancipating all the slaves been carried through as rapidly as some abolitionists have desired, the fate of the negroes might have been almost as deplorable as that of the aboriginal Indians. We must never forget that the slaves have at present a monopoly of the labour-market; the planters being 152 DYING OUT OF SLAVERY. Chaf. IX. bound to feed and clothe their., and being 1 unable to turn them off and take white labourers in their place. The coloured population, therefore, are protected against- the free competition of the white emigrants, with whom, if they were once liberated, they could no longei successfully contend. I am by no means disposed to assume that the natural capacities of the negroes, who* always appeared to me to be an amiable, gentle, and inoffensive race, may not be equal in a moial and in¬ tellectual point of view to those of the Europeans, provi¬ ded the coloured population were placed in circumstan¬ ces equally favourable for their development. But it would be visionary to expect that, under any imagi¬ nable system, this race could at once acquire as much energy, and become as rapidly progressive, as the Anglo- Saxons. To inspire them with such an aptitude for rapid advancement must be the work of time the result of improvement carried on through several successive generations. Time is percisely the condition for which the advocates of the immediate liberation of the blacks would never sufficiently allow. Tne great experiment now making in the West Indies affords no paiallel case, because the climate there is far more sultry, relaxing, and trying to Europeans, than in the Southern States of the Union ; and it is well known that the West Indian proprietors have no choice, the whites being so few in number, that the services of the coloured race are indispensable. Professor Tucker, of Virginia, has endeavoured to show, that the density of population in the slave States will amount, in about sixty years, to fifty persons m a square mile. Long before that period arrives, the most productive lands will have been all cultivated, and some Chap. ix. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 153 of the inferior soils resorted to: the price of labour will fall gradually as compared to the means of subsistence, and it will, at length, be for the interest of the masters to liberate their slaves, and to employ the more eco¬ nomical and productive labour of freemen. The same causes will then come into operation which formerly emancipated the villeins of western Europe, and will one dayset free the serfs of Russia. It is to be hoped however, that the planters will not wait for more than • lalf a century for such an euthanasia of the institution . slaver y; for the increase of the coloured population ^ ‘ in sixty years would be a formidable evil, since in this instance they are not, like villeins and seifs, of the same race as their masters. They cannot be fused at once into the general mass, and become amalgamated with the whites, for their colour still remains as the badge of then- former bondage, so that they continue aftei their fetters are removed, to form a separate and anfei lor caste. How long this state of things would ast must depend on their natural capabilities, moral, intellectual, and physical; but if in these they be equal to the whites, they would eventually become the dom¬ inant race since the climate of the south, more con¬ genial to their constitutions, would give them a decided advantage. A philanthropist may well be perplexed when he desires to devise some plan of interference which may eally promote the true interests of the negro But the way m which the planters would best consult their own hibhm appears 40 me Very Clear - The y should ex- bit moie patience and courage towards the abolition- ’ whose influence and numbers they greatly over¬ rate, and lose no time in educating the slaves, and 154 ABOLITION OP SLAVERY. Chap. is. encouraging private manumission to prepare the way for general emancipation. All seem agreed that the states most ripe for this great reform are Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Experience has proved in the northern States that emancipation immediately checks the in¬ crease of the coloured population, and causes the rela¬ tive number of the whites to augment very-rapidly. Every year, in proportion as the north-western States fill up, and as the boundary of the new settlers in the west is removed farther and farther, beyond the Mis¬ sissippi and Missouri, the cheaper and more accessible lands south of the Potomac will offer a more tempting field for colonisation to the swarms of New Englanders, who are averse to migrating into slave states. Before this influx of white labourers, the coloured race will give way, and it will require the watchful care of the philanthropist, whether in the north or south, to pre¬ vent them from being thrown out of employment, and reduced to destitution. If due exertions be made to cultivate the minds, and protect the rights and privileges of the negroes, and it nevertheless be found that they cannot contend, when free, with white competitors, but are superseded by them, still the cause of humanity will have gained. The coloured people, though their numbers remain stationary, or even diminish, may in the mean time e happier than now, and attain to a higher moral rank. They would, moreover, escape the cruelty and injus¬ tice which are the invariable consequences of the ex¬ ercise of irresponsible power, especially where authority must be sometimes delegated by the planter to agents of inferior education and coarsei feelings. And lastj Chap. ix. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 155 not least, emancipation would effectually put a stop to the breeding, selling, and exporting of slaves to the sugar-growing States of the South, where, unless the accounts we usually read of slavery be exaggerated and distorted, the life of the negro is shortened by se¬ vere toil and suffering. Had the white man never interposed to transplant the negro into the New World, the most generous asserters of the liberties of the coloured race would have conceded that Africa afforded space enough for their ' development. Neither in their new country, nor in that of their origin, whether in a condition of slavery or freedom, have they as yet exhibited such superior qualities and virtues as to make us anxious that ad¬ ditional millions of them should multiply in the south¬ ern States of the Union; still less, that they should overflow into Texas and Mexico. 12 156 WILMINGTON. Chap. x. CHAPTER X. Wilmington, N. C.— Mount Vernon.—Return to Philadelphia. Reception of Mr. Dickens.—Museum and Fossil human Bones. Penitentiary.—Churches.-Religious Excitement.—ColouredPeo¬ ple 0 f Fortune.—Obstacles to their obtaining Political and Social Equality. — No natural Antipathy between the Races.—Negro Reservations. Jan. 22._I now turned my course northwards, and, after a short voyage in a steamer from Charleston, landed at Wilmington, in North Carolina. Here 1 col¬ lected fossils from tertiary formations of two ages, the Miocene marls, and an underlying Eocene limestone, harder than that of Shell Bluff and the Santee canal before mentioned ; but containing many of the same shells, corals, and teeth of fishes. I then went by rail¬ way to South Washington, visiting several farms on the banks of the north-east branch of Cape Fear river. Here I found cretaceous green marls, similar to those which I had seen 350 miles to the N. E. in New Jersey, with belemnites and other characteristic organic re¬ mains, some of species not previously known. On several of the small plantations here I found the proprietors by no means in a thriving state, evidently losing ground from year to year, and some of them talking of abandoning the exhausted soil, and migra¬ ting with their slaves to the south-western States, i , while large numbers of the negroes were thus carried to the South, slavery had been abolished in North Car¬ olina, the black population might ere this have been Chap. x. MOUNT VERNON. 157 reduced considerably in numbers, without suffering those privations to which a free competition with white labourers must expose them, wherever great facilities for emigration are not afforded. A railway train shooting rapidly in the dark through the pine forests of North Carolina has a most singular appearance, resembling a large rocket fired horizontally, with a brilliant stream of revolving sparks extending behind the engine for several hundred yards, each spark being a minute particle of wood, which, after issuing fiom the chimney of the furnace, remains ignited for several seconds in the air. Now and then these fiery particles, which are invisible by day, instead of lagging in the leai, find entrance by favour of the wind through the open windows of the car, and, while some burn holes in the traveller’s cloak, others make their way into his eyes, causing them to smart most painfully. At Petersburg, Mr. Ruffin, the agriculturist, and Mr. Tuomey, accompanied me in an excursion to collect tertiary fossils in the neighbourhood, and I examined with much instruction the organic remains in their cabinets. At Washington I saw M. Nicollet, and had a long conversation with this eminent astronomer and naturalist, who died the year after. He had just re¬ turned from a geographical and geological survey of the Far West, and higher parts of the valley of the Mississippi and Missouri. He showed me the ammo¬ nites, baculites, and other chalk fossils brought by him from those distant regions, which establish the wide lange of that peculiar assemblage of organic remains characteristic of the cretaceous era. From the deck of our steam-boat on the Potomac we saw Mount Yernon, formerly the plantation of General 158 PHILADELPHIA. Chap. x. Washington. Instead of exhibiting, like the farms in the northern States, a lively picture of progress and improvement, this property was described to me by all as worn out, and of less value now than in the days of its illustrious owner. The bears and wolves, they say, are actually re-entering their ancient haunts, which would scarcely have happened il slavery had been abolished in Virginia. The air was balmy on the Potomac the last_day of January, and the winter had been so mild m the south¬ ern States, that we were surprised, on recrossing the Susquehanna at Havre de Giace in Maryland, to see large masses of floating ice brought down from the Appalachian hills, and to feel the air sensibly cooled while we were ferried over the broad river. It struck me as a curious coincidence, and one not entirely acci¬ dental, that, precisely in this part of our journey, I once more saw the low grounds covered with huge boulders, reminding me how vast a territory in the South I had passed over without encountering a single erratic block. These far transported fragments of rock are decidedly a northern phenomenon, or belong to the colder lati¬ tudes of the globe, being rare and exceptional m warmer regions. Philadelphia , Feb. 1.—The newspapers are filled with accounts of the enthusiastic reception which Mi. Charles Dickens is meeting with every where. Such homage has never been paid to any foreigner since Lafayette visited the States. The honours may ap¬ pear extravagant, but it is in the nature of popular enthusiasm to run into excess. I find that several of my American friends are less disposed than I am to sympathise with the movement, regarding it as more Chap. x. RECEPTION OF MR. DICKENS. 159 akin to lion-hunting than hero-worship. They ex¬ press a doubt whether Walter Scott, had he visited the U. S., would have been so much idolised. Perhaps not; for Scott’s poems and romances were less exten¬ sively circulated amongst the millions than the tales of Dickens. There may be no precedent in Great Britain for a whole people thus unreservedly indulging their feelings of admiration for a favourite author ; but if so, the Americans deserve the more credit for obeying their warm impulses. Of course, many who attend the for¬ eigner’s crowded levee are merely gratifying a vulgar curiosity by staring at an object of notoriety; but none but a very intelligent population could be thus carried away to flatter and applaud a man who has neither rank, wealth, nor power, who is not a military hero or a celebrated political character, but simply a writer of genius, whose pictures of men and manners, and whose works of fiction, have been here, as in his own country, an inexhaustible source of interest and amusement. ^ /lien at Philadelphia I was present at several meet¬ ings ol the American Philosophical Society, and of the Academy of Natural Sciences. In the museum of the former body I was shown a limestone from Santas, in Brazil, procured by Captain Elliott, of the U. S. navy, which contains a human skull, teeth, and other bones, together with fragments of shells, some of them retain¬ ing a portion of their colour. The rock is less solid than that of Guadaloupe, which it resembles. We are informed, that the remains of several hundred other human skeletons, imbedded in a like calcareous tufa, were dug out at the same place, about the year 1827.* The soil covering the solid stone supported a growth of * American Philosophical Transactions, 1828, p. 285. 160 SKELETON OF FOSSIL MASTODON. Chap. x. large trees, which covered the face of a hill on the side of the river Santas. The height above the sea is not mentioned, and it is to be regretted that the notes ob¬ tained by Dr. Meigs from Captain Elliott were not fuller. I observed serpulee in the rock, a shell which the natives would not have carried inland for food. On the whole, therefore, I should infer, though we need further evidence, that this stone has emeiged fiom tie sea, and that there had been previously a submergence of dryland, perhaps the site of an Indian burial-ground. Dr. Harlan, the zealous and accomplished osteolo¬ gist, who, to my great regret, died the year after (1843), at New Orleans, took me to see the entire skeleton ol the large fossil mastodon, or so-called Missounum, brought by Mr. Koch from the state of Missouri. He pointed out several errors in the manner in which the tusks and bones were put together. This splendid fossil has since been purchased by the British Museum, taken to pieces in London, and correctly set up again under the direction of Mr. Owen. It is the largest in¬ dividual of the species (Mastodon giganteus) yet dis¬ covered; for Dr. Harlan and I compared the femur with that of the largest mastodon previously known, from the state of New York, and preserved in Peale’s Museum in this city. The dimensions of the Phila¬ delphia skeleton are less gigantic. I spent six weeks very agreeably in this city, much of my time being occupied in delivering a short course of lectures on geology, and in comparing, with the friendly aid of several naturalists, especially Mr. Conrad, the fossils collected by me in the South with those pre¬ viously known, most of which are preserved in the pub¬ lic and private cabinets here. Mr. Lea’s collection of 161 Chap. x. PHILADELPHIA PENITENTIARY shells, which we visited more than once, rich in the nuviatile species of North America, was most interesting to me. There seems no end to the freshwater mussels o the genus Unio, as well as other fluviatile forms such as Melania, which have been created to people the waters of a continent unrivalled in the number of its rivers, all so copiously filled with water during every season of the year. Such an obvious relation of the zoological to the geographical peculiarities of a great region is striking, and reminds the geologist of the dif¬ ferent states of the animal creation, which have accom¬ panied the successive changes of the earth’s surface in former ages. The same species of Unio, and of other fresh-water shells, preserved in a fossil state in alluvial stiata, forming terraces one above the other to a con- sideiable height above the Mississippi and its tribu¬ taries, show that the fauna here alluded to, so modern m the earth’s history, is nevertheless of high antiquity, and has outlasted some important modifications in the shape of the valleys and levels of the North American streams. Me were taken to see the Penitentiary at Phila¬ delphia, where all the prisoners are confined in sep¬ arate cells. They see the keepers, chaplain, and occa¬ sional visiters, by which the rigour of their solitude is mitigated. They are taught to read, and have numer¬ ous occupations. If we recollect that this establishment is not an asylum for the poor, aged, and destitute, like oui workhouses, but a place for the punishment and reform of criminals, we may regard it as a humane institution, and it appeared to me admirably managed. A few years ago, an American professor being asked at the end of a short stay in London whether he had 14 * 162 CHURCHES. Chap. X. been pleased with his reception, said he had been often invited out to dinner, but no one during his whole stay- had offered him a seat in their pew in church. At Philadelphia, besides other kinds of hospitality, we had certainly no reason to complain of any want of atten¬ tion in this respect, for we had pressing invitations to private pews in no less than six different Episcopal churches soon after our arrival, of which we availed ourselves on as many successive Sundays, and were struck with the handsome style of the buildings, and the comfortable fitting up of the pews. In regard to the preaching in these and in most of the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Unitarian churches which I entered in the United States, I thought it good, and there seemed to me to be two great advantages at least in the voluntary principle: first, that the ministers are in no danger of going to sleep; and, secondly, that they concern themselves much less with politics than is the case with us. To be without a body of dissenters, dis¬ satisfied with their exclusion from ecclesiastical endow¬ ments is a national blessing, which not only eveiy statesman, but every churchman, will admit. I am by no means prepared to say whether there may not be a balance of evil in the voluntary system sufficient to outweigh the gain alluded to. While here, I heard complaints of the religious excitement into which the city had been just thrown by the arrival of a popular New England preacher, who attracted such crowds that at length all the sittings of his church were monopo¬ lized by the fair sex. American gallantry forbids that a woman should remain standing while gentlemen are comfortably seated in their pews, so that at last the men were totally excluded. Notice was immediately given Chap. x. EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. 1Q3 that certain services were to be entirely reserved for the men, an announcement well calculated to provoke cu¬ riosity, and to tempt many a stray sheep from other folds. It was then thought expedient for the ministers of rival sects to redouble their zeal, that they might not be left behind in the race, and even the sober Episco¬ palians, though highly disapproving of the movement, increased the number of their services; so that I was assured it would be possible for the same individual between the hours of seven o’clock in the morning and nine in the evening, to go seven times to church in one day. The consequences are too like those occasionally experienced in the “ old country,” where enthusiasm is not kindled by so much free competition, to be worth dwelling upon. Every day added new recruits to a host of ascetic devotees, and places of public amusement were nearly deserted; at last even the innocent indul¬ gence of social intercourse was not deemed blameless : and the men who had generally escaped the contagion in the midst of their professional avocations, found a gloom cast over society or over their domestic circle. The young ladies, in particular, having abundance of leisure, were filled with a lively sense of their own ex¬ ceeding wickedness, and the sins of their parents and guardians. Many of the most respectable Quaker families have recently joined the Episcopal church, which is very flourishing here, not only in this city, but in the United States generally, having quadrupled its numbers in a period during which the population of the Union has only doubled. It is true that immediately after the revolutionary war, when this form of worship was iden¬ tified with royalist opinions, and when not a few of its RICH MAN OF COLOUR. Chap. i» 164 professors left the country for Canada, Nova Scotia, or the mother country, the Episcopal establishment was depressed below its natural level. Its revival and rapid progress are nevertheless remarkable in this republican country, and are perhaps partly owing to the possession of large endowments, especially in the State of New York, rendering it less dependent on voluntary contri¬ butions, and partly to the better station of the foreign immigrants from Great Britain belonging to t e ng 1 can church. , , I am assured, that if the salaries paid to t te v% 10 e clergy of all sects in the Union are compared to those of the ministers of any other church in the world they will be found to be in excess in proportion to the pop¬ ulation. Whether this be true or not, there is certainly no lack of divinity schools, nor of ecclesiastical build¬ ings, nor of crowded congregations, the men being as regular in their attendance as the women ; and the rapidity with which new churches spring up in the wilderness is probably without example elsewhere. A rare event, the death of a wealthy man of colour, took place during my stay here, and his funeral was attended not only by a crowd of persons of his own race, but also by many highly respectable white mer¬ chants, by whom he was held in high esteem. He had made his fortune as a sail-maker, and is said to have been worth, at one time, sixty thousand pounds, but to have lost a great part of his riches by lending money with more generosity than prudence. I was rejoicing that his colour had proved no impediment to his rising in the world, and that he had been allowed go much fair play as to succeed in over-topping the majority of his white competitors, when I learnt, on Chap. x. FREE MEN OF COLOUR. 165 further inquiry, that, after giving an excellent educa¬ tion to his children, he had been made unhappy, by finding they must continue, in spite of all their ad¬ vantages, to belong to an inferior caste. It appeared that, not long before his death, he had been especially mortified, because two of his sons had been refused a hearing at a public meeting, where they wished to speak on some subject connected with trade which concerned them. In many states, the free blacks have votes, and exert their privileges at elections, yet there is not an in¬ stance of a single man of colour, although eligible by law, having been chosen a member of any state legis¬ lature. The schools for the coloured population at Boston are well managed, and the black children are said to show as much quickness in learning as the whites. To what extent their faculties might be de¬ veloped as adults we have as yet no means of judg¬ ing ; foi if their first efforts are coldly received, or treated with worse than indifference, as in the case of the young Philadelphians before alluded to, it is im¬ possible that the higher kinds of excellence can be reached in literature, the learned professions, or in a political career. If any individual be gifted with finer genius than the rest, his mind will be the more sensi¬ tive to discouragement, especially when it proceeds from a race whose real superiority over his coloured fellow-citizens, in their present condition, he of all others would be the first to appreciate. It is after many trials attended with success, and followed by willing piaise and applause, that self-confidence and intellectual power are slowly acquired ; and no well educated black has ever yet had an opportunity of 166 CiiaP. X . DEPRESSION OP NEGRO RACE. ripening or displaying superior talents m this or any other civilised country. Canada and Ireland teach us how much time and how many generations are re¬ quired for the blending together, on terms of perfect equality, both social and political, of two nations, the conquerors and the conquered, even where both are of the same race, and decidedly equal in their natura capacities, though differing in religion, manners, and language. But when, in the same community, we have two races so distinct in their physical peculiari¬ ties as to cause many naturalists, who have no desire to disparage the negro, to doubt whether both are of the same species, and started originally from the same stock; when one of these, found in Africa in a savage and unprogressive state, has been degraded, by those who first colonized North America, to the lowest place in the social scale—to expect, under such a combina¬ tion of depressing circumstances, that, in half a cen¬ tury, and in a country where more than six-sevenths of the race are still held in bondage, the newly-eman¬ cipated citizens should, under any form of government, attain at once a position of real equality, is a cieam of the visionary philanthropist, whose impracticable schemes are more likely to injure than to forward a great cause. . In the West Indies, where circumstances are lar more favourable to a fair experiment, we have found how much easier it is to put an end to slavery than to elevate the blacks to an equal standing with the whites in society, and in the management of public affairs They are however advancing slowly , and, although we hear complaints of commercial losses, consequent on emancipation, and of exports of sugar Chap. x. FREE MEN OF COLOUR. 167 and coffee falling off, there seems little doubt that the negro population, comprising the great bulk of the in¬ habitants, are better informed, better clothed, and happier, in their own way, than during the period when all were slaves. A gradual transfer of land is going on in Barbadoes, Jamaica, and other large isl¬ ands, from the original proprietors to the negroes, who are abandoning the cultivation of sugar, and raising such crops and fruits of the earth as they can obtain with moderate labour. There has not been time to ascertain whether the freed men will ever have aspi¬ rations after that higher civilization, which distin¬ guishes a few of the more advanced among the na¬ tions of western Europe ; but this problem has still to be solved with regard to the Chinese and many other large sections of the human family. The near approach to universal suffrage in the United States appears to me one of the most serious obstacles, both to the disfranchisement of the slaves in the South, and to their obtaining, when freed, a piopei station relatively to the whites. Wfrerever property confers the right of voting, the men of colour can at once be admitted without danger to an absolute equality of political rights, the more industrious alone becoming invested with privileges which are withheld from the indigent and most worthless of the dominant race. Such a recognition of rights not only raises the negroes in their opinion of themselves, but, what is of far more consequence, accustoms a portion of the other race to respect them. In the free states, we were often painfully reminded of the wide chasm which now sep¬ arates the whites from the emancipated man of colour. If there be any place where distinctions of birth, 168 DEPRESSED CONDITION OF Chap. x. wealth, station, and race should be forgotten, it is the temple where the Christian precept is inculcated that all men are equal before God. On one occasion m New England, when we were attending the admin¬ istration of the sacrament in an Episcopal church, we saw all the white communicants first come forward, and again retire to their pews, before any of the col¬ oured people advanced, most of whom were as well dressed as ourselves, and some only a shade darker m complexion. In another Episcopal church m New York, the order and sanctity of the service was, 101 a moment, in danger of being disturbed because some of the whites had been accidentally omitted, so that they came to the altar after the coloured communicants. After a slight confusion, however, our feelings were re¬ lieved by the officiating minister proceeding and show¬ ing his resolution not to allow any interruption from this accident. I had no opportunity of witnessing the good example said to be set by the Roman Catholic clero-y in prohibiting all invidious distinctions in then churches; but we know in Europe how much more the poor and the rich are mingled together indifferently in the performance of their devotions in Romanist churches than in most of the Anglo-protestant con- gl TheTxtent to which the Americans carry their re¬ pugnance to all association with the coloured race on ecrual terms remained to the last an enigma to me. They feel for example, an insurmountable objection to sit down to the same table with a f we j^ eS ^ ^ informed, and well-educated man of colour, wh le same persons would freely welcome one of tlieir ow Te of meaner capacity and ruder manners to boon Chap. x. FREE MEN OF COLOUR. 169 companionship. I have no doubt that if I remained here for some years I should imbibe the same feelings, and sympathise with what now appears to me an al¬ most incomprehensible prejudice. If the repugnance arose from any physical causes, any natural antipathy of 1 ace, we should not seethe rich Southerners employ¬ ing black slaves to wait on their persons, prepare their food, nurse and suckle their white children, and live with them as mistresses. We should never see the black lady’s maid sitting in the same carriage with her mistress, and supporting her when fatigued, and" last, though not least, we should not meet with a numerous mixed breed springing up every where from the union of the two races. We must seek then for other causes of so general and powerful a nature as to be capable of influencing almost equally the opinions of thirteen millions of men. e well know that the abolition of villeinage and serf¬ dom has never enabled the immediate descendants of freed-men, however rich, talented, and individually meritoiious, to intermarry and be received on a footing of perfect equality with the best families of their coun¬ try, or with that class on which their fathers were re¬ cently dependent. If in Europe there had been some indelible mark of ancestral degradation, some livery, handed down indefinitely from one generation to an- other, like the colour of the African, there is no saying how long the most galling disabilities of the villein would have survived the total abolition by law of per¬ sonal servitude. But, fortunately, in Western Europe, the slaves belonged to the same race as their masters, wheieas, in the United States, the negro cannot throw 15 NEGRO RESERVATIONS. Chap. x. 170 off the livery which betrays to the remotest posterity the low condition of his forefathers. There are Indian reservations, and I often asked why there should not be also negro reservations ox- large territories set apart for free blacks, where they might form independent states or communities. t would be proper to select those districts where the cli¬ mate is insalubrious to Europeans, but where the blacks are perfectly healthy. I was assured that no scheme could be more Utopian—that the negroes, if left to themselves, would abandon the cultivation of sugar, cotton, and all the crops most appropriate to such lands. All this I can conceive ; but my friends went on to ob¬ ject that the negroes would soon sink into savage hie, and make marauding expeditions beyond their ffontiei. I have no doubt that if the two parties were left with¬ out a powerful check, some attempt would soon be made at territorial encroachments, but it is easy to foresee which party would be the formidable aggressoi. Chap, xi . PHILADELPHIA. 171 CHAPTER XI. Philadelphia—Financial Crisis—Payment of State Dividends sus¬ pended—General Distress and private Losses of the Americans. —Debt of Pennsylvania—Public Works—Direct Taxes.—De¬ ficient Revenue. Bad Faith and Confiscation.—Irresponsible Ex¬ ecutive. Loan refused by European Capitalists in 1842 .—Good Faith of Congress during the War of 1812-14 —Effects of Uni¬ versal Suffrage—Fraudulent Voting—Aliens. — Solvency and good Faith of the Majority of the States—Confidence of Amer¬ ican Capitalists—Reform of the Electoral Body—General Prog- ' ress of Society, and Prospects of the Republic. Philadelphia, January to March, 1842.— Wish¬ ing to borrow some books at a circulating library, I piesented several dollar notes as a deposit. At home there might have been a ringing of coin upon the coun¬ ter, to ascertain whether it was true or counterfeit; heie the shopwoman referred to a small pamphlet, re- edited “semi-monthly,” called a “Detector,” and con¬ taining an interminable list of banks in a 11 parts of the Union, with information as to their present condition, whether solvent or not, and whether paying in specie, and adding a description of “ spurious notes.” After a slight hesitation, the perplexed librarian shook her head, and declaring her belief that my notes were as good as any others, said, if I would promise to take them back again on my return, and pay her in cash, I might have the volumes. It often happened that when we offered to buy arti¬ cles of small value in shops, or fruit in the market, the vendeis declined to have any dealings with us, unless 172 FINANCIAL CRISIS. Chap. xi. we paid in specie. They remarked that their change might in a few days be worth more than our paper. Many farmers and gardeners are ceasing to bring their produce to market, although the crops are very abun¬ dant, and prices are rising higher and higher, as if the city was besieged. My American friends, anxious that I should not be a loser, examined all my dollar notes, and persuaded me, before I set out on my tiavels, to convert them into gold, at a discount of eight per cent. In less than four weeks after this transaction, there was a general return to cash payments, and the foui banks by which the greater part of my paper had been issued, all failed. A parallel might perhaps be found for a crash of this kind in the commercial and financial history of Eng¬ land, or at least in some of her colonies, Australia, for example, where the unbounded facility afforded to a new country of borrowing the superabundant capital of an old one, has caused a sudden rise in the value of lands, houses, and goods, and promoted the maddest speculations. But an event now occurred of a diffeient and far more serious nature. One morning we were told that the Governor of Pennsylvania had come in great haste from Harrisburg, in consequence of the stoppage of one of the banks in the city, in which were lodged the funds intended for the payment of dividends on state bonds, due in a few days. On this emergency he endeavoured to persuade other banks to advance the money, but in vain ; such was the general alarm, and feeling of insecurity. The consequent necessity of a delay of payment was announced, and many native holders of stock expressed to me their fears, that al¬ though they might obtain the dividend then actually Chap. xi. DEBT OF PENNSYLVANIA. 173 due, it might be long before they received another. At the same time they declared their conviction, that the resources of the State, if well managed, were ample; and that, if it depended on the more affluent merchants of Philadelphia, and the richer portion of the middle class generally, to impose and pay the taxes, the hon¬ our of Pennsylvania would not be compromised. It was painful to witness the ruin and distress occa¬ sioned by this last blow, following, as it did, so many previous disasters. Men advanced in years, and re¬ tired from active life, after success in business, or at the bar, or after military service, too old to migrate with their families to the West, and begin the world again, are left destitute; many widows and single women have lost their all, and great numbers of the poorer classes are deprived of their savings. An erroneous notion prevails in England that the misery created by these bankruptcies is confined chiefly to foreigners, but, m fact, many of the poorest citizens of Pennsylvania’ and of other States, had invested money in these secu¬ rities. In 1844, or two years after my stay in Phil¬ adelphia, the Savings’ Bank of New York presented a petition to the legislature at Harrisburg for a resump¬ tion of payment of dividends, in which it was stated Qonnnn 11 ’ ^ then heW 300 > 000 dollars, and had held «UU,000, but was obliged to sell 500,000 at a great de¬ preciation, in order to pay the claimants, who were compelled by the distress of the times to withdraw their deposits. «nmnnff 1 °l Penns y lvania amounted to about > S,000, 0 °0Z. sterhng, nearly two thirds of which was led by British owners; and as a majority of these )e onged to that party which always indulged the most 15* 174 DEBT OF PENNSYLVANIA. Chap. xi. sanguine hopes of the prospects of the American re¬ public, and estimated most highly the private worth of the people and their capacity for self-government, they suffered doubly, being disappointed alike in their pecu¬ niary speculations and their political views. It was natural, therefore, that a re-action of feeling should embitter their minds, and incline them to magnify and exaggerate the iniquity of that conduct which had at once irnpugned the soundness of their judgment, and inflicted a severe injury on their fortunes. Hence, not a few of them, confounding together the different States, have represented all the Americans as little better than swindlers, who, having defrauded Europe of many millions sterling, were enjoying tranquilly and with impunity the fruits of their knavery. The pub¬ lic works executed with foreign capital are supposed by many in England to yield a large profit on the outlay, which is not the case in any one of the delin¬ quent States. The loss or temporary suspension of the interest even of one third of the above-mentioned debt, in a country like Pennsylvania, where there is a small amount of capital to invest, and that belonging chiefly to persons incapable of exerting themselves to make money, a country where property is so much divided, and where such extensive failures had preceded this crisis, inflicts a far deeper wound on the happiness of the community, than the defalcation of a much larger sum in Great Britain would occasion. When we inquire into the circumstances which have involved the Pennsylvanians in their present difficul¬ ties, we shall find that, disgraceful as their conduct has been, their iniquity is neither so great, nor the pros- Ciiap. si. PUBLIC WORKS. 175 pect of their affairs righting themselves so desperate, as might at first sight be supposed. Every holder of Pennsylvanian bonds is undoubtedly entitled to assume that “there’s something rotten in the state of Den¬ mark,” and to observe to any traveller who extenuates the delinquency of the State, “ the better you think of the people, the worse opinion you must entertain of their institutions.” How, under a representative form of government, can such events occur in time of peace, and, moreover, in a state so wealthy, that an income tax of If per cent, would yield the two milions of dol¬ lars required,’ 1 and where the interest on the bonds was not usurious nor unusual in America—unless the ma¬ jority of the electors be corrupt or grossly ignorant? It appears that in the year 1831, when Pennsylvania borrowed a large sum for making railways and canals, she imposed direct taxes for seven years, for the express purpose of regularly paying the interest of her debt. It was hoped, from the experience of New York, that, at the expiration of that term of years, the public works would become sufficiently profitable to render it un¬ necessary to renew the tax. The inhabitants went on paying until the year 1836, when the government thought itself justified in remitting the burden, on being unexpectedly enriched by several large sums from va- ffous sources. In that year they received for granting a charter to the U. S. Bank of Pennsylvania 2,600,000 dollars, and 2,800,000 more for their share of monies which had accumulated in the treasury of the Federal Government, arising out of the sale of public lands, and then divided among the States. It was calculated that t ese funds would last for three years, and that the * Tucker’s Progress of the U. S. 1843, p. 210. 176 OVER-TRADING. Chap. xi. public works would by that time yield a revenue suffi¬ cient to defray the interest of the sum laid out on exe¬ cuting them. That the legislature should have seized the first op¬ portunity of relieving their constituents from the direct taxes will astonish no one who has perused the printed paper of the tax-assessor in Pennsylvania, which every one is required to fill up. The necessity of asceitaining the means of persons possessed of small property renders the questions exceedingly minute and inquisitorial. From a variety of others, I extract the following:— “ What is the amount of your monies loaned on mort¬ gage, and the debts due to you by solvent debtors? “ What interest do they pay ?” “ What shares do you hold in any bank or company in any other State? “ How many pleasure carriages do you keep ?” “ How many watches do you own ?—are they gold or silver ? and so forth. Soon after the ill-judged remission of this tax, a great combination of circumstances led to over-trading, and the most extravagant schemes of money-making. The United States’ Bank, during its controversy with Pres¬ ident Jackson, had accumulated a large amount of specie, and lent it out most lavishly and imprudently , and when it obtained its new charter from Pennsyl¬ vania, it again promoted loans of all kinds, which gave an inordinate stimulus to speculation. Some of the great London banks, at the same time, gave credit to a prodigious amount, often without sufficient caution ; and when they were compelled to withdraw this credit suddenly, they had not time to distinguish which of their creditors were worthy of confidence. A great fire in New York, in 1835, had annihilated property to the Chap. xi. NON-PAYMENT OF DIVIDENDS. -^,,^0. 177 value of six millions sterling. After the United States’ Bank had ceased to be connected with the Federal Government, many other States, besides Pennsylvania, granted charters to banks, which led to an over-issue of notes, and a hot-bed forcing of trade throughout the Union. Then came, in 1839, the miserable expedient of authorizing banks to suspend cash payments, and in 1841, the stoppage of the great U. S. Bank of Penn¬ sylvania, followed by a general panic and financial crisis. It is necessary to reflect on these events, in order to understand how the insolvency of Pennsylvania was biought about; but no American writer or statesman of any character pretends to excuse or palliate the con¬ duct of her legislature in 1839, 1840, and 1841. In these years, there was an actual excess in the ordinary expenditure of the State for the purposes of government and education, over the receipts from all sources of rev¬ enue, except the public works. The proceeds of these last were appropriated to the payment of the interest ol the debt, for which they were lamentably insufficient, n what manner were these various deficits provided or. Not by the imposition of new burdens, but by arrowing, and adding annually to the public debt. I he party m power shrank from the unpopularity of laying on new taxes ; and the slight share of discredit incurred by them at the time, for this glaring act of bad faith, places in a strong light the mischief arising from the smaff power here confided to the executive. The Governor tells the Houses that there is a de- ciency in the revenue, and they are left to make the best ol it, and appoint a committee of ways and means, composed usually of members very incompetent as 178 NON-PAYMENT OF dividends. Chap. XI. financiers. It is for them to consider what is to be done; there is no experienced official Minister of Fi¬ nance, no chancellor of the exchequer, whose duty it is to come forward with a budget, and declare, like the English minister in 1842 “ Here is an income-tax, to which you must submit, or we resign.” The jeal¬ ousy on the part of the people, and their fears of the abuses of a strong executive, have induced them to circumscribe its powers so much, that they have vir¬ tually deprived it of all responsibility. In their attempt to avoid one evil, they have fallen into another as great, if not greater. The resources of the country were so paralyzed in 1842, amidst the general wreck, and crash of commer¬ cial houses and banks, that the suspension of the pay¬ ment of one or two State dividends had become un¬ avoidable ; but the non-payment even of a fraction of the interest in 1843-4, during a period of reviving pros¬ perity and sound currency, reflects no small disgrace on the people, or discredit on the nature of their in¬ stitutions. It appears that in the year 1841, before the regular payment of dividends was suspended, a new property tax was imposed, which came into play in 1842, and yielded to the State 486,000 dollars; and 658,000 more in 1843, and an additional sum in 1844, of 755,000 dollars. These returns being inadequate, a new tax was laid on in 1844, with more stringent regulations for enforcing its collection, and it is now expected (De¬ cember, 1844) that the public creditor, whose arrears of unpaid dividends have, in the mean time, been funded, will receive his due. But how many bond¬ holders have been already obliged to sell out. while Chap. xi. CAUSES OF DEFALCATION. 179 others are dead and gone, so that restitution to all be¬ comes impossible; and thus, to a certain extent, an irretrievable act of confiscation has been perpetrated ! Let us now consider how far these evils can be at¬ tributed to causes of so general, lasting, and deep-seated a nature, as to have justified the monied men of Eng¬ land and the Continent, in 1842, in the distrust man¬ ifested by them of the good faith of the whole Union. Such a want of confidence was displayed when the agent of the Federal Government failed to obtain in Europe a loan of a few millions sterling offered on very advantageous terms. On referring to the history of the United States, during the present century, we find that in the course of the war of 1812—1814, the nation had incurred a debt about equal to that now owing (1844) by all the delinquent States. A proposal was twice made in Con¬ gress to discontinue the payment of dividends to the English creditors, on the ground that they were ene¬ mies. On both occasions, the proposal was rejected, as dishonest, and with marked expressions of disapproba¬ tion ; at a time when direct taxes levied by the Federal Government pressed heavy on the people. The debt went on increasing after the close of the war, but was at length entirely paid off in 1835. These transactions raised the character of American securities throughout Europe ; and the altered tone of feeling evinced in 1842 is the more remarkable, as it occurred in a time of profound peace, when there was no immediate an¬ ticipation of war, and when it was well known that between the years 1812 and 1842, the wealth and ter¬ ritory of the confederacy had increased enormously, and the population more than doubled. In fact, the ad- 180 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. Chap. xi. vance in the number of the inhabitants in this short interval was from eight to eighteen millions; the ex¬ cess alone amounting to more than the population of all England at the commencement of the present century. It cannot be denied that the course of events during the thirty years above alluded to has afforded grounds of anxiety to those who admire republican institutions and to every well-wisher of the prosperity of the Union. They who would make a permanent investment of money in U. S. stock must anticipate the possibility of war, and of a consequent reduction of revenue from the customs. If it then became necessary to lay on direct taxes, we have to consider, whether a majority of all the citizens would be likely to evince as much repug¬ nance to pay their dividends punctually to foreign and domestic creditors as the Pennsylvanians and Maiy- landers have recently shown. If it has required several years to rouse the electors of these ancient States to a sense of their duty and honour, would the consciences of the new settlers in ruder and less advanced com¬ munities, constituting a large portion of the Union, be more sensitive ? As politicians, no people are so prone to give way to groundless fears and despondency respecting the pros¬ pects of affairs in America as the English, partly be¬ cause they know little of the condition of society there, and partly from their own well-founded conviction, that a near approach to universal suffrage at home would lead to anarchy and insecurity of property. To divide the land equally among all, to make an “equitable adjustment” of the national debt, or, in other words, to repudiate, are propositions gravely discussed at Chartist Chap. xi. UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 181 meetings, and even embodied in numerously signed petitions to parliament. The majority even of the democratic party in the U. S. would probably assent to the opinion, that in England, where there is so much actual want, where one tenth of the population, or 1,500,000 persons, receive parochial relief, where edu¬ cation has made such slow progress among the poor, and where there is no outlet in the Far West, no safety- valve for the escape of the redundant inhabitants, it would be most dangerous to entrust every adult male with the right of voting. Yet in America they think the experiment a safe one, or even contend that it has succeeded. But not a few of the opposite party, how¬ ever inexpedient and useless they may think it to agi¬ tate the question, agree with the majority of European politicians in considering that it has lowered and de¬ teriorated the character of the electoral body. It is undeniable that the rapidity with which the native population has multiplied throughout the Union, and still more the influx of aliens into every State, has had a tendency to cause the whole country to resemble a new colony, rather than an old and long-established nation. Not only many new Territories and States, but even some of the old ones, such as New York and Pennsylvania, contain so much unoccupied land that they are full of adventurers and speculators from other parts of America, and of new-comers from Europe, speaking different languages, often cherishing foreign prejudices, and disturbing the equilibrium of native parties, founded on broad and distinct views of home policy. I have already remarked, that, on the south¬ ern frontier of the State of New York (p. 59.), I saw the native forest yielding as fast to the axe of the new 16 182 PENNSYLVANIAN GERMANS. Chap. xi. settler, as if we had penetrated to the Far West, or the back woods of Canada. When we turn to her north¬ ern confines, we learn from the Reports of the Geolog¬ ical Surveyors employed by government in 1837, and subsequent years, that in Essex County and elsewhere they had recourse to Indian guides in a pathless wil¬ derness, encountered panthers and moose-deer, found the beaver still lingering in some streams, saw lakes before undescribed, and measured the height of moun¬ tains for the first time. During my short sojourn in the metropolis of that State, I witnessed, among other illustrations of the heterogeneous composition of its people, a grand Repeal demonstration, an endless pro¬ cession of Irish parading the streets, with portraits of O’Connell emblazoned on their banners, and various mottoes, implying that their thoughts were occupied with party questions of British, not of American pol¬ itics. A large number of these aliens have, contrary to old usage, been of late years invested with electoral rights; and candidates for places in the magistracy, or the legislature, are degraded by paying court to their sympathies and ignorant prejudices. This temptation is too strong to be resisted ; for, small as may be their numbers when compared with the native voters, they often turn the scale in an election where the great con¬ stitutional parties are very nearly balanced. In addition to some of these evils, Pennsylvania labours under the disadvantage of being jointly occu¬ pied by two races, those of British, and those of Ger¬ man extraction. The latter are spoken of by the Anglo-Americans as the Boeotians of the land. They appeared to me industrious and saving, very averse to speculation, but certainly wanting in that habit of Chap. xi. PENNSYLVANIAN GERMANS. 183 identifying themselves with the acts of their govern¬ ment, which can alone give to the electors under a rep¬ resentative system a due sense of responsibility. Some of them talked of their public works as of commercial projects which had failed ; and when I remarked that, unlike the English, whose debts were incurred by car¬ rying on wars, they were at least reaping some advan¬ tage from their expenditure, they assured me I was mistaken—that such cheap and rapid means of locomo¬ tion were positively injurious, by facilitating migrations to the West, and preventing a country with a “ sparse” population from filling up. For this reason, their lands had not risen in value as they ought to have done. They protested that they had always been opposed to railways and canals; and that for every useful line adopted, there was sure to be another unnecessary canal or railway made, in consequence of “ log-rolling” in their legislature. The representatives, they say, of each section of the country, would only consent to vote money, if they could obtain a promise that an equal sum should be laid out in their own district, and to this end some new and uncalled-for scheme had to be in¬ vented. This kind of jobbing they compare to log¬ rolling in the back settlements, where the thinly-scat¬ tered inhabitants assemble and run up a log-cabin in a single day for the new-comer, receiving, in their turn, some corresponding service, whenever the union of numbers is required. From all I could learn, I felt inclined to believe, that as soon as these Germans were convinced that they really owed the money they would pay it. There are, however, a multitude of European immigrants who have recently been admitted to take part in the elec- 184 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. Chap. xi. tions by shortening the term of years required for natu¬ ralization. It is also notorious that, owing to the neg¬ lect of registration, many aliens vote fraudulently, and others several times over at the same poll, in various disguises. To those English politicians who are not accustomed to look with favouring eyes on democratic institutions in general, the task of reforming such abuses appears hopeless. By what eloquence, they ask, can we per¬ suade an ignorant multitude to abdicate power, if we have once taken the false step of conferring sovereignty upon them? At every election they must become more and more demoralized. It is proverbially difficult for truth to reach the ears of kings, and what matters it whether the sovereign consist of one or of many in¬ dividuals? The flattery of demagogues is not less gross and servile than that of courtiers in the palaces of princes. The candidates for popular favour, when appealing to the passions of the vulgar, their vanity, pride, and national jealousy, never administer their honied drugs in homoeopathic doses. By what arts or powers of oratory can we hope to persuade the least educated portion of the community, when they have once obtained by their numbers a preponderating in¬ fluence, that they ought to be disfranchised ?—that the more wealthy citizens, who have leisure for study and reflection, will shrink from the ordeal of contested elec¬ tions, if they must defer to vulgar prejudices, and coarser feelings ;—in a word, that some must be content to break stones on the road and dig canals, instead of choosing lawgivers, and instructing them how to vote? Nothing is more easy than to draw so discouraging a picture of the dangers of universal suffrage, that we Chap. xi. AMERICAN CAPITALISTS. 185 are led to despair of the republic, and deem it far more wonderful that Ohio should pay than that Mississippi should repudiate. But when we take a nearer view of recent events, and observe what is now going on in the U. S., we discover grounds for viewing their affairs in a very different and far more cheerful light. In the first place, touching financial matters, it is satisfactory to know that, when the Central Government failed, in 1842, to contract a loan in Europe, the American cap¬ italists came forward without hesitation, and advanced the money on the terms which had been rejected. The new stock rose at once above par, and has since be¬ come saleable in Europe at a premium of 16 per cent. The Americans have, also, made large purchases, in the years 1843 and 1844, of the bonds of Ohio, Ken¬ tucky, Tennessee, and even Pennsylvania; and had there been more capital seeking investment in the U. S., their securities generally would have changed hands to a greater extent. This confidence is not based on any principles of pure patriotism, but on cool calculation and a knowl¬ edge that all but nine out of twenty-nine States and Territories are either free from debt, or have been true to their engagements. The only State which has for¬ mally disowned or repudiated a portion of her debt, amounting to about one million sterling, is Mississippi. She does not deny having received the money, or a part of it, but has the effrontery to allege, as ground for non-payment, that her agents exceeded their powers, and defrauded her. Michigan, also, and Florida, have held language somewhat bordering on repudiation ; but the other States in arrear have promised to pay, and some of them are exerting themselves in earnest to 16* 186 SUFFRAGE IN NEW-ENGLAND. Chap. xi. accomplish the object. Upon the whole, the interest of nearly half the money borrowed has been regularly paid; and when we recollect that no small part of it was lent to new and poor States or Territories, where society is still in a rude, half-formed, and migratory condition, and that the money lent rashly and incau¬ tiously was spent, as might have been expected, im- providently, we must view their delinquency with some indulgence, and assign a share, at least, of the blame to the lender. The state of Ohio has always punctually discharged the interest of her debt by direct taxes imposed for that special purpose, although there has been a deficit from the beginning on the proceeds of her public works. She is of recent origin, and her growth has been more rank and luxuriant than that of any other State of the Union. An influx of illiterate Irish, Welsh, and West¬ phalian settlers, has tended to lower the educational qualifications of her electors, considered as a whole; but she came of a good New-England stock, which, like the philosopher’s stone, has converted much of her baser metal into gold. Any foreigner who has hastily embraced the notion that a suffrage virtually universal must be incompati¬ ble in the U. S. with order, obedience to the laws, security of property, a high degree of civilization, and the most unimpeachable public credit, has only to make himself acquainted with the present condition of the New-England States, especially Massachusetts, and he will feel satisfied that the charge may be refuted. It is a wholly different question whether so democratic a constitution is equally fitted for the exigencies of many other parts of the Union, where the mass of the Chap. xi. THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY. 187 people are less advanced in knowledge and wealth, where the force of public opinion and sympathy is checked, and the free communication of thought im¬ peded, by distinctness of races and of language. Although the political constitutions of the several States are all formed on one great model, there exists considerable diversity in the details of their organiza¬ tion. The qualifications of the electors and legislators are not the same in all, nor the modes of appointment or powers of the Executive. There seems, however, a nearer approach to uniformity, than can be consist¬ ent with the very different degrees of social advance¬ ment and mental cultivation to which these independ¬ ent States have attained. To defects and blemishes of this kind, the leading statesmen in America are not blind, and both the evils and their remedies are subjects of the freest discussion. In many of the newspapers, and in the monthly and quarterly journals of both parties, in public lectures and speeches at elections, we find, during the last three years, the conduct of repudiating or defaulting States unsparingly condemned. The most earnest appeals are made to the sense of justice and honour, to the re¬ ligious feelings or national pride, of their hearers or readers ; they also tell them that it is their interest to pay, and that, if they cannot be moved by higher motives, they should remember that “ Honesty is the best policy.” The frequency and earnestness of these exhortations sufficiently prove the conviction of the writers and orators that a reform may be brought about. The mischief that has occurred is sometimes adduced as a proof that education and habits of temperance, al¬ though they have made great progress during the last 188 PROSPECTS OF THE REPUBLIC. Chap. XI. fifteen years, have not yet been carried far enough. A more strict registration of the electors for the sake of putting an end to fraudulent voting, and the exclusion of foreigners from the electoral body, by lengthening the term of naturalization, are measures warmly in¬ sisted upon by the party opposed to the extremes of democracy—a party which, so late as the year 1840, obtained a majority in a presidential election, when two millions and a half of persons gave their votes. San¬ guine hopes are entertained that the most respectable members of the democratic party will also join in effect¬ ing reforms in the electoral system so obviously desira¬ ble. It is not simply the fair fame and happiness of eighteen mi llions of souls which are at stake ; for du¬ ring the lifetime of thousands now taking part in pub¬ lic affairs, or before the close of the present century, the population of the U. S. will probably amount,, even on a moderate estimate, to no less than eighty mil¬ lions* * Tucker’s Progress of the U. S., p. 106. Chap. xir. NEW YORK. 189 CHAPTER XII. New York City. — Geology.—Distribution of Erratic Blocks in Long Island.—Residence in New York.—Effects on Society of increased Intercourse of distant States.—Separation of the Capital and Metropolis. — Gl.i?nate. — Geology of the Taconic Mountains .— Stratum of Plumbago and Anthracite in the Mica Schist of Wor- cesier.—Theory of its Origin.—Lectures for the Working Classes. —Fossil Foot-prints of Birds in Red Sandstone.—Mount Holyoke. —Visit to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard.—Fossil Walrus.— Indians. New York, March, 1842.— The island on which New York stands is composed of gneiss, as are the cliffs on the left bank of the Hudson, for many miles above. At Hoboken, on the opposite side of the river, cliffs are seen of serpentine, a rock which appears to be subordi¬ nate to the gneiss, as in many parts of Norway and Sweden. All these formations, as well as the syenite of Staten Island, correspond very closely with European rocks of the same order. Long Island is about 130 miles in length, and the town of Brooklyn, on its western extremity, may be considered as a suburb of New York. This low island is every where covered with an enormous mass of drift or diluvium, and is the most southern point in the United States, where I saw large erratic blocks in great numbers. Excavations recently made in the Navy Yard at Brooklyn have exposed the boulder formation to the depth of thirty feet; the lowest portion there seen consisting of red clay and loam, with boulders of trap and sandstone, is evidently the detritus of the New 190 STRATIFIED DRIFT. Chap. xii. Red Sandstone formation of New Jersey. This mass, in the sections where I observed it, was about eighteen feet thick, and rudely stratified. Above it lay an un¬ stratified grey loam, partly of coarse and partly of fine materials, with boulders and angular blocks of gneiss, syenitic greenstone, and other crystalline rocks, dis¬ persed at random through the loamy base, the whole being covered with loam eight feet thick. One an¬ gular block of gneiss, which I measuied, was thiiteen feet long, by nine in breadth, and five feet high, but masses still larger have been met with, and broken up by gunpowder. Mr. Redfield, who accompanied me to Brooklyn, suggested that the inferior red drift may have been accumulated first when the red sandstone of the neighbouring country was denuded, and that after¬ wards, when the land was submerged to a greater depth, and when the gneiss and hypogene mountains of the highlands alone protruded above the waters, the upper drift with its erratics may have been thrown down. I am well disposed to adopt this view, because it coin¬ cides with conclusions to which I was led by indepen¬ dent evidence, after examining the districts around Lakes Erie and Ontario, viz. that the drift was de¬ posited during the successive submergence of a region which had been previously elevated and denuded, and which had already acquired its present leading geo¬ graphical features and superficial configuration. & At South Brooklyn, I saw a fine example of strati¬ fied drift, consisting of beds of clay, sand, and gravel, which were contorted and folded as if by violent lateral pressure, while beds below of similar composition, and equally flexible, remained horizontal. These appear¬ ances, which exactly agree with those seen in the drift Chap. xii. LONG ISLAND BOULDERS. 191 of Scotland or the North of Europe, generally accord well with the theory which attributes the pressure to the stranding of ice islands, which, when they run aground, are known to push before them large mounds of shingle and sand, and must often alter greatly the arrangement of strata forming the upper part of shoals, or mud-banks and sand-banks in the sea, while the inferior portions of the same remain unmoved. Mr. Mather, in his Report on the geology of this portion of New York,* states an interesting fact in re¬ gard to the arrangement of the boulder formation on Long Island, which, as before mentioned, extends for about 130 miles east and west. At its eastern ex¬ tremity the boulders are of such kinds of granite, gneiss, mica, slate, greenstone, and syenite, as may have come across the Sound from parts of Rhode Isl¬ and, immediately to the north. Farther westward, opposite the mouth of the Connecticut River, they are of such varieties of gneiss and hornblende slate as cor¬ respond with the rocks of the region through which that river passes. Still farther west, or opposite New Haven, they consist of red sandstone and conglomerate, and the trap of that country ; and lastly, at the west¬ ern end, adjoining the city of New York, we find ser¬ pentine, red sandstone, and various granitic and crys¬ talline rocks, which have come from the district lying immediately to the north. This distribution of the travelled fragments will remind every geologist of the manner in which distinct sets of erratics are lodged on the Swiss Jura, each set, whether of granite, marble, or gneiss, answering in composition to those parts of the Alps which are nearest and immediately opposite, as if * Report for 1837, p. 88. 192 NEW YORK. Chap, xil jc they had crossed the great valley of Switzerland, m than fifty miles broad, in a direction at right angles to its length. The Sound, which separates Long Island from the main land, is from five to twenty-five miles broad. The fragments have doubtless been trans¬ ported by ice ; but we must suppose them to have been floated by ice-islands in the sea, as there are no ig mountains in this part of North America from which glaciers can have descended after the continent had acquired nearly its present shape and altitude. We spent several weeks at New York, and soon found ourselves at home in the society of persons to some of whom we had letters of introduction from near relatives in England, and others whom we had met at distant places in the course of our tour. So many American citizens migrate from north to south for he sake of mild winters, or attendance on Congress., 01 ie supreme courts of law at Washington, or congregate in large watering places during the summer, 01 have children or brothers settled in the Far West; every¬ where there is so much intercourse, personal or episto¬ lary, between scientific and literary men in remote states, who have often received their university educa¬ tion far from home, that in each new city where Ye sojourn our American friends and acquaintances seem to know something of each other, and to belong to the same set in society. The territorial extent and politi¬ cal independence of the different States of the Union remind the traveller rather of the distinct nations o Europe than of the different counties of a single king¬ dom like England; but the population has spread so fast from certain centres, especially from New England and the facilities of communication by railway an Chap. xii. NEW YORK. 193 steam-boat are so great, and are always improving so rapidly, that the twenty-six republics of 1842, having a population of seventeen millions, are more united, and belong more thoroughly to one nation, than did the thirteen States in 1776, when their numbers were only three millions. In spite of the continued decline of the federal authority, and the occasional conflict of commercial interests between the North and South, and the violent passions excited by the anti-slavery movement, the old colonial prejudices have been soften¬ ing down from year to year, the English language, laws, and literature, have pervaded more and more the Dutch, German, and French settlements, and the danger of the dismemberment of the confederacy ap¬ pears to all reflecting politicians less imminent now than formerly. I dined with Mr. Astor, now far advanced in years, whose name is well known to the readers of Washing¬ ton Irving’s “ Astoria.” He informed me that he was about to found a large public library in New York, which I rejoice to hear, as the scientific men and nat¬ uralists of this country can rarely afford to purchase expensive European works with numerous illustrations. I often regretted, during my short residence here, that the town of Albany, 150 miles distant, is destined, be¬ cause it is the capital, to possess the splendid collection of minerals, rocks, and fossils obtained during the late government survey. The surveyors are now employed in arranging these treasures in a museum, which would have been far more useful and more frequently con¬ sulted if placed in the midst of this wealthy metropolis, having a population of 300,000 souls. Foreigners, in¬ deed, who have only visited New York for commercial 17 194 VARIABLE CLIMATE. Chap. xii. purposes, may imagine that all the inhabitants are ex¬ clusively engrossed with trade and money-making; but there is a college here, and many large and flour¬ ishing literary and scientific institutions. I received numerous invitations to deliver lectures on geology, but had scarcely time to finish one short course when I was reminded, by the breaking up of winter, that 1 could resume my operations in the field. It was now the second week of April, and already the willows on “ the Battery” were putting forth their yellowish-green leaves. The air was as waim as in an English summer, although a few days before the ground had been covered with snow. Such sudden changes are trying to many constitutions , and we aie told that if we staid a second year in the United States we should feel the influence of the climate, and begin to lose that freshness of colour which marks the newly- arrived Englishman. The greater sallowness of com¬ plexion here is attributed to the want of humidity in the air; and we ought to congratulate ourselves that there is no lack of that ingredient in the atmosphere of Great Britain. We continue to be surprised at the clearness of the skies, and the number of fine days and bright star-light nights, on this side of the Atlantic. April 12, 1842.—Left New York, and ascended the North River to Hudson City, to observe there the tran¬ sition or Silurian slates and limestones. These rocks have undergone so much disturbance that I was un¬ able to satisfy myself—perhaps from want of more time for observation—whether the alleged unconform- ability of the fossiliferous limestone to the black slate is real or only apparent, and owing to shifts in the position of the strata. From Hudson City I followed Chap. xii. TACONIC GROUP OF STRATA. 195 the line of the railway by Chester and Westfield, over what is called the Taconic range of mountains. They may be considered, geographically, as a continuation of the Green Mountains of Vermont; and they do not differ greatly in their geological structure, the predom¬ inant rocks being gneiss, mica schist, talcose slate, and crystalline limestone, the larger portion of which would in the ordinary nomenclature of geology be called pri¬ mary. They have, however, been termed metamor- phic, because in some of the associated slates traces of fucoids and vermiform bodies, called Nereites, have been discovered. Professors Hitchcock and H. D. Rogers have expressed an opinion, which appeared to me highly probable after a cursory examination of these hills, that they consist of altered Silurian strata. I)r. Emmons, on the other hand, contends that they are more ancient than the lowest sandstone of the old¬ est fossiliferous group of New York,—in a word, that they are sedimentary strata of an era anterior to the Silurian, in a metamorphic state. The order of ar¬ rangement of the masses, their mineral constituents and organic remains, are appealed to in support of this theory ; and several sections are considered as proving that the most ancient sandstones of the New York series rest unconformably on the rocks in question, to which Dr. Emmons gives the name of the Taconic system. But the fossils are so few, and so analogous either to species found in the Silurian strata in the United States or in those now generally referred, like the Nereites (a species of annelides ?), to the inferior division of that group in Great Britain, that the claim of this Taconic group to an independent place among the paleozoic formations seems still very questionable. 196 PLUMBAGINOUS ANTHRACITE. Chap. xii. 1 went afterwards to examine the mica schist of Worcester, in Massachusetts, to the east of the Taco- nic range and of the Connecticut River, and forty-five miles due west of Boston. I found, interstratified with the mica schist and associated clay-slate of this place, a regular bed of plumbaginous anthracite, or impure graphite, portions of which give a streak on paper like a lead pencil. It has been used for making pencils, while a part of the stratum has been worked for coal, but apparently without profit, as the mine is now abandoned. The mica schist contains garnets and asbestus, and is much impregnated with carbonaceous matter. I searched in vain for vegetable impressions in the plumbaginous anthracite, which was in part iridescent, like coal, and so much resembled some of the earthy anthracites which I soon afterwards saw on the borders of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, at Wrentham, Cumberland, Attleborough, and Mansfield, that I feel strongly inclined to believe that the Wor¬ cester beds, however crystalline they may be, are no other than carboniferous rocks in an altered or meta- morphic state. At the various localities last men¬ tioned I found in the carbonaceous slates accompany¬ ing the anthracite the most common coal plants, such as Pecopteris plumosa, Neuropteris flexuosa, Spheno- phyllum, Calamites, doc. Although the associated strata were not in a crystalline condition, they and the coal were occasionally traversed with veins of quartz, like the plumbaginous bed at Worcester; and there are many places in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, pointed out by Dr. C. T. Jackson and Professor Hitch¬ cock, in which the carboniferous and old red sandstone rocks pass into mica schist, and other hypogene rocks, Chap. xii. ANTHRACITE IN MICA SCHIST. 19 7 especially in the neighbourhood of masses of granite and syenite. In some cases the pebbles of the con¬ glomerate remain distinct, while the shaly base has been turned into a well-characterised mica schist, of which I obtained specimens. I have already mentioned (p. 72.) that in crossing from the west, of the Alleghany mountains to the east¬ ern portion of the Appalachian coal-field the volatile ingredients (oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen) of the original coal bear continually a smaller and smaller proportion to the carbon. In the specimens which I myself obtained from Pomeroy, Ohio, where the coal is bituminous, and where the strata are undisturbed, the quantity of gaseous matter has been found by my friend Dr. Percy to be in the proportion of 19 per cent., the rest being carbon and ash. 2dly. In the coal at Frostburg, in Maryland, in the midst of the Alleghany chain, where the strata have undergone but slight dis¬ turbance, the proportion of volatile matter was found to be 9-g- per cent. 3dly. In the Pennsylvanian an¬ thracite of the Lehigh and Mauch Chunk mines, before alluded to (p. 69.), the volatile ingredients are about 5 per cent.* In the plumbaginous anthracite of Worcester the proportion of volatile matter is about 3 per cent., there being a slight trace of nitrogen. I conceive that a * These results were obtained from an elaborate analysis made for m3 by the kindness of Dr. J. Percy of Birmingham, since the state¬ ment given at p. 72. was printed. They bear out the geological in¬ ferences, there referred to, of Professor H. D. Rogers ; but it will he seen that the proportions of the chemical constituents differ greatly, the gaseous matter being only half the previously estimated quantity. For details of the analysis and manipulations, see Appendix to a paper by the author, in the Journal of Geol. Soc., London, No. II. 1845. 17 * 198 ANTHRACITE IN MICA SCHIST. Chap. xii. move powerful action of those same plutonic causes (heat, and other subterranean agencies) which are ca¬ pable of converting sedimentary into crystalline rocks may have expelled nearly all the gaseous ingredients from a stratum of coal or anthracite, and turned it into an impure plumbago, while the carboniferous grits and shales were changed into carbonaceous mica-sclnst, clay-slate, and quartzite. At Little Falls, on the Mo¬ hawk River, and elsewhere in the U. S., and at the Falls of Montmorency, and other places in Canada, I have seen the lowest Silurian strata resting uncon- formably on gneiss and other hypogene formations. But we ought not to be surprised on that accbunt, if we find on the American continent, as in the Swiss Alps and other regions in Europe, strata containing plants of the coal-measures, or of, still newer dates, which have acquired the hypogene or metamorphic structure. Near the Atlantic border of the United States, in particular, we should be prepared for such a discovery, for we know that those poweiful movements which have given rise to the Appalachian chain, fold¬ ing and dislocating the solid rocks for a breadth of 150, and a length of more than 1000 miles, and the injec¬ tion into the eastern portion of the chain, of igneous rocks of the trappean and plutonic order, are phenom¬ ena posterior in date to the deposition of the American carboniferous strata. During so long a series of sub¬ terranean changes as are implied by these disturbances it may well have happened that considerable masses of the coal-bearing, as well as of more ancient paleozoic strata, should have assumed a crystalline texture. At a small New England town in the Taconic hills above mentioned I was getting some travelling in- Chap. xii. LECTURES IN NEW ENGLAND. 199 structions at the bar of an inn, when a carpenter en¬ tered who had just finished his day’s work, and asked what lecture would be given that evening. The re¬ ply was, Mr. N. on the Astronomy of the Middle Ages. He then inquired if it was gratis, and was an¬ swered in the negative, the price being twenty-five cents (or one shilling English); upon which he said he should go, and accordingly returned home to dress. It reflects no small credit on the national system of education in New England, that crowds of the labour¬ ing classes of both sexes should seek recreation, after the toils of the day are over, in listening to discourses of this kind. Among the most popular subjects of lec¬ tures which I saw announced in newspapers or pla¬ cards in different towns and villages were Temperance, a cause which has made great progress of late years among Protestants as well as Catholics, and which began in the U. S. fifteen years before the correspond¬ ing movement in Great Britain; Phrenology, to the pretensions of which the Americans lend too credulous * an ear; the History of the American Revolution ; the Present State and Past History of China ; Travels in the Holy Land; Meteorology, and a variety of other topics. April 15.—Visited Professor Hitchcock at Amherst College, Massachusetts, by whom the geological sur¬ vey of that State has been ably executed. He showed me several ridges and large rounded hillocks of trans¬ ported materials, or “ drift,” north of Amherst, sur¬ rounding swamps, in precisely the same manner as those usually referred to the glacial period in Scotland and Northern Europe. They have been called “ mo¬ raines” by some geologists ; but if we call in the agency 200 FOSSIL FOOTSTEPS OF BIRDS. Chap. xii. of ice, as I am well disposed to do, we must attribute their accumulation to the melting of icebergs charged with fragments of gravel and rock, rather than to gla¬ ciers. Professor Hitchcock has, in fact, styled them iceberg moraines. At Smith’s Ferry, near Northampton, about eleven miles north of Springfield, I examined, in company with the Professor, the red sandstone on the banks of the Connecticut River, where the celebrated foot-prints of birds are beautifully exhibited. The rock consists of thin-bedded sandstone (New Red, Trias ?) alterna¬ ting with red coloured shale, some of the flags being distinctly ripple-marked. The dip of the layers, on which the Ornithichnites are imprinted in great abun¬ dance, varies from eleven to fifteen degrees. It is evi¬ dent that in this place many superimposed beds must have been successively trodden upon, as different sets of footsteps are traceable through a thickness of sand¬ stone exceeding ten feet. My companion also pointed put to me that some of the beds, exposed several yards down the river, and containing Ornithichnites, would, if prolonged, pass under those of the principal locality, and make the entire thickness throughout which the impressions prevail at intervals, perhaps, twenty or thirty feet. We cannot, therefore, explain these phe¬ nomena simply by supposing large sheets of mud to have been spread out by the tidal waters, as may be observed on the broad flats bordering the Bay of Fun- dy. These last, it is true, as will be shown in a future chapter, exhibit the recent foot-prints of birds, in many successive layers, for a depth of two or three inches ; but I cannot conceive such markings to extend through a thickness of twenty-five feet without supposing a Chap. xii. FOSSIL FOOTSTEPS OF BIRDS. 201 subsidence of the ground to have taken place from time to time during the deposition of the layers on which the birds walked. The tracks are too well defined and distinct to have been made under water: there are clear indications of joints in the different toes ; and there is generally such a deviation from a straight line in any- three prints following each other as is observa¬ ble in the trifid marks which birds leave on the sands of the sea-coast. The birds must have been of various sizes, from that of a small sand-piper to bipeds larger than the ostrich ; and it is highly interesting to remark how regularly the distance between the footsteps in¬ creases or diminishes in proportion to the size of the foot-marks. In some of the most diminutive, for ex¬ ample, they are no more than three inches apart, but in the case of the largest (Ornithichnites gig as) they are from four to six feet. The length of the foot in the huge species last mentioned is in some instances no less than nineteen inches. Its magnitude being nearly twofold that of the African ostrich, as estimated by the foot {ex jpede Herculem), and the acknowledged antiquity of the rock, disinclined many naturalists to adopt the views of Professor Hitchcock, when he re¬ ferred the markings to extinct birds; but the discovery of the bones of the Moa or Dinornis of New Zealand, described by Mr. Owen, proved the existence, at no remote period, of feathered bipeds nearly as gigantic, and reconciled the zoologist at least to the credibility of the fact, however marvellous. The waters of the Connecticut being low, I had an opportunity of seeing a ledge of rock of red shale laid bare, on which were imprinted a single line of nine footsteps of Ornithichnites giganteus , turning alter- 202 MOUNT HOLYOKE. Ciiap. xii. nately right and left, and separated from each other by intervals of about five feet. At one spot there was a space several yards square, where the entire surface of the shale was irregular and jagged, owing to the number of footsteps, not one of which could be tiaced distinctly, as when a flock of sheep have passed over a muddy road; but on withdrawing from this area the confusion gradually ceased, and the tracks became more and more distinct. The Professor informed me, that since he first announced his belief, in 1836, that these impressions were referable to birds, he had ob¬ served above two thousand foot-prints, probably made by nearly thirty distinct species, all indented on the upper surface of the strata, and only exhibiting casts in relief on the under side of the beds resting on such indented surfaces. This sandstone is of much higher antiquity (see p. 125.) than any formation in which fossil bones or other indications of birds have been detected in Euiope. Still we have no ground for inferring from such facts that the feathered tribe made its first appearance in the western hemisphere at this period. It is too com¬ mon a fallacy to fix the era of the first creation of each tribe of plants or animals, and even of animate beings in general, at the precise point where our present retro¬ spective knowledge happens to stop. The discoveries in the Connecticut valley ought to teach us extieme cau¬ tion in deducing general conclusions from mere negative evidence, especially when we infer the non-existence of land animals from the absence of their remains in con¬ temporaneous marine strata. On leaving Amherst for Springfield, we ascended Mount Holyoke, the lower part of which is formed of Chap. xii. GEOLOGY OF MARTHA’S VINEYARD. 203 horizontal strata of red sandstone, while the summit is capped with a picturesque mass of basaltic greenstone. This hill has been isolated by denudation, and from its summit we enjoyed a fine view of the fertile plain of the winding Connecticut. On its flanks we gathered the blue Hepatica triloba , the Houstonia cerulea, a white saxifrage, the May flower, Epigcea repens , and several plants, which have been recently naturalised in. British gardens. Immediately after my arrival at Boston I set out (April 19th) to explore the island of Martha’s Yineyard, off the south coast of Massachusetts. Travellers who made this excursion a few years ago complain of being jolted in a coach over deep ruts and huge stones: now, an excellent railway carried me rapidly to New Bed¬ ford on the coast, where a steam-boat was in readiness, so that, having started long after sunrise, I was landed on “ the Yineyard,” eighty miles distant from Boston, in time to traverse half the island, which is about 20 miles long from east to west, before sunset. Late in the evening I reached the lofty cliffs of Gayhead, more than 200 feet high, at the western end of the island, where the highly-inclined tertiary strata are gaily coloured, some consisting of bright red clays, others of white, yellow, and green sand, and some of black lig¬ nite. They have been compared, not unaptly, by Professor Hitchcock, to the tertiary beds of Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight, which they resemble in appear¬ ance, though not in age. I collected many fossils here, assisted by some resident Indians, who are very intelligent. The section is continuous for four fifths of a mile, the beds dipping to the N. E. at an angle of from 35° to 50°, and in some places to 70°. Their 204 GEOLOGY OF MARTHA’S VINEYARD. Chap. xii. entire thickness must be very great, exceeding 2000 feet. The clays predominate over the sands. In the black beds containing lignites coniferous wood is abun¬ dant, and amber is said to have been found. The or¬ ganic remains prevail at intervals in various strata, but I extracted most of them from a bed of green sand (6), near the north-eastern end. They consisted of casts of shells, teeth of large sharks, the vertebrae of a dol¬ phin, and of a whale of great size. I also discovered a tooth referred by Mr. Owen to the canine tooth of a seal. Togelher with these, I found numerous nodules of the shape of kidney potatoes, from one to two inches in diameter, smooth externally, which I presume to have been coprolites. They have been analysed for me by my friend J. Middleton, Esq., F. G. S., and found to contain no less than 50 per cent, of phosphate of lime, the constitution of the latter being such as is peculiar to organic substances. They also consist of fluoride of calcium, chloride of sodium, and other ele¬ ments. These coprolites, therefore, seem closely anal¬ ogous in composition as in age, to those found by Professor Henslow in the Suffolk crag of Felixstow, and which accompany the bones of sharks and cetacea. ' Near the lighthouse there is a great fold in the beds, where they are so bent as to have twice a north¬ easterly and once a south-westerly dip. One of these fo/hl MfimmMiawi -Rewuum, , I 1 ' ,nn th* fcrfrwry .tfirwfaf of MwthaS Vrnevoifrts .MsiJufsiu'-h.iA-oells' S.MusfJrvm, JH*" h, ajo^f jKnMIyOsMni^Z/, 1 MaM of WoUrvur (Tyichumo / Stales H tyuJi&s to a, foot ftg 2 Stefa neeyv 3. End, Vteew oftood vortehrot of Wholes, f Eyperood-oevJ 4 S ™ / " "' e/w 4 Ji&mv of toasts vertesbras of Ce£asc?s The greatest depth of the black mud has not been ascertained; it is composed chiefly of clay, with a mixture of calcareous matter and sand and contains 5 parts in 100 of sulphate of lime, with some anima matter. (Cuvier, Oss. Foss.,tom. i., p. 216.) Layers of gravel occur in the midst of it at various depths. • , T , n 1 M. Sirw. Parish’s Buenos Ayres, * Darwin’s Journal, p. lot), sir pp. 151 and 371. Chap. xvii. FOSSIL ANIMALS AND SHELLS. 57 In some places it rests upon the blue limestone. 1 he only teeth which I myself procured from col¬ lectors on the spot, besides those of the buffalo, were recognized by Mr. Owen as belonging to extremely young mastodons. From the place where they were found, and the rolled state of some of the accom¬ panying bones, I suspected that they had been washed out of the soil of the bogs above by the river, which often changes its course after floods. Mr. Cooper of New York, who has given’ the fullest account of the fossils of this place, says, that the remains of reeds and freshwater mollusca accom- pany the bones; but he names no species of shells. Mr. Anthony and I were therefore diligent in our search for shells in pits which happened to have been recently laid open by collectors of fossil bones; and we soon obtained a small Ancylus and Cyclas. Afterwards, in the most eastern marsh, in the middle of which a powerful spring throws up beech nuts and shells from the mud below, we found two species of Melania known as recent, Physa hetero strop ha, Cydas similis, C. dubia ? (and another species, not known to naturalists here), Pisidium (supposed to agree with one from Lake Erie), Ancylus (not known), and fragments of Unio ; also the following land shells Helix solitaria (with bands of colour not effaced), H. alternata, H. clausa, H.fraterna, and Pupa armifera. As new terrestrial and freshwater shells are occasionally added to the recent American fauna, I think it very probable that all the fourteen species which we met with, and which, I believe, co-existed with the mastodon, are still living, though 58 BIG BONE LICK. Chap. xvii. perhaps not all of them in the immediate neigh- ^“it ^"impossible to view this plain, without at once concluding that it has remained unchanged m all its principal features from the period when the extinct quadrupeds inhabited the banks of the Ohio and its tributaries. But one phenomenon P® r P 1 “® i ™ much, and for a time seemed quite uninte igi • parts of the boggy grounds, a superficial covering o yellow loam was incumbent on the dark-coloured mud, containing the fossil bones. This partial covering of yellow sandy clay was at some points no less than fifteen or twenty feet thick. Mr. u oc P® s fj through it when he dug for fossil remains on the left bank of the creek, and he came down to the boggy grounds with bones below. We first resorted to the hypothesis that the valley might have been dammed up by a temporary barrier, and converted into a lake; but we afterwards learnt, that although the Ohio is seven miles distant by the windings of the creek, there being a slight descent the whole way, yet that great river has been known to rise so high as up the valley of Big Bone Creek, and, so late as 1824 to enter the second story of a house bull near the springs. The level of the Licks above the Ohio is about fifty feet, the distance in a straight line being only three miles. At Cincinnati the river has been known to rise sixty feet above its summer level, and in the course of ages it may occasionally hate risen hio-her. It may be unnecessary, therefore, to relei t„ the general subsidence before alluded to (probably an event of a much older date), in order to account for the patches of superficial silt last described. Chap. xvii. northern drift. 59 After spending the day in exploring the Licks we were hospitably received at the house of a Ken¬ tucky proprietor a few miles distant, whose zeal for farming and introducing cattle of the “true Durham breed,” had not prevented him from cultivating a beautiful flower garden. We were regaled the next morning at breakfast with an excellent dish of broiled squirrels. There are seasons when the grey squirrel swarms here in such numbers, as to strip the trees of eir foliage, and the sportsmen revenge themselves after the manner of the Hottentots, when they eat the locusts which have consumed every green thing in Southern Africa. ° We then returned by another route through the splendid forest, and re-crossed the Ohio. The weather was cool, and we saw no fire-flies, although had seen many a few days before, sparkling as they flitted over the marshy grounds bordering the Ohio m my excursion up the river to Rockville. Among the inquiries which can hardly fail to awaken the curiosity of a geologist who explores this region, one of the most natural relates to the relative age of the northern drift, and the deposits containing the remains of the mastodon and elephant, whether at ig Rone Lick, or in the higher terrace (b , fig. 9 ) a t Cincinnati. In my journey, some days afterwards, from the Ohio river to Cleveland on Lake Erie I had not proceeded twenty-five miles to the north¬ ward before I again found myself in a country covered with northern drift, of which I had lost sight for many weeks previously. The first patches which I observed were about five miles N.E. of the town of Lebanon, after which I saw it in great 60 NORTHERN DRIFT. Chap. xvir. abundance at Springfield, with large blocks and boulders of gneiss, reddish syenite, quartzite, and hornblende rock, all of which must have come from the north side of Lake Erie. The Ohio river, therefore, in the north latitude 40° and 41°, seems to mark the southern limit of the drift m this part of North America, although some scattered blocks have gone farther, and reached Kentucky. I was also told that a boulder of gneiss, twelve feet in diameter, has been found resting on the upper terrace ( b,fig . 9), four miles north of Cincinnati, and that fragments of granite, in a similar situation, have been met with at that city itself. These may possibly have been brought into their present position since the period of the deposition of the principal mass of northern drift ; for, although I could not obtain sufficient data for forming an accurate opinion as to the relative age of the drift, and the beds containing the bones of mastodon and elephant, whether in the upper terrace above alluded to, or in the licks of Kentucky, I incline to believe the drift, as a whole, to be the older of the two formations. The swamps of the Big Bone Licks have the same intimate re¬ lation to the present superficial geography of the district, as have those marshes and alluvial deposits before described in New York, as containing the remains of mastodon and recent shells, which are de¬ cidedly more modern than the drift and its erratic blocks. (Yol. I., pp. 18, 20, and 54.) Chap, xviii. CINCINNATI. 61 CHAPTER XVIII. Cincinnati—Journey across Ohio to Cleveland.—JYew Clear¬ ings. Rapid Progress of the State since the year 1800.— Increase of Population in the United States.—Political Dis¬ cussions.—German and Irish Settlers—Stump Oratory.— Presidential Elections.—Relative Paine of Labour and Land. The pork aristocracy of Cincinnati does not mean those innumerable pigs which walk at large about the streets, as if they owned the town, but a class of rich merchants, who have made their fortunes by killing annually, salting, and exporting, about 200,000 swine. There are, besides these, other wealthy proprietors, who have speculated success¬ fully in land, which often rises rapidly in value as the population increases. The general civilisation and refinement of the citizens is far greater than might have been looked for in a State founded so recently, owing to the great number of families which have come directly from the highly educated part of New England, and have settled here. As to the free hogs before mentioned, which roam about the handsome streets, they belong to no one in particular, and any citizen is at liberty to take them up, fatten, and kill them. When they increase too fast, the town council interferes, and sells off some of their number. It is a favorite amusement of the boys to ride upon the pigs, and we were shown one sagacious old hog, who was in the habit of lying down as soon as a boy came in sight. VOL. ii. 7 62 TOUR THROUGH OHIO. Chap. xvih. May 29th .—We left Cincinnati for Cleveland on Lake Erie, a distance of 250 miles, and our line of route took us through the centre of the State of Ohio, by Springfield, Columbus, Mount Vernon, and Woos¬ ter, at all which places we slept, reaching Cleveland on the fifth day. In our passage through Ohio, we took advantage of public coaches only when they offered themselves in the day-time, and always found good private car¬ riages for the rest of the way. If some writers, who have recently travelled in this part of America, found the fatigue of the journey excessive, it must have arisen from their practice of pushing on day and night over roads which are in some places really dangerous in the dark. On our reaching a steep hill north of Mount Vernon, a fellow-passenger pointed out to me a spot where the coach had been lately upset in the night. He said that in the couise of the last three years he had been overturned thirteen times between Cincinnati and Cleveland, but being an inside passenger had escaped without serious in¬ jury. In passing from the southern to the northern fron¬ tier of Ohio, we left a handsome and populous city and fine roads, and found the towns grow smaller and the high road rougher, as we advanced. When more than half way across the State, and after leav¬ ing Mount Vernon, we saw continually new clear¬ ings, where the felling, girdling, and burning of trees was going on, and where oats were growing amidst the blackened stumps on land which had never been ploughed, but only broken up with the harrow. The carriage was then jolted for a short space ovei a Chap, xviii. TOUR THROUGH OHIO. 63 corduroy road, constructed of trunks of trees laid side by side, while the hot air of burning timber made us impatient of the slow pace of our carriage. We then lost sight for many leagues of all human habitations, except here and there some empty wood¬ en building, on which “Mover’s House” was in¬ scribed in large letters. Here we were told a family of emigrants might pass the night on payment of a small sum. At last the road again improved, and we came to the termination of the table land of Ohio, at a distance of about sixteen miles from Lake Erie. From this point on the summit of Stony Hill we saw at our feet a broad and level plain covered with wood; and beyond, in the horizon, Lake Erie, ex¬ tending far and wide like the ocean. We then be¬ gan our descent, and in about three hours reached Cleveland. The changes in the condition of the country which we had witnessed are illustrations of the course of events which has marked the progress of civilisation in this State, which first began in the south, and spread from the banks of the Ohio. At a later pe¬ riod, when the great Erie canal was finished, which opened a free commercial intercourse with the river Hudson, New York, and the Atlantic, the northern frontier began to acquire wealth and an increase of inhabitants. Ports were founded on the lake, and grew in a few years with almost unparalleled rapid¬ ity. The forest then yielded to the axe in a new direction, and settlers migrated from north to south, leaving still a central wilderness between the Ohio and Lake Erie. This forest might have proved for many generations a serious obstacle to the progress 64 PROGRESS OF OHIO. Chap, xviii. of the State, had not the law wisely provided that all non-resident holders of waste lands should be compelled to pay their full share of taxes laid on by the inhabitants of the surrounding districts for new schools and roads. If an absentee is in arrear, the sheriff seizes a portion of his ground contiguous to a town or village, puts it up foi auction, and thus dis¬ charges the debt, so that it is impossible for a specu¬ lator, indifferent to the local interests of a district, to wait year after year, until he is induced by a great bribe to part with his lands, all ready communication between neighbouring and highly cultivated legions being in the mean time cut off. Ohio was a wilderness exclusively occupied by the Indians, until near the close of the last centuiy. In 1800 its population amounted to 45;365, in the next ten years it had increased five-fold, and in the ten which followed it again more than doubled. In 1840 it had reached 1,600,000 souls, all free, and almost without any admixture of the coloured race. In this short interval the forest had been transformed into a land of steamboats, canals, and flourishing towns; and would have been still more populous had not thousands of its new settlers migrated still faithei west into Indiana and Illinois. A portion of the pub¬ lic works which accelerated this marvellous piospei- ity, were executed with foreign capital, but the intei- est of the whole has been punctually paid by direct taxes. There is no other example in history, either in the old or new world, of so sudden a rise of a large country to opulence and power. The State contains nearly as wide an extent of arable land as England, all of moderate elevation, so rich in its Chap, xviii. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 65 alluvial plains as to be cropped thirty or forty years without manure, having abundance of fine timber, a temperate climate, many large navigable rivers, a ready communication through Lake Erie with the north and east, and by the Ohio with the south and west, and, lastly, abundance of coal in its eastern counties. I am informed that, in the beginning of the present year (1842), the foremost bands of emigrants have reached the Platte River, a tributary of the Missouri. This point is said to be only half way between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, and the country beyond the present frontier is as fertile as that already occupied. De Tocqueville calculated that along the borders of the United States, from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, extending a distance of more than 1200 miles as the bird flies, the whites advance every year at a mean rate of seventeen miles ; and he truly observes that there is a grandeur and solemnity in this gradual and .continuous march of the European race towards the Rocky Mountains. He compares it to “ a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onwards by the hand of God.” # When conversing with a New England friend on the progress of American population, I was surprised to learn, as a statistical fact, that there are more whites now living in North America than all that have died there since the days of Columbus. It seems probable, moreover, that the same remark may hold true for fifty years to come. The census has been very carefully taken in the United States since * Democracy in America, vol. ii., ch. x , sect. 4. 00 INCREASE OF POPULATION. Chap, xviii, the year 1800, and it appears that the ratio of in¬ crease was 35 per cent, for the first decennial peri¬ ods, and that it gradually diminished to about 32 per cent, in the last. From these data, Professor Tucker estimates that, in the year 1850, the population wdl amount in round numbers to 22 millions, m 1860 to 29 millions, in 1870 to 38 millions, in 1880 to 50 mil¬ lions, in 1890 to 63 millions, and in 1900 to 80 mil¬ lions. . The territory of the United States is said to amount to one-tenth, or at the utmost to one-eighth of that colonised by Spain on the American conti¬ nent. Yet in all these vast regions conquered by Cortes and Pizarro, there are considerably less than two millions of people of European blood, so that they scarcely exceed in number the population ac¬ quired in about half a century in Ohio, and fall far short of it in wealth and civilisation. We were perfect strangers in our tour thiough Ohio, and, when at inns and in public conveyances, had many opportunities of hearing lawyers, mer¬ chants, farmers, and labourers, conversing freely and unreservedly together. I have generally abstained from retailing such gossip, reflecting how small would be the value of the opinions which an American could derive from a similar source, or from talk over¬ heard in an English railway or steamboat. I shall, however, depart slightly from my rule on this occa¬ sion, as my readers may, perhaps, be amused as I was, and will abstain from drawing general conclu¬ sions from the conversation of persons whom chance has thrown in the traveller’s way. As soon as we were recognized to be foreigners, Chap, xviii. TOUR THROUGH OHIO. 67 we were usually asked whether we had made up our minds where we should settle. On our declaring that, much as we saw to like and admire in America, we had no intention of exchanging our own country for it, they expressed surprise that we had seen so many States, and had not yet decided where to set¬ tle. Nothing makes an English traveller feel so much at home as this common question. You have arrived at the domain of a rich and hospitable host, who is ready to welcome you, and where there is ample room and accommodation for all. Some of the more highly educated class, especially the lawyers, ex¬ pressed their alarm at the growing strength of the democratic party in Ohio, owing to the influx of Irish and German labourers, nearly all Roman Catholics, and very ignorant. These new comers, they said, had lately turned the elections against a majority of native Americans, their superiors in wealth and men¬ tal cultivation. They also complained that many settlers of German origin from Pennsylvania were opposed to all improvement, and unwilling to be taxed for new schools, canals, and roads. They were indifferent to the speedy arrival of letters and daily newspapers, and other advantages, for which the New Englanders and the' Scotch and English Protestants would pay most cheerfully. Yet they allege that these same Germans, opposed as they are to all useful innovations, are in the habit of giving their votes to demagogues, who are prepared to plunge the country into the most headlong career of political changes. A thriving farmer, who entered the coach at Wooster, spoke vehemently against the new tariff, 68 STUMP ORATORY. Chap, xviii. which, he said, would sacrifice the agriculturists of the West to the New England manufacturers, who meant to compel them to buy their home-made goods at a high price, while the raw produce of Ohio and the West would be shut out from the British market. He also boasted to me of the advantages they en¬ joyed in the U. S., commiserating the lot of the mass of the people in the old country, deprived of their political rights, and exposed to the tyranny and op- * pression of the rich. By way of drawing him out, I told him how I had found the day before a minister preaching in Welsh to a congregation of three hun¬ dred persons in the town of Columbus—that these and other poor settlers, Irish and German, were ig¬ norant of the American laws and institutions, and wholly uneducated. Ought they to be permitted to turn the elections, as I was told they had recently done in Ohio ? On this he poured forth an oration on the equality of the rights of all men, on the invidi¬ ous distinctions some desired to establish between the franchise of old and new settlers, on the policy of welcoming new comers when the population was sparse, on the advantages of common schools, and, lastly, on the evil of endowing universities, which he said were “ hot-beds of aristocrats.” While descant¬ ing on these and other topics, the tone of his voice grew louder and louder as his warmth increased, and when he left the public coach, a lawyer of Ohio con¬ gratulated me that I could now understand what is meant in the United States by “ stump oratory,” or that kind of declamation which is addressed by a can¬ didate for popular favour from the stump of a tree in a new clearing. Chap, xviii. POLITICIANS IN OHIO. 69 On another occasion, the respective merits of Mr. Van Buren, Mr. Clay, and others, were canvassed, and an animated discussion took place on their rela¬ tive claims to fill the presidential chair at the next general election. I expressed surprise that, as there were still three years to run of Mr. Tyler’s official career, they should be mooting this question already. The whole country had been so recently convulsed by the severe contest between Harrison and Van Buren, in which parties had been so nearly balanced, that it was surely inexpedient that the minds of the people should be again excited and unsettled. I en¬ larged on the superior advantages of an hereditary monarchy, as preventing the recurrence of such dan¬ gerous agitation, and was prepared for a retaliatory attack upon the kingly office, and a eulogy on the superiority of the American constitution. But Ame¬ ricans at home, however loyal and patriotic, and as little disposed to change their form of government for a monarchy as we are to turn republicans, are, nevertheless, by no means optimists. When they travel in England, they acquire a habit of standing on the defensive, from hearing John Bull object to everything in which their laws and institutions may happen to differ from his own. But in the United States, I frequently heard politicians deplore the pro¬ gress of democracy, argue that the president ought to be elected for six years instead of four, that he should not be re-eligible, that there should be no veto, and contend for other organic changes. In re¬ ply to my sally, one of the party, who had previously expressed his fears that General Harrison’s death would lead to the democratic party regaining their tyo NEW SETTLERS IN OHIO. CHAP. XVIII. ascendancy, remarked, “ The most disastrous periods, sir, in your history, were the wars of a disputed suc¬ cession. We are always engaged in a civil war of this kind.” By way of consolation, I reminded him that, at all events, there had been less bloodshed in their battles for the chief magistracy than in our con¬ tests for the rightful heirs to a throne. He replied, « Yes, there has been less destruction of the body, but not of the soul. A president who has 60,000 places in his gift holds in his hands far greater means of bribery and corruption than did your Harry the Eighth, even after he had seized upon the property of the monasteries.” One of my travelling companions in Ohio assured me that agricultural labourers from the Lowlands of Scotland were the best settlers of all who came direct from Europe. Some of these had arrived with a large family, and with no money even to buy the im¬ plements of husbandry, and had in twelve years be¬ come the owners of 300 acres of cleared land, in which the log-house was replaced by a neat farm building, called a frame-house, with a small garden attached to it. They laugh here at the common error into which new settlers fall, who possess some money, and have been accustomed to English farm¬ ing, especially their diligence in uprooting stumps, which have so slovenly an appearance. This prac¬ tice seems to be in their eyes the most unequivocal test of extreme ignorance of the relative value of la¬ bour and land in a new country. Foreigners who have a small capital should always settle in districts which have been already cleared, and bioken up y the plough. Chap. xix. CLEVELAND. 71 CHAPTER XIX. Cleveland.—Ridges of Sand and Gravel along the Southern Coast of Lake Erie.—Their Origin— Fredonia, Streets lighted with natural Gas.-Falls of JYiagara.—Burning Spring.—Passing behind the Falls.—Daguerreotype of the Falls.—Boulder Formation of Whirlpool, and Valley of St. David’s.—Glacial polishing and Furrows.—Influence of Ice¬ bergs on Drift. June 3, 1842.—The morning after my arrival at Cleveland, Dr. Kirtland, the zoologist, took me to Rockport, about four miles to the west, and after¬ wards to the ravine of a torrent called the Rocky River, about six miles farther, in the same direction, that I might examine in both places what are here called the Lake Ridges. Like the “ ridge road” of Lake Ontario before described (Yol. I., p. 24), they resemble ancient beaches, running parallel to the shores of Lake Erie, and being composed of sand and gravel. At the point which I first visited, in the town of Rockport, Lake Erie is bounded by a perpendicular cliff (A, fig. 10), about seventy-five feet high, at the base of which the water is so deep, that, in some places, it can only be approached in a boat. Hori¬ zontal beds of shale, with some layers of sandstone, appear cut off abruptly in the face of this cliff, all referable to the Hamilton group, No. 10 of Map PI. II., or the lowest part of the Devonian series (F). Proceeding from the summit of the cliff inland, we find the surface of the country covered with clay (ft), « lake ridges” NEAR CLEVELAND. _ .. Chap. xix. 72 sloping gently, so that, in half a mile, there is a rise of about forty feet, and we then come to the bottom of the first or northernmost ridge (c), which is about fifteen feet high, rising at an angle of abou 1- , both on its northern and southern slope Between this and the next ridge (d), which is about half a mile distant, extends a line of swamps and marshes, some of them several hundred acres in extent. wo other parallel ridges of sand and gravel are observa¬ ble still farther inland or southwards, the distance ol each varying greatly according to the general slope of the land, for the same ridge occasionally ap¬ proaches within a mile of the shore at one point, and recedes to the distance of eleven miles from it at another, apparently preserving everywhere the same level. „ . Boulders of granite, some of them three feet in diameter, which must have come from the north side of Lake Erie, are scattered sparingly here and there as at e, fig. 10. I could not obtain any fossil shells from any of these ridges, although some are said to have been found, together with fragments of wood, similar to those now thrown up on the beach of the lake. The shells might at once decide the point whether the ridges are of marine or freshwater ori¬ gin. If this were settled, another and distinct ques- Chap. xix. “ lake ridges” near Cleveland. 73 tion would still remain ; namely, whether they were for the most part formed at first under water, like sand-bars at the mouth of rivers ; or were thrown up by the waves on the margins of ancient sheets of water, in the manner of beaches. The section which I saw on the banks of the Rocky River appeared to me to favour the theory of the subaqueous origin of the ridges. This torrent, about a mile and a half above its mouth, flows in a narrow ravine, scarcely more than thirty yards wide, with perpendicular cliffs on each side, 110 feet high. When we arrive at the point where the ravine inter¬ sects the second of the Rockport ridges before al¬ luded to ( d , Jig. 10), we see the river-cliff suddenly heightened by the addition, for a short space, of a bank of sand and gravel, about 30 feet high, the peb¬ bles in the ridge being rounded like those on the lake shore, and proving that the bank was never a mere dune of blown sand. If we imagine bars or banks of sand and pebbles to have been formed in succession near the shore in shallow water, and then cut through by torrents when the land was elevated, we can explain the abrupt manner in which the ridge determinates on each side of a ravine evidently excavated by the torrent in soft shale since the emergence of the strata. But it is difficult to imagine how an ancient beach, formed where a stream entered a lake or sea, could have been so straight and continuous, and so little modi¬ fied and rounded off in its outline conforming to the shape of the small bay, which must have existed at the entrance of a stream. It will be unnecessary, however, to dwell longer on this questipn at present, VOL. II. 8 74 natural gas, fredonia. Chap. xix. as I shall resume the subject when discussing the na¬ ture and origin of the “ lake ridges” near Toronto. The town of Cleveland is built on a terrace of stratified clay and sand, the height of which is 103 feet above the lake. Its depth is unknown, the fun¬ damental Devonian (or Hamilton) strata being con¬ cealed here, so that the newer deposit exclusively occupies the lake shore for forty miles. As several rivers besides the Cuyahoga of Cleveland cut wind¬ ing courses through this terrace, we may presume that these rivers existed when the water stood 100 feet higher relatively to the land. If so, we seem to have here an upraised delta formed of the materials brought down by streams before the waters had sunk to their present relative level. The nature of the sand and clay is such as rivers might have washed down from the land above, but no shells have been discovered, although diligently searched for, during the excavation of a ship canal and other works m the town. The tooth of a mastodon, however, was shown me as having been found low down in the clay. . June 5 .— Sailed in a steamboat to Fredonia, a town of 1200 inhabitants, with neat white houses, and six churches. The streets are lighted up with natural gas, which bubbles up out of the ground, and is received into a gasometer, which I visited. This gas consists of carburetted hydrogen, and issues from a black bituminous slate, one of the beds of the Hamilton group of the New York geologists, oi part of the Devonian formation of Europe. The light¬ house-keeper at Fredonia told me that, near the shore, at a considerable distance from the gasometer, he Chap. xix. BURNING SPRINGS-NIAGARA. 75 bored a hole through this black slate, and the gas soon collected in sufficient quantity to explode, when ignited. There is a ridge of sand at Fredonia, as at many other places, between Cleveland and the outlet of the Niagara from Lake Erie, but I tried in vain to iden¬ tify the ridges with those seen by me at Rockport, and could not discover that their heights, as estimated by residents, agreed at different places. Some of them, indeed, according to Mr. Whittlesey, the en¬ gineer, decline in altitude as they are traced east¬ ward. We next leached Buffalo, and found so many new buildings erected since the preceding autumn, and new shops opened, that we were amazed at the pro¬ gress of things, at a time when all are complaining of the unprecedented state of depression under which the commerce and industry of the country are suffering. x ^ Falls of Niagara, where we next spent a week, residing in a hotel on the Canada side, I re¬ sumed my geological explorations of last summer. Every part of the scenery, from Grand Island above the Falls to the Ferry at Queenstown, seven miles below, deserves to be studied at leisure. We visited the “ burning spring” at the edge of the river above the rapids, where carburetted hy¬ drogen, or, in the modern chemical phraseology, a light hydro-carbon, similar to that before mentioned at. Fredonia, rises from beneath the water out of the limestone rock. The bituminous matter supplying this gas is probably of animal origin, as this limestone is full of marine mollusca, Crustacea, and corals, with- 76 PASSING BEHIND THE FALLS. Chap. xix. out vegetable remains, unless some fucoids may have decomposed in the same strata. The invisible gas makes its way in countless bubbles through the clear transparent waters of the Niagara. On the applica¬ tion of a lighted candle, it takes fire, and plays about with a lambent flickering flame, which seldom touches the water, the gas being at first too pure to be inflam¬ mable, and only obtaining sufficient oxygen after mingling with the atmosphere at the height of several inches above the surface of the stream. At noon, on a hot summer’s day, we were tempted, contrary to my previous resolution, to perform the exploit of passing under the great sheet of water be¬ tween the precipice and the Horse-shoe Fall. We were in some degree rewarded for this feat by the singularity of the scene, and the occasional openings in the curtain of white foam and arch of green water, which afford momentary glimpses of the woody ra¬ vine and river below, fortunately for us lighted up most brilliantly by a midday sun. We had only one guide, which is barely sufficient for safety when there are two persons, for a stranger requires support when he loses his breath by the violent gusts of wind dash¬ ing the spray and water in his face. If he turns round to recover, the blast often changes in an in¬ stant, and blows as impetuously against him in the opposite direction. The Falls, though continually in motion, have all the effect of a fixed and unvarying feature in the landscape, like the two magnificent fountains in the great court before St. Peter’s at Rome, which seem to form as essential a part of one architectural whole as the stately colonnade, or the massive dome itself. Chap. xxx. DRIFT AT WHIRLPOOL. 77 However strange, therefore, it may seem, some Da¬ guerreotype representations of the Falls have been executed with no small success. They not only re¬ cord the form of the rocks and islands, but even the leading features of the cataract, and the shape of the clouds of spray. I often wished that Father Hen¬ nepin could have taken one of these portraits, and bequeathed it to the geologists of our times. It would have afforded us no slight aid in our specula¬ tions respecting the comparative state of the ravine in the 19th and 17th centuries. After one or two warm days, the weather became unusually cold for the month of June, with occasional frosts at night, and the humming-birds which we had seen before reaching Buffalo appeared no more dur¬ ing our stay here. In my visits to Grand Island, Lewiston, and St. Catherines, I made some of the observations already alluded to in the first volume (ch. ii., p. 27) ; and I shall now confine myself to remarks on the connec¬ tion of certain strata of drift which appear at the Whirlpool, and similar deposits observable in the valley of St. David’s, about three miles west of Queenstown, where there is an opening in the escarp¬ ment, as shown in the bird’s-eye view (PI. I.), and in the map of the Niagara district (PI. III.). I n the former view (PI. I.), a small chasm is introduced on the left bank of the Niagara at the whirlpool, to mark the only spot where the continuity of the older form¬ ations (the limestone, shale, and subjacent rocks) is broken between the Falls and Queenstown. This interruption occurs precisely opposite the summer¬ house (e. fig. 11). 8 * 78 BOULDER FORMATION BETWEEN Chap. xrz. Fig. 11. Course of the Niagara at the TV hirlpool. a, t. Streamlets which are thrown in cascades over the limestone precipice, after cutting through superficial red drift, twenty-five feet thick, e. Bowman’s Run. d. Small gulloy, between which and c the cliffs consist of drift. e. Summer house, where sand with fresh-water shells rests on the top of the pre¬ cipice. See fig. 3, Vol. I., p. 40. f. g. Probable course of the ancient valley, now filled with drift. The river cliff, from c to d, or for a distance of about 170 yards, on the northern side of the whirl¬ pool, consists exclusively of strata of sand, loam and gravel; the latter in parts cemented together into a conglomerate, and all belonging to the drift or boul- / der formation. The visible thickness of this modern deposit is about 300 feet, but we know not to what depth it may extend below the level of the Niagara. It appears clearly that there was here an original valley, which was afterwards completely filled up with stratified drift. The same red clay which Chap. xix. WHIRLPOOL AND ST. DAVID’S. 79 spreads far and wide over the limestone platform, forms the uppermost stratum of the mass, the occur¬ rence of which, at this point, had been overlooked by geologists, until Mr. Hall and I observed it in 1841. He immediately suggested to me that it might be connected with the opening in the escarpment at fet. David’s, about three miles to the northwest, which I determined to examine the year after. On a close inspection of the drift in the cliffs be¬ tween c and d, we find it to be composed at the top of red clay, from twenty to thirty feet thick, below which is a conglomerate, including boulders of gra¬ nitic and trappean rocks, of northern origin, mixed with fragments of the Niagara limestone. One an- gulai block of the latter is no less than fifteen feet in diameter, having been evidently detached from the original wall of the chasm during its denudation. Below this come beds of white sand and loam, to which succeed gravel cemented into a conglomerate by carbonate of lime, the pebbles being of sandstone, limestone, and hornblende rock. Under this conMo- merate are laminated clays, being the lowest visible strata. . Amending the steep bank formed of these mate¬ rials, we soon reach the general level of the table¬ land, and pass over it for two miles before we begin to enter the depression, which, deepening graduallv carries us down to St. David’s. This valley is en' tirely excavated in the boulder formation, and we may infer that the latter maintains its full depth be- tween St. David’s and the whirlpool, from sections obtained m sinking wells in the intervening township 80 VALLEY OP ST. DAVID’S. Chap, six, of Stamford, where a great thickness of drift was passed through. In the bird’s-eye view (PI. I., Vol. I.), the valley of St. David’s is represented, for want of more space, as of small width ; but it is, in fact, about two miles broad at its mouth, so that it bears no resemblance to the deep narrow chasm in which the Niagara flows. One end of it seems to have terminated ori¬ ginally in an angle at the point where the whirlpool is now situated ; and the sections laid open in the gulleys (c and d, Jig. 11) show that the walls of the ancient hollow were not perpendicular, but consisted of a succession of precipices and ledges. I was in¬ formed that, near St. David’s, an outlier of quartzose sandstone, (a', Jig. 12), was found by boring through the drift, which may, therefore, have projected like an island in the middle of the original valley or channel. The accompanying diagram will, probably, convey a correct notion of the manner in which the drift rests upon the older rocks near the northwestern end of the valley of St. David’s. The outline of the older formation given in this transverse section is, in fact, the same as that presented by the same rocks in those parts of the escarpment east and west of Lew¬ iston and Queenstown, where the face of the cliff is not masked by drift. I shall afterwards describe cavities, or ancient val¬ leys, intersecting the old Silurian rocks near Quebec, which have been filled up with transported materials, in which marine shells of recent species, and of a northern or arctic character, have been discovered. These shells have also been found in the drift of the Chap. xix. GLACIAL FURROWS. 81 Supposed section of drift and subjacent rocks in valley of St. Davids. a. Ledge of quartzose (Medina) sandstone. b. Ledge of Clinton limestone. c. Platform of Niagara limestone. d. General covering of drift or boulder formation. valley of the St. Lawrence, at elevations of more than 500 feet above the level of the sea, or nearly as high as Lake Erie, so that I consider it to be a mere local accident that none of the same are preserved, or have yet been met with in the Niagara district. Professor Emmons has shown that, on the removal of the clay and sand containing those marine shells m the valley of Lake Champlain, the rocks beneath are polished and furrowed, and similar phenomena are observed in the region now under consideration between Lakes Erie and Ontario. If the reader will glance at the frontispiece (PI. I.), he will see in the distance a zone of country (No. 1) bounding Lake Erie, part of which consists of an upper Silurian limestone, called in New York the Corniferous. It occurs at Black Rock among other places (see Map, PI. III.). It is very hard, contains many corals, and has nodules of flint or chert dispersed through it in horizontal beds. The upper surface of this rock, when the boulder clay is removed, appears smoothed or polished, and usually scored with long parallel furro Ws . But the nodules of chert, although much' rubbed down and worn, stand out slightly in relief while narrow elongated ridges of limestone are seen * 82 GLACIAL FURROWS. Chap. xix. extending from the southern end of each nodule, marking the space where the softer rock has been protected for a short distance from the triturating action which ground down the whole. Mr. George E. Hayes of Buffalo showed me large specimens of the polished rock, on which these markings were conspicuous ; and he and Mr. Haskin have ascertained that the general direction of the grooves in this region is N.E. and S.W., or N. 35° E. They are traced over the broad platform of the Niagara limestone No. 3 (see Frontispiece and Map, PI. III.), retaining the same course wherever the drift is removed; and, what is still more remarkable, as Mr. Hall pointed out to me, near Lewiston and Lockport, they are imprinted at different levels on the projecting shelves formed by the more solid rocks of the great escarpment. Suppose, for example, the drift d {jig. 12, p. 81) to be removed from the ledge of quartzose sandstone, a , and from the surface of the upper edge of Clinton limestone, b, and from c ,—we should find everywhere grooves running nearly in the direction N.E. and S.W. ' Some geologists have considered these facts as very difficult to reconcile with the glacial theory. To me they appear to indicate the following suc¬ cession of events. First, the country represented in the frontispiece (PI. I.) acquired its present geographical configuration, so far as relates to the outline of the older rocks, under the joint influence of elevatory and denuding operations. Secondly; a gradual submergence then took place, bringing down each part of the land successively to the level of the waters, and then to a moderate depth below them. Chap. xix. ACTION OF ICEBERGS. 83 Large islands and bergs of floating ice came from the north, which, as they grounded on the coast and on shoals, pushed along all loose materials of sand and pebbles broke off all angular and projecting points of lock, and when fragments of hard stone were rozen into their lower surfaces, scooped out grooves m the subjacent solid strata. The sloping beach, as well as the level bottom of the sea, and even occa¬ sionally the face of a steep cliff, might all be polished and grooved by this machinery; but no flood of water however violent, or however great the quantity of detritus, or size of the rocky fragments swept along by it, could produce straight, parallel furrows, such as are everywhere visible in the district under consideration. Mr John L. Hayes, in an able paper recently published, on the influence of icebergs upon drift, has shown, from a great variety of testimony, that they ave a remarkable steadiness of motion, in con¬ sequence of the larger portion of their bulk bein* deep under water, so that they are not perceptibly moved by the winds and waves, even in the strongest gales. Many had supposed that the magnitude attributed to ice-islands by unscientific navigators ad been exaggerated, but it appears that their esti¬ mate of their dimensions has rather fallen within than beyond the truth. Many of the icebergs, care¬ fully measured by the officers of the French ex- ^n ing i e o? e f i0n ° f the Astr oIabe, were between . °° and 225 fee t high, and from two to five miles m length. Captain D’Urville ascertained one of these ergs, floating in the Southern Oeean, to be thirteen miles long, and a hundred feet high, with walls per- 84 ACTION OP ICEBERGS. Chap. xix. fectly vertical. The submerged portions of such islands must, according to the weight of ice relatively to sea-water, be from six to eight times more con¬ siderable than the part which is visible, so that the mechanical power they may have exerted when fairly set in motion must be prodigious.* To return to the succession of geological changes which immediately preceded the present period in the Niagara district:—Thirdly, after the surface of the rocks had been smoothed and grated upon by the pas¬ sage of innumerable icebergs, the clay, gravel, and sand of the drift were deposited, and occasionally frag¬ ments of rock, both large and small, which has been frozen into glaciers, or taken up by coast ice, were dropped here and there at random over the bottom of the ocean, wherever they happened to be de¬ tached from the melting ice. During this period of submergence, the valleys in the ancient rocks were filled up with drift, with which the whole surface of the country was over-spread. Finally; the period of re-elevation arrived, or of that intermittent upward movement, when the ridges to be described in the next chapter were formed in succession, and, when valleys, like that of St. David’s, which had been filled up, were partially re-excavated. J. L. Hayes, Boston Journ. Nat. Hist., 1S44. Chap. xx . MIRAGE. 85 CHAPTER XX. Mirage on Lake Ontario.—Toronto.—Excursion with Mr. Roy to examine the Parallel Ridges between Lakes Ontario and Simcoe. Correspondence of Level in their Base-lines over wide Areas.—Origin of the Ridges.—Lacustrine Theory.— Hypothesis of Sand-banks formed under Water.—Rapid Progress of the Colony.—British Settlers unable to speak English. June 14, 1842.— From Queenstown we embarked in a fine steamer for Toronto, and had scarcely left the mouth of the river, and entered Lake On¬ tario, when we were surprised at seeing Toronto in the horizon, and the low wooded plain on which the town is built. By the effect of refraction, or “ mi¬ rage,” so common on this lake, the houses and trees were drawn up and lengthened vertically, so that I should have guessed them to be from 200 to 400 feet high, while the gently rising ground behind the town had the appearance of distant mountains. In the ordinary state of the atmosphere none of this land, much less the city, would be visible at this distance, even in the clearest weather. Toronto contains already a population of 18,000 souls. The plain on which it stands has a gentle, and to the eye imperceptible, slope upwards from the lake, and is still covered, for the most part, with a dense forest, which is beginning to give way before the axe of the new settler. I found Mr. Roy, the civil engineer, expecting me, and started with him VOL. II. 9 86 RIDGES NEAR TORONTO. Chap. xx. the morning after my arrival, to examine those ridges of sand and gravel, and those successive terraces, at various heights above the level of Lake Ontario, of which he had given an account in 1837 to the Geo¬ logical Society of London. No small curiosity was excited, when his paper was read, by his endeavour to explain the phenomena, by supposing the former existence of a vast inland sea of fresh water, the barriers of which were broken down one after another until the present chain of lakes alone remained. We started at an early hour from Toronto on horseback, taking a direction due northwards through the forest, and after riding for a mile over what seemed a perfectly level plain, came to the first ridge, the base of which my companion informed me was 108 feet above Lake Ontario. This ridge rose abruptly with a steep slope towards the lake, and was from 20 to 30 feet high. Its base consisted of clay, and its sandy summit, covered with pines, might easily be traced eastward and westward by the dis¬ tinctness of the narrow belt of fir-wood, on each side of which other kinds of timber flourished luxuriantly on the clayey soils. Continuing our ride over the plain we arrived at the second ridge, a mile and a half farther inland, having its base 208 feet above the lake ; this level, and the others afterwards to be mentioned, having been accurately ascertained by Mr. Roy when em¬ ployed professionally in making measurements for several projected canals and railroads. The second ridge is a far more striking object than the first, being from 50 to 70 feet high above the flat and even ground on both sides of it. At its foot were a great Chap. xx. LAKE RIDGES. 87 number of boulders of rocks which, by their com¬ position, can be proved to have come from the north; and some few of which were perched on the summit of the ridge. Such transported fragments are rare on the soil between the ridges. Another ride of two miles and a half, in a northerly direction, brought us to the third ridge, five miles distant from the lake- shore, which was much less conspicuous than the preceding ones ; it was indeed, at the point where we crossed it, little more than a steep slope of ten feet, by which we mounted to a higher terrace. The surface of this terrace was only 80 feet above the base of the second ridge, so that the top of the latter, in those places where it is 70 feet or more in height, is nearly on a level with the bottom of the third ridge, or cliff*. In this manner we went on, passing one l’idge or cliff* after another, sometimes deviating from our course for several miles east and west, that my guide might point out to me the continuity of the ridges, and the uniformity of the level of their base-lines. This uniformity, however, though I have no doubt of its reality, I had no time to test by actual measure¬ ment. On tracing the same ridge for several miles east and west, I occasionally found it to vary greatly in height above the plain, and sometimes to divide into two. One of these sometimes formed a step immediately above the other, and sometimes diverged or branched off* so as to form an upper and parallel ridge at some distance. They were all broken oc¬ casionally by deep narrow gaps, as I had observed in the Osars of Sweden. I saw, on the whole, no less than eleven of these ridges, some of which might be called cliff's, or the 88 ORIGIN OF THE RIDGES Chap, xx abrupt terminations of terraces of clay, which cover everywhere the subjacent Silurian rocks to a great depth, and belong to the drift or boulder formation. The highest ridge is about 680 feet above Lake On¬ tario, the water-shed between that lake and Lake Simcoe being 762 feet high. There is then a descent of 282 feet from that summit level to the shores of Lake Simcoe, which is 42 miles from Lake Ontario. On this northern slope of 282 feet, Mr. Roy has traced several of the higher ridges, at levels precisely cor¬ responding to those which I saw on the southern side. He also assures me that several of the ridges, which exceed in height the level of the table-land between Lakes Ontario and Erie, extend continu¬ ously to the northern shore of Lake Erie; and in another direction agree with ridges on the uplands bounding the valley of the Ottawa river. The identification, however, of horizontal planes at points several hundred miles distant from each other, requires a nicety and exactness of trigono¬ metrical measurement, which cannot as yet have been bestowed on this region ; and when there are so many terraces at levels differing but slightly from each other, and some of them occasionally dividing into two, an upper and a lower shelf, they may easily be confounded at remote points. I shall content myself with stating that, with the exception of the parallel roads or shelves in Glen Roy, and some neighbouring glens of the Western Highlands in Scotland, I never saw so remarkable an example of banks, terraces, and accumulation of stra¬ tified gravel, sand, and clay, maintaining, over wide Chap. xx. NEAR TORONTO. 89 areas, so perfect a horizontality, as in this district north of Toronto. The hypothesis which attributes such appearances to the successive breaking down of the barriers of an ancient lake or ocean of fresh, water, has now been vei T generally abandoned, from the impossibility of conceiving where, in North America, as in the west of Scotland, the lands capable of damming up the waters to such heights could have been situated, or how, if they ever existed, they could have disappear¬ ed, while the levels of the ancient beaches remained undisturbed. In order to dispense with the necessity of barriers, we may assume that the successive ridges and cliffs were formed on the margin of the sea, which changed its level relatively to the land again and again, while a large part of the continent emerged gradually from the waters. In that case, we must imagine the movement of upheaval to have been intermittent, so that there were pauses during which the coast-line remained stationary for cen¬ turies, and when the waves had time to cut cliffs, or throw up beaches, or throw down littoral deposits and sandbanks near the shore. This theory has been objected to on the ground of the great improbability of so vast an amount of ver¬ tical movement having been developed so uniformly °vei aieas several hundred miles in diameter. In some parts of Sweden and Finland, however, there has been a near approach to an uniform upward move¬ ment of two or three feet in a century throughout wide areas within the historical era, and we know far too little of the laws governing subterranean move¬ ments, to entitle us to raise objections, on the ground 90 THEORY OF ORIGIN Chap. ax. that the observed phenomena would imply a regu¬ larity in the process of upheaval, not in harmony with our pre-conceived notions. Between the first and second ridges, north of Toronto, I saw a section 50 feet deep in the argil¬ laceous deposit on which all the ridges rest, or in which cliffs, corresponding in level with some of the ridges, are cut. It consisted of blue clay in hori¬ zontal thin layers, with partings of yellow sand, and at the bottom yellow clay, with some interstratified layers of white clay. I observed no included boulders, but Mr. Roy has seen them at Toronto, where deep excavations were made for the founda¬ tions of buildings. They occurred near the junction of the clay and the subjacent rocks ; and he remarked that the solid rocks, on the removal of the boulder formation, were polished and scored on the surface. I could find no shells either in the clay or in the ridges. I was informed, indeed, that marine shells had been met with in the clay, but, on inquiry, they turned out to be Silurian fossils, washed out of the ancient shales. It will be seen from the above observations, that I consider the ridges and other marks of ancient water- levels, between Toronto and Lake Simcoe, as refer¬ able, some of them to ancient beaches and lines of cliff formed on the margins of channels of the sea; others, including some of the loftiest ridges, as having originated in banks or bars of sand, formed, not at the extreme edge of a body of water, but at some distance from the shore, in proportion as the water obtained a certain shallowness by the upheaval of the land. Chap. xx. OF LAKE RIDGES. 91 It is well known that on many shelving coasts the breakers and tides give rise to banks of sand at no great distance from the beach. I learn from Mr. Whittlesey that a bank of this kind has been formed for several miles along the southern shore of Lake Erie, near Cleveland, the origin of which he attri¬ butes in part to the reflux of the waves from the beach, by which pebbles and sand are swept out from the land. Mr. Mather informs us that the great beach on the south coast of Long Island, in the State of New York, extends for a distance of 104 miles, with a breadth of from 100 to 1000 yards. For 70 miles it is separated from the mainland by a continuous line of bays, which are between half a mile and six miles broad. “ This great beach or bank forms a line of spits and low islands. One of the islands is about 25 miles long, with a breadth of a few hundred yards. They are all narrow and long, and when above the reach of the surf they are covered by a labyrinth of hillocks of drifted sand, imitating almost all the variety of form which snow-drifts present after a storm.”* They consist, he adds, of the ma¬ terials derived from the neighbouring cliffs of Long Island, which are undermined and destroyed by the waves.f Examples of similar banks parallel to the shore are cited by Mr. Darwin, in his work on Coral Reefs (p. 53). Capt. Grey also states that the west coast of Australia, in lat. 24°, is fronted by a sand bar about 200 yards in width, on which there is only two * New York State Report, 1838, p. 130. f Journal of Two Expeditions, &c., vol. i., p. 369. 92 CLEARING OF THE FOREST Chap. xx. feet of water ; but between it and the land the depth increases to two fathoms.* At Bahia Blanca, in Brazil, Mr. Darwin observed a bar running parallel to the coast, on which they landed from the boats at low water, and then waded for a quarter of a mile to the shore. He has de¬ scribed a similar bar at Pernambuco, in Brazil, seve¬ ral leagues in length, in which the sand has been consolidated into a hard stone by calcareous matter. Within these bars currents are often seen to run strongly, caused by the water thrown over them by the waves when the tide is high. These waters run between the bar and the coast, until at length they find some breach in the bar by which they return to the sea. In illustration of the ancient ridges or osars in Roxburghshire, Mr. David Milne, F.G.S., has de¬ scribed many examples of narrow sandbanks now existing off the coast of Britain, some 5, others 30 miles in length, with ten or twelve fathoms water between them and the neighbouring shore.f The existence of such bars near modern shores being ascertained, it follows that, if a coast be gra¬ dually upraised, many of them will be both formed and made to emerge in succession, all preserving the same general parallelism to each other which pre- * Journal of Two Expeditions, &c.,vol. i., p. 369. f See Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinb., vol. xv., p. 484, Jan. 1842. My paper, citing analogous cases, in explanation of similar geological phenomenon, was read at the same time to the Geological Society of London, without our having communicated together on the sub¬ ject. See Abstract in Proceedings Geol. Soc., No. 92, p. 21, Jan. 4 , 1843. Chap. xx. NORTH OF TORONTO. 93 vails in the ridges above the Canadian lakes. It is also clear that there will be swamps and ponds on the inland side of such upraised banks, representing the channels and lagoons which intervened originally between the bars and the mainland. There would also be occasional gaps in the ridges, some corre¬ sponding to original openings, through which the back water escaped, and others cut by torrents after the emergence of the land. According to Mr. Whittlesey, the base lines of several ridges east and west of Cleveland are not strictly horizontal, but inclined five feet, and some¬ times more, in a mile. To account for this difference of level, it has been suggested that the upward move¬ ment of the land on the south side of Lake Erie may have been unequal, some parts being raised higher than others. But it deserves consideration whether the ridges, if some of them were bars or sandbanks, may not occasionally have varied in level from the first, according to the inequalities of the ground and the force of currents. If we adopt the theory above set forth we must still conceive the banks to have become beaches as they emerged, or cliffs partially undermined by the waves, while in some cases they may have been en¬ tirely destroyed, of which I thought I saw indications when tracing the continuity of some ridges near To¬ ronto. In my ride with Mr. Roy through the forest we went about twenty miles due north of Toronto, be¬ sides making many detours. A more active scene of the progress of a new colony could scarcely be witnessed. We often came upon a party of survey- 94 IGNORANCE OF NEW SETTLERS. Chap. xx. ors, or pioneers, tracing out a new line of road with the trunks of tall trees felled on every side, over which we had to leap our horses. Then we made a circuit to get to windward of some large stumps which were on fire, or, if we could find no pathway, hurried our steeds through the smoke, half suffocated and oppressed with the heat of the burning timber and a sultry sun. Sometimes we emerged suddenly into a wide clearing, where not a single clump of trees had been spai'ed by the impatient and improvi¬ dent farmer. All were burnt, not even a shrub re¬ maining for the cattle and sheep, which, for want of a better retreat, were gasping under the imperfect shade of a wooden paling, called in America a Vir¬ ginia, or snake fence. The appearance of the country had been so en¬ tirely altered since Mr. Roy surveyed the ground two years before, and marked out the boundaries of the new settlements, that he lost his way while ex¬ plaining to me the geology of “ the ridges; ” and after we had been on horseback for twelve hours we wandered about in a bright moonlight, unable to find the tavern where we hoped to pass the night. In the darker shade of the forest I saw many fire-flies; and my attention was kept alive, hrspite of fatigue, by stories of men and horses swallowed up in some of the morasses which we crossed. I shall always, in future, regard a corduroy road with respect, as marking a great step in the march of civilisation; for greatly were we rejoiced when we discovered in the moonlight the exact part of a bog, over which a safe bridge of this kind had been laid down. At length we reached a log-house, and thought our Chap. xx. IGNORANCE OP NEW SETTLERS. 95 troubles at an end. But the inmates, though eager to serve us, could not comprehend a syllable of our language. I tried English, French, and German, all in vain. Tired and disappointed, we walked to an¬ other log-house, a mile farther on, leading our weary horses, and then to others, but with no better suc¬ cess. Though not among Indians, we were as foreigners in a strange land. At last we stumbled, by good luck, upon our inn, and the next day were told that the poor settlers with whom we had fallen in the night before had all come from the British Isles in the course of the five preceding years. Some of them could speak Gaelic, others Welsh, and others Irish; and the farmers were most eloquent in des¬ canting on their misfortune in having no alternative but that of employing labourers with whom they were unable to communicate, or remaining in want of hands while so many were out of work, and in great distress. For the first time I became fully aware how much the success and progress of a new colony depends on the state of schools in the mother country. 96 KINGSTON.-MONTREAL. Chap. xxi. CHAPTER XXI. Kingston—Montreal.—French Population and Language.— Quebec.— Soldiers.—Deserters—Three Rivers.—Scotch Emi¬ grants.—Distinctness of French and British Canadians. Large Military Foree.—American Sympathizers.—Geological Survey.—Analogy in Structure of Canada and Scandinavia. —Section at Falls of Montmorency.— Unconformable position of lowest Fossiliferous Sandstone to Gneiss .— Supposed Mon¬ ument of the Commencement of the Organic World.—To what extent the Granitic Rocks are Primary.—Difficulty of establishing the Date of Met amorphic Action.—Two sources of popular error respecting the more abundant production of Hypo gene Rocks at Remote Periods. June 18 th .— An excellent mail steam-packet carried us along the northern coast of Lake Ontario, from Toronto to Kingston, from whence I made a geo¬ logical excursion to Gannanoquoi. From Kingston we then descended the St. Lawrence to Montreal. The scenery of the Thousand Islands and of the ra¬ pids of the St. Lawrence owe much of their beauty to the clearness of the waters, which are almost as green, and their foam as white, as at the Falls of Niagara. On approaching Montreal we seemed to be en¬ tering a French province. The language and cos¬ tume of the peasants and of the old beggars, the priests with their breviaries, the large crosses on the public roads, with the symbols of the Crucifixion, the architecture of the houses, with their steep roofs, large casement windows, and, lastly, the great Catholic cathedral rising in state, with its two lofty towers, carried back our thoughts to Normandy and Brittany, Chap. xxi. FRENCH CANADIANS. 97 where we spent the corresponding season of last year. The French spoken in those provinces of the mother country is often far less correct, and less easy to follow, than that of the Canadians, whose manners are very prepossessing, much softer and more polite than those of their Anglo-Saxon fellow- countrymen, however superior the latter may be in energy and capability of advancement. I was informed by a physician at Montreal that the English language has made great progress there within his recollection; and all agree that it would soon become still more general if the seat of govern¬ ment were transferred to that city,—a measure since realized, but which was then only beginning to be dis¬ cussed (1842), and was exciting no small effervescence of party feeling. I was assured by many that it was the only step towards anglicising Lower Canada that would be popular with the French party. The country round Kingston must always be compara¬ tively barren, as much of the soil consists of granite and granitic detritus; and it could never become a large metropolis, such as Toronto might be made, or such as Montreal is even now. Quebec, with its citadel and fortifications crowning the precipitous heights which overhang the St. Law° i ence, and where the deep and broad river is enlivened with a variety of shipping, struck us as the most picturesque city we had seen since we landed in America. We were glad to meet with some old fiiends among the officers of the garrison, who ac¬ companied us to the Falls of Montmorency, and other places in the neighbourhood. Their task in main¬ taining strict discipline in their corps, in preventing VOL. II. 10 s 98 THREE RIVERS. Chap. xxi. the desertion of soldiers, and keeping the peace along the frontier, has been more irksome than in quelling the rebellion. Those soldiers who have deserted to the States are said rarely to make good and thriving settlers ; for they have been turned into such mere machines, into such creatures of routine, so exclusively trained for excellence in one art, that they want re¬ sources, and are singularly deficient in a virtue termed by the Americans “ shiftiness,” or the power of turn¬ ing one’s hand to anything and everything, for which the well-educated New-England coloniser is celebrated. On our way back from Quebec to Montreal, I stopped at Three Rivers to make a geological ex¬ cursion to the Falls of Maskinonge, about ten miles northward of the St. Lawrence. In the woods, near the beautiful waterfall, where the river forces its way through a narrow cleft in the gneissose rocks, I lost my way, and was attacked by myriads of mosquitos—■ the only occasion, owing to the unusual coolness of the season, on which I was annoyed by these enemies, so much dreaded here by the lovers of angling. When standing on the wharf at Three Rivers, I conversed with the proprietor of a large estate in the Eastern townships, who complained to me that while crowds were passing up the river every week to re¬ mote districts, and sometimes returning disappointed, and even occasionally re-crossing the Atlantic, he and other farmers were unable to get hands. While he was speaking, a large steamer, with several hundred Scotch emigrants from Ayrshire, came alongside the wharf. They were only to tarty there one hour to take in wood for the engines. My companion Chap. xxi. FRENCH CANADIANS. 99 went on board, eagerly endeavouring to bribe some of the new-comers to settle on bis farm, but all in vain. They said they had cousins and friends in “ Upper Canada,” and were all resolved to go there. I could not help sympathizing with him in his disappoint¬ ment, and the more so, as I had seen at Toronto large bands of Irish and Welsh peasants in a state of desti¬ tution for want of work; and in spite of the liberality of the citizens, several gangs of them, while we were there, committed robberies in the neighbourhood. It appears that during the late troubles in Canada the tide of immigration was almost entirely stopped for several years ; now it is setting in more strongly than ever: but as they come from all parts of the British Isles, it is scarcely possible, unless the whole system of colonising were under government regulation, and conducted on arbitrary principles, to adjust the supply of labour to the various and ever-fluctuating local demands. When passing in a carriage over the rich allu¬ vial grounds on the left bank of the St. Lawrence, I expostulated with some of the English proprietors on the intolerable condition of the muddy roads. I reminded them that all this part of Canada was a cleared and cultivated country, when half the United States was still a wilderness. They replied, that the French farmers, to whom most of the land belonged, lefused to pay taxes for bettering the roads, contend¬ ing that it was preferable to spend more time on the way, and to wear out their horses and vehicles somewhat faster, than to pay down money to a tax- gatherer. The anecdotes told us by the British settlers, of 100 ARMY IN CANADA. Chap. xxi. the superstitious horror of the old Canadians at the new inventions and innovations of the Anglo-Ameii- cans, were very amusing. The river craft of the Ca¬ nadian “ voyageurs” was so unrivalled in its way that we may pardon them for beholding the first steameis with jealousy. One of them is said to have exclaimed, as he saw them ascending the St. Lawrence, “ Mais croyez-vous que le bon Dieu permettra tout cela?” During this tour I often thought of the old story of the American, who said that “ if the United States ever got possession of Canada, they would soon im¬ prove the French off the face of the earth. The French party speak of the late Lord Sydenham as if they really believed him capable of conceiving and executing such a project. On the other hand, not a few of the English settlers, while they praised his zeal and habits of business, and devotedness to the interests of Canada, took pains to persuade me that if his measures were enlightened, his means ot carry¬ ing them through the legislature were equally un¬ scrupulous. One of his admirers, deeply imbued with the spirit of his policy, is said to have declared, “ We shall never make anything of Canada until we anglicize and protestantize it;” to which a French seigneur rejoined with bitterness, “ Had you not bet¬ ter finish Ireland first V’ Some of the American travellers whom we met here were extremely entertained with the militaiy display of the large army now quartered in this province, the reviews, the bands of music, the trains of bag- gage-wagons, which they occasionally met on the roads, the barracks of infantry and cavalry, the new fortifications of Kingston, and the old ones of Quebec. Chap. xxi. MILITARY FORCE IN CANADA. 101 All this warlike parade, after a sojourn of nine months in the United States, appeared almost as great a novelty to us as to them ; but the resemblance of the colony to a garrison afforded me no pleasure. It was a per¬ petual remembrance of the late troubles, and of that former mismanagement of which a civil war, however unjustifiable, affords ample proof. It reminded me also of the difficulties with which the wisest and best- intentioned government will have to contend, whose task it is to fuse into one harmonious whole two populations so dissimilar in origin and language as the French and British, and all whose ideas on social, political, and religious subjects, are so discordant. It recalled, moreover, to mind the unwarrantable conduct of those turbulent borderers, the American “ sympathizers,” who poured in by thousands to aid the insurgents, and whose intervention alone rendered the rebellion formidable for a time. Great indignation was expressed to me by many Canadians, that these citizens should have been allowed with impunity, by the governor of New York, to take cannon out of a public arsenal, and invade a friendly territory in time of peace. “ Non cogente quidem sed nec prohibente tribuno.” Some New Yorkers, on the other hand, while they freely condemned the sympathizers, and said they had rejoiced in their defeat, defended their governor, saying it was impossible for him to have foreseen and provided against so sudden a move¬ ment along so extensive a frontier; that neither he nor the federal government had troops enough at their command to act as a sufficient police ; and 10 * 102 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Chap. XXI. that it was too much to expect of them to maintain, permanently, a large standing army for the sake of being prepared for such rare emergencies. That the whole of the British force now kept up in this colony is absolutely needed, I venture not to doubt; but they who refuse to hope for its speedy reduction, appear to me to libel by anticipation our future colonial policy. I listened with no small impatience to the wishes expressed by some residents, that this full war establishment should be permanent, and to their discussions on the desirableness of new fortifications, to be executed at great cost by Eng¬ land, and of fleets of war-steamers to be built on the lakes, in order that they might at all times be ready for an outbreak with the United States. The population of the British possessions in America, in 1842, amounted in round numbers to one million and a half. Lower Canada - - 690,000 Upper Canada - - 526,000 New Brunswick - - 156,000 Nova Scotia - - 180,000 1,552,000 The annual growth of the population of the United States, with which their wealth and territory keep pace, exceeds at present 700,000 souls, so that every two years’ increase is about equal to the number of all the present inhabitants of British America. The mere contemplation of these figures s Chap. XXI. RESEMBLANCE OF CANADIAN 108 would seem to me enough to convince a reasonable man, that Canada must owe her security from external aggression, not to local armaments and provincial demonstrations, but to the resources oi the whole British empire. A surplus revenue at home, or the remission of taxes which press heavily on in¬ dustry and commerce, and economy in administering our colonial affairs in times of peace, are the true means of fortifying the Canadian frontier. The legislature of Canada have lately voted a sum of money for a geological survey of the province, which has been placed under the direction of Mr. Logan, from whose labours we may soon expect an accurate map, with a description of the rocks and their organic remains, and a comparison of them with the equivalent formations in the United States. My own observations were confined to the valley of the St. Lawrence and its environs, where I was struck with the remarkable analogy between the structure of this part of North America and those portions of Scandinavia which I visited in 1834 and 1836. I seemed to have got back to Norway and Sweden, where, as in Canada, gneiss and mica schist, and occasionally granite, prevail over wide areas, while the fossiliferous rocks belong either to the most ancient or the very newest strata, to the Silurian rocks, or to deposits so modern as to contain exclusively shells of recent species. In both countries, we pass over enormous spaces, without beholding any formations of an intermediate age. In both, large erratics, or far-transported fragments of rock, have been carried from north to south, while the surfaces of solid rocks, covered at 104 AND SCANDINAVIAN GEOLOGY. Chap. xxi. various heights by gravel, sand, and clay, have been smoothed and furrowed. There are large parts of Scandinavia, where the Silurian strata have not been invaded by trappean rocks, whether felspathic or basaltic. There are others, where these igneous materials have intruded themselves, both in the form of dykes and over- lying masses, as in Sweden, at Ivinnekulle near Lake Wener, and in Norway near Christiania. The same geological condition of things recurs in Canada, the mountain of Montreal affording a good example of slightly disturbed Silurian limestone full of shells and corals, with a capping of basalt or greenstone about eighty feet thick, which terminates abruptly towards the river, giving a picturesque outline to the hill. (See fig. 13., p. 117.) Numerous dykes or veins of trap, both felspathic and augitic, are seen penetrating the limestone, and some of them sending ramifications through it. One of the felspathic dykes (d, fig. 13), consisting of claystone-porphyry, was well exposed to view by new excavations near M-Gill’s College, at the time of my visit. The limestone of this mountain, and of other districts in the valley of the St. Lawrence and the adjoining country, agrees in its fossils with the Trenton limestone of New York. (No. 15 of map PI. II.) The same is seen at the Falls of Mont- morenci, where it rests on the ancient sandstone (No. 15), called the Potsdam sandstone, the lowest of more than twenty fossiliferous formations older than the coal, which are recognized in the classifica¬ tion of the New York surveyors. The upper part of this sandstone, at the falls above mentioned, is re- Chap. xxi. ROCKS OF MONTMORENCX. 105 markable for containing boulders of enormous size, the largest I ever remember to have seen in any ancient stratified rock. I measured some of them which were eight feet long, but they may have been derived originally from the destruction of rocks in the immediate neighbourhood, as they consist of the same gneiss as that on which they rest, and therefore cannot be said, like certain modern erratics in Canada, to point to glacial action, or to imply that large blocks were transported by icebergs at a very remote period. The strata of black slate, commonly called grey- wacke in Canada, which appear in a highly inclined position immediately below the Falls of Mont- morenci, have, no doubt, been correctly referred, by Professor Emmons, to the slate of the Hudson river series. (No. 14 . of map PI. II.) In consequence of a derangement or fault in the strata, they appear, on a cursory view, to belong to an older formation than the less disturbed limestone and sandstone before mentioned. This fault is so extensive, that it has misled many of the earlier explorers of the valley of the St. Lawrence, who naturally concluded that the inclined greywacke was more ancient than the hori¬ zontal limestone of the same district, whereas it oc¬ cupies in fact a higher place in the series. The termination downwards of the most ancient fossiliferous rocks of Canada in a stratified quartzose sandstone with few fossils affords another point of analogy between the geology of Scandinavia and North America. An additional one is supplied by the unconformable superposition in both hemispheres of the inferior sandstone to gneiss. I saw a junc- 106 LOWEST OR POTSDAM SANDSTONE. Chap. XXI. tion of this kind at Kinnekulle in Sweden, and in the U. S. at Little Falls on the Mohawk ; and afterwards on the western borders of Lake Cham¬ plain in the U. S. At Little Falls, however, the ancient strata, which rest upon gneiss, do not belong precisely to the same part of this lower member of the Silurian series as those at Montmorenci, but to the beds next above the Potsdam ; namely, those called the calciferous sandrock by the New York surveyors. This circumstance should serve as a warning against the hasty assumption that in any of these sections we have positively arrived at the lowest stratum con¬ taining organic remains in the crust of the earth, or have discovered the relics of the first living beings which were imbedded in sediment. When reasoning on this subject, we must not for¬ get that the oldest formations are those which must have sifffered the greatest loss by aqueous denuda¬ tion, and which have been most extensively altered by plutonic action. We must also remember how small a part of the earth’s crust is accessible to hu¬ man observation, three-fourths of the surface of the globe being submerged beneath the ocean, and a fraction only of the remaining portion having been as yet carefully investigated by geologists. Nor must we overlook the large spaces occupied by form¬ ations newer than the Silurian, which may conceal from our view fossiliferous strata older than any yet brought to light. As it is still a favourite theory of many geologists, that the granite and other formations, both stratified and unstratified, which I have called hypogene, were produced in far greater abundance before the origin Chap, xxi, OLDEST KNOWN STRATA. 107 of the oldest strata at present known to contain fos¬ sils than at any subsequent period; and as some are disposed to consider their conclusions on this head much strengthened by the fact that, in North Ame- , rica, as in Europe, there are certain points where granite, mica schist, and gneiss, can he shown to be of prior date to any of the fossiliferous rocks hitherto detected ; I shall briefly refer to the leading argu¬ ments against this doctrine, which I have advanced both in my “Principles” and “Elements of Geo¬ logy” ' The crystalline formations, such as granite and gneiss, were termed primitive and primary by some of the earlier observers, because in each district they are the lowest in geological position. It is now un¬ derstood, in regard to granite, syenite, and the un¬ stratified class, that they are of various ages, often newer than fossiliferous strata, and that it by no means follows that they were first in the order of time, because they are inferior in position. Paradox¬ ical as the first statement of this proposition appears, it is now acknowledged, that the superstructure is often older than the foundation on which it rests, the latter having been forced up subsequently from be¬ low either in a solid form, or, more frequently, like lava in a volcano. It is also now admitted, in direct contradiction to all preconceived opinions, that many stratified hypogene formations, the gneiss, mica schist, talcose schist, and saccharine marble of the Alps, Apnenines, and other districts, have assumed their crystalline texture after the origin of many of the fossiliferous strata, even in some cases long after 108 OLDEST KNOWN STRATA. Chap. xxi. the deposition of those which l'epose directly upon them. Nevertheless, if we confine the term primary to all rocks which we can prove to be of older date than strata in which organic remains have yet been discovered, we may affirm that the gneiss of Kinne- kulle in Sweden before alluded to, or of the Falls of Montmorenci, and many of the unstratified or Plu¬ tonic rocks of the Adirondack Mountains, west of Lake Champlain, are truly primary. We may also extend the same appellation, without much liability of error, to all the crystalline rocks found for a con¬ siderable space on every side of the points where the lowest strata charged with fossils are incumbent upon the non-fossiliferous formations. But the farther we go from such points of departure, the more unsafe does our generalization become; and the American geologists have already found reason to retract their first conclusion, that the gneissose, micaceous, and talcose schists, of the Taconic range (see above, p. 245, Vol. I.), are referable to a primary series. The posteriority of age of many masses of granite and other Plutonic rocks is more easily proved than the modern origin of the stratified hypogene forma¬ tions, because the former produce alterations of mo¬ derate extent, at the point of contact, or send veins into the newer fossiliferous strata. But where these strata have been altered on a great scale in texture, by heat and other subterranean causes, the evidence of transmutation is difficult to detect' in proportion to the intensity of the metamorphic action. The study of the Alps and Appenines has shown that it is cha¬ racteristic of such action to annihilate all signs of the Chap. xxt. HOW FAR PRIMITIVE. 109 date of its development, by the obliteration through¬ out entire mountain masses of all traces of organic structure. We are therefore entitled, on every prin¬ ciple of sound reasoning, to suspect, that for one case where we can positively establish the secondary ori¬ gin of any set of crystalline strata, there are many others where the proofs of their modern origin have been destroyed. A geologist whose observations had been confined to Switzerland might imagine that the coal measures were the most ancient of the fossiliferous series. When he extended his investigations to Scotland, he might modify his views so far as to suppose that the Old Red sandstone marked the beginning of the rocks charged with organic remains. He might, indeed, after a search of many years, admit that here and there some few and faint traces of fossils had been found, in still older slates, in Scotland ; but he might naturally conclude that all pre-existing fossiliferous formations must be very insignificant, since no peb¬ bles containing organic remains have yet been de¬ tected in the conglomerates of the Old Red sand¬ stone. Great would be the surprise of such a theo¬ rist, when he learnt that in other parts of Europe, and still more remarkably in North America, a great suc¬ cession of antecedent sets of strata had been disco¬ vered, capable, according to some of the ablest paleontologists, of constituting no less than three independent groups, which are each of them as im¬ portant as the “ Old Red” or Devonian system, and as distinguishable from each other by their organic remains. Yet it would be consistent with methods of generalizing not uncommon on such subjects, if he VOL. II. 11 110 OLDEST, KNOWN STRATA. Chap. xxi. still took for granted that in the lowest of these “ Transition” or Silurian rocks, he had at length ar¬ rived at the much-wished-for termination of the fos- siliferous series, and that nature had begun her work precisely at the point where his retrospect happened then to terminate. It may be useful to inquire, whence arises this strong tendency to believe that the present limits of human knowledge in geological science exactly em¬ brace that period of past time in which organic beings have flourished on the earth. If it be a very com¬ mon delusion, there must be some cause for its popu¬ larity. Its source is, I believe, twofold; first, it is almost unavoidable that we should under-rate the magnitude of the subterranean changes now in pro- gress at great depths in the earth’s crust; and, secondly, that we should equally exaggerate the amount of those which took place far below the sur¬ face at former eras, especially those most remote from our times. In regard to the first of these sources of error, we have of late years grown familiar with the proofs of great subsidence and upheaval of land in modern times, without sufficiently reflecting on the enormous alterations in the condition, and probably the struc¬ ture, of the subjacent parts of the earth’s crust, which are implied by these movements. The connection of such rising and sinking of the solid parts of the globe with volcanic action can be demonstrated in many places, and fairly inferred in others, where the action of subterranean heat, owing to its great depth, is latent. I Have endeavoured elsewhere to explain the grounds which we have for inferring that crystal- Chap. xxi. HOW FAR PRIMITIVE. Ill line formations have been elaborated at many suc¬ cessive periods, both secondary, tertiary, and still more modern. We need go no farther, indeed, than the valley of the St. Lawrence, now under consider¬ ation, to find wide areas covered with marine shells of recent species, at the height of 500 feet above the sea, and where all the rocks can be shown, both to have sunk and to have been again uplifted bodily, for a height and depth of many hundred feet, since the deposition of these shells. But however firmly we may be convinced that subterranean causes, connected with the develop¬ ment of internal heat, have operated with great, and perhaps nearly uniform intensity, at each successive geological period of equal duration, we must still be prepared to find that by far the largest portions of the visible hypogene rocks are of high relative antiquity to the fossiliferous deposits. This must happen, if we are correct in assuming that the crystalline rocks, whether stratified or unstratified, have been formed originally at considerable depths in the crust of the earth. For in that case, a long period of time must have elapsed after their origin before they can have been brought up within the sphere of human obser¬ vation. There must have been great upheaval and denudation to cause them to emerge, even in a single district ; but it must require a series of geological epochs before those formed at a given era of the past can have become generally exposed at the surface. A repetition of one series of elevatory movements after another must have taken place in different areas, accompanied by denudation ; and while such forces are acting, the deposition of new strata is going on. 112 PRIMITIVE FORMATIONS. Chap. xxi. and the pre-existing crystalline rocks are becoming relatively more and more ancient. What was before said of the succession of ages re¬ quired to raise deep-sea formations extensively to the surface (see p. 47) is equally applicable to rocks of deep subterranean origin. Hence it follows that the high relative antiquity of the visible crystalline rocks affords no better a presumption in favour of a period when nothing but granite and gneiss were formed, than the pelagic character of the visible Silurian strata and the absence of contemporaneous littoral deposits, imply the universality of the ancient ocean. Chap, xxii GLACIAL. FURROWS. 113 CHAPTER XXII. Glacial Furrows in the Valley of the St. Lawrence.—Action of packed Ice in the Canadian Rivers.—Boulder Formation with and without Shells. — Gannanoqui.—Mountain of Montreal .— . Recent Shells in Drift more than 500 Feet above the Sea .— Lake St. Peter.—Falls of Maskinonge.—Deposit of Shells at Beauport near Quebec.—Agreement with Swedish Fossils .— Shells in Boulder Formation of Lake Champlain. — Burling¬ ton, Vermont.—Fossils of Drift imply a colder Climate. Scenery of Lake Champlain .— Organic Remains of lowest Silurian Sandstone. — Lingula .— Vermont Mountains. Inns and Boarding Houses.—Return to Boston. [ had frequent opportunities in the valley of the St. Lawrence, especially at Kingston, and in the country between that city and Gannanoqui, of examining the recently bared surface of the fundamental rocks, con¬ sisting of, first, granite ; 2dly, quartzose (or Potsdam) sandstone ; 3dly, lower Silurian (or Trenton) lime¬ stone. Wherever the drift or superficial clay and gravel have been removed, the surfaces of these rocks are worn, smoothed, and furrowed, the furrows being least clearly defined on the sandstone. The direction of all the straight and parallel grooves was nearly N. E. and S. W., differing uniformly in their general course from those traced by Professor Hitchcock and Mr. Percival through New England, where they run usually from N. N. W. to S. S. E. It is worthy of notice, that in both regions the erratic blocks and boulders have been transported south¬ wards, along the same lines as are marked out by 11 * 114 GLACIAL FURROWS. Chap. xxii. the direction of the furrows. There is obviously, therefore, a connection between these two distinct classes of phenomena ; and I know of no theory that can account for both of them, with any plausibility, except that already alluded to in the last chapter, viz., the agency of large islands of floating ice, which, by their buoyancy and enormous weight, supply the carrying power and pressure required to scratch, polish, and groove the solid floor of the ocean, and to convey stones of all sizes, firmly fixed and frozen into the ice, to great distances. As large masses of ice are annually accumulated in the rivers of Lower Canada, and when they break up in spring ai’e often the means of conveying from place to place, huge fragments of rock, I hoped to discover indications, not only of the polishing, but also of the grooving of the surface, at those points where the packed ice is forced every year over the bottoms of the Canadian rivers. Accordingly, at Quebec, I went with Colonel Codrington, and search¬ ed carefully below the city in the channel of the St. Lawrence, at low water near the shore, for the signs of glacial action, at the precise point where the chief pressure and friction of packed ice are exerted every year. But the edges of the worn greywacke slates, in the channel there, are scarcely any of them hard enough to receive or retain such markings, and if they were so, the weight of the ice would probably be insufficient. At the bridge above the Falls, at Montmorenci, over which a large quantity of ice passes every year, the gneiss is polished, and kept perfectly free from lichens, but not more so than rocks similarly situated at waterfalls in Scotland. In none Chap. xxii. AT KINGSTON AND QUEBEC. 115 of these places were any long straight grooves ob¬ servable, and I feel persuaded that any degree of freedom of motion in the rocky fragments forced along by small pieces of ice, or by a flood of water, would be quite incompatible with the mechanical effects exhibited in what are called glacial furrows. I have stated that, between Kingston and Quebec, the quartzose sandstone retains the grooving much less distinctly than the limestone or granite. The largest area over which I observed the furrows to preserve a perfect parallelism, was a floor of lime¬ stone forty yards wide, from which clay had recently been removed. It was situated about six miles west of Gannanoqui. I saw the surfaces of smoothed granite on the Rideau Canal, six miles north of Kingston, swelling into those flattened dome-shaped forms called “ roches moutonnees,” so common in Sweden, and near the glaciers in Switzerland. Although in this part of Canada the boulders are usually uppermost, yet at some points, near Gannan¬ oqui, and elsewhere, they have been found, in sink¬ ing wells, to lie thirty feet deep in the clay and sand. The St. Lawrence, in its course from Lake Onta¬ rio to Montreal, a distance of about 160 miles in a direct line, has a wide extent of low ground on both sides of it. The river falls in that distance 214 feet, descending by a succession of rapids, between which are lake-like expansions. At the rapids, the Transi¬ tion limestone, or sandstone, or the intrusive trap, or subjacent gneiss, are exposed, but the valley is for the most part occupied by the boulder formation, the thickness of which, at the Belouse rapid, and at 116 VALLEY OP ST. LAWRENCE. Chap. xxii. Cornwall, varies from twenty to forty feet. At Co- teau du Lac, “ the Cascades,” and St. Ignatius, it constitutes a broad terrace, 80 to 100 feet above the St. Lawrence, and the small streams which drain the terrace have cut deep gulleys or valleys through the clay. This drift, or deposit of clay, sand, and gravel, is more usually stratified than that associated with large boulders in Scotland. It is generally destitute of organic remains, but in a few places contains them in abundance. In order to show the identity of the fossiliferous and non-fossiliferous portions of this formation, it will be necessary to enter into some details, which may not be without interest to the geologist who considers in how much obscurity all phenomena bearing on the glacial period is still in¬ volved. Travelling from the south-west, I found no shells in the drift till I reached Montreal, which stands at the base of a mountain rising abruptly from a broad plain where the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa meet. This mountain, which is 740 feet high above the St. Lawrence, terminates in two summits, one considerably higher than the other, and capped, as before stated, with a mass of greenstone about eighty feet thick. The subjacent beds of Silurian limestone are traversed by dykes and veins of trap. At the base of the hill, on its eastern side, in the suburbs of Montreal, we find clay and sand (d, e, fig. 13) above 100 feet deep, in which marine shells occur. This deposit forms a terrace which ends abruptly in the steep bank (e) facing the river-plain, and running parallel to it for three or four miles. MOUNTAIN OF MONTREAL. in Chap. xxii. 117 It varies in height from 50 to 150 feet, and at its base is a low flat of more modern gravel (/"), lising from ten to twenty feet above the St. Lawrence. In certain places, as at the Cote St. Pierre, on the road from Montreal to Lachine, the surface of the ten ace slopes from e to d, or towards the mountain. A good section of this modern deposit was to be seen at the Tanneries, a village in the parish of St. Henii in the Fig. 13. Section of Montreal mountain, with shelly drift at its base. A. Silurian limestone. B. Trap or greenstone. r c. Dykes of basaltic trap. d. Dyke of felspathic trap, or claystone-porphyry. d. e. Terrace of drift with shells. /. Gravel, on which part of Montreal stands. g . River St. Lawrence. suburbs of Montreal, at the time of my visit (June, 1842). Excavations had recently been made for a new road, exposing horizontal beds of loam and marly clay, in one of which, at the height of about sixty feet above the St. Lawrence, I observed great numbers of the Mytilus edulis, or our common Euio- pean mussel, the shells retaining both valves and their purple colour. In the same beds were speci¬ mens of Tellina grcenlandica, and a few of Saxicava 118 HEIGHT OF SHELLY DRIFT Chap, xxix. rugosa. In the midst of the shells, I found a single isolated boulder of gneiss, six inches in diameter. The My til us, although so abundant in this bed, is by no means of common occurrence in the drift of Lower Canada. The colour of the layers containing the Mytilus reminded me of those purple marls which I had seen in the boulder formation of Sweden, pro¬ duced by the decomposition of countless numbers of these same shells.* At the Cote St. Pierre, near the house of Mr. Brodie, fortv feet above the section in the road last mentioned, and about ninety feet above the river, gravelly beds appeared, in which the Tellina grcen- landica and Mya arenaria were abundant, retaining both valves ; they were also accompanied by Saxi- cava rugosa. The shelf {d, e) containing these remains is intersected here and there by deep narrow gullies, one of which terminates at the Tanneries. In the channels of the small streams draining these gullies I found fossil shells, washed out of the clay and sand, among which were a new species of Astarte ( A. Laurentiana ), Saxicava rugosa, and Tellina groen- landica, yet nowhere could I see a single shell in situ. At some points, the upper beds of sand and gravel, at the same level as the shelly beds with Mytilus, before alluded to, become very coarse, and contain boulders of gneiss and syenite three feet in diameter, showing the inseparable connection between the fossils and the ordinary boulder formation of Canada. As I could find no organic remains at any points higher than the terrace d, e,fig. 13 , or none that were * Phil. Trans. 1835, p. 7. Chap. xxii. IN MOUNTAIN OF MONTREAL. 119 elevated 200 feet above the river, I might have gone away with the notion that the fossiliferous drift was confined to a comparatively low level, if Mr. Logan had not informed me the year before that Mr. M‘Cord had been fortunate enough to meet with a small patch of gravel full of sea-shells at the height of more that 500 feet in the hollow between the two eminences which form the Montreal mountain. I was conducted by Dr. Holmes to this place, called the Cote de Neige, and found there a bed of gravel six feet thick, con¬ taining numerous valves of recent species, Saxicava rugosa. and Tellina grosnlandica. The deposit was covered by an unstratified mass of boulders and gravel twelve feet thick, which would have entirely con¬ cealed the shelly beds, had not the gravel been lately dug for road-making. Mr. M'Cord estimated, from barometrical measure¬ ments, the height of these shells above the St. Law¬ rence, at Montreal, at 429 feet, which would give them an elevation above the sea of about 450 feet; but the same series of barometrical observations gave only 668 feet for the summit of Montreal mountain above the river, whereas Capt. Bayfield determined, by the mean of three trigonometrical measurements, the true height to be 760 feet, or 92 feet more. I am in¬ clined, therefore, to believe that the shells are 520 feet above the river, or 540 feet above the sea, which gives an elevation of 306 feet above Lake Ontario, and places them nearly on a level with Lake Erie, which is 565 feet above the sea. N Even if we adopt the lower estimate of Mr. M‘Cord, and suppose the shells to be only 450 feet above the sea, they would be within 55 feet of the summit of the Falls of Nia- 120 drift of maskinonge. Chap. xxii. p-ara, and more than 200 feet above Ontario, between which lake and the mountain of Montreal there is an open and uninterrupted valley. After this discovery of marine shells ot living species, at so great an elevation in the drift of Canada, we must either conclude that the boulder for¬ mation of the Niagara district was deposited m the same sea, or abandon all idea of any approach to uniformity in the last series of upward movements, which raised the great lake district to its present Between Montreal and Quebec, a distance of about 140 miles, in a straight line, I found the older rocks covered with a stratified drift similar to that already described, the lower beds usually consisting of lami¬ nated clay, and the upper of sand ; but this arrange¬ ment is not constant. Boulders are for the most part sparingly interspersed, and often only seen on the surface. As I know that Capt. Bayfield had met with marine shells in abundance, in the drift at several points between Quebec and Montreal, I inquired everywhere for fossils in the intervening country, but neither at Sorel, nor between Berthier and Maskinonge, nor on the shores of Lake St. I eter, could I see or hear of any. At Lake St. Peter, the St. Lawrence expands into a lake, bounded by a low alluvial flat, which is sometimes several miles broad. This flat is m its turn bounded by a steep bank of sandy drift forty feet high, in which I could find no shells. Ascend¬ ing it to a higher level, I went for nine miles over a sloping terrace of drift to the base of tiff mountains of gneiss, where the Falls of Maskinonge are situ- Chap. xxii. MARINE SHELLS IN DRIFT. 121 ated. On the way, I examined the clay and yellow sand of St. Ursule, and other places, but was unable to detect a single shell. At the falls, at a height of more than 300 feet above the St. Lawrence, the gneiss makes its appearance in rounded domes (roches moutonndes). Higher up, or more than 400 feet above the St. Lawrence, the same gneiss is again covered deeply with stratified yellow sand, similar to that of the lower grounds. Although, during my short stay, I was equally unsuccessful in detecting any marine shells at Three Rivers, they have been met with in the neighbour¬ hood, and at Port Neuf, and on the banks of the Jacques Cartier river, twelve miles above its junction with the St. Lawrence, about thirty miles above Quebec. My friend Col. Codrington observed there a fine section of drift, laid open by a landslip in May, 1842. At the top of the cliff was sand about thirty feet thick, and below blue clay, with shells of Tellina calcarea, T. grasnlandica, and Astarte Laurentiana. I shall next describe the drift with shells in the im¬ mediate neighbourhood of Quebec, respecting which my curiosity had been excited as early as the winter of 1835, when Capt. Bayfield, then engaged in a tri¬ gonometrical survey of Canada, sent me a collection of marine fossil shells. In his letter, he described them as occurring in very modern strata, bordering the St. Lawrence, at a village called Beauport. When they arrived in London, Dr. Beck of Copen¬ hagen, an eminent conchologist, happened to be with me ; and great was our surprise, on opening the box, to find that nearly all the shells agreed specifically with fossils which, in the summer of the preceding VOL. II. 12 122 MARINE SHELLS IN DRIFT Chap. xxii. years, I had obtained at Uddevalla in Sweden, and figured in my paper “ On the Rise of Land,” &c., in the Phil. Trans, for 1835. Among the species most abundant in these remote regions (Scandinavia and Canada), were Saxicava rugosa. My a truncata, M. arenaria, Tellina calcarea, T. grasnlandica, Natica clausa, and Balanus Uddevallensis. All of them are species now living in the northern seas and whereas I had found them fossil in latitudes 58° and 60° N. in Sweden, Capt. Bayfield sent them to me from part of Canada, situated in latitude 47° deg. N. In both hemispheres, they are most abundant at model ate elevations above the sea, not exceeding usually 200 or 300 feet, but occasionally, in Norway, they attain, as at Montreal, much higher levels. As some of them belonged to species now living in the Greenland and other seas in high latitudes, Dr. Beck and I im¬ mediately concluded that this fossil fauna, having an almost arctic character, must formerly have had a wider range than the same assemblage of species at present. Captain Bayfield had called my attention in his letter to the fact, that boulders accompanied the shells in such a manner as to imply, that they had - been dropped from melting icebergs to the bottom of a sea, in which the mollusca lived and died. He also furnished me with evidence, that the testacea now inhabiting the Gulf of St. Lawrence, differed widely as a whole from the fossil fauna of Beau- port.* * See my paper on this subject, Geological Trans, vol. vi., Se¬ cond Series, p. 135, read 1839. Chap, xxii. OF BEAUFORT, NEAR CIUEBEC. 123 The village of Beauport is about a quarter of a mile distant from the St. Lawrence, on its left bank, and about three miles below Quebec. Near it, a small streamlet flows in a narrow ravine, about 110 feet deep, partly excavated in the drift, which, like that of St. David’s before described (p. 95), had filled a more ancient hollow in the Silurian strata. By examining the cliff immediately below Mr. Ryland’s house, and again a few hundred yards to the west, where lower beds were laid open by the river, and then ascending to the higher grounds northwards and towards St. Michel, I obtained the annexed section, the different parts of which I shall now describe. Fig. 14. Position of shelly drift in the ravine at Beauport, near Quebec. A. Horizontal Lower Silurian strata. b. Laminated clay. c. Yellow sand. d. Drift with boulders. e. Mya, Terebratula, &c. f. Mass of Saxicava rugosa. g. Gravel with boulders. h. Clay and sand of higher grounds, with Saxicava, &c. K. Mr. Ryland’s house. The lowest mass of drift ( b , fig. 14), having a thickness of twenty-five feet, consists of fine, lami¬ nated, stiff blue clay, without fossils, similar to that containing shells on the Jacques Cartier, before men¬ tioned. Next above, the beds c are composed of incoherent yellow sand, in regular layers, about twenty-five feet thick, also without shells. In the next mass, d, of loam and blue clay, having also a 124 MARINE SHELLS IN DRIFT Chap. xxii. thickness of twenty-five feet, large boulders of dark syenite are frequent. I found no contemporaneous fossils, but fragments of Encrinus and Trilobite, de¬ rived from the older formations. Above this, in e, the fossils commenced. In the lowest five or six feet, they are rare, but become more abundant above. They are embedded in layers of sand and loam with pebbles. The Tellina calcarea is most common, after which may be mentioned Mya truncata, Terebratula psittacea, with both valves united; Mytilus edulis, Scalaria borealis, S. groenlandica, and several others. To these succeeds a remarkably compact mass of shells,/, twelve feet thick, rudely stratified, consisting almost entirely of the Saxicava rugosa, most of them having the valves united. They are disposed in lay¬ ers in every position, oftentimes end upwards, and are intermixed with a slight quantity of earthy mat¬ ter and pebbles, some of the latter being eight inches in diameter. Most of the shells are bleached white, but there is one layer, an inch thick, in which they are stained of a ferruginous colour, as in the English Crag. The individuals of the Saxicava are smaller in their average size than those of the same species in the great bed of Uddevalla, in Sweden. With the Saxicava is associated Balanus miser, and more rarely Natica clausa and Mytilus edulis. The topmost bed, g, in this vertical section, is two or three feet thick, and consists of sand, gravel, and boulders of granite, distinct from the boulders in d; but the mass g appeared to me to be superficial, and not to belong to the shelly drift. The bed of Saxi¬ cava,/, is about 150 feet above the level of the St. Lawrence, but is by no means the newest part of the Chap. xxii. OF BEAUPORT, NEAR aUEBEC. 125 drift of this region, for I found the ground immedi¬ ately above, or north of K, to consist of a sloping terrace, in which are horizontal strata of clay and ye low sand, as at h, containing Saxicava rugosa, lellina grcenlandica, and other marine shells. Some of these fossiliferous beds were within a quarter of a mile of Mr. Ryland’s house, K, and about 200 feet above the St. Lawrence j but I observed other simi¬ lar beds without shells several miles inland, in a north-westerly direction, from 300 to 400 feet above the sea. The following is a list of twenty-three species of iossiis which I procured at Beauport:_ Tritomum anghcanum. Syn. Buccinum undatum, var. ? 1. fornicatum. Syn. Fusus carinatus. Trichotropis borealis. Natica clausa. N. septentrionalis, Beck. 5. Velutina. Scalaria grcenlandica. S. borealis. Littorina palliata, Say. Mya truncata. 10. M. arenaria. Saxicava rugosa. Tellina grcenlandica. T calcarea. Agrees with recent species from Boston. Astarte Laurentiana. New species: see description in note.* * Fig. 15. Astarte Laurentiana. a. Outside. c. Inside of left valve. 12 * 126 SHELLS OF BEAUPORT. / Chap. xxii. 15. Cardium grcenlandicum. C. islandicum. ✓ Nucula. Agrees with recent species found by Capt. Bay- field in the St. Lawrence. Mytilus edulis. Pecten islandicus. 20. Terebratula psittacea. Balanus miser. B. Uddevallensis. Syn. B. scoticus. Found recently in the German Ocean, off Scarborough. Echinus granulatus, Say. At the falls of Montmorenci, the most north¬ eastern place which I visited in this neighbourhood, I saw on the right bank of the river, above the falls, and close to the bridge, a bed of gravel and sand, containing large boulders of gravel and syenite, some of them three feet in diameter. In this coarse gravel the Saxicava rugosa and Tellina grosnlanclicct occurred. The whole mass rested on Lower Silurian limestone. I did not examine the valley of the Ottawa River (see map); but I may mention that Mr. Logan ob¬ tained near Bytown concretions of clay similar to This must be regarded as an Astarte, although somewhat different from the usual form; it is comparatively thin, it is more longitudinal, it is deeper or more gibbous; the posterior lateral tooth in one, and the anterior lateral tooth in the other valve, are more than usually prominent. The shell has all the usual characters of the Astarte; among others, the small se¬ cond vascular impression placed above the anterior adductor muscle. The following are its characters:— A. testa subovali, sublongitudinali, tenuiusculS., gibbosula, ex- tus concentrice confertim sulcata; dente laterali utriusque valvee prominentiori. Chap. XXII. FOSSILS OF BOULDER FORMATION. 127 those called fairy stones, which occur without fossils in the clay at Albany, New York, and at Burlington, Vermont, and in Massachusetts, as described by Pro¬ fessor Hitchcock. In the centre of one of these nodules was the entire skeleton of a fossil fish, allied to, if not identical with, that named Mallotus villosus by Professor Agassiz, which now lives in the Green¬ land seas, and is also found fossil in Greenland. The only remaining district seen by me where shells have been discovered in the boulder formation, is on the borders of Lake Champlain, about eighty miles south of Montreal. The basin of this lake may be considered as a southern branch of the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the locality is important, as being the most southern latitude (44° 25' N.) to which this assemblage of arctic fossils has been traced. Professor Emmons has given an account of the spot where the shells occur, south of Port Kent, in the county of Essex, State of New York, at a point where a small brook enters on the western side of the lake. In this place I observed, at the bottom of the section, first, clay, thirty feet thick, with boulders of gneiss, granite, limestone, and quartzose (Pots¬ dam) sandstone, some rounded blocks of the latter being nine feet in diameter; secondly, loam with shells, six feet thick ; thirdly, sand, twenty feet thick. Although the shells in the second bed, or the loam, were very numerous, I could only detect four species, namely, Mytilus edulis, Saxicava ragosa, Tellina grasnlandica, and Balanus miser. Travelling inland from this spot to Keeseville, I found the boulder formation of great depth, covering the older rocks, and the ascent to an elevation of 128 MARINE FOSSILS OF THE Chap. xxir. about 500 feet is by a succession of terraces, composed chiefly of beds of sand. I consider the whole of these strata to be upper members of the same deposit, doubtless all marine, although no shells have yet been met with at a greater height than forty feet above the lake. At Burlington, in Vermont, on the opposite or east side of Lake Champlain, the drift consists chiefly of clay, laminated and micaceous, or unlami¬ nated and without mica. In this clay, argillaceous concretions of curious forms occur. In some places beds of brick earth, sand, and gravel, are associated, pebbles and boulders being scattered sparingly through the loam. Professor Benedict pointed out to me several spots where this loam behind the town, at the height of thirty and forty feet above the lake, contains shells of the Tellina grcenlandica, without any other species. In like manner, I afterwards observed this Tellina in a recent state, on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, in Nova Scotia, strewed for miles along the beach unmixed with other species. At the Falls of the Winouski or Onion River, near Burlington, the boulder clay attains a thickness of 200 feet. Although in great part marly and cal¬ careous, it is barren of shells. There has evidently been great denudation of the drift around Lake Cham¬ plain, and I conceive that most of the large boulders of granite, syenite, and sandstone, which now rest upon the surface, may once have been dispersed through the mass. Nothing, however, is clearer than that here, as well as in the valley of the St. Lawrence, between Kingston and Quebec, the marine shells of recent species are referable to the Chap. xxn. BOULDER FORMATION. 129 same geological period as that to which the boulders belong. The shells occur both below and above far-transported fragments of rock, and the funda¬ mental granite, limestone, and other rocks, which support the shelly drift of the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain, are smoothed and furrowed on their surface by glacial action. In my fii st memoir on the fossil shells sent to me by Captain Bayfield, from the drift near Quebec, I called attention to the fact, that the number of species was small, while the individuals were nume¬ rous, a character belonging to the fauna of seas in high latitudes. At the same time it was shown, that there was a far greater variety in the shells now living in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Dr. Gould, the eminent conchologist of Boston, suggested to me, that on examining a greater number of localities, especially at wide distances from each other, I might find the number of species gradually to aug¬ ment. This has not been the case, and when we reflect, that at Burlington in Vermont, which, as before stated, is situated in latitude 44° 25 / N., or corresponding to the latitude of Bordeaux in France, we meet with the same assemblage as near Quebec, latitude 48° 48' N., and at some points on the coast of Labrador, in latitude 50°, most of them being identi¬ cal with fossils of the Scandinavian drift, in latitudes 58 and 60° N.; we shall be inclined to acquiesce in the views which I formerly advanced, respecting the prevalence of a colder climate in these regions at the time when the boulder formation originated. July 5th. —Returning to Montreal after our ex¬ cursion to Quebec, we crossed the St. Lawrence on 130 MONTREAL.-SWALLOWS. Chap, xxii our way southward to La Prairie. On looking back over the river at Montreal, the whole city seemed in a blaze of light, owing to the fashion here of covering the houses with tin, which reflected the rays of the setting sun, so that every roof seemed a mirror. Behind the city rose its steep and shapely mountain, and in front were wooded islands, and the clear waters of the St. Lawrence sweeping along with a broad and rapid current. At the barracks in La Prairie, a regiment of hussars was exercising—a scene characteristic of the times. On our way to Lake Champlain we slept at St. John’s, where I counted under the eaves of the stable of our inn more than forty nests of a species of swallow with a red breast. The head of a young bird was peeping out of each nest, and the old ones were flying about, feeding them. The landlord told me, that they had built there for twenty years, but missed the two years when the cholera raged, for at that time there was a scarcity of insects. Our host also mentioned, that in making an excavation lately near Prattsbui’g, about 1000 of these birds were found hybernating in the sand : a tale for the truth of which I do not vouch; but it agrees with some old accounts of the occasional hybernation of our swallows in similar situations. We next crossed Lake Champlain to Burlington, in Vermont, in a steamboat, which, for neatness, elegance, and rapidity, excelled any we had yet beheld. The number of travellers has been sensibly thinned this year by the depressed state of commerce. The scenery of this lake is deservedly much ad¬ mired. To the west we saw the principal range of Chap. xxii. SCENERY OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN. 131 mountains in the State of New York, Mount Marcy, the highest, attaining an elevation of upwards of 5400 feet. It is still (July 6th) capped with snow, but the season is unusually late. From the survey of this part of New York by Professor Emmons, it appears that hypersthene rock rises up in the central part of this chain, and forms the nucleus, around which masses of gneiss, crystalline limestone, and other formations are disposed. To the eastward were the Green Mountains, chiefly composed of chlorite schist, the Camel’s Hump and the still loftier Mount Mansfield, being very conspicuous. We landed at Burlington, finely situated on the east shore of the lake; its streets adorned with avenues ol the locust tree (Robinia pseudo-acacia), now covered with white blossoms, and affording an agree¬ able shade. After examining the rocks in the neigh¬ bourhood, and at the Falls of the Winooski, with Professor Benedict, I crossed the Lake to Port Kent, where, after seeing the boulder formation with shells already described, I went to Keeseville, to examine a deep cleft in the sandstone, through which the Ausable river flows for two miles. This chasm is only from foity to fifty feet in width, while its perpendicular walls are 100 feet high. A flight of wooden stairs has been placed so as to enable one to reach the bottom, and the geologist may observe, as he descends, the numerous horizontal strata of siliceous sandstone. In many places, this most ancient of the fossiliferous locks of New York (the Potsdam sandstone) is divided into laminae by the remains of innumerable shells of the genus Lingula. They are in such pro¬ fusion as to form black seams like mica, for which 132 OLDEST KNOWN FOSSILS. Chap. xxii. they were at first mistaken.* With the Lingula occurs another small placunoid shell, allied to, if not identical, according to Professor E. Forbes, with a fossil which occurs in company with a small Lingula in the lowest beds of the English Silurian series at Builth, in Brecknockshire. As this is perhaps the most ancient fossiliferous rock of which the position has been well determined in North America, it is highly interesting that one of its commonest or¬ ganic remains should belong to a living genus {Lin¬ gula), and that its form should come very near to species now existing. Throughout so vast a series of ages has Nature worked upon the same model in the organic world ! Nor are the signs of uniformity con¬ fined to these phenomena, for they extend equally to the shape of the ripple mark on the ledges of sand¬ stone laid open to view above the chasm, where two beautiful waterfalls are seen on the Ausable river. The ripple-like ridges and furrows exhibit their usual parallelism and ramifications as sharp as if they had been made yesterday. On my way back over the lake to Burlington, I saw, on looking from our boat through the clear and shallow water near the shore, a similar ripple in the light yellow-coloured, loose sand, extend¬ ing over hundreds of acres, and proving that it is not merely on the beach between high and low water mark that the movement of the water can produce those sinuous ridges, but also to a certain depth below. Some of the freshwater shells inhabiting Lake Champlain are of species peculiar to this lake, as, for example, Limncea gracilis, specimens of which were * See Emmons’s Report on the Geology of New York, Chap. xxii. TRAVELLING IN THE U. S. 133 presented to me by Professor Benedict. Among the flowers and plants which enlivened the borders of this lake was the Virginia raspberry, with its large red blossoms, the Kalmia (K. angustifolia), a beautiful tiger lily, the oderiferous shrub called sweet fern (Comptonia asplamifolia), an Hypericum, and a blue Campanula. July 9th. —From Burlington, I crossed the Green Mountains of Vermont, composed of chlorite schist, gneiss, and other crystalline rocks, passing by Mont¬ pelier, to Hanover. Here we paid a visit to Profes- soi Hubbard, at Darmouth College, and then return¬ ed through New Hampshire by Concord to Boston. Since we had left that city in May, we had travelled in little more than two months a distance of 2500 miles on railways, in steamboats, and canoes, in pub¬ lic and private carriages, without any accident, and having always found it possible so to plan our journey from day to day, as to avoid all fatigue and night travelling. We had usually slept in tolerable inns, and sometimes in excellent hotels in small towns, and had scarcely ever- been interrupted by bad weather. I infer, from the dismay occasionally expressed by Americans when we pursued our journey, in spite of lain, that the climate of the States must be always as we found it this year—wonderfully more propi¬ tious to tourists than that of the “old country,” though it is said to be less favourable to the health and complexion of Europeans. I ventured on one or two occasions in Canada, when I thought that the inns did not come up to the reasonable expectations of a traveller, to praise those of the United States. I was immediately assured VOL. II. 13 BOARDING-HOUSES. Chap. xxii. 134 that if in theii’ country men preferred to dine at ordinaries, or to board with their families at taverns, instead of cultivating domestic habits like the English, nothing would be more easy than to have fine hotels in small Canadian towns. This led me to inquire how many families, out of more than fifty whom we had happened to visit in our tour of eleven months in the United States, resided in boarding-houses. I found that there was not one; and that all of them lived in houses of their own. Some of these were in the northern and middle, others in the southern and western States; some in affluent, others in very moderate circumstances: they comprised many mer¬ chants as well as lawyers, ministers of religion, poli¬ tical, literary, and scientific men. Families who are travelling in the U. S., and strangers, like ourselves, frequent hotels much more than in England, from the impossibility of hiring lodg¬ ings. In the inns, however, good private apartments may be obtained in all large towns, which, though dear for the United States, are cheap as contrasted with hotels in London. It is doubtless true that not only bachelors, but many young married couples, occasionally escape from the troubles of house-keep¬ ing in the United States, where servants are difficult to obtain, by retreating to boarding-houses ; but the fact of our never having met with one instance among our own acquaintances inclines me to suspect the custom to be far less general than many foreigners suppose. It was now the fourth time we had entered Boston, and we were delighted again to see our friends, some of whom kindly came from their country resi- Chap. xxii. RETURN TO BOSTON. 135 dences to welcome us. Others we visited at Nahant, where they had retreated from the great heat, to enjoy the sea-breezes. The fire-flies were rejoicing in the warm evenings. Ice was as usual in abun¬ dance ; the icemen calling as regularly at every house in the morning as the milkman. Pine-apples from the West Indies were selling in the streets in wheelbarrows. I bought one of good size, and ripe, for a shilling, which would have cost twelve shillings or more in London. Alter a short stay, we set sail in the Caledonia steam-packet for Halifax. 136 GLACIAL FURROWS.-HALIFAX. Chap, xxiii. CHAPTER XXIII. Halifax.—Glacial Furrows in JVova Scotia.—Difference of Climate of Halifax and Windsor .— Tracts covered with Kalmia.—Linncea borealis.—High Tides of the Bay of Fundy .— The Bore.—Recent Deposits of Red Mud hardened in the Sun.—Fossil Showers of Rain.—Footprints of Birds, and Casts of the same.—Cracks caused by Shrinkage .— Submerged Forest.—Recent Glacial Furrows at Cape Blo- midon.—Loaded Ice. — Ice-Ruts in Mud. July 16, 1842.— When I went on board the Caledonia at Boston, I could hardly believe that it was as large as the Acadia, in which we had crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool, so familiar had I now become with the greater dimensions of the steamers which navigate the Hudson and other large Ameri¬ can rivers. We soon reached Halifax, and I determined to devote a month to the geology of Nova Scotia. About three miles south of Halifax, near “ the Tower,” I saw a smooth surface of rock, formed of the edges of curved and highly inclined strata of clay-slate. This surface was crossed by furrows about a quarter of an inch deep, having a north and south direction, and preserving their parallelism throughout a space 100 yards in breadth. Similar phenomena are observed in other parts of this pen¬ insula, on the removal of the drift, which occurs both stratified and unstratified, and much resembles that of Scotland. I may mention here, that afterwards Chap, xxiii. NOVA SCOTIA.-CLIMATE. 137 near Pictou (at Dixon’s quarry), I observed polished a suiface of quartzose grit of the coal measures, with distinct furrows running nearly E. and W. or E. 15° N., magnetic ; while in some other places I saw them having nearly the same direction as at Halifax. Nova Scotia is usually known to strangers by its least favourable side,—its foggy southern coast, which has, nevertheless, the merit of affording some of the best harbours in the world. We left Halifax for Windsor in a drizzling rain and fog, and were told that we should probably find fair weather on the other side of the hills. Accordingly, when we had travelled about thirty miles, and crossed a low chain called the Ardoise Hills, we found the sun shining on a region sloping towards the Bay of Fundy, where a rich vegetation clothes the rocks of red sandstone, marl, and limestone. Great was the contrast between the climate and aspect of this fertile country, and the cold barren tracts of granite, quartzite, and clay-slate which we had passed over on our way from Halifax. The sterility of that quartziferous district had not been relieved by any beautiful features in the scenery, the plants alone affording us some points of interest and novelty, especially a species of Kalmia (K. angusti- folia), now in full flower, which monopolised the ground m some wide open spaces, as heaths take exclusive possession of barren tracts in Europe. In the woods near Windsor, I saw several kinds of Py- rola and other flowers, differing, for the most part, from British species, but among them the Linncea borealis appeared here and there, matting the ground 13* 138 LINNA3A BOREALIS. Chap, xxiii with its green leaves under the shade of the fir-trees, and still displaying some of its delicate pink flowers. I had gathered it some years before in the moun¬ tains of Norway, north of Christiania, and have since seen it growing in Scotland, where it is very rare. Linnaeus, when this small and elegant plant had been named after him by a friend, accepted it as his em¬ blem, comparing it to himself when struggling with difficulties ; he described it as “ a humble, despised and neglected Lapland plant, flowering at an early age.” Eventually, the last only of these points of resemblance remained true, for few men of science have risen to greater honours in their own country than he did, and his diary has laid him open to the charge of no ordinary share of vanity, a fault which we forget in our admiration of his original genius, and the important reforms which he introduced into the study of every branch of natural history. More than half of the southern portion of the pe¬ ninsula of Nova Scotia consists of granitic rocks, clay-slate, quartzite, and other crystalline formations without fossils, the strata having an east and west strike. Granite also occurs, intruding itself in veins into every part of this series. Towards their north¬ ern limits, the slaty formations become less metamor- phic, and contain fossils, some of which I collected at New Canaan near Wolfville in King’s County, and others on the East River of Pictou, consisting of Encrinites, and Trilobites, and shell of the genera Orthoceras, Spirifer, Orthis, and Leptcena. Some few of them agree specifically with fossils of the Hamilton group or uppermost Silurian division of the United States, No. 10 of map, PI. II. Chap, xxiii. RECENT RED MUD WITH 139 After crossing the Ardoise Hills above mentioned, I left these older rocks, and entered upon strata which constitute, as I shall show in the sequel (ch. 25), a lower carboniferous formation, containing subordi¬ nate beds of gypsum and marine limestone. These rocks I examined on the banks of the Avon, in the neighbourhood of Windsor, and in the cliffs at Horton Bluff. I then passed by Kentville and Cornwallis, skirting the western shores of the Basin of Mines. Into this basin, or inner estuary, the tides of the Bay of Fundy pour twice every day a vast body of water through a narrow strait, converting every small streamlet into the appearance of a large tidal river. The tides are said to rise in some places seventy feet perpendicular, and to be the highest in the world. They often come up at first with a lofty wave called the Bore, of which I saw a fine example in the largest river of Nova Scotia, the Shubenacadie, where the waters seemed to be rushing down a much steeper slope than the St. Lawrence at its rapids. They roared too as loudly over their rocky bed, but could not compete in beauty ; for instead of the transparent green waters and white foam of the St.' Lawrence, they resembled a current of red mud in violent motion. The waters of the Bay of Fundy become charged with this red sediment, by undermining cliffs of red sandstone and soft red marl; and in places where they overflow the alluvial plains, they throw down red mud wherever the velocity of the current is sus¬ pended at the turn of the tide. Many extensive and level flats of rich land have been thus formed natu- lally, and many thousand acres of the same have 140 IMPRESSIONS OF RAIN-DROPS. Chap, xxiii been excluded artificially from the sea by embank¬ ments. When I arrived in this region it was the period of the lowest or neap tides, so that large areas, where the red mud had been deposited, were laid dry, and in some spots had been baking in a hot sun for ten days. The upper part of the mud had thus become hard for a depth of several inches, and in its consolidated form exactly resembled, both in colour and appearance, some of the red marls of the New Red sandstone formation of Europe. The upper surface was usually smooth, but in some places I saw it pitted over with small cavities, which I was told were due to a shower of rain which fell eight or ten days before, when the deposit was still soft. It peifectly recalled to my mind those “ fossil showers” of which the markings are preserved in some an¬ cient rocks, and the origin of which was first cor¬ rectly explained to an incredulous public by Dr. Buckland in 1838. I have already alluded to such impressions of rain-drops when speaking of the ripple-marked flags of the New Red sand-stone at Newark in New Jersey. I saw several other exam¬ ples, during my tour, of similar phenomena, particu¬ larly in a bright red deposit of mud thrown down at the mouth of the Patapsco at Baltimore, of which I was able to bring away some consolidated layers. On these, in addition to the smaller cavities due to lain, there are larger ones, more perfectly circular, about the size of large currants, which have been formed by air-bubbles in the mud. On the sui face of the dried beds of red mud at Wolfville on the Bay of Fundy before mentioned, I observed many worm-like tracks, made by Annelides / Chap. xxm. RECENT FOOTSTEPS OF BIRDS. 141 which burrow in the mud; and, what was still more interesting to me, the distinct footmarks of birds in regular sequence, faithfully representing in their gen¬ eral appearance the smaller class of Ornithicnites of high antiquity in the valley of the Connecticut before described. (Yol. I., p. 252). I learnt from Dr. Harding of Kentville, and Mr. Pryor of Horton, who were my guides, that these lecent footprints were those of the sandpiper ( Tringa minuta ), a species common to Europe and North America, flights of which I saw daily running along the watei s edge, and often leaving thirty or more similar impressions in a straight line, parallel to the borders of the estuary. The red mud had cracked in hardening in the sun’s heat, and was divided into compartments, as we see clay at the bottom of a dried pond, and I was able to bring away some pieces to England. One of these I have figured in the annexed plate (VII.). In fig. 1 we see the upper surface of the slab, on the left side of which are six perfect foot-marks in the same line, with part of a seventh, and another, a, probably belonging to a dis¬ tinct line. A small ball or protuberance will be seen near the base of the middle toe, as at a, b, or some¬ times about the middle of the impression of the mid¬ dle toe, as at c. This is caused by the mud which is displaced by the prominent metatarsus or instep bone, which has thrust forward a small mound of earth, in consequence of the slanting position of the leg as the bird advances. On splitting the slab, and reducing it to the thickness expressed in the transverse section, Jig. 3, I was fortunate enough to lay open an under surface, on which two other lines of foot-prints 142 RECENT FOOTSTEPS OF BIRDS. CHAP. XXHI appeared in relief, fig. 2. These are the casts of impressions which had been made on an inferior layer, deposited several tides before ; and I ascer¬ tained that on the upper and under surfaces of seve¬ ral other thin laminae, shown in the cross section No. 3, there exist similar foot-marks, each set made by birds at different times. It will be seen that the toes which are indented in No. 1, are represented by pro¬ tuberances in No. 2, and that at d the mark of a single toe occurs in relief, and quite isolated. This occurrence was not unfrequent, and Mr. Waterhouse has suggested to me in explanation that these waders, as they fly near the ground, often let one leg hang down, so that the longest toe touches the surface of the mud occasionally, leaving a single mark of this kind. The slabs here figured have been presented by me to the British Museum, in order that those na¬ turalists who are still very sceptical as to the real origin of the ancient fossil ornithicnites, of which there are some fine examples in our national reposi¬ tory, may compare the fossil products of the month of July, 1842, with those referable to feathered bipeds which preceded the era of the Icthyosaurus, Iguanodon, and Pterodactyl. On several wide areas, comprising many hundreds of acres each, I saw the surface of the red mud fis¬ sured in all directions by the shrinkage accompany¬ ing desiccation, and I was surprised to find some of the cracks several inches wide, and no less than two or three feet deep. Occasionally, a fresh tide had deposited sediment in the older cracks, filling them up, and this mud having in its turn become hardened, together with a new contemporaneous superficial Recent Footprint of Birds-. (The Sandpiper; Tdnpov nu'/miaJ. ’ or the red nurd of due day ofFifdy, jVovco Scotia. Tl. VII JVafowail Si n. sithog jnwv i a urfau ,y oMiMg.$. Limera'caffa. //-?//< ,.r./ur Footprint in rtCwf. Fig: 3. Trcmoverso Sertim0'Jlcdb- Chap, xxiix. CLIFFS OF CAPE BL0MID0N. 143 layer, I found, on taking up the slab, the casts of the old fissures standing out in relief, as we occasionally see them on the under surfaces of flags of sandstone, which rest on layers of clay or shale. Before quitting the subject, I may state that hard nodules of a red clay-ironstone are occasionally met with in the red mud, some of which I was shoyjn as having been found near Minudie at low water. The nucleus of the concretion often consisted of recent littoral shells, My a arenaria and Tellina gramlandica. I was also informed that there was a submerged foiest buried in this red mud, and exposed to view in the Cumberland Basin at low tide, not far from Fort Cumberland. I regret that I had no time to examine this forest of upright trees, as the accounts I received of it appeared to imply that there must have been some subsidence of land in modern times. In estimating the changes in progress in nature’s labo¬ ratory beneath the sea, we must not forget that by far the greater part of the red sediment of the Bay of Fundy is carried out by a strong current into the depths of the Atlantic. July 24. —Continuing my course along the western boideis of the Basin of Mines, I at length reached Cape Blomidon, where cliffs of soft red sandstone, in nearly horizontal beds, are capped by a mass of basalt, greenstone, and amygdaloid. This mass of igneous rock, after presenting fine ranges of rude columns in the bold precipices facing northwards, is continuous, in a narrow strip of high land, for no less than 130 miles east and west, extending as far as An¬ napolis, and beyond it to Briar Island. Its structure and characteristic minerals have been well described 144 RECENT GLACIAL FURROWS Chap. XXIII. by Messrs. Jackson and Alger, in their elaborate pa¬ per, read in the year 1831, to the American Aca¬ demy.* Although this trap is generally parallel to the subjacent red sandstone, it appears in reality to form a great dyke rather than a contemporaneous bed. Ajs I was strolling along the beach at the base of these basaltic cliffs, collecting minerals, and occa¬ sionally recent shells at low tide, I stopped short at the sight of an unexpected phenomenon. The soli¬ tary inhabitant of a desert island could scarcely have been more startled by a human foot-print in the sand, than I was on beholding some recent furrows on a ledge of sandstone under my feet, the exact counter¬ part of those grooves of ancient date which I have so often described in this work, and attributed to glacial action. After having searched in vain at Quebec (see p. 120) for such indications of a modern date, I had despaired of witnessing any in this part of the world. I was now satisfied that, whatever might be their origin, those before me were quite recent. The inferior beds of soft sandstone, a , a, fig. 16, which are exposed at low water at the base of the cliff at Cape Blomidon, form a broad ledge of bare rock, to the surface of which no sea-weed or barna¬ cles can attach themselves, as the stone is always wearing away slowly by the continual passage of sand and gravel, washed over it from the talus of fallen fragments, d, which lies at the foot of the cliff on the beach above. The slow but constant under- * On the Mineralogy and Geology of Nova Scotia. Mem. of Amer. Acad, of Arts and Sci., vol. i., New Series, 1833. Cam¬ bridge, Mass. Chap. xxm. at cape blomidon. Fig. 16. 145 Section of the Cliff and Bsach at Cape h P h edge f ° f S ° ft sandstone ex P<>sed at low water. Capptg'of trap. '** “ ^ and ^ «»ro US gypsum . * Ta ' US ° f b ' 0CkS and PebWes oftra P> amygdaloid, greenstone, & c. mining of the perpendicular cliff forming this promon- ory round which the powerful currents caused by the tide sweep backwards and forwards with prodi¬ gious velocity, must satisfy every geologist that the denudatton by which the ledge in Question hasten posed to view is of modem date. Whether the locks forming the cliff extended so far as the points °’ 5 °’, or 10 ° y ears a S<>. I have no means of esti¬ mating ; but the exact date and rate of destruction Fig. 17 ai e immaterial. On this recently formed led^e I saw several straight furrows half an inch broad/some of them very nearly parallel, as a, b, fig. 17, others di- C ’ ^^tion of a, b, being N. 35 ° 146 RECENT GLACIAL FURROWS. Ch4P. XXIII.' or corresponding to that of the shore at this point After walking about a quarter of a mile, I found ano¬ ther set of similar furrows, having the same general direction within five degrees ; and I made up my mind that if these grooves could not be referred to the modern instrumentality of ice, it would throw no small doubt on the glacial hypothesis. When I asked my guide, a peasant of the neighbourhood, whether he had ever seen much ice on the spot where we stood, the heat was so excessive (for we were in the latitude of the south of France, 45° N.) that I seemed to be putting a strange question. He replied that in the preceding winter of 1841 he had seen the ice, in spite of the tide, which ran at the rate of 10 miles an hour, extending in one uninterrupted mass from the shore where we stood to the opposite coast at Parrs- borough, and that the icy blocks, heaped on each other, and frozen together or “ packed,” at the foot of Cape Blomidon, were often fifteen feet thick, and were pushed along when the tide rose, over the sand¬ stone ledges. He also stated that fragments of the “ black stone” which fell from the summit of the cliff, a pile of which, d, fig. 16, lay at its base, were often frozen into the ice, and moved along with it. I then examined these fallen blocks of amygdaloid scattered round me, and observed in them numerous geodes coated with quartz crystals. I have no doubt that the hardness of these gravers, firmly fixed in masses of ice, which, although only fifteen feet thick, are often of considerable horizontal extent, have furnished sufficient pressure and mechanical power to groove the ledge of soft sandstone. In Nova Scotia the term “ loaded ice ” is in Chap, xxiii. LOADED ICE, NOVA SCOTIA. 147 common use for large sheets of ice several acres in area, which are sometimes floated off from the rivers as the tide rises, with sedge and other salt-marsh plants frozen into their lower surfaces; also with mud adhering plentifully to their roots. In our speculations, therefore, on the carrying power of ice, we ought always to remember that, besides gravel and large fragments of rock, it transports with it the nnest mud. Dr. Harding informed me that the surface of mud- banks along the estuaries near Wolfville, are often furrowed with long, straight, and parallel ruts, as if arge waggons had passed over them. These conform in their general direction to the shore, and are produced by the projecting edges of irregular masses of packed ice, borne along by the tidal current. 148 COAL FORMATION Chap. xxiv. CHAPTER XXIV. Coal Formation of Scotia-Productive Coal Measures - Erect Fossil Trees in the Cliffs of the Bay of Fundy. Sec¬ tion from Minudie to the South Joggins—Ten buried Forests, one above the other.-Connection of upright Trees J U ^ f 2Z of Coal .— Stigmaria. — Sigillana. Evidence of Repeated Submergence of dry Land-Theory to explain'^Evenness of the Ancient Surface-Pictou Coal-field-Bed of Erect Catamites, compared to those of St. Etienn ^’ m ^To7ttse of Species of JVova Scotia Coal-plants—Four-fifths of these LT. Lntified rtk European Spede,-Car*on,fer.u, re/n of the United States. Above the granite, clay-slate, quartzite, and Silurian formations of Nova Scotia, there occur, in the north¬ ern part of the peninsula, as stated in the last chapter, strata referable to the carboniferous group, occupying very extensive tracts, and resting uncon- formably on the rocks of the older series. They may be divided into three formations; the middle one, comprising the productive coal-measures, agreeing precisely with those of Europe in their lithological characters and organic remains ; an upper one, com¬ posed of sandstone and shale with fossil plants, but without coal; and a lower carboniferous group, chiefly made up of red sandstone and red marl, with subordinate beds of gypsum and marine limestone. In this lower series there are also occasionally some beds of shale with plants, and some coal-grits, and thin seams of impure coal. A variety of opinions have been entertained le^ Chap. xxiv. OF NOVA SCOTIA. 149 specting the true age and position of the last-men¬ tioned or gypsiferous formation, which has been generally presumed to be newer than the coal,_by some referred to the New Red sandstone, and even thought to overlie the coal-measures unconformably Immediately after my return to England, I commu¬ nicated to the Geological Society my opinion; 1st, that the gypsiferous formation, with its accompany¬ ing fossiliferous limestones, is a true member of the Carboniferous group ; 2dly, that its position is below the productive coal measures.* I shall now give some account of these middle or productive coal measures, which contain valuable seams of bituminous coal, at various places, especially near Pictou. I was particularly desirous, before I !e t England, of examining the numerous fossil trees alluded to by Dr. Gesner as imbedded in an upright posture at many different levels in the cliffs of the South Joggins, near Minudie. The cliffs belong to the Cumberland coal-field, on the southern shores o a branch of the Bay of Fundy, called the Chig- necto Channel, which divides part of New Brunswick from Nova Scotia. The first allusion to the trees winch I have met with, is that published in 1829 by Mr. Richard Brown, in Halyburton’s Nova Scotia and he attributed their fossilisation to the inundation of the ground on which the forests stood. I felt con¬ vinced that, if I could verify the accounts of which I had read, of the superposition of so many different tiers of trees, each representing forests which grew in succession on the same area, one above the other; ♦See Proceedings of Geol. Soc., vol. iv„ p. 184. 1843. 150 erect fossil trees. Chap, xxiv and if I could prove at the same time their con¬ nexion with seams of coal, it would go farther than any facts yet recorded to confirm the theory that coal in general is derived from vegetables produced on the spots where the carbonaceous matter is now stored up in the earth. . At Wolfville I hired a schooner, which soon car¬ ried us across the Basin of Mines to Parrsborough. We had a side wind, and the deck was inclined at about an angle of 45°, in spite of which we admired a splendid view of the coast, and the range of basaltic rocks which extend from Cape Blomidon to Cape Split. At Parrsborough I was joined by Dr. Gesner, who had come expressly from New Brunswick to meet me; and we went together to Minudie, a thriving village, where we were hospitably received by the chief proprietor and owner of the land, and of many of those fertile flats of red mud before described, which he has redeemed from the sea. From Minudie, a range of perpendicular cliffs ex¬ tends in a south-westerly direction along the southern shore of what is commonly called the Chignecto Channel. The general dip of the beds is southerly, and the lowest strata near Minudie consist of beds of red sandstone, with some limestone and gypsum, a, b, iig. 18. The section is then very obscure for about three miles, or from b to c, the rocks consisting chiefly of red sandstone and red marl, after which, at c, blue grits are seen, inclined to' the S.S.W. at an angle of 27°, affording an excellent grindstone, and attaining a thickness of forty-four feet. These beds are succeeded to the south by a vast series of newer and conformable strata, all dipping the same way, Section of the cliffs of the South Joggins, near Mintidie, Nova Scotia, 152 ERECT FOSSIL TREES. Chap. xxiv. and, for the first three miles which I examined, in¬ clined nearly at the same angle, upon an average about 24° S.S.W. Within this space, or between 'd and g, all the upright trees hitherto found occur; but the same set of strata is still continuous, with a gradually lessening dip, many miles farther to the south. If we assign a thickness of four or five miles to this regular succession of carboniferous strata, which, as I shall afterwards show, must have been originally quite horizontal, our estimate will probably be rather under than over the mark. For the first mile south of the grindstones, or from c to d, I observed no coal in the cliffs, after which the first of the upright trees appears at d, at the distance of about six miles from Minudie. Then followed a series of coal-bearing strata, consisting of white freestone, bituminous shale, micaceous sandstone, sandy clays, blue shale, and clays with and without nodules of ironstone, all re¬ sembling the carboniferous rocks of Europe. They occupy a range of coast about two miles long, the vertical height of the cliffs being from 150 to 200 feet; and about nineteen seams of coal have been met with, which vary in thickness from two inches to four feet. At low tide, we had not only the ad¬ vantage of beholding a fine exposure of the edges of these beds in the vertical precipices, but also a hori¬ zontal section of the same on the beach at our feet. The beds through which erect trees, or rather the trunks of trees, placed at right angles to the planes of stratification, are traceable, have a thickness of about 2500 feet; and no deception can arise from the repetition of the same beds owing to shifts or Chap. xxiv. EKECT FOSSIL TREES. 153 faults, the section being unbroken, and the rocks, with the exception of their dip, being quite undis¬ turbed. The first of the upright trees which I saw, in the strata d, fig. 18 , is represented in the enlarged section, fig. 19 . No part of the original plant is pre¬ served, except the bark, which forms a tube of pure bituminous coal, filled with sand, clay, and other de¬ posits, now forming a solid internal cylinder without traces of organic structure. The bark is a quarter of an inch thick, marked externally with irregular longitudinal ridges and furrows, without leaf-scars, and therefore not resembling the regular flutings of Sigillarise, but agreeing exactly with the description of those vertical trees which are found at Dixonfold, on the Bolton railway, of which Messrs. Hawkshaw and Bowman have given an excellent account in the Proceedings of the Geological Society.* On com¬ paring Mr. Hawkshaw’s drawings of the British fossils, in the library of the Geological Society, as well as a specimen of one of the Dixonfold trees pre¬ sented by him to their museum, with portions of the bark brought by me from Nova Scotia, I have no hesitation in declaring them to be identical. The diameter of the tree, a. b, fig. 19 , was fourteen inches at the top and sixteen inches at the bottom, its height five feet eight inches. The strata in the’ interior of the tree consisted of a series entirely different from those on the outside. The lowest of the three outer beds which it traversed consisted of purplish and blue shale, c, fig. 19 , two feet thick, above which was sandstone, d, one foot thick, and * London, 1839—40; vol. iii,, pp. 139 , 270. 154 UPRIGHT TREES, S. JOGGINS. Chap. xxiv. above this clay, e, two feet eight inches. In the interior, on the other hand, were nine distinct layers of different composition: at the bottom, shale four inches; then, in the ascending series, sandstone one foot, shale four inches, sandstone four inches, shale eleven inches, clay with nodules of iionstone, f, two inches, pure clay two feet, sandstone thiee inches, and, lastly, clay four inches. Mr. Bowman has explained in the Manchester Transactions the causes of the frequent want of cor¬ respondence in the strata enclosing a buried tree, and the layers of mud and sand accumulated in the interior, which vary according to the more or less turbid state of the water at the periods when the trunk decayed and became hollow, and according to the height to which it was prolonged upwards in the air or water after it began to be imbedded externally in sediment, and various other accidents. It is not uncommon to observe in Nova Scotia, as in England, that the layers of matter in the inside are fewer than those without. Thus, a 44 pipe” or cylinder of pure white sandstone, representing the interior of a fossil tree, will sometimes intersect numerous alternations of shale and sandstone. In some of the layers in the inside of the trunk, a, b, fig. 19, and in other trees in this line of cliffs, I saw leaves of ferns and frag¬ ments of plants which had fallen in together with the sediment. Continuing my survey, I found the second of the erect trees, e. fig. 18, or a, fig. 21, separated from the first, or from a, b, fig. 19, by a considerable mass of shale and sandstone. This second trunk was about nine feet in length, traversing various strata, and cut Chap. xxiv. FOSSIL TREES IN COAL. 155 off at the top by a layer of clay two feet thick, on which rested a seam of coal, b, fig. 21, one foot thick. This coal foimed a foundation on which stood two laige tiees, c and d, fig. 21, about five yards apart, each about two and a halt feet in diameter, and four¬ teen feet long, both enlarging downwards, and one of them, d, bulging considerably at the base. The beds through which they pass consist of shale and sandstone. The cliff was too precipitous to allow me to discover any commencement of roots, but the bottom of the trunks seemed to touch the subjacent coal. Above these trees were beds of bituminous shale and clays with Stigmaria, ten feet thick, on which rested another bed of coal, e, one foot thick, and this coal supported two trees, f, g, each eleven feet high, and sixty ya'rds apart. They appeared to have grown on the coal, e. One of these, about two feet m diameter, preserved nearly the same size from top to bottom, while the other, which was about four¬ teen inches in diameter at the top, enlarged visibly at the base. The irregular furrows of the bark were an inch and half one from the other. The tops of these trees were cut off by a bed of clay, on which rested the main seam of the South Joggins coal, four feet thick, above which is another succession of strata, very similar to those already described, with occasional thin seams of coal, and with vertical trees at five or six different levels. . 1 Served in all at least seventeen of these up¬ right trunks, but in no instance did I see any one of them intersecting a layer of coal, however thin, nor did I find any one of them terminating downwards m sandstone, but always in coal or shale. Their 156 stigmarue roots of trees. Chap. xxiv. usual height was from six to eight feet, but one which was more than a hundred feet above the beach, and which I could not approach to measure, seemed to be twenty-five feet high, and four feet in diameter, with a considerable bulge at the base. They all ap¬ pear to be of one species, the rugosities on the sur¬ face producing the effect of a rudely-fluted column, and they were placed very accurately at right angles to the planes of stratification. I found numerous flattened trunks of large Sigillariae with their flutings and leaf-scars in the shales, but none of them resem¬ bled the erect trees with their irregularly furrowed exterior. Stigmarise are abundant in the argillaceous sand¬ stones of these coal-measures, often with their leaves attached, and spreading regularly in all directions from the stem. It commonly happens here, as in Europe, that, when this plant occurs in sandstone, none of its leaf-like processes (or rootlets ?) are at¬ tached, but I saw one remarkable exception in strata of micaceous sandstone, between the site of the up¬ right tree represented in fig. 19 and those given in fig. 21. The stem was about four inches thick (see fig. 20), and it traversed obliquely several layers of fine white micaceous sandstone two feet in vertical thickness. Mr. Binney of Manchester seems now to have proved that these Stigmarise are really the roots of Sigillaria, by finding them actually proceeding from the bottoms or stools of the trunks of Sigillarise which occur erect in the British coal-measures. We may therefore conclude that the dome-shaped mass represented by Messrs. Lindley and Hutton in their Fossil Flora, pi. 31, and figured by Dr. Buckland in Chap, xxiv. STIGMARIA3 roots of trees. 157 his Bridgewater Treatise, pi. 56, vol. ii., was nothing more or less than a section of the stump of a fossil Sigillaria, from which the roots extended in all direc¬ tions through the ancient soil. It should be remem¬ bered that M. Adolphe Brongniart, when he obtained from Autun the first and only example yet discover¬ ed of a Sigillaria exhibiting internal structure, pro¬ nounced it to agree so nearly with Stigmaria, that he inferred on botanical considerations alone, that both must belong to the same plant, and that the Stigma¬ ria was probably the root. In some of the specimens of the latter plant obtained in Nova Scotia, and cut in thin slices so as to transmit light, the woody fibre of the internal cylinder surrounding the axis from which the pith has disappeared, shows, under the microscope, the vascular tissue, and the fern-like or scalariform vessels, which are so conspicuous in European Stig- manse. By aid of the silicified fossil from Autun M. Ad. Brongniart has been enabled to demonstrate’ that this structure, or the scalariform vessels, so dis¬ tinguishing a character of the living Ferns and some other cryptogamous plants, is united in Sigillaria with rings of growth peculiar to dicotyledonous trees, so that we have here, in this extinct genus, a link be¬ tween classes of plants standing widely apart from each other m the arrangement of existing vegetables. I have stated that I counted seventeen upright trees m the strata of the South Joggins, and I was assured by Dr. Gesner, and by residents at Minudie, that other and different individuals were exposed a few years ago ; the action of the tides of the Bay of Fun- dy being so destructive as continually to undermine and sweep away the whole face of the cliffs, so that VOL. IT. 15 ’ ulcU 158 AMERICAN COAL-PLANTS. Chap. xxiv. a new crop of fossils is laid open to view every three or four years. I saw the erect trees at more than ten distinct levels, one above the other ; they extend over a space of two or three miles from north to south, and more than twice that distance from east to west, as I am informed by Dr. Gesner, who has explored the banks of streams intersecting this coal-field. For the names of Sigillarise, Lepidodendra, Ferns, and Calamites collected by me in the cliffs of the South Joggins, and in other coal-measures of Nova Scotia, I refer to the list given at the end of this chapter, calling the reader’s attention to the extraordinary amount of specific identity in fossils so widely sepa¬ rated from each other in their “ habitations.” It ap¬ pears that, out of forty-eight species, without enume¬ rating the different kinds of Stigmarice, which agree perfectly with the varieties found in England, there are no less than thirty-seven which have been identi¬ fied. The greater part of the remaining eleven might perhaps have been found to agree with known Euro¬ pean fossils, had not most of the specimens been in too imperfect a state to admit of close comparison. Out of fifty-three species obtained by me from the coal-fields of the United States (almost all of them from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio), I have been able to identify thirty-five with European fossils, chiefly species found in Great Britain. Ot the re¬ maining eighteen, only four can be said to be peculiar forms, the other fourteen being all closely allied spe¬ cies, or geographical representatives of European coal plants. When it is considered that all the gene¬ ra of these fossils are likewise common to North America and Europe, we seem entitled to declare, Chap. xxiv. SECTION OF CLIFFS, S. JOGGINS. 159 that so great a degree of uniformity in the flora of regions equally remote is without parallel, whether in the more ancient strata or in the geographical distri¬ bution of plants, in the present condition of the globe. Continuing our survey of the cliffs of the South Juggins, we observe, not far above the uppermost coal-seams with vertical trees, or, g, fig. 18, two ' stiata, h, i, perhaps of freshwater or estuary origin, composed of black calcareo-bituminous shale, chiefly made up of compressed shells, of two species of Modiola and two kinds of Cypris. Above' these beds are innumerable strata of red sandstone or shale, without coal seams, and with few or no fossils, on which it will be unnecessary to dwell. Many curious conclusions may be deduced from the facts above enumerated. 1st. The erect position of the trees, and their per¬ pendicularity to the planes of stratification, imply that a thickness of several thousand feet of strata, now uniformly inclined at an angle of 24°, were deposited originally in a horizontal position. But for the existence of the upright trees it might have been conjectured, that the beds of sand and mud have been thrown down at first on a sloping bank, as sometimes happens in the case of gravel and coarse sand. But, if we are compelled to assume the ori¬ ginal horizontality of beds 2500 feet thick, through which the erect trees are dispersed, we can hardly avoid extending the same inference to the greater pait of the strata above and below them. It by no means follows that a sea four or five miles deep was filled up with sand and sediment. On the contrary, repeated subsidences, such as are required to explain 160 ERECT FOSSIL TREES. Chap. xxiv. the successive submergence of so many forests which grew one above the other, may have enabled this enormous accumulation of strata to have taken place in a sea of moderate depth. Secondly. The evidence of the growth of more than ten forests of fossil trees superimposed one upon the other prepares us to admit more willingly the opinion, that the Stigmaria with its root-like processes was really the root of a terrestrial plant fossilised in situ. Yet, if we embrace this opinion, it follows that all the innumerable underclays with Stigmatise in North America and Europe, which I have alluded to at pp. 62 and 84, Vol. I., and p. 15, Vol. II., &c., are indications of an equal number of soils, whether of dry land or freshwater marshes, which supported a growth of timber, and were then submerged. If this be true, and the conclusion seems inevitable, the phenomenon of the upright trees in Nova Scotia, marvellous as it may be, shrinks into insignificance by comparison. At the same time, it is quite intelligible, that we should find hundreds of cases where the soil has remained with the roots fixed in their original matrix for one instance where the trunk has continued to stand erect after submergence. Many favourable circumstances must concur, to allow of such an exception to the general rule. There must, for example, be an absence of waves and currents of sufficient strength to loosen and overturn the trees, and the water must be charged with sediment ready to envelope the plants before they have had time to¬ tally to decay. I have shown (p. 164, Vol. I.) that on the coast of S. Carolina and Georgia the land has sunk Chap. xxiv. ERECT FOSSIL TREES 1G1 in modern times, and that buried trees are occasion- ally found in strata containing shells of recent species. The formation of low islands of sand off the shore, breaking the force of the Atlantic, has probably allowed many of these trees near the mouths of estuaries to continue erect under water, until they were silted up and preserved. Similar low islands and sandbanks skirt nearly the whole of the eastern coast of the United States, and may assist the geologist in explaining some of the phenomena of the Carboniferous period, especially the manner in which superficial beds of vegetable matter, as well as upright trees, escaped the denuding forces. Thirdly. It has been objected to the theory which refers the origin of seams of pure coal to plants which grew on the exact spaces where we now find coal, that the surfaces of ancient continents and islands ought to undulate like those we now inhabit. Where, they ask, are the signs of hills and valleys, and those river-channels which cut through deltas ? These appaient difficulties will, I think, be removed, if we reflect that the fossilisation of successive forests presupposes both the subsidence of the ground and the deposition of sediment going on simulta¬ neously. If so, the accumulation of mud and sand furnishes us with the levelling power required, and, had there been extensive denudation capable of pro¬ ducing valleys, it could readily have swept away all the coal. In regard to ancient river-courses, the late Mr. Buddie often assured me, that he had in many places met with them in the coal-fields of the Noith of England, and he has given a detailed account of one which intersected a seam of coal in 162 ORIGIN OF COAL-SEAMS. Chap. xxiv. the Forest of Dean. Even in these cases, however, the general evenness of the surface is immediately- restored by a new sinking of the delta, and the depo¬ sition of fresh sediment, so that the succeeding seam of coal has grown on as perfectly flat a surface as if there had been no partial destruction of the beds below. If it be objected that, according to the analogy of recent subterranean movements, some areas ought to have sunk down at a more rapid rate than others, producing irregularities in the ancient level of the dry land, we reply, that there are abundant proofs in the arrangement of the carboniferous strata, that the amount of local subsidence was actually not uni¬ form. Mr. Bowman has clearly pointed out, that the wedge-shaped or lenticular masses of sandstone and shale, which sometimes intervene between the upper and lower portions of a seam of coal, are the natural result of such inequalities in the downward movement. In those areas which sink so fast, as to be submerged, the growth of terrestrial plants is suddenly arrested, and the depressed region becomes the receptacle of sediment, until its level is again raised. Then the growth of the former vegetation is resumed, and the result is the intercalation of strata for a certain space between two beds of coal, which unite and become one, if they are followed to a certain distance in every direction. In our excursion to the fossil trees, Dr. Gesner and I were joined by several volunteers, some of whom separated from us on their way home. I asked a cottager, whether he had seen them pass. He said, that “ a party of Jogginers on horseback Chap. xxiv. PICTOU COAL-FIELD. 163 had come by his house half an hour before.” As I had heard of a North Joggins on the other side of the bay, I asked whether there was any meaning in this term. He immediately pointed to the salient and retiring angles of the cliffs, observing, “ You see that they jog in and jog out.” The coal-field of Pictou, the only one in Nova Scotia where a large quantity of the valuable mine¬ ral has been worked, lies about a hundred miles to the eastward of the Cumberland or Minudie coal- measures. An examination of the strata of the Albion Mines, near Pictou, convinced me that the coal-bearing formation there is the equivalent of that already described, although it may be impossible to identify the different strata in detail. They contain the same fossil plants, and similar shales, with the same species of Modiola and Cypris, as at the South At the latter place, the largest seam is only four feet thick, whereas that at the Albion mines is estimated at thirteen yards in thickness. In both localities there is a vast series of beds of red sandstone and red marl, with limestone and gypsum undei lying the principal coal-seams, and an enormous thickness of sandstones and shales, without coal, above them. The only spot in the Pictou coal-field where plants have been observed in an erect position is at Dick¬ son s Mills, a mile and a quarter west of Pictou. Here a bed of upright Calamites were discovered by Mr. J. W. Dawson, with whom I visited the locality. But the section in 1842 was almost entirely con¬ cealed by water. The strata consisted of red and grey sandstones and shales, with imbedded fern 164 UPRIGHT CALAMITES. Chap. xxiv. leaves, and numerous fragments of Calamites and Sternbergia. The sandstone in which the upright Calamites were enveloped was about ten feet thick, and all these terminated downwards at the same level, where the sandstone joined a layer of coarse grey limestone with pebbles. The tops of the Calamites were broken off at different heights, where the grit became coarser. Mr. Dawson states that he observed in the same bed, in a prostrate position, a lepidodendron, with leaves and lepidostrobi attached to its branches. Since my excursion to Nova Scotia, I have ex¬ amined the French coal-field of St. Etienne near Lyons, where M. Alexandre Brongniart first de¬ scribed a great bed of erect Calamites, inclosed in sandstone, which he believed to have grown where they have become fossil. The section of the beds of which he published a drawing, representing the erect fossil stems, has been since entirely de¬ stroyed by the quarrying away of the sandstone, but I obtained so much evidence, in 1843, of the occurrence of various upright trees, Sigillarise and others, at different levels in the same coal formation, as to incline me fully to believe M. Alex. Brong- niart’s conclusions, and to retract the objections I formerly urged against his inferences, on the ground of the different heights at which the Calamites terminated downwards.* This may perhaps be explained by a slight obliquity in the direction of the trunks, or a want of perpendicularity in the vertical face of the cliffs to the planes of stratification. * See Elements of Geol, vol. ii , p. 137. Chap. xxiv. LIST OF COAL PLANTS. 165 The following list of plants comprises several species which I did not meet with in Nova Scotia, but which occur in the neighbouring island of Cape Breton, and were presented, at different times, to me and to the Geological Society, by Mr. Richard Brown. For several specimens from Nova Scotia I have been indebted to Mr. J. W. Dawson, of Pictou, and to Mr. Alison, F.G.S. I have also included in the catalogue one or two fossils from the New Brunswick coal-field (which may be con¬ sidered as another part of that near Minudie) presented to the Geological Society by Mr. Hen- wood. In determining the specific characters and names, I have been principally indebted to Mr. Samuel Woodward, of the Geological Society, who has been occasionally assisted by Mr. Morris, and I have re¬ ferred, in some points of difficulty, to M. Adolphe Brongniart. After the list was completed, it was revised, as far as relates to the ferns, by Mr. Chas. Bunbury, some of whose corrections have been adopted, and his comments cited. LIST OF FOSSIL PLANTS FROM THE COAL MEASURES OF NOVA SCOTIA AND CAPE BRETON. NAMES OF FOSSIL PLANTS. LOCALITIES. 1. Flabellaria Sternb. Fragments of large palm-like leaves, such as are figured by Stern¬ berg under the name of Flabellaria, are common in many British and Continental localities. Horton Bluff, near Windsor, South Jog- gins, and Pictou in Nova Scotia. 2 . Cyperites Lindl. Identical with the grass-like leaves of C. bicarinata, as far as the specimens admit of comparison. Cape Breton. 166 LIST OF COAL-PLANTS OF Chap. xxiv. NAMES OF FOSSIL PLANTS. 3. Trigonocarpum Brongn. An undescribed and new species of this genus, so common in the European coal-fields, was given me by Mr. Dawson. 4. Artisia approximata Brong. This plant (the Sternbergia of Brong.') is considered by Mr. Dawes as the cast of the medullary cavity of stems of trees. Quarter¬ ly Journ. Geol. Soc., No. 1, p. 91. 5. Asterophyllites, allied to A. tuberculata. Mr. Binney considers the speci¬ men from Sydney to differ from A. tuberculata, but to be identical with a species found at Manchester. 6. A. galioides 1 Lindl. British. 7. Sphenophyllum Schlotthei- mii ? Brong. A common British coal plant, of which I found only one specimen. 8. Pinnularia capillacea Lindl Also British. 9. Lepidophyllum lanceolatum (Bindley and Hutton) t. 7. fig. 3, 4. Also British species. 10. Lepidodendron Rhodianum Sternberg. Also British. 11. L. obovatum Sternberg, t. 6. f. 1 ; Lindley and Hutton, pi. 19, bis. Also British. The L. aculeatum which I found LOCALITIES. Pictou. Pictou and South Jog- gins, Nova Scotia. Sydney, Cape Breton. Pictou, Nova Scotia. Pictou, Nova Scotia; Sydney, Cape Bre¬ ton. Sydney, Cape Breton. Pictou, Nova Scotia. Cape Breton. Sydney, Cape Breton. Chap. XXIV. NOVA SCOTIA AND CAPE BRETON. 167 NAMES OF FOSSIL PLANTS. abundantly associated with this in the U. S. coal-fields appears to Mr. Woodward not specifically distinct from L. obovatum. LOCALITIES. 12. L. undulatum Sternberg. Bathurst, New Bruns- Tliis species, also British, was wick, found by Mr. Henwod in New Brunswick. 13. Lepidodendron elegans (Lind- ley and Hutton.) Extremely common in the coal¬ fields of Nova Scotia down to the lower or gypsiferous coal-measures. Horton and Windsor, Nova Scotia; Syd¬ ney, Cape Breton. 14. L. gracile ? Also a British species. 15. L. (new species.) Not known in Europe or else¬ where ; the specimen is in the Mu¬ seum of the Geol. Society. South Joggins, Nova Scotia; Cape Bre¬ ton. Cape Breton. 16. L. In the same fissured state as L. or natissimum, figured by Brongniart. South Joggins, Nova Scotia. 17. Lycopodites? selaginoides (Lepidodendron selaginoi¬ des Sternberg). Common in the British and Bohe¬ mian coal-measures. Cape Breton. 18. Lepidostrobus. I met with no species myself in Nova Scotia, but Mr. Dawson has observed it associated as in Europe with Lepidodendron. Pictou, Nova Scotia, 19. Sigillaria Saullii Brong. pi. Windsor, Nova Scotia; 151. Sydney, C. B. A British species found at Man¬ chester. 168 LIST OF COAL-PLANTS OF Chap. xxiv. NAMES OF FOSSIL, PLANTS. localities. 20. S. allied to S. Schlottherrnii Brong. pi. 152, fig. 4. 21. S. scutellata Brong. pi. 163, fig. 3. Also British. Queere. Same as S. undulata of Sternberg, tab. 15. 22. Sigillaria reniformis Brong. pi. 142. Bindley & H. pi. 57 and 71. This British species I have ob¬ tained from Cape Breton in a decor¬ ticated state, and found it common, with its bark, at Frostburg in Mary¬ land. South Joggins, Nova Scotia. South Joggins, Nova Scotia. Sydney, Cape Breton. 23. S. organum Bindley & H. t. 70. Syriogodendron ? Brong. A British species. Sydney, Cape Breton. 24. Lyginodendron. 1 found various fluted stems with¬ out scars in the lower coal forma¬ tion near Windsor, and elsewhere in Nova Scotia. Perhaps these fos¬ sils may be only lower portions of the stems of Sigillaria;, in which the scars are obliterated by age and growth. 25. Stigmaria ficoides, and nu¬ merous varieties. These seem to agree well with the different British kinds, probably the roots of distinct species of Si¬ gillaria. 26. Neuropteris cordata, Brongn. pi. 64, f. 5. Bindley and Hutton, 41. Extremely common in the middle Nova Scotia, passim. Dickson’s Mill, Pictou, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton. Chap. XXIV. NOVA SCOTIA AND CAPE BRETON. NAMES OF FOSSIL PLANTS. or productive coal-measures of Nova Scotia; also British. Cape Breton. 27. N. angustifolia, Brongn. t. 61,' Cape Breton. f. 3, 4. Also British. 28. Neuropteris flexuosa Brongn. t. 65, f. 2. The most abundant fern in the coal-measures of Nova Scotia, the U. S., and Europe. Also British. 29. N. acutifolia ? allied to Odon- topteris minor Brongn. t. 77. Sydney, Cape Breton. 30. 31. Cyclopteris dilatata 1 Lind- ley and Hutton. See Neu¬ ropteris ingens, t. 91, A. Qua re, if variety of N. cordata. The only indication of a Cyclopte¬ ris which I have met with in Nova Scotia. I found the same species at Pomeroy, Ohio. Pecopteris muricata Brongn. pi. 95 & 97. Perfectly identical with common British specimens. P. abbreviata Brongn. pi 115. r Common British species. 33. P. arborescens Brongn. pi, 102 . ^ Also British. Sydney, Cape Breton. South Joggins, and Dickson’s Mill, Pic- tou ; also Bathurst, New Brunswick. 32. Cape Breton. Cape Breton. 34. P. lonchitica Brongn. pi. 84. The most characteristic British species of Pecopteris in the coal- measures. South Joggins, Nova Scotia. 1 "*11 170 LIST OF COAL-PLANTS OF Chap. xxiv. NAMES OF FOSSIL plants. 35. P. pteroides Brongn. pi. 99. f. 1. Also British. 36. Pecopteris sequalis Brongn. Also British. 37. P.-? A remarkable species, with ana- stomozing veins, resembling in this respect the P. Defrancii of Bron- gniart. Mr. Charles Bunbury ob¬ serves respecting this species, that «its venation is completely reticu¬ lated, the midrib evanescent,” and “ it would form the type of a new genus, standing in the same rela¬ tion to Lonchopteris as Neuropteris does to Pecopteris.” 38. P. Sillimanni ?. Brongn. pi. 96, f. 5. A single pinna, collected by Mr. Ilenwood. 39. P. villosa Brongn. pi. 104, f. 3. Also British. 40. P. Serlii Brongn. pi. 85. Also British. Calamites. The specimens of this genus scarcely afford satisfactory specific characters to the botanist, but al the Nova Scotia fossils agree with common European forms from the coal-measures. LOCALITIES. Bathurst, New Bruns¬ wick. Cape Breton. Sydney, Cape Breton. Bathurst, New Bruns¬ wick. Dickson’s Mill, Nova Scotia. Sydney, Cape Breton. 41. C. cannseformis Schlot. South Joggins, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton. 42. C. Suckowii Brongn. South Joggins, Nova Scotia. Chap. xsir. NOVA SCOTIA AND CAPE BRETON. 171 NAMES OF FOSSIL PLANTS. 43. C. approximates Artis. LOCALITIES. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. 44. C. arenaceus ? Jceger. 45. C. Steinhaueri Brongn. 46. C. dubius Brongn. 47. C. nodosus Schlot. 48. C. Cistii Brongn. Also British. « Nova Scotia. South Joggins, Nova Scotia. Sydney, Cape Breton. Pictou, and South Jog- gins, Nova Scotia. Sydney, Cape Breton. * 172 AGE OF GYPSIFEROUS Chap, xxv CHAPTER XXV. Lower Carboniferous or Gypsiferous Formation of Nova Scotia. — Why formerly considered as newer than the productive Coal. -—Determination of its true Age.-Sections near Windsor. —Supposed Reptilian Footsteps.—Section on the Shubena- cadie.-Large Masses of Gypsum.-Their Origin.-Volcanic Action contemporaneous with JVova Scotia Coal Measures. . Limestone with Marine Shells.-Table of Organic Remains of the Carboniferous Limestone of Nova Scotia and Island of Cape Breton. The productive coal-measures near Minudie, de¬ scribed in the last chapter, may be regarded as the middle of the carboniferous series of Nova Scotia; while the strata above them, including the beds with Modiola , h, i (fig. 19, p. 151), and the sandstones and shales farther to the south, in the same region, to¬ gether with a corresponding series near Pictou, and the lower sandstone of Prince Edward’s Island, as¬ certained by Mr. Dawson to contain coal-plants, may be all classed as the Upper Carboniferous division, in which no seams of coal have yet been found. Lastly, we may regard an enormous mass of red and brown sandstones and red marls, the lower portions of which include beds of gypsum, and limestones charged with marine shells and corals, as the Lower Carboniferous or gypsiferous ^series. In this division grits and shales, with some true coal plants and some thin seams of impure coal are occasionally met with. Before my visit to Nova Scotia, the group last mentioned had been considered, chiefly, I believe, Chap. xxv. STRATA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 173 from its resemblance to the gypsiferous red marls above the coal in Europe, as the uppermost forma¬ tion in Nova Scotia. Mr. Logan, in his first brief excursion in 1841 to the Windsor district, where the beds are greatly disturbed, had little more than time to collect some of the most abundant fossils; and these, when submitted to several able palseontologists (to M. de Verneuil among others), were thought to confirm the opinion previously entertained, that the strata were newer than the coal. That geologists should at first have arrived at this result will surprise no one who is aware how many of the fossils of our Magnesian limestone and coal resemble each other, or who studies the list given at p. 218, in which seve¬ ral species both of shells and corals from Nova Scotia, identical or closely allied to well-known Permian or Magnesian limestone forms, are enumerated. By these considerations my friend Mr. Murchison was induced, in his Anniversary Address to the Geolo¬ gical Society of London, in 1843, to pronounce the gypsiferous rocks of Nova Scotia as the equivalents in age of the Permian group of Russia. My first in¬ spection of the country near Windsor, followed by an examination of the cliffs near Minudie, described in the last Chapter, led me to an opposite view, strength¬ ened by discussions with Mr. Richard Brown of Syd¬ ney, and Mr. J. W. Dawson of Pictou, with whom I explored the cliffs of the East River, south of the Al¬ bion Mines, near Pictou. I then examined with care, in company with Messrs. Dawson and Duncan, the fine section laid open in the cliffs of the Shubenacadie, a river which intersects Nova Scotia from south to north, cutting through the gypsiferous strata for a 16* 174 AGE OF GYPSIFEROUS Chap. xxv. distance of twenty miles. Lastly, I had an opportu¬ nity of studying at my leisure in London the fossils collected from various localities, and I had then no longer any hesitation in announcing to the Geological Society my conviction, that the gypsiferous strata were older than the productive coal-measures, whether of the South Joggins or of Pictou. I also stated at the same time my opinion that I considered them as constituting a lower member of the Carboniferous group, containing fossil plants of the coal, with shells and corals of the carboniferous limestone. Mr. Richard Brown, after our meeting at the Al¬ bion Mines in 1842, kindly undertook, at my request, to make a re-examination of part of Cape Breton, and the result was published in a letter, dated October 20, 1843, addressed to me, # in which this experienced observer declared that he had been able “ to confirm my views as to the relative age of the coal and gyp¬ sum,” and that the gypsiferous strata of Cape Breton, agreeing in character with those of Nova Scotia, were inferior in position to the productive coal-meas¬ ures of Sydney. Mr. Dawson also, soon after my visit, published several memoirs on the neighbour¬ hood of Pictou and the northern parts of Nova Sco¬ tia, in which he adopted and extended the same views. Mr. Logan, after seeing my fossils and sections, and examining in 1844 the cliffs near Minudie, and at the South Joggins, which he had not seen on his first visit to Nova Scotia, communicated to me his opinion that the gypsum and accompanying marine limestones (in which he found several of the characteristic fossils of * See “ Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London,” No. I., p. 23. Chap. xxv. STRATA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 175 Windsor), and the red sandstones near Minudie, were older than the productive coal-measures. Dr. Ges- ner, however, has not abandoned the opinion at w’hich he had previously arrived on this point, having re¬ cently, in a letter addressed to the President of the Geological Society, and read May, 1845, declared his belief that the true order of superposition is not as I have represented it, and that other geologists have been misled by me. As this question affects the geological structure of a large portion of Nova Scotia, I shall give a brief outline of the data which favour the classification I have proposed. In the first place, I found every¬ where that the gypsiferous formations were much more disturbed than those strata which I have called the Middle and Upper coal-measures, and that their outcrop was always nearer to the region occupied by the older rocks, whether Silurian or Metamorphic. Thus, for example, if we pass from the granitic moun¬ tains and older slates of the Cobequid Hills to the coal of the South Jogging, we find the gypsum and limestone nearest the Hills: or, if we descend the East River, we pass from the Silui'ian strata, cross the region in which limestones and gypsums occur, and then come to the coal-measures of the Albion Mines. Mi'. Richard Brown has shown, in the Me¬ moir above cited, that the same arrangement holds good in Cape Breton. Secondly, the regular dip of all the beds seen near Minudie (see section above, p. 151) would carry the strata to which the limestone and gypsum are subordinate under the workable coal of the South Joggins. Thirdly, geologists before and since my visit, who have carefully examined the East 176 LOWER CARBONIFEROUS STRATA. Chap. XXV River, south of Pictou, including Mr. Logan, are agreed that the sandstones and marine limestones, some of them having an oolitic structure, occurring to the south of the Albion Mines, are older than the coal of those mines. Now I found that most of the fossils of those limestones agreed with shells and corals obtained by me in the limestones near Wind¬ sor, or in those of the Shubenacadie, accompanying the principal masses of gypsum. Fourthly, both in the Windsor district, and on the Shubenacadie, I found an intimate association between strata contain¬ ing mountain limestone fossils, masses of gypsum, and coal grits, with Sigillaria and Lepidodendron, but no seams of pure coal in this part of the series. Fifthly, I obsei’ved that, in the Pictou region, as well as at the South Joggins, the strata which I class with Mr. Dawson as the Upper coal-measures, although several thousand feet thick, and respecting the posi¬ tion of which above the productive coal there is no question, contain no marine limestones, or great masses of gypsum. Sixthly, there is a formation of unconformable red sandstone without fossils, which appears on the Salmon River six miles above Truro, lying on the edges of the inclined Carboniferous strata. In this series of beds no limestone with marine shells or gypsum have been discovered. In illustration of the first of these points, namely, that the gypsiferous rocks occur nearest to the older formations, I may cite, in addition to the Minudie and East River sections already adverted to, the structure of the first country which I observed near Windsor. I saw, for example, the gypsum near the Halifax Road almost in contact with the old slates of the Ardoise Chap. XXV. SUPPOSED REPTILIAN FOOTSTEPS. 177 Hills, and afterwards traced the gypsiferous beds of the Saint Croix River up to their junction with the older slates. I also found, in going southwards from Windsor to a small tributary of the Avon, on which is situated Snides Mill, that the gypsiferous series in¬ closes, before its junction with the older rocks, coarse sandstones with a seam of impure coal two inches thick, also clay-iron-stone, and shales with Lepido- dendron elegans, but no strata resembling the pro ductive coal-measures. I consider the inclined and bent rocks near the town of Windsor, consisting of soft red, yellow, and purple marls, with conformable beds of limestone and gypsum, as higher in the series than the coal-grits above mentioned. In some of these limestones of Windsor, one of which having an oolitic texture oc¬ curs near the bridge, and another on the farm of Belvidere on the Avon, the following fossils occur, Terebratula sufflata, T. elongata, two other species of Terebratula, Producta Martini, P. Lyelli (De Ver- neuil) Pecten plicatus, Avicula, Modiola, allied to M. Pallasi, Cirrus spiralis, Euomphalus Icevis, Natica, Fenestella membranacea, and Ceriopora spongites, almost all of which I afterwards found on the Shube- nacadie, and some of them on the Debert River near Truro, associated with gypsum, also in strata on the East River, decidedly lower than the productive coal- measures. I consider the highly-inclined and curved strata of Horton Bluff, near Windsor, as affording another fine section of the Lower Carboniferous series associated with the gypsum. In the cliffs here I found Lepido- dendra, and other coal plants, and scales of fish of the 178 SECTION OF GYPSIFEROUS ROCKS CHAP. XXV. genera Holopticliius and Paleoniscus, both of them common to the English coal-measures. Mr. Logan detected in the same strata masses of concretionary limestone, which I had overlooked, and which are interesting, as they contain the Terebratula elongata, Avicula, and other marine fossils identical with those of Windsor. He also found, in one of the ripple- marked slabs of Horton what appear to be the im¬ pressions of the footsteps of an animal, perhaps a Reptilian, having five claws. There are two of these tracks, and they resemble considerably some foot¬ prints in the New Red sandstone of England, but, as they are on a stratum containing fucoids, and are not very sharp in their outline, like tracks formed above water, and as there is no series of them, Mr. Owen does not feel himself entitled to decide positively on their reptilian character.* Mr. Dawson has also found impressions resembling trifid footsteps in several parts of the carboniferous series of Nova Scotia, in ripple-marked sandstones, so sharp as to imply that they were not made above water ; but I have not yet been able to decide that any of them belong to vertebrate animals. The gypsiferous strata are best disclosed in the cliffs which bound the estuary of the Shubenacadie, for a distance of about 14 miles from north to south, or between Fort Ellis and the mouth of the river, where they are several thousand feet in thickness. * Dr. A. King has lately published an account in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia, Nov., 1844, of footsteps, referable, some of them to birds, others to batrachian reptiles, from the true carboniferous strata of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania.— Silliman’s Journal , vol. xlviii, p. 343, 1845. Chap. xxv. of THE SHUBENACAD1E RIVER. 179 The rapid tides of the Bay of Fundy continually un¬ dermine and sweep away the fallen detritus at the base of these cliffs, otherwise the section would soon be obscured, so rapid is the disintegration of the soft red marls, with which the gypsum and fossiliferous limestones are interstratified. The general strike of the beds on the Shubenacadie, as at Windsor, is nearly east and west, the strata seeming to have been first folded into numerous parallel wrinkles, running east and west, and then part of these folds tilted at considerable angles, sometimes towards the east, and sometimes to the west, while the rocks were fissured in the direction of their strike, and shifted vertically. By such complicated movements the strata have been thrown into the greatest confusion. At the Big Rock, a mass of gypsum or alabaster of a pure white colour and no less than 300 yards thick, is exposed and forms a conspicuous object in the vertical cliff, and has been followed continuously east and west for 12 miles through the country. Below it are al¬ ternations of anhydrous gypsum with yellow shale and bituminous limestone. Among the dislocated strata which alternate with the gypsiferous series, are three masses consisting of coal-grit, shale with lepidodendra, and red sandstone, which I refer to the same formation. In five cases where Mr. Dawson and I traced the junction of these sandstones with the gypsiferous beds, visible only at low water, we found a line of fault at the point of contact, and one wall of the fault was in every case formed of gypsum : yet 1 do not believe that the gypsum has filled rents, for it has all the appearance of having been an origi¬ nal and intregral part of the stratified series, formed 180 ORIGIN OF GYPSUM. Chap, xxv contemporaneously with the beds of red marl and marine limestone. If we endeavour to account for the origin of the gypsum by the subsequent conver¬ sion of carbonate into sulphate of lime, we encounter this difficulty, that beds of limestone full of fossils are intimately associated with the gypsum, and yet have undergone no alteration. I saw nowhere any passage from the one to the other even at points where the gypsum and limestone alternate. On the other hand, there are abundant proofs in various parts of Nova Scotia of the intrusion of trappean rocks of contemporaneous origin with the lower carboniferous strata, so that I have little doubt that the production of gypsum in the carboniferous sea was intimately connected with volcanic action, whether in the form of heated vapours (or stufas), or of hot mineral springs, or any other kind of agency accompanying submarine igneous eruptions. To the influence of these latter I also ascribe the remarkable mineralogical difference between the inferior carboniferous rocks of Nova Scotia and those of the coal-fields of the United States, which are free from trappean rocks. The gypsum of Nova Scotia when burnt is used for manure, and is shipped in great quantities for the United States. There are many indications of me¬ talliferous ores in the rocks of the Shubenacadie, and the neighbouring districts, and among other places, I observed near the mouth of the river and on its left bank, a limestone called the Black Rock, containing disseminated crystals of galena with one of magne¬ sia, copper, lead and cobalt. The limestones containing marine shells on the Shubenacadie occur, 1st, at a place north of Rose’s Ch A.P XXV. MARINE CARBONIFEROUS FOSSILS. 181 Point, about 7£ miles above the mouth of the river; 2dly, at the point called Anthony’s Nose, nearly op¬ posite, in both places near beds of gypsum ; 3dly, at Admiral’s rock, four miles higher up the river, on its left or western bank. One dark bed in the latter lo¬ cality is made up entirely of the broken stems of a small species of encrinus. Some layers at Anthony’s Nose are almost exclusively composed of a small coral, Ceriopora spongites, Goldf., while in other beds Productse are very abundant. The greater number of species are common to the different limestones of the Shubenacadie, the district round Windsor and that of Brookfield, a locality eight or nine miles to the east of Anthony’s Nose, and probably in the strike of that fossiliferous rock. For a set of fossils from the place last mentioned, enumerated in the list at page 183, I was indebted to Mr. Duncan, of Truro. The limestone of Gay’s River, having many shells in com¬ mon with the above-mentioned rocks, occurs near the outcrop of the gypsiferous formation, eight miles south of Fort Ellis, where the Shubenacadie section above alluded to terminates, and near which older formations make their appearance. In addition to the places above-mentioned, I also discovered during my tour with Mr. Dawson, to whose active operations I was much indebted, a series of strata below the bridge on the Debert River, thir¬ teen miles east of Truro, consisting of highly-inclined beds of red limestone and black slaty limestone, red sandstone, and red marl, in which a large number of the Windsor shells occurred, together with some small bivalves, and a fragment of a Limulus, or a genus intermediate between Limulus and Trilobite, VOL. ii. 17 182 MARINE CARBONIFEROUS FOSSILS Chap. xxv. resembling that of the coal-measures of Colebrook Dale, figured by Mr. Prestwich. We also saw beds similar to the above in the district of Onslow, about twelve miles N. E. of the Debert River bridge, where there is also a black slaty limestone, with similar small bivalve shells in it. The annexed Table will show in one view the fossils of the various localities of the gypsiferous limestone of Nova Scotia, together with a few others from Cape Breton, decidedly of the same formation, which I received from Mr. Richard Brown and Mr. James Dawson. Mention is made in the Table of the geological position, when known, of the same species in other countries. I am indebted to M. de Yerneuil for the determination of the greater part of the shells. On considering this Table we shall not hesitate to pronounce the gypsiferous formation of Nova Scotia to be a member of the carboniferous group, instead of the triassic or magnesian lime¬ stone formation, to both of which it had been seve¬ rally conjectured to belong. The presence of the genera Orthoceras, represented by two species, the Nautilus and Conularia, the Limulus or Trilobite, and the Cyathophyllum are opposed to the opinion that the beds are newer than the coal. The following species are either identical or scarcely distinguish¬ able from well known mountain limestone fossils ; Enomphalus lsevis, Pileopsis vetustus, Pecten plicatus, Isocardia unioniformis, Phil. Producta Martini, P. Scotica? The Ceriopora spongites also occurs in the mountain limestone in Ireland ; and the coral which has been compared to Retcpora jlustvaceci of the magnesian limestone is not the same, but rnoie Chap, xxv OF NOVA SCOTIA. ]83 nearly allied to, if not identical with Fenestella mem- branacea of the mountain limestone, according to Mr. E. Forbes. The abundance of this coral and three shells, namely, Terebratula elongata, Modiola allied to M. Pallasi, and Avicula antiqua, brought by Mr. Logan from Windsor, first led to the presumption that the gypsiferous beds were newer than coal; but M. de Yerneuil now informs me that T. elongata has also been found in the mountain limestone of Yorkshire. The other genera mentioned in the Table accord well with the Carboniferous fuana, a result which we might expect from the association before mentioned of the Gypsiferous marine Lime¬ stone with sandstone and shales, containing Lepido- dendron elegans. It will be seen that the agreement of species from various and often distant localities is quite as great as could have been expected, when we consider the small number of the fossils hitherto obtained. LIST OF FOSSILS OF THE LOWER CARBONIFEROUS OR GYPSIFEROUS FORMATION OF NOVA SCOTIA AND CAPE BRETON. NAMES OF FOSSILS. LOCALITIES. 1. Trilobite or Limulus. Debert River, near v. Truro. 2. Cypris or Cytherina. South Joggins and Pictou,Nova Scotia. 3. C-. Second species. South Joggins. 4. Nautilus. Allied to N. Leplayi, DemidolF. Brookfield, Nova Sco¬ tia. 184 LIST OF FOSSILS OF Chap. xxv. NAME OF FOSSILS. LOCALITIES. and to N. bidorsatus., Fischer. (Oryctol. of Warsaw.) A fossil of the Mountain Limestone of Europe. 5. Cyrtoceras. A genus not known above the coal. Windsor, Nova Scotia. 6. Orthoceras. Brookfield. Analogous to O. Gesneri, Mar¬ tin, with longitudinal striae, and with the syphon between the centre and the border. 7. O Windsor. Second species. Larger and dif¬ ferent, but specimens imperfect. 8. Conularia. New species, distinct from C. quadrisculate, by size, distance of striae, and other characters. 9. Littorina? Analogous to a Permian species. Brookfield, and Gut of Canso, Cape Breton. Gay’s River. 10. Cirrus spiralis (or C. rotun- datus ?) Windsor. 11. Enomphalus IsBvis. A fossil also of the Devonian and Carboniferous formations of the Eiffel. Windsor. 12. Natica. New species, like N. plicistria, but smaller ; found also by De Yerneuil in the Permian rocks of Russia. Windsor and Gay’s River, Nova Scotia. 13. Cypricardia. New species, (aff. C. transversa) fossil in the mountain limestone of Belgium. Windsor. Chap. XXV. MOUNTAIN LIMESTONE, NOVA SCOTIA. 185 NAME OF FOSSILS. 14. Isocardia unioniformis Phil. A shell of the carboniferous limestone. 15. Cardiomorpha Archiacana. Found in the coal of Belgium. 16. Bivalve. Numerous impressions, genus not determinable, common to several localities. 17. Cucullsea. New species (aff. C. obtusa Phil.) 18. Modiola (afT. M. Pallasi). Like one in Permian formation of Russia. 19. M. A second species. 20. Avicula antiqua Munst. In Zechstein of Europe. 21. A-. New species allied to the pre¬ ceding, but more gibbous. 22. A-. LOCALITIES. Brookfield. Windsor. Debert River and On¬ slow District, Nova Scotia. With forty-five narrow ribs. 23. A 24 & 25. A. Two other species. 26. Pecten plicatus. Or very analogous. 27. P-(or Avicula). Smooth. 28. P New species. Windsor. Windsor, Brookfield, and Gay’s River. Gay’s River. The Shubenacadie and Gay’s River. Gay’s River. Debert River. Debert River. Windsor. Windsor, Brookfield, and Shubenacadie. Debert River. Brookfield. 17* 186 LIST OF FOSSILS OF Chap. xxv. NAME OF FOSSILS. 29. P-. New species, allied to P. gra- nosus, found in the carboniferous limestone. LOCALITIES. Shubenacadie. 30. Terebratula elongata Sclilot. Occurs in the Zechstein in Eu¬ rope, and in the mountain limestone of Yorkshire. 31. T. sufflata. Qucere. Gibbous variety of pre¬ ceding, De Verneuil. Windsor, Brookfield, Shubenacadie, Gay’s River, Debert Ri¬ ver, and Cape Bre¬ ton. Windsor, Brookfield, Shubenacadie, and Debert River. 32. T Debert River. Small, like T. diodonta with sinus. 33. T-. With one fold in the sinus. Windsor and Shube¬ nacadie. 34. T-. New Species. 35. Terebratula. Windsor. Brookfield. New species, with sinus reaching very nearly to the beak, very like one described by Von Buch, as T. canidea. 36. Spirifer glaber. Fossil of mountain limestone and Zechstein of Europe. East River of Pictou, and Cape Breton. 37. S. cristatus ? Windsor. Fossil of English magnesian limestone. 38. S. Minimus Sow. Or new species ? A fossil of the Permian of Russia. Windsor, Brookfield, Shubenacadie, and Debert River. 39. S. octoplicatus. Silurian of Europe ? Windsor. Chap. XXV. MOUNTAIN LIMESTONE, NOVA SCOTIA. 187 NAMES OF FOSSILS. 40. Producta Martini. A fossil of the mountain lime¬ stone of Europe. 41. P. concinna, Sow. Or allied Species ; carboniferous limestone of Europe. 42. P. Lyelli, De Verneuil. Shell with fine striae, and with long and slender tubes, the most characteristic fossil of the lower carboniferous formation. 43. Producta Scotica. Smaller than European, if iden¬ tical ; carboniferous limestone, Eu¬ rope. 44. P. Spinosa Sow. QucBre. Var. of P. Martini. Car¬ boniferous limestone, Europe. 45. P. antiquata de Koninck. Coal-measures, Europe. 46. Encrinus. 47. Fenestella membranacea ? (Retepora membranacea, Phil.) Carboniferous limestone, Eu¬ rope. 48. Ceriopa spongites, Goldfuss. (pi. 64.) Eiffel, Silurian, and mountain limestone, Ireland. 49. Favosites ramosa ? •50. Cyathophyllum. LOCALITIES. Windsor, Brookfield, Shubenacadie, East River of Pictou, and Cape Breton. Cape Breton. Windsor, Horton Bluff, Shubenacadie, Gay’s River, Debert Riv¬ er, Minudie, and Cape Breton. Windsor, Brookfield, Shubenacadie, East River of Pictou, and Cape Breton. Cape Breton. Brookfield. Shubenacadie, and East River, Pictou. Windsor, Brookfield, the Shubenacadie, and East River, Pictou. Windsor and Brook¬ field. Shubenacadie. Cape Breton. 188 PROGRESS OF NOVA SCOTIA. Chap. xxvi. * CHAPTER XXYI. Progress and Resources of JVova Scotia.—Highland Settlers.— Timber Duties.—Cobequid Hills.—Conflagration of Forests.— Albion Mines.—Humming Birds.—Estuary of the Shuben- acadie .— Stakes cut by Beavers.—Promotion of Science .— Social Equality.—JVova Scotians “ going home.”—Return to England. The day after my arrival in Nova Scotia, a fellow- passenger in the coach from Halifax to Windsor, a native of the country, and who, from small begin¬ nings, had acquired a large fortune, bore testimony to the rapid strides which the province had made, within his recollection, by deploring the universal increase of luxury. He spoke of the superior sim¬ plicity of manners in his younger days, when the wives and daughters of farmers were accustomed to ride to church, each on horseback behind their hus¬ bands and fathers, whereas now they were not con¬ tent unless they could ride there in their own car¬ riage. In spite of the large extent of barren and siliceous soil in the south, and, what is a more serious evil, those seven or eight months of frost and snow which crowd the labours of the agriculturist into so brief a season, the resources of this province are extremely great. They have magnificent harbours and fine navigable estuaries, large areas of the richest soil gained from the sea, vast supplies of coal and gypsum, and abundance of timber. Chap. xxvi. HIGHLAND SETTLERS. 180 Not a few of the most intelligent and thriving in¬ habitants are descended from loyalists, who fled from the United States at the time of the declaration of independence. The picture they drew of the sta¬ tionary condition, want of cleanly habits, and igno¬ rance of some of the Highland settlers, in parts of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, was discouraging, and often so highly coloured as to be very amusing. They were described to me as cropping the newly cleared ground year after year without manuring it, till the dung of their horses and cattle accumulated round their doors, and became, even to them, an in¬ tolerable nuisance. They accordingly pulled down their log-cabins and removed them to a distance, till several of their more knowing neighbours offered to cart away the dung for a small remuneration. After a time, when the Highlanders perceived the use to which the manure was put, they required those who removed it to execute the task gratuitously ; and my informants thought that the idea might possibly occur to some of the next generation of applying the material to their own fields. I heard frequent discussions on the present state of the timber duties both here and in Canada, and great was my surprise to find the majority of the small proprietors, or that class in whose prosperity and success the strength of a new colony consists, regretting that the mother country had legislated so much in their favour. They said that a few large capitalists and shipowners amassed considerable for¬ tunes (some of them, however, losing them again by over-speculation), and that the political influence of a few such merchants was naturally greater than that of 190 TIMBER DUTIES. Chap. xxvi. a host of small farmers, who could never so effectively plead their cause to the Government. But, on the other hand, the labourers engaged during the severe winter, at high pay, to fell and transport the timber to the coast, became invariably a drunken and improvi¬ dent set. Another serious mischief accrued to the colony from this traffic: as often as the new settlers reached the tracts from which the wood had been re¬ moved, they found, instead of a cleared region, ready for cultivation, a dense copsewood or vigorous under¬ growth of young trees, far more expensive to deal with than the original forest, and, what was worse, all the best kinds of timber, fit for farm buildings and other uses, had been taken away, having been care¬ fully ^elected for exportation to Great Britain. So that, while the English are submitting to pay an en¬ hanced price for timber inferior in quality to that of Norway, the majority of the colonists, for whom the sacrifices are made, feel no gratitude for the boon. On the contrary, they complain of a monopoly that enriches a few timber merchants, at the expense of the more regular and steady progress of agriculture. After my visit to the district of Windsor, Cape Blomidon, and Minudie, I went by Amherst to the Cobequid Hills, the nucleus of which consists of gra¬ nite. Their outline, though rounded and not pictu¬ resque, formed a striking contrast to that of the low, long, flat-topped and uniform ridges, with straight intervening valleys, into which the Cumberland coal¬ field near Minudie is divided. On the highest part of the Cobequid Hills, we crossed a fine wild forest covering the granite, and then, pn the southern flanks of those hills, I observed clay-slate cut through by Chap. xxvi. HUMMING BIRDS. 191 trap dikes. We then went by Londonderry to Truro at the head of the Bay of Fundy, and. fiom thence took places for Pictou in an open four-wheeled vehicle, here termed a wagon, which carried the mail. The road was cut through an endless forest of fir-wood, parts of which had lately suffered much by conflagrations. These fires often spread for leagues in the summer season, and cause great devastation. The more resinous species of fir, when they have been heated by the burning of the surrounding timber, blaze up suddenly when the fire at last reaches them, and are enveloped from top to bottom in brilliant flames, presenting in the night a most splendid spectacle. I had arranged with Captain Bayfield, whom I had not seen for many years, that we should meet at Pic¬ tou, and the day after my arrival there, his surveying ship, the Gulnare, sailed into the harbour. I spent a day on board that vessel, and we then visited together the Albion Mines, from whence coal is conveyed by a railway to the estuary of the East River, and there shipped. Mr. Richard Brown, whose able co-opera¬ tion in my geological inquiries I have before acknow¬ ledged, had come from Cape Breton to meet me, and with him and Mr. Dawson I examined the cliffs of the East River, accompanied by the superintendent of the Albion Mines, Mr. Poole, at whose house we were most kindly received. Here, during a week of intense heat, in the beginning of August (1842), I was frequently amused by watching the humming-birds, being able to approach unperceived, by aid of a Ve¬ netian blind, to within a few inches of them, while they were on the wing. They remained for many 192 SHUBENACADIE RIVER. Chap. xxvi. seconds poised in the air, while sucking the flowers of several climbers trailed to the wall on the outside of the window, and in this position the head and body appeared motionless, brilliant with green and gold plumage, and the wings invisible, owing to the ra¬ pidity of their motion. The sound was somewhat like that of our humming hawk-moths or sphinges, but louder. When they darted away, they seemed to emit a flash of bright colour. Following them into the garden, I sometimes saw them perched upon the dry stakes on which peas were trained, and theie plume themselves. It is wonderful to reflect on the migrating instinct which leads these minute cieatures from the distant Gulf of Florida to a countiy buried constantly under deep snow for seven or eight months in the year. After leaving Pictou, I made an expedition with Mr. Dawson to the Shubenacadie (see above, p. 139), and at Truro we were joined by Mr. Duncan, by whose advice we started at an early hour each morn¬ ing in a boat, after the great tidal wave or bore had swept up the estuary, and were then carried ten, fifteen, or twenty miles with great rapidity up the river, after which as the tide ebbed, we came down at our leisure, landing quietly wherever we pleased, at various points where the perpendicular cliffs offer¬ ed sections on the right or left bank. On one occasion, when I was seated on the trunk of a fallen tree, on a steep sloping beach about ten feet above the level of the river, I was warned by my companion that, before I had finished my sketch, the tide might float off me and the tree, and cairy both down to the Basin of Mines. Being inciedulous, I Chap. xxvi. STAKES GNAWED BY BEAVERS. 193 looked at my watch, and observed that the water re¬ mained nearly stationary for the first three minutes, and then, in the next ten, rose about three feet, after which it gained very steadily but more slowly, till I was obliged to decamp. A stranger, when he is looking for shells on the beach at low tide, after the hot sun has nearly dried up the sandy mud, may well be surprised if told that in six hours there will be a perpendicular column of salt water sixty feet high over the spot on which he stands. The proprietor of one of the large quarries of gyp¬ sum on the Shubenacadie showed me some wooden stakes, dug up a few days before by one of his labourers from a considerable depth in a peat bog. His men were persuaded that they were artificially cut by a tool, and were the relics of aboriginal In¬ dians ; but having been a trapper of beavers in his younger days, he knew well that they owed their shape to the teeth of these creatures. We meet with the skulls and bones of beavers in the fens of Cam¬ bridgeshire, and elsewhere in England. May not some of the old tales of artificially cut wood occur¬ ring at great depths in peat and morasses, which have puzzled many a learned antiquary, admit of the like explanation ? I never travelled in any country where my scien¬ tific pursuits seemed to be better understood, or were more zealously forwarded, than in Nova Scotia, al¬ though I went there almost without letters of intro¬ duction. At Truro, having occasion to go over a great deal of ground in different directions, on two suc¬ cessive days, I had employed two pair of horses, one in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. The vol. ir. 18 194 SOCIAL EQUALITY. Chap, xxvi postmaster, an entire stranger to me, declined to re¬ ceive payment for them, although I pressed him to do so, saying that he heard I was exploring the country at my own expense, and he wished to contribute his share towards scientific investigations undei taken foi the public good. We know, on the authority of the author of “ Sam Slick,” unless he has belied his countrymen, that some of the Blue Noses (so called from a kind of potato which thrives here) are not in the habit of setting a very high value, either on their own time or that of others. To this class, I presume, belonged the driver of a stage-coach, who conducted us from Pictou to Truro. Drawing in the reins of his four horses, he informed us that there were a great many wild rasp¬ berries by the road-side, quite ripe, and that he in¬ tended to get off and eat some of them, as there was time to spare, for he should still arrive in Truro by the appointed hour. It is needless to say that all turned out, as there was no alternative but to wait in the inside of a hot coach, or to pick fruit in the shade. Had the same adventure happened to a traveller in the United States, it might have furnished a good text to one inclined to descant on the inconvenient inde¬ pendence of manners which democratic institutions have a tendency to create. Doubtless, the political and social circumstances of all new colonies promote a degree of equality which influences the manners of the people. There is here no hereditary aristocracy _no proprietors who can let their lands to tenants no dominant sect, with the privileges enjoyed by a church establishment. The sects are too numerous, and too fairly balanced, to admit of the possibility of Chap. XXVI. NOVA SCOTIANS “GOING HOME.” 195 such a policy; and the Baptists, who predominate greatly in number and position in society, are oppos¬ ed on principle to all ecclesiastical endowments by the State. The influence of birth and family is scarcely felt, and the resemblance of the political and social state of things to that in the United States is striking. The longer, indeed, Jjiat I remained here, the larger were the deductions I found it necessary to make from those peculiarities that I had imagined, during my sojourn in the United States, to be the genuine fiuits of a lepublican as contrasted with a monarchi¬ cal constitution, of an American as distinguished from a British supremacy. They who lament the increased power recently acquired by the democracy m the United States, ascribe to it, and I believe not without reason, the frequent neglect of men of the greatest talent and moral worth, and the power which it gives to envy, concealing itself under the cloak of a love of equality, to exclude such citizens from the most important places of trust and honour. In our American colonies, on the other hand, we hear complaints that very similar effects result from the habitual disregard of the claims of native merit, all posts of high rank and profit being awarded to for¬ eigners, who have not their hearts in a country where they are but temporary sojourners. The late revolution in our colonial system, obliging the respon¬ sible executive to command a majority in the colo¬ nial parliaments, must, it is to be hoped, remove this cause of dissatisfaction. It is no small object of ambition for a Nova Sco¬ tian to “go home,” which means to “leave home, 196 VOYAGE HOME. Chap. xxvi. and see England.” However much his curiosity may be gratified by the tour, his vanity, as I learn from several confessions made to me, is often put to a severe trial. It is mortifying to be asked in what part of the world Nova Scotia is situated to be complimented on “ speaking good English, although an American”—to be asked “what excuse can pos¬ sibly be made for repudiation to be forced to ex¬ plain to one fellow countryman after another “ that Nova Scotia is not one of the United States, but a British province.” All this, too, after having prayed loyally every Sunday for Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales—after having been so ready to go to war about the Canadian borderers, the New York sympathisers, the detention of Macleod and any other feud! Nations know nothing of one another—most true _but unfortunately in this particular case the ignor¬ ance is all on one side, for almost every native of Nova Scotia knows and thinks a great deal about England. It may, however, console the Nova Scotian to re¬ flect, that there are districts in the British isles, far more populous than all his native peninsula, which the majority of the English people have never heard of, and respecting which, if they were named, few could say whether they spoke Gaelic, Welsh, 01 Irish, or what form of religion the greater part of them professed. August 18.—We left Halifax in the steamship Co¬ lumbia, and in nine days and sixteen hours were at the pier at Liverpool. This was the ninetieth voy¬ age of these Halifax steamers across the Atlantic, without any loss, and only one case of detention by Chap. xxvi. RETURN TO ENGLAND. 197 putting back for repairs. As we flew along in the railway carriage between Liverpool and London, my eye, so long accustomed to the American landscape, was struck with the dressy and garden-like appear¬ ance of all the fields, the absence of weeds, and the neatness of the trim hedgerows. We passed only one unoccupied piece of ground, and it was covered with heath, then in full blossom, a plant which we had not seen from the time we crossed the Atlantic. Eight hours conveyed us from sea to sea, from the estuary of the Mersey to that stream which Pope has styled “the Father of the British Floods.” What¬ ever new standard for measuring the comparative size of rivers I had acquired in my late wanderings, I certainly never beheld “ the swelling waters and alternate tides” of Father Thames with greater ad¬ miration than after this long absence, or was ever more delighted to find myself once more in the midst of the flourishing settlement which has grown up upon his banks. 18 * DESCRIPTION OF PLATES AND MAPS. Plate I. Bird's-eye view of the Falls of Niagara and adjacent country, coloured geologically . Frontispiece of Vol. I. I have stated in the second chapter, Vol. I., that Mr. Bake well, Jun.,son of the distinguished geologist of that name, gave me his original coloured sketches of the Niagara district in 1841. He had previously- published an outline of them in some wood-cuts in “ Loudon’s Magazine ” for 1830, at a time when the geological structure of the country had not been worked out as it has since been by the State sur¬ veyors of New York. When I visited the Falls of Niagara in 1841, I conceived the idea of combining Mr. Bakewell’s pictorial view with a correct geolo¬ gical representation of the rocks as determined by Mr. Hall, who accompanied me to the Falls. A copy of the view thus made I sent off in the same year to the Geological Society, and exhibited another in illustration of a lecture delivered at Boston in the autumn. DESCRIPTION OF PLATES AND MAPS. 199 A reference to the section at p. 45, Vol. I., and to map, PI. III., and to the observations made at pp. 78 and 80, Vol. II., will enable the reader to un¬ derstand the details exhibited in this view. The numbers on the right-hand margin from 1 to 6 correspond with those referring to similar colours in the map of the Niagara district, PI. III., Yol. I. p. 30, in which the usual position of North and South have been reversed, that it might correspond with the bird’s-eye view. In the latter, Lake Erie is seen in the distance, or to the South, and the river Niagara flowing out of it. This river at its exit is about 330 feet above Lake Ontario, and has a fall of about one foot in a mile for the first fifteen miles, until, after passing the larger or Grand Island, and approaching Goat Island, it descends rapidly about fifty feet in less than a mile, and is then thrown down about 165 feet perpendicularly at the Falls. For the dimensions of these and the ravine, see Vol. I., p. 31. The river then flows for seven miles in the ravine, with a fall of 100 feet. The first notch on the left bank marks the western side of the whirlpool, where the drift occurs, described in Yol. II., p. 78, as connected with the valley of St. David’s. The next notch and pro¬ jection, half a mile lower down on the opposite bank, marks the site of the Devil’s Hole (see map, PI. III.) where the Bloody Run enters. I have speculated upon this indentation, p. 42, Yol. I., as a spot where there are clear signs of the great cataract having been once situated. About four miles still lower down, the platform terminates suddenly in the escarpment, at the base of which are seen the towns of Lewiston and Queenstown, standing on the Medina sandstone, 200 DESCRIPTION OF No. 6, which forms the low ground extending for about seven miles to Lake Ontario, as shown in the map PL III., the river having a fall of only four feet from Queenstown to its entrance into that lake. The site of the town of St. David’s is seen on the right-hand side of the bird’s-eye view, and I have stated, at p. 80, Yol. II., that the opening here is re¬ presented, for want of more space, as of small width, but it is in fact nearly two miles broad at its mouth, forming a strong contrast to the narrowness of the ravine (about 400 yards wide) from which the Nia¬ gara escapes at Queenstown. This remarkable dif¬ ference is doubtless connected with the entirely dis¬ tinct mode of origin which I have ascribed to the two openings, that of the Niagara having been formed by the excavating power of the river as it receded, that of St. David’s by the antecedent denu¬ ding action of the waves of the sea during the up¬ heaval of the land. The two chapters to which this bird’s-eye view principally refers are Ch. 2, Yol. I., and Ch. 19, Vol. II. Plate II. Geological Map of the United States, Canada, 6pc., compiled from the State Surveys of the U. S., and other sources Frontispiece of Yol. II. The route which I followed through the United States and Canada will be found indicated bv a double line or road, and by a white streak through PLATES AND MAPS. 201 the Ohio or Appalachian coal-field, and by a dotted line whei'e I went by water, on the sea or the lakes. Section I. Authorities .—I have given an alpha¬ betical list on the map itself of the principal authori¬ ties for the geological colouring of this map, which, although very imperfect, will, it is hoped, be useful, in conveying a general idea of the distribution of the principal groups of rocks, especially in that portion of the territory of the United States in which so many admirable State surveys have been made under the direction of the State governments. The manner in which the map has been composed, and the relative approach to correctness of its several parts, will best be understood by the observations which I shall offer on the sources of my information, and by my ex¬ planation of the groups of rock represented by dif¬ ferent colours. Maclure, William. The earliest geological survey of America referred to in the construction of the present map is that accompanying Maclure’s “ Observations on the Geo¬ logy of the United States,” published at Phila¬ delphia in 1817. In this map he has represented, with great general accuracy, the “Alluvial Plain” (see p. 93, Vol. I.), bordering the Atlantic, and ex¬ tending from Long Island to Louisiana and Texas. This plain includes the areas of the tertiary forma¬ tions represented on my map. Parallel to the Alluvial Plain, Maclure has described the great “Hypogene,” or “primary” district of the Atlantic Slope (see p. 93, Yol. I.), and has indicated its northern extension over the whole of New Hampshire, and over nearly 202 description of all Maine, Vermont and Connecticut; he has also coloured in the detached mass occupying the northern part of the State of New York, between Lakes Ontario and Champlain. The broad belt of “ Pa- lceozoic rocks” stretching from Lake Champlain through the Appalachian ridges to the river Coosa in Alabama, and the isolated basin of Rhode Island, he has represented under the older epithet of “ Transition.” The sandstone of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, now classed as New Red sandstone, is coloured by him as Old Red; whilst, in the ab¬ sence of positive information respecting the Western States, he coloured them all as “ Secondaiy. Bayfield, H. W., Captain R. N. The earliest contribution of this indefatigable explorer of the geological structure of the northern parts of America, is contained in a paper on Lake Superior, published in 1829 in the First Volume of the Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. In this memoir the position and extent of the sandstone, and various trappean and primary rocks which surround the lake and compose its numerous islands, were described from a careful personal survey. The representation given on my map is taken from a coloured copy laid down by Captain Bayfield for me. Since 1829, Captain Bayfield has explored a great part of the Lake and River coast between Lake Superior and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; and in the present year he communicated to the Geological Society of London a paper “ On the Junction of the Transition and Primary Rocks of Canada and La- PLATES AND MAPS. 203 brador,” in illustration of which he presented an ex¬ tensive suite of fossils to the Society, and supplied me with coloured maps of the district in question. On these maps he has laid down the great region of hypogene or granitic formations extending from Labrador along the northern coast of the Gulf and River St. Lawrence to the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Superior; at intervals along this he has traced the oldest fossiliferous limestone (No. 15), forming the northern extremity of Newloundland, the island of Anticosti, and the Mingan islands, the out¬ lying mass on Lake St. John, many points on the river St. Lawrence, above and below Quebec, some of the Thousand Isles, and thence, crossing to Cabot’s Head and the Manitoulins, where it appears to bend southward across Lake Michigan to the Wisconsin river. From these maps I have also taken the coast of Chaleur Bay, Gaspe, the southern shore of the St. Lawrence, and many points in addition to, or con¬ firming the information derived from other sources. Featherstonhaugh, G. W. In his “ Tour in the Slave States,” Mr. F. refers to his earlier geological surveys made in various parts of the United States. From this work, and verbal communications, I have obtained much valuable information respecting the Alleghany Mountains, the Arkansas, and other Western territories; likewise in regard to the line of junction of the Primary and Silurian rocks on St. Peter’s River, Missouri, and around the Ozark moun¬ tains. On Mr. F.’s authority I have extended the 204 DESCRIPTION OP Cretaceous colour for a considerable distance along both banks of the Arkansas River; and he informs me that he has seen the same formation characterised by the abundance of Exogyra costata extending all the way to the sources of the Yellowstone river and Miscou. Conrad, T. A. Mr. C. published in 1832, “Fossil Shells of the Tertiary Formation of North America,” in which he alludes to the extent of these deposits. He has also kindly presented me with a map of Ala¬ bama, in which, besides the limits of the Primary and Silurian districts of North Alabama and Ten¬ nessee, he has traced out those of a Lower Cretaceous region explored by him, extending from Tuscaloosa and Montgomery on the north to Claiborne and Columbia, where it joins and is covered up by the Eocene tertiary. Jackson, C. T. and Alger, F. A map of the geology of Nova Scotia was pub¬ lished by these authors in 1833, to accompany a memoir communicated by them to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. i., Cambridge ; in which a great portion of the leading features of the structure of the country are exhibited. The first account of their survey was published in Silliman’s Journal of Science for 1828-9. Dr. Jackson is also the author of a Report on the Geological and Agricultural Survey of Rhode Island, 1840. From his map it appears that the western oar* of the State consists entirely of Primary rocks, PLATES AND MAPS. 205 which also form its eastern boundary. Rhode Island itself, and the bays and islands northwards, are co¬ loured as Greywacke and coal, which I have re¬ presented as Old Red sandstone and coal. In 1841 and subsequent years Dr. Jackson pub¬ lished various Reports, succeeded in 1844 by one large 4to volume, entitled “ Final Report on the Geology and Mineralogy of the State of New Hampshire.” The State consists entirely of Hypo- gene and Metamorphic rocks. The non-fossiliferous limestones of Haver Hill and Francisca are the only additions which, owing to the wholesale grouping of the rocks in the present map, I have been able to make, beyond the single colour used for the whole State in Maclure’s map. In the years 1837, 1838, and 1839, Dr. Jackson published three reports on the Geology of Maine, from which it appears that that great region consists almost entirely of Hypogene and Silurian rocks. As the latter have not yet been subdivided, or referred to their equivalents in other States, I have coloured all the fossiliferous tracts with one tint. Nos. 10—13. Hitchcock, Edward. Professor Hitchcock published his first Report on the Geology of Massachusetts in 1833, but the map of which I have availed myself, appeared in 1841, accompanying a new edition of his Report. In this, the boundaries of the various metamorphic and primary rocks are laid down in great detail. The small scale of my present map only allows me to correct, the general outline originally given by Maclure. VOL. II. 19 206 DESCRIPTION OF Taylor, R. C., F.G.S. In Mr. Hall’s map of the Middle and Western States, published in his Geology of New-York, he acknowledges his obligation to Mr. Taylor of Phila¬ delphia for a coloured map of the Eastern part of Pennsylvania, recording his own observations pre vious to the year 1834. I have adopted this part of Mr. Hall’s map, and have also before me that of Mr. Taylor, published in 1840, on which he laid down the position and extent of the outlying coal basins on the north-east of the great Appalachian coal-field. Mr. Taylor is also the author of models to ex¬ plain the geological structure of some of the ridges in the Alleghanies of Pennsylvania. Rogers, H. D. This eminent geologist published in 1839, his map of the geology of New Jersey, the result of a State survey, of which I have availed myself. Although the Final Report and map of Pennsylvania, con¬ structed during another elaborate survey, under the direction of the same geologist, has not yet been published, and consequently was not directly avail¬ able for the present map, it is probable that some of the information obtained during the Pennsylvanian survey, and made public through various Reports, has found its way into the channels to w T hich I have been indebted in the construction of my map. Rogers, W. B. Mr. Hall acknowledges his obligations to Mr. Slade, a member of the geological corps of the State survey of Virginia, so ably conducted by Professor PLATES AND MAPS. 207 W. B. Rogers, for the limits of the formations in Virginia, on which Reports have been published from the years 1836 to 1840, by Professor R. In regard to the newer coal of Eastern Virginia, the relation of which to the New Red sandstone was hinted at by Maclure, Mr. Rogers infers from the fossil plants that it is of the age of the Oolite. See Paper in Trans, of Assoc, of Amer. Geol., 1842, p. 298. Owen, David Dale, M.D. In November, 1842, Dr. Owen, the State Geolo¬ gist of Indiana, communicated to the Geological Society an important paper on the Geology of the Western States, with a large suite of fossils and a map, which he most liberally gave me permission to make use of for this work, without waiting for the publication of the original. His map comprises the whole of the Illinois coal-field, and a considerable part of the Ohio or Appalachian coal-field. It com¬ prehends indeed the geology of all the Western States watered by the rivers Ohio, Wabash, Illinois, Rock, Wisconsin, Cumberland, and Tennessee, lying be¬ tween 35° and 43° of north latitude, and 81° and 91° of west longitude. It includes the States of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Du¬ buque and Mineral Point districts of the Territories of Iowa and Wisconsin. The observations recorded are the results of numerous excursions in these prov¬ inces, commenced in the year 1834, and continued to 1841, by Dr. Owen, sometimes alone, at others accompanied by Dr. Troost and Dr. Locke, the State geologists respectively of Tennessee and Ohio. The 208 DESCRIPTION OF territory under consideration occupies an area of about half a million of square miles (Proceedings of Geol. Soc. of London, November, 1842, Vol. iv., p. 1), and meets Mr. Taylor’s Survey of the Penn¬ sylvanian coal-field on the north-east, and the Cre¬ taceous plain described by Conrad and Featherstone- haugh to the south. New York State Survey, 1836—1842. The State of New York having been divided into four districts, the geological survey of the first of these, comprehending the southern counties, was as¬ signed to Mr. Mather, that of the second or northern counties to Dr. Emmons, the third district or central counties to Mr. Lardner Yanuxem, and the fourth or western region to Mr. James Hall. The large map, comprising the result of their joint labours, has not appeared, but a compendium of it has been given by Mr. Hall in his geological map of the Middle and Western States, published in his Final Report, Albany, 1843. To this map, by Mr. Hall, and to that already mentioned by Dr. Dale Owen, I have been indebted for the principal portion of that part of my map which contains the Govern¬ ment Surveys of the Union. Mr. Hall’s map comprehends a sketch of the geo¬ logy of Michigan, with which he was furnished by Dr. Houghton, the government surveyor of that State, who must therefore be considered as my authority for this region. The observations of Dr. Hildreth, in the twenty- ninth volume of Silliman’s Journal “ on Ohio,” &c., of Professor J. T. Ducatel, in Maryland, and Pro- PLATES AND MAPS. 209 fessor J. C. Booth, the geologist of Delaware, have been embodied by Mr. Hall in his map, which I have followed in regard to each of those States. That portion of Mr. Hall’s map which relates to Pennsylvania and Virginia, especially the ridges of the Appalachian mountains, is necessarily imperfect, in consequence of the unavoidable delay which has attended the publication of the splendid maps, now nearly ready, by Professors H. D. and W. B. Rogers, the surveyors of those States. I have not had the advantage of seeing a geologi¬ cal map of the Western States, published by Mr. Byrem Lawrence, to which Mr. Hall refers. Dr. Emmons published his “ Final Report on the Second District of New York” in 1842. It contains geological maps of the counties of Jefferson and Clin¬ ton, and many detailed sections, extending from the great primary or hypogene district of New York across the Silurian basin of Lake Champlain into Ver¬ mont, where the primary reappears ; giving, upon several different lines, the points at which the various strata appear at the surface. I have also profited by much valuable information respecting the geogra¬ phical distribution of the rocks of Canada, &c., in the body of Dr. Emmons’ book. Percival, James G In 1842, Mr. Percival’s “ Report on the Geology of the State of Connecticut” appeared, with a map exhibiting, with great accuracy, the boundary lines of the various hypogene rocks, and the new red sand¬ stone of the valley of the Connecticut, with the re¬ markable crescent-shaped masses of trap which oc- 19* 210 DESCRIPTION OF cupy a considerable portion of its area. These tiap- rocks are mentioned by Maclure, but their form, and the singular circumstance that they all he in one di¬ rection, with their points eastward, was hist made out by Mr. Percival. Dr. A. Gesner. In 1836, Dr. Gesner published “ Remarks on the Geology and Mineralogy of Nova Scotia,” with a small map, geologically coloured, in the construction of which he had been engaged some years befoie ; but I am unable to record the exact date of his earli¬ est observations. In 1842, he sent a much more detailed map to the Geological Society, to illustrate a memoir on the same subject, an abstract of which appeared in the Pro¬ ceedings of the Society, and a sketch of the map itself subsequently in the Geological Journal, No. I, p. 34, 1845. In 1839 and the three following years, he issued four Reports pn the Geological Survey of the Province of New Brunswick; but, as no map was published with them, I have only been able to glean a few particulars, sufficient, in connection with the MS. map with which Mr. Henwood has furnished me, to give a general idea of the structure ot that province. In the last of these Reports, Di. Gesnei describes the coal-field of New Brunswick as occu¬ pying an area of 8,700 square miles, bounded on the south by a primary ridge extending from Shepody on the Bay of Fundy to the Oromoecto Lake, on the east by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north and west, as far as it has been explored, by palseozoic and primary rocks beyond the rivers Nashwack and Miramichi. PLATES AND MAPS. 211 The whole of this great region presents a remark¬ ably low and level surface, not averaging an eleva¬ tion of more than 40 feet above the sea, the coast- cliff of the gulf being only from 12 to 20 feet high ; and the central tract, which separates the streams which flow west into the St. John’s from those which have an easterly direction to the gulf, scarcely ex¬ ceeding 150 feet. Sandstone, containing coal-measure plants and fos¬ sil trees, also occurs on the northern shore of the Bay of Fundy, forming cliffs, which are occasionally 200 feet high, and present many remarkable contortions and dislocations of the strata, caused in some instances by protruding masses of trap-rock. Henwood, W. J., F.G.S., of Penzance. I am indebted to the kindness of this gentleman for a MS. map of New Brunswick, indicating the locali¬ ties in which coal-measure strata occur all along the south shore of Prince Edward’s Island, and on the opposite coast of Northumberland Straits and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from Pictou Harbour, Nova Scotia, to Miscou Island, and along the south shore of Chaleur Bay. Also at many points in Passama- quoddy Bay, and along the whole course of the rivers Nashwack and Miramichi to Bathurst on Cha¬ leur Bay. Mr. J. W. Dawson, of Pictou. From the map of the north-eastern part of Nova Scotia, sent to the Geological Society by this gen¬ tleman, of which a sketch was given in the first num¬ ber of the Journal of the Geological Society, London, 212 DESCRIPTION OF 1845, No. I, p. 26, and of which an improved edition will be given in the third number of that journal, I have corrected part of Dr. Gesner’s map of Nova Scotia, so far as the small scale of my own could allow. On Mr. Dawson’s authority, also, I have coloured Prince Edward’s Island as carboniferous, as he has shown that the sandstone there contains coal plants throughout. Mr. Richard Brown, of Sydney, Cape Breton. From two papers and a map communicated by him to the Geological Society of London (see Quar¬ terly Journal, No. I, p. 23, and No. II, p. 207), I have been able to give the geology of the island of Cape Breton. Prince of Neuwied. The valley of the Missouri around the “Great Bend ” has been coloured as Cretaceous upon the au¬ thority of the Prince of Neuwied. Mr. Romer has given the following extracts from his recently pub¬ lished work:—“Reise des Prinzen Maximilian von Wied zu Neuwied in Nord-America.” P. 75. “ In the environs of Fort Clark on the Mis¬ sissippi, all the hills consist of sandstone with Bacu- lites and other shells, which are found everywhere on the Missouri, and on its tributary rivers. Fossil bones have been often found; whole skeletons of Sau¬ rian animals, more than fourteen feet long, frequently occur farther down the Missouri: one of these, found near the Big Bend, I brought home, and it has been described as a new species of Ichthyosaurus by Pro¬ fessor Goldfuss.” PLATES AND MAPS. 213 P. 513. “We found here (near the mouth of the Mussel-shell river, Missouri) many shells, and among them very large and fine Baculites.” Baron Leopold von Buch informs me that the late Mr. Nicollet’s map, which I have not seen, would have enabled me to give a greater extension to the cretaceous strata in the Far West. Section II. Geological Formations expressed by dif¬ ferent Colours and Numbers on the Map. No. 1. Alluvium and Post-Pliocene. —One tint is employed to represent everything newer than the chalk. The spaces occupied by tertiary strata are indicated by dotting or by crosses, as in Nos. 2 and 3. I am aware that many parts to which I have been unable to extend these markings are really tertiary. No. 2. Miocene .—The island of Martha’s Vineyard has been referred by me to this period, as well as other districts, the area of which is sketched out in the 6th chapter of this work, p. 132, Vol. I., and a more full account of which will be given in the 4th No. of the Quarterly Journ. of the Geol. Soc. Lon¬ don, 1845. No. 3. Eocene. —A short account is given by me of what I observed of these strata, in the 9th chapter, p. 174, Vol. I., and a more detailed paper will be given in the 4th No. of the Quarterly Journ. of the Geol. Soc. London, 1845. I have by no means been able to mark all the points at which Mr. Conrad and others have seen the outcrop of these formations, to which I have also referred the white limestones of 214 DESCRIPTION OF the Santee river and some other places, classed by- several preceding observers as Upper Cretaceous. No. 4. Cretaceous. —The strata indicated by this colour in New Jersey, are described in the 4th chap¬ ter, p. 77, Vol. I., and in my paper in the Quarterly Journal of Geol. Soc. No. I. I have already alluded to the authorities on which various regions of the map have been delineated as cretaceous. No. 5. Coal {Oolite?) Virginia .—I have already mentioned (p. 207), that Professor W. B. Rogers considers the plants of the newer coal of Virginia to agree very closely with those of the oolitic formations of Europe. I have therefore distinguished the coal field near Richmond in Virginia, which I did not visit, by a different figure (No. 5) from the formation next in succession, or No. 6. No. 6. New Red Sandstone and Trap. —The pro¬ bable age of this formation has been discussed by me in the 6th chapter, p. 125, Vol. I., it being still a ques¬ tion whether it should be referred to the upper or lower New Red, to the Trias or Permian groups of Europe. This sandstone, in the valley of the Con¬ necticut and elsewhere, rests on hypogene rocks, and contains the footprints of birds and numerous fish of a genus allied to Paleoniscus. No. 7. Coal Measures. —I have alluded to the Illi¬ nois and Appalachian coal-fields at pp. 81, 86, Vol. I.; and at pp. 25, 26, Vol. II. That of Nova Scotia has been mentioned in the 24th and 25th chapters, Vol. II., and in my reference to Dr. Gesner, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Dawson as authorities. No. 8. Carboniferous Limestone and Gypsum of Nova Scotia .—This formation, when it is represented PLATES AND MAPS. 215 as forming a belt round the Ohio and Michigan coal¬ field, as shown by Dr. Dale Owen and Dr. Houghton, consists of limestone containing fossils by which it can he referred to the mountain limestone of Europe. No gypsum is there associated with it, but I have shown in the 25th chapter, Vol. II., that the lower carboni¬ ferous rocks of Nova Scotia assume a very different aspect from those in the United States, consisting of sandstone and red marl, with large masses of inter- stratified gypsum and marine limestone with true car¬ boniferous fossils. No. 9. Old Red Sandstone , or Devonian. —In order to understand the divisions comprehended under this and the following heads, from 10 to 16 inclusive, it will be necessary to refer to the classification adopted by the surveyors of New York in their geological reports, of which the following Table is given by Mr. Hall in his “ Final Report,” p. 18. / 210 Geographical subdivisions. Chamlpain Division. Ontario Division. Helderberq Series. Erie DESCRIPTION OF Systematic subdivisions, founded upon the fossil and lithological characters. Potsdam sandstone. Calciferous sandrock. Black-river Limestone group, embracing the Chazy and Birdseye. Trenton limestone. Utica slate. Hudson-river group. . Grey sandstone. Oneida or Shawangunk conglomerate. Medina sandstone. Clinton group. Niagara group, including shale and limestone. . Onondaga-salt group. . Water-lime group. . Pentamerus limestone. . Delthyris shaly limestone. . Encrinal limestone. . Upper Pentamerus limestone. . Oriskany sandstone . Cauda-galli grit. . Schoharie grit. . Onondaga limestone. . Corniferous limestone. . Marcellus slate. f Moscow shales. ’ Encrinal limestones. ’ Ludlowville shales. 24. Hamilton group. 25. Division, i 26. 27. 28. Tully limestone. Genesee slates. Portage or Nunda group. Chemung group ' Portage sandstone. ' Gardeau flagstones. * Cashaqua shale. No. 9 of my map includes Nos. 26, 27, and 28, or the Genesee, Portage, and Chemung groups, forming the upper or newer part of the Erie division of the New York system. Some allusion will be found to this formation, Yol. I., p. 58, and Yol. II., pp. 9 46. No. io .—Hamilton Group .—This formation in¬ cludes the Moscow and Ludlowville shales, and the Marcellus slate of the above table of the New York system, and corresponds in many of its fossils with PLATES AND MAPS. 217 the Ludlow rocks of Mr. Murchison s Upper Siluiian group. No. 11. Helderberg Series. —This division includes that portion of the Upper Silurian rocks of the above Table, which comprises the formations from 22 to 14 inclusive. Mr. Hall mentions that, after leaving the western extremity of Lake Erie, the Niagara lime¬ stone, the Onondaga salt group, and the Helderberg limestones (Nos. 13, 12 and 10 of my map), aie so blended together, that it is impossible to define their limits in the same manner as in New York. He has therefore united them in his map; and represented them under one colour in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois ; and I have followed the same plan. No. 12. Onondaga Salt Group.— This remarkable formation of red and green argillaceous shale, marl, and shaly limestone, with veins and beds of gypsum, and productive brine springs acquires a thickness of 1000 feet in New York, near the Niagara region, and in tl'ie county of Onondaga, where it is largely deve¬ loped ; but it is a group of partial extent in the Up¬ per Silurian division. No. 13. Niagara and Clinton Groups. —These, it will be seen, form the chief part of the Ontario divi¬ sion of the New York system. The Niagara lime¬ stone and shale correspond in their fossils with the Wenlock or Dudley limestone of England, and would therefore be classed by Mr. Murchison as Upper Silurian. The Clinton group, as containing the Pe.ntame.rus oblongus in abundance, would be considered in Eng¬ land as Lower Silurian ; but Messrs. Murchison and De Verneuil regard this fossil in Europe generally as vol. n. 20 218 DESCRIPTION OF on the dividing line between the Upper and Lower Silurian rocks. I have thought it most convenient in this instance to unite the Clinton and Niagara groups. No. 14. Hudson River, Utica, fyc..— In this group I have included the formations from Nos. 5 to 9 in¬ clusive, of the table of the New York system. The Medina sandstone, the Hudson River rocks, and Utica slates, comprise a number of arenaceous and argillaceous strata, which separate the Niagara and Trenton limestones, and which contain fossils corres¬ ponding to part of the Lower Silurian of Europe. No. 15. Limestone of Trenton, fyc .—This group includes Nos. 3 and 4 or the Trenton and Bird’s-eye divisions of the New York table, and the blue lime¬ stone of Cincinnati. (See p. 42, Yol. II.) The fos¬ sils brought by Capt. Bayfield from the island of Anticosti, and by Dr. Bigsby from the Manitoulin Islands, seem to imply that, near the northern limits of the Silurian rocks, the lowest group, containing Spirifer lynx, and other ancient fossils, and the newer calcareous formations, abounding in Pentamerus ob- longus and Favosites Gothlandica, are closely conti¬ guous, and cannot perhaps be divided. No. 16. Potsdam sandstone, fyc .—This group com¬ prehends Nos. 1 and 2, or the Potsdam and calcifer- ous sandstones, of the New York system, being the lowest formation containing organic remains in New York and on the St. Lawrence.—See pp. 106, 133, Yol. II. Z. Sandstone of Lake Superior .—This sandstone was formerly considered as belonging to the Old Red by Capt. Bayfield; but, as he has obtained no fossils PLATES AND MAPS. 219 from it, its age must be considered as undetermined, and he is now inclined to regard it as the equivalent of the Potsdam sandstone. The small oval marks engraved on the area of the hypogene rocks on the north shore of Lake Superior, indicate points where Capt. Bayfield has seen this sandstone overlying the granitic rocks. a. Hypogene ( Granite , Gneiss, fyc .)—Under this head I have comprehended all the formations for¬ merly called primitive or primary, whether stratified or unstratified, plutonic or metamorphic. They are non-fossiliferous, and I have discussed their chrono¬ logical relations in the 21st chapter, at pp. 108 to 112, Yol. II b. Trap Rocks. —Trappean rocks of various ages are indicated by crosses, which it will be observed are different from those used for the Eocene strata. c. Metamorphic Limestone. —The non-fossiliferous crystalline limestones or marble of the hypogene or primary class are indicated by this character. Note. —I have to acknowledge the co-operation of Mr. Woodward of the Geological Society in assist¬ ing me in collecting the various maps from which the present one has been compiled, and in selecting and arranging the colours. Plate III. Map of the Niagara District. The signification of the six subdivisions of the Silurian system of New York, represented in this map, will be understood by referring to the pre¬ ceding description. It will be seen that the Helder- 220 DESCRIPTION OF berg limestone, No. 1, is the same as one of the Upper Silurian formations, or No. 11, of the large map; that No. 2 corresponds with No. 12, and Nos. 3 and 4 with No. 13, while No. 6, or the Medina sandstone, is included in the large map in No. 14, and considered a member of the Lower Silurian group. In the Niagara district, it is constituted partly of a hard white quartzose sandstone, but chiefly of red sandstone and red marl. This map is referred to at p. 30, Vol. I. It will be seen that the same Nos. are used in the section at the side. The usual position of North and South has been reversed in this map, in order that it might cor¬ respond with the bird’s-eye view, PI. I. Plate IV. Facsimile of a view of Niagara Falls, by Father Louis Hennepin. —(From the original Utrecht edition, 1697.) This view is referred to at p. 35, Vol. I. The ship introduced by Father Hennepin is, I presume, a con¬ ventional sign for water, as at that period, Lake Erie had only been navigated by canoes. Plate V. Fossil mammalian remains from the tertiary strata of Martha!s Vineyard, Massachusetts. An account of the fossil walrus, fig. 1 , will be found in Vol. I., p. 258. In regard to the two ver- I’LAXES AND MAPS. 221 t hree of different genera of cetaceans, the whale and dolphin, the reader is reminded that they have been reduced to one fourth of their natural size, so that they must have belonged to individuals of very large dimensions. Plate VI. View of the great coal seam on the Monongahela at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. A description of this plate is given at p. 22, Vol. II. Plate VII. Recent footprints of birds, the Sandpiper (Tringa minuta ), on the red mud of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia—natural size. A full account of these impressions of the foot¬ steps of birds, fossilized in red marl deposited by the waters of the Bay of Fundy in July, 1842, will be found at p. 140, and the following pages, Vol. II. The specimen has been pi'esented by me to the British Museum. _ INDEX, A. Abolition of slavery, i. 153-156. Abolitionists, precautions against, 1 .14b. --, mischief caused by, i. 149. Aboriginal race, Dr. Morton on the,.ii. 32. Ague, i. 128, 142. Albany, >tate geological survey, i. 13. Albion mines, ii. 191, Alger, Mr. F., Map of Nova Scotia, ii. 144, 204. Alien voters, i. 180. AHeghanies, ridges of, i. 66 ; ii. 7. -, crossing the, ii. 21. Allegators, i. 128. Alluvial terraces at Cincinnati, ii. 50. Alluvium and post-pliocene, ii. 213. Amboy Strait, ii. 5. Annelides, tracks of, ii. 140. Anthracite of Pennsylvania, i. 65,197. Appalachian chain, i. 66. •-, structure of, i 73. -coal field, i. 71; ii. 26. -, area of, ii. 29. -and Illinois coal fields, supposed former continuity of, ii. 41. Architecture, money sunk in, i. 89. Ardoise Hills, ii. 137-139. Association of American Geologists, i. 208. Astarte Laurentiana, ii. 125. Asterophyllites, ii. 166. Astor, Mr., i. 193. Asylum, blind, i. 92. Atlantic plain, i. 106; ii. 201. Atmosphere, clearness of, at New York, i. 11. Augusta, i. 123. Ausable River, ii. 131. B. Bachman, Dr., i. 137, Bakewell, Mr., view of Niagara, i. 24. Baltimore, i. 102. -metamorphic rocks, ii. 6. Bank notes, i. '72. Banks, S. of Newfoundland, i. 2. Bartram on Licks, ii. 54. Bath, N. Y., slates of Old Red, i. 47. Bayfield, Capt., ii. 122, 129, J91, 202. Bears in Virginia, i. 118. Beauty in Georgia, i. 131. a Beaupnrt, marine fossils, ii. 122. -boulders, ii. 123. -, small variety of shells, ii. 129. Beavers, wood gnawed by, ii. 193. Beck, Dr., ii. 122, 123. Benedict, Prof., ii. 128, 131. Bequests for education, i. 89. -for national purposes, i. 209. Big bone Lick, ii., 54, 59. -mastodon bones, ii. 56. -- shells, ii. 57. Binney, Mr., on stigmaria, ii. 156. Birds not vocal, i. 51. -- foot-tracks of, i. 200. ——, foot prints, Nova Scotia, ii. 141. Blind asylum, i. 92. Blomidon, Cape, ii. 143. Blossberg coal, stigmaria, i. 49. Blue limestone of Cincinnati, ii. 43. -fossils, ii. 43. Boarding-houses, ii. 134. Bogs in Kentucky, ii. 54 Booth, Mr. J. C., ii. 209. Boston, plants near, i. 4. -, drift near, i. 5-7. -marine shells, i. 5. -- railways, i. 8. -, advantages of, i. 85. -, society in, i. 98. -sleigh-driving, i. 99. -meeting of American geologists at, i. 208. -, fourth arrival, ii. 134. Boulders of Long Island, i. 191. -at the Falls of Montmorenci, ii. 105. •-between Montreal and Quebec, ii. 120 . Bowman, Mr., ii. 154, 162. Brachiopoda, ii. 44. Braddock, General, grave of, ii. 20. British settlets unable to speak English, ii. 95. - possessions in America, popula¬ tion of, ii. 102. Brookfield, N. Scotia, ii. 181. Brooklyn, i. 189. Brongniart, M. Adolphe, on stigmaria, ii. 17, 157. Brown, Mr. Richard, ii. 191, 212. Brownsville coal, ii. 22. Brygon swamp, i. 139. Buddie, Mr., ii. 161. Buffalo trail, Big Bone Lick, ii. 55. -, town of, ii. 75. Banbury, Mr. Charles, ii. 185, 170. Burlington, Vermont, drift of, ii. 128* -, town of, ii. 131. Burning-spring at Niagara R., ii. 75. Burr stone, i. 126. Butterflies, i. 20. 224 INDEX C. Calamites, upright, ii. 164. -, list of species, ii. 170. Cambridge University system, i. 215. -, Dr. Peacock on, i. 230. -, youth of teachers, i. 230. -, private tutors or “crammers,” i. 230, 231. _, transference of tuition to college tutors, i. 238. -, Trinity and St. John’s colleges, i. 239. -, clerical professors, i. 241. ■ -, Dr. Whewell’s treatise, i. 241, 248. -, Massachusetts, i. 92. Canada, ii. 96, -, bad roads, ii. 99. -, French farmers, ii. 99 -, Scotch emigrants, ii. 98 -, soldiers, ii. 98. -, military aspect of, ii. 100. -“ Sympathizers,” ii. 100. -Geological survey, ii. 103. Cape Breton, coal measures, ii. 175. -coal plants, ii. 16,5. -mountain limestone, fossils of, ii. 165. Capital and metropolis, separation of, i. 193. Carbonic acid, atmosphere of, i. 120. Carboniferous rocks, thickness of, i. 69. -limestone fossils, list of, ii. 165. -flora, wide range of, ii. 17. -list of, ii. 165. Carolina, S., Eocene strata, i. 138; pre¬ face, v. -malaria in, i. 143. Cave Hall, white limestone, i. 140. Cedars, i. 124, 120. Chalk of New Jersey, i 62. Champlain lake, plants, ii. 133. ■ -scenery of, ii. 130. Channing, Dr., ii. 1. Charleston, i. 122. ■ -, severe frost, i. 137. Charter of Charles II., Rhode Island ii. 2. Chignecto Channel, ii. 150. Chilmark strata, i. 2115. Churches, voluntary system, i. 162. -, episcopal, i. 163. Cincinnati, ii. 38. --blue limestone, ii. 42. f -bones of elephant, ii. 51. -, associated shells, ii. 51. -“ pork aristocracy,” ii. 61. -alluvial terraces, ii 50. City Point, i. 107. Civilisation, progress of, i. 59. Clay, nodules of, ii. 127. Clergy, salaries of, i. 164. Cleveland “ lake ridges,” ii. 71. -alluvial terraces, ii. 74. “ Cliff limestone,” ii. 41. Climate of N. America, i. 8. -of miocene period, i. 110, Climate of U. S., i. 194. Clinton group, ii. 217. Coaches, i. 46; ii. 62. Coal oolitic, of Virginia, ii. 214. -measures, Nova Scotia, ii. 148 -plants of Nova Scotia, ii. 158. -list of, ii. 165-171. -formed by growth of plants in situ, ii. 161. -. debituminization of, i. 72,197. -, origin of, i. 118. -of Frostburg, ii. 13. -, stigmaria and marine shells, ii. 15. -plants, ii. 16. -on the Ohio, abundance of, ii. 22. -, vast area of, ii. 25. -plants of Marietta, ii. 35. —— plants of Pomeroy, ii. 37. Cobequid hills, ii. 190. Codrington, Col., ii. 114, 121. Coggin’s Point, i. 107. Congress at Washington, i. 103. -, good faith of, i. 179. Connecticut valley, i. 101. --yeomanry, i. 101. -river,—footmarks, i. 801. Conrad, Mr., i. 63 ; ii. 204. -Trilobites of New York, ii. 45. Cooper River, i. 138. Corals, Timber Creek, i. 64. Corduroy road, ii. 63, 94. Corniferotis limestone, ii. 81. Cote de Neige, shells 500 feet high, ii. 119. -St. Pierre, shelly gravel, ii. 118. Crabs, i. 133. Cretaceous group, ii. 214. -- strata of New Jersey, i. 02, preface, p. iv. Cumberland coal-field of Maryland, ii. 14. -of Nova Scotia, ii. 163. D. Daguerreotype view of the Horse-shoe Fall, ii, 77. Darwin, Mr., on coral reefs, ii. 91. Dawson, Mr. J. W., ii. 181, 211. Debert River, Nova Scotia, ii. 181. Debituminization of coal, i. 72, 197. Deep sea strata, ii. 47. Delaware, flood on, i. 82. Democracy, effects of, i. 180 ; ii. 194. Democratic movement in Rhode Islarfd, ii. 2. Denudation of Alleghanies, ii. 18. “ Detector,” i. 171. De Tocqueville, on the progress of emi¬ grants in Ohio, ii. 65. De Verneuil, M., Silurian system of Scandinavia and Russia, ii. 44. -on Nova Scotia fossils, ii. 182. Devonian rocks in the Appalachians, i. 47; ii. 8, 45. INDEX, 225 Dickens, Mr. Charles, reception of, i. 158. Divinity schools, i. 211. Dorr, leader of Rhode Island insurgents, ii. 4. Drift at Beauport, near Quebec, ii. 123. -at Keeseville, ii. 127. -near Boston, i. 5-7. -of South Brooklyn, i. 190. -of Burlington, ii. 128. -at Niagara Falls, ii. 78. -northern, age ot, ii. 59. -of the St. Lawrence, ii. 116. -at Lake St. Peter, ii. 120. Ducatel, Mr. J. T., ii. 208. Duncan, Mr., ii. 192. Durham county, ichthyolites, i. 100. -snow storm, i. 101. E. EastR. of Pictou, ii. 191. Eaton, Professor, i. 54. Ebenezer causeway, i. 129. Education, compulsory, i. 94. Educational funds, i. 90. Election at Trenton, i. 83. -at Philadelphia, i. 83. Electoral body, reform of, i. 187. Elephants’ bones at Cincinnati, ii. 51. Emancipation in West Indies, i. 148, 152-167. Emigrants of German origin, ii. 12. Emmons. Dr., Taconic system, i. 195. -, rocks of Lake Champlain, ii. 81. -, ii. 209. Eocene organic remains, i. 129.- -limestone of Wilmington, i. 156. -shells, i. 142. -white limestone, i. 141. -strata of S. Carolina and Georgia, i. 138: preface, p. v. ■-, ii. 213. Episcopal church, i. 163. Equality, ii. 194. •-- of sects, i. 96. --spirit of, i. 49. Erratics near Boston, i. 5. --at Hampden, i. 10. -of Long Island, i. 189. -of Martha’s vineyard, i. 203. Essex co., N. Y., shells in drift at, u. 127. Eutaw, corals and shells, i. 141. Evergreen, Va., masses of coral at, i 107. Farmers of Connecticut, i. 101 _ . Featherstonhaugh, Mr. G. W., t. 711 n. 203. . Qn Fees of public lecturers, l. 89. Ferns in fructification, ii. 16. Fever and ague, i. 126, 142. Fiddler crabs, i. 133. Financial crisis, i. 172. Fire, alarms of, i. 61. Fire-flies i. 11; ii. 59, 94, 135. Fish in old red sandstone, i. 48. -in Silurian rocks, ii. 48. -Creek, Indian corn, ii. 28. Flood on the Delaware, i. 82. Florida war, i. 136. Foot-prints of birds, Nova Scotia, ii. 141. Footsteps, supposed reptilian, ii. 177. Forbes, Prof. E., on marine fauna, ii. 49. Forest in Kentucky, ii. 53. -on fire, ii. 190. Forests of fossil trees, ii. 153. Fossil trees upright, ii. 161. Fossils, list of Nova Scotia carbonifer¬ ous limestone, ii. i65, 171. Frederick, metamorphic rocks, ii. 6. Fredonia, natural gas, ii. 74. -sand ridge, ii. 74. French farmers, ii. 99. Freshwater shells, i. 161. Frost at Charleston, i. 137. Frostburg iron mines, ii. 13. -, analysis of coal, ii. 14. -, numerous seams of coal, ii. 15. -, outliers of quartzoze grit, ii. 18. ——, skunk, ii. 19. -family of emigrants, ii. 12. Fundy, Bay of, tides, ii. 139. -, the Bore, ii. 140. -red mud, ii. 140. Furrows, glacial, recent, in Nova Sco¬ tia, ii. 144. G. Gannanoqui polished rocks and boul¬ ders, ii. 115. Gayhead Cliffs, Martha’s Vineyard, i. 205. —, Indians settled near, i. 206. Gebbard, Mr., i. 54. _ Genesee Upper Falls, i. 45. -, fossil mastodon, i. 45. Geological survey of Canada, ii. 10~. New York, i. 13. Geologists, association of American, i. Georgia, Eocene strata of, i. 138; pre¬ face, p. v. German patois, i. 81. -- Pennsylvanians, i. 182. —- “ log-rolling,” i. 183. -emigrants, ii. 12. -settlers, ii. 68. _ Gesner, Dr., ii. 150,157, 210. Girard College bequest, l. 89. Glacial theory, k 7. _furrows in Canada, 11 . _recent furrows in Nova Scotia, n. 144. -, furrows near Halifax, ii. 136. Goat Island freshwater deposit, i. t-9. Gopher, i. 128. Gould, Dr., ii. 129. 226 INDEX. Great Dismal swamp, i. 114. -Mr. E. Ruffin’s description, i. 114. -higher than surrounding country, i. 115. -accumulation of peat, i. 116. -trees and shrubs, i. 116., -buried timber, i. 117. --lake in the centre, i. 117. -bears and wild cats, i. 113. Green, Capt. George, ii. 15. Green mountains, ii. 133. Greensand, cretaceous, i. 63. Grooves on Niagara limestone, ii. 82. Grove, South Carolina, i. 136. -landing, shells, i. 108. Gypsum, ii. 180, 215. -of Nova Scotia, age of, ii. 172-187. H. Habersham, Dr., i. 130. Halifax, harbour, &c., i. 2. -steamers, ii. 196. —— glacial furrows, ii. 136. Hall, Mr. James, i. 18 ; ii. 208. Hampden, erratic block, i. 10. Hamilton group, ii. 216. -, Sir W., on English universities i. 221 . Harlan, Dr., i. 160. Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, ii. 6. Harrison, General, on Indian mounds, ii. 30. Harvard University, i. 92. -College, i. 214. -, professors and tutors, i. 214. -examinations, i. 215. Hayes, Mr. J. L., on icebergs, ii. 83. Helderberg mountains, i. 54. -series, ii. 217. “Helderberg war,” i. 55. Hennepin’s description of Niagara Falls, i. 28. Henwood, Mr. W. J., ii. 211. Heyner’s Bridge, i. 130. Highland settlers, ii. 189. Hildreth, Dr., ii. 29, 208. Hitchcock, Professor, drift of Amherst, i. 199; ii. 205. Hoboken, serpentine cliffs, i. 189. Boloptichius, i. 47; ii. 178. Holyoke, Mount, plants, i. 202. Horseshoe Fall, i. 25. -, passing under, ii. 76. -, Daguerreotype view of, ii. 77. Houghton, Dr., ii. 208. Hubbard, Professor, ii. 133. Hudson city, Silurian rocks, i. 195. -River group, ii. 218. -River scenery, i. 13. Human bones fossilized, i. 159. -skull, i. 136. Humming birds, ii. 191, 192. -at Newhaven, i. 10. -, tameness of, i. 51. Hypogene rocks, ii. 106. I Ice of New England, i. 9. -, action of, ii. 146. Icebergs, i. 138 ; ii. 83. Xchthyolites of Durham, Connecticut, i. 99. — in Old Red sandstone, ii. 48. Illinois and Appalachian coal fields, supposed former continuity of, ii. 41. Indians near Gayhead, i. 206. -of Ohio Valley, ii. 32. Indian corn found fossil on the Ohio, ii. 28. -mounds, ii. 28. -civilisation, ii. 33, 34. Indian summer, i. 85. Infusorial clay, i. 107 Irish voters, i. 182. -College, intolerance, i. 213. Italian scientific “ congress,” i. 235. J. Jack Porter Mine, Maryland, ii. 16. Jackson, Mr. C. T., ii. 144, 204. Jacques’ Cartier River shells, ii. 121. James River, i. 107. Jenning’s Run, Frostburg, outliers of quartzoze, grit, ii. 18. Jogginers. ii. 162. Joggins, South, ii. 154, 159. Joinville, Prince de, i. 97. Jones, Colonel, i. 127. K. Kalm’s description of Niagara Falls,!. 29. Keeseville drift, ii. 127. -, Lingulae, ii. 131. Kentucky farmers, ii. 12. -bogs, ii. 58. “ Killing-time,” i. 15. King Crab, i. 207. Kingston, ii, 182. L. Labour compulsory in Europe, i. 89. Lake in Great Dismal, i. 114. -Ridges, ii. 86. U -Ridges, near Cleveland, ii. 71. La Prairie, ii. 130. Laura Bridgman, i. 92. Laurel Hill, ii. 20. Lea, Mr., fluviatile shells, i. 160. Lectures at Lowell Institute, i. 86. -, invitations to deliver, i. 194. -attended by labouring classes, i. 199. -in Oxford university, i. 225. -- in Cambridge university, i. 240. Lehigh Summit Mine, i. 68, 82,197. INDEX 227 Lepidodendron, ii. 166. Lepidostrobus, ii. 167. Le Roy Fall, i. 45. Libraries in Massachusetts, i. 210. Licks, ii. 50. Liebig, Professor, on the state of feeling towards science in England, i. 245. Lime-sinks, i. 140. Lingulae in sandstone, ii. 132. Linnasa borealis, ii. 138. Literary works, large sale of, i. 210. Liverpool, arrival at, ii. 196. Locke, Dr., ii. 29, 40, 207. “Log-rolling,” i. 183. Logan, Mr., geological survey of Cana¬ da, i. 50; ii. 103, 173. Long Island, erratic blocks, i. 189. Lowell Institute lectures, i. 86. -oral instruction, i. 88. --fees of lecturers, i. 89. -Institute, costly buildings, i. 89. -Mr. John, i. 92. -factories, i. 93. M. Maclure’s geological map, i. 105. ■ -, Mr. W., ii. 201. McCord, Mr., shells at Cote de Neige, ii. 119. Malaria in South Carolina, i. 143. Mammalia, i. 19, 45, 54, 130, 136, 139 Manners, i. 57. Marietta coal measures, ii. 35. ■ -psarolites, ii. 35. Martha’s Vineyard bones, i. 204. -erratic blocks, i. 206. -, Indians of, i. 206. Maskinongb, falls of, ii. 120. Massachusetts, libraries in, i. 210. Mastodon remains near Rochester, i. 19. -at Niagara Falls, i. 41. -at Genesee, i. 45. — near Hudson River, i. 54. -in Georgia, i. 130. -in Brygon swamp, i. 139. -skeleton from Missouri, i. 160. --bones in Kentucky, ii. 57. Mather, Mr., report of New York, i. 191. -—- beach on the coast of Long Island, ii. 91. --ii. 208. Mauch Chunk, i. 69, 197. Metamorphic limestone, ii. 219. Metropolis and capital, separation of, i. 193. Mexicans, ancient civilisation of the, ii. 32. Millhaven, Georgia, i. 127. Miniulie, upright trees near, ii. 150. Miocene strata of Virginia, i. 105; pre face, p. v. -period, climate of, i. 110. -marls of Wilmington, 156. ■ -formations, ii. 218. * Mirage ” on Lake Ontario, ii 85. Mississippi, repudiation of, i. 185. Mocking bird, i. 142. Mohawk valley, i. 15. Monongahela River shells, ii. 27. -, coal on the, ii. 22. Montmorertci, falls of, ii. 105,126. -, polished gneiss, ii. 114. Montreal, French aspect of, ii. 96. -the seat of government, ii. 96. -, mountain of, ii. 116. --shells, ii. 117. -, height of shells, ii. 119. ■-, tin-covered houses, ii. 130. “Moraines,” i. 199. Morris, Mr., ii. 165. Morton, Dr., i. 00. -, Aboriginal Indians, ii. 32. Mosquitoes, ii. 98. Mount Vernon, i. 158. Mountains of New York, ii. 131. Mountain limestone fossils, ii. 182. “ Mover’s House,” ii. 63. Muddy River, i. 33. Murchison, Mr., Silurian system of Scandinavia and Russia, ii. 44. Museum at Washington, i. 102. Mytilus edulis fossil, ii. 117. N. National Road, ii. 7 Negroes, natural capacities of, i. 152; ii. 34. -, wealthy, social position of, i. 164. -, free, depression of, i. 164. --, sacrament, administered to, i. 168. -, repugnance to associate with, i. 168. -, reservations, i. 170. (See Slaves.) Nereites in Laconic mountains, i. 195. Neuropteris, ii. 168. Neuwied, Prince of, ii. 212. New Brunswick coal field, ii. 210^ New England, good faith of, r, 186. -universities, i. 211. -divinity schools, i. 211. -theological colleges, i. 211. - early age of quitting college, i. 214. -Harvard college system, i. 214. -, trees, ii. 5. Newfoundland fog banks, i. 1. Nevvhaven, i. 10. -red sandstone, i. 10. New Jersey cretaceous strata, i. 62 , pre face, p. iv. •-New Red sandstone, i. 12. -- trees, ii. 5. New Red sandstone of Connecticut River, i. 200. -, New Jersey, i. 12. -, Durham, Connecticut, i. 99. -, ii. 214. New York, mountains of, ii. 131. -savings’ bank- i. 173. -island, i. 189. 228 INDEX, New York, migratory condition of, i. 192. New York sympathizers, ii. 101. -Geological survey, i. 13. Niagara Falls, scenery, i. 22. -, vapoury clouds, i. 22. -, Mr. Bakeweil’s view, i. 24. -, descrij tion of, i. 24. -, recession from (iueenston, i. 25. -, rate of recession, i. 27. -, Father Hennepin’s description, i. 28. -, Nairn’s description, i. 29. -, Slope of tile river, i. 31. -, Goat Island deposit, i. 29. -, ancient river bed, i. 30. -, Muddy River sand, i. 33. -, Devil’s Hole, i. 34. -, Bloody Run, i. 34. -, future recession, i. 36. -, origin, i. 36. -, successive changes, i. 38. -, St. David’s ravine, i. 39. -, vast lapse of past time proved by, i. 41. -, “ Burning Spring,” ii. 75. -, drift, >i. 77. -liver, course of the, ii. 76. -, limestone, gloves on, ii. 78. -, district, supposed geological changes in, ii. 84. Nicollet, M., i. 198, ii. 213. Nomenclature of places, i. 52. North Carolina pine forests, i. 157. Nova Scotia, ii. 137. -, climate and scenery, ii. 137. -, plants, ii. 137. -, fossils, ii. 138. -, red mud, ii. 139. ——, progress of, ii. 188. -, resources, ii. 188. -, Highland settlers, ii. 189. -, timber duties, ii. 191) -, appreciation of science, ii. 193 -, “ going home,” ii. 195. O. Ohio, voters of, i. 186. -, good faith of, i. 186. -, coal, abundance of, ii. 22. -, vast area of, ii. 25. -, Brownsville coal, ii. 22. -, progress of civilisation, ii. 64. -, population of, ii. 65. -, river, succession of steps in banks of, ii. 34. Old red sandstone, fish, i. 58 ii. 9, 40. Onondaga salt group, ii. 217. Ontario, tortoises, i. 19. Opossum footsteps, i. 133. Oral instruction, influence of, i. 87. Ornithichnites, i. 200. Outlier of quartzose grit in Allcghanies, ii. 18. Owen, Mr. Dale, map of Illinois coat field, ii. 26. --, ii. 207. Oxford University, peculiarities of sys¬ tem, i. 2J 5. -, division into colleges, i. 216. -, age of students, i. '2l7. -, choice of teachers, i. 217. -, subversion of original scheme, i 219. -, concourse of students, i. 219. ■——, heads of houses, i. 219. -, boarding houses, i. 219. -, Sir W. Hamilton on, i. 221. ■ -, establishment of new colleges, j. 221 . ’ --, Earl of Leicester, i. 222. -, Archbishop Laud, i. 222. -, professors supplanted by college tutors, i. 224. -laxity of discipline, i. 224. -, courses of lectures, i. 225. -, examination statute of 1800, i. 225. -, subjects taught by one tutor, i 227 -, classification of students, i. 226. -, resportsions, i. 228. -, private tutors or “crammers,” i. 229-231. ■ -, tailing off of professors’ classes, i. 232-237. -, members of convocation, i. 234. -, ecclesiastical spirit, i. 234. -, tractarian movement, i. 236. -, youth of public examiners, i. 238. -, exclusive system, i. 249. P. Packed ice, ii. 144. Paleonisctts, i. 125; ii. 214. Passports of slaves, i. 134. Patapsco, valley of the, ii. 5. Peacock, Dr., on the statutes of Cam¬ bridge university, i. 230. Peat in Great Dismal, i. 116. Pecopteris, list of species, ii. 169. Pelagic deposits, ii. 47. Penitentiary at Philadelphia, i. 161. Pennsylvania, anthracite, i. 65, 197. Pennsylvania, debt of, i. 173. -defalcation, i. 174. -, taxes imposed, i. 175. ——public works, i. 175. -, tax-assessor’s inquiries, i. 176 -■, causes of insolvency, i. 176. --, borrowing to pay dividends, i. 177. -, small power of executive, i. 178. -, probability of payment, i. 179. --, German population of, i. 182. ——, fraudulent voting, i. 184. Pennsylvanians, conduct of, i. 174. Pentanierus oblongus, ii. 41, 218. Percivrll, Dr , ii. 209. Percy, Dr., i. 197. “ Personal notes,” ii. 6. INDEX 229 Philadelphia, i. 60, 158. -election, i. 83. -, reception of Mr. C. Dickens, i. 158. -, fossil human hones, i. 159. -, Dr. Harlan, i. 160. -y mastodon skeleton, i. 160. -, penitentiary, i. 161. -, financial crisis, i. 172. Pictou, glacial furrows, ii. 137. -, coal field, ii. 163. Pine Barrens, i. 112, 113. Pittsburgh, seam of coal at Brownsville, ii. 22. -, vast area of, ii. 25. -■, fossil shells, ii. 28. Planters, hospitality of, 107, 123, 121, 129. -, style of living, i. 144. Plants near Boston, i. 4. -of Schoharie, i. 55. -near Savannah, i. 134. Plumbaginous anthracite of Worcester, i. 196 ; preface. Polished rocks near Lake Erie, ii. 81. Politeness to women, i. 57, 104. CfQ Pomeroy coal, ii. 37. Population of the United Statep, ii. 65. -, Professor Tucker’s estimate, ii. 66. •-, growth of, in United States, ii. 102. “Pork aristocracy,” at Cincinnati, ii. 61. Post-pliocene and alluvium, ii. 213. Potsdam sandstone, ii. 131. Pottsville, i. 67. Prescott’s “ Conquest of Mexico,” i. 91. Presidential elections, ii. 68. Producta, list of species, in Nova Scotia, ii. 187. Psaronius, ii. 35. Q. Quadrupeds, range of, i. 137. Quebec, fortifications, ii. 97. R. Racoons, i. 133. Railways, i. 8,123. Railway cars, i. 113. -train in N. Carolina, i. 157 Rain-drops at Baltimore, ii. 140. Ravenel Dr., i. 138. Recession of Niagara Falls, i. 25, 27. Redfield, Mr., i. 12,190. Red mud of Bay of Fundy, ii. 143. Religious excitement, i. 102. Rennsalaer, General Van, i. 53 Repudiation, i. 171,183. ——, “detector,” i. 171. •--, valueless paper, i. 172. Rhode Island, coal plants, i. 196. --, democratic movement, ii. 2. -, charter of Charles II., ii. 2. 21 Rhode Island “Suffrage Convention,” 11. 4. Ridges of Aileghanies between Cumber¬ land and Frostburg, ii. 7 . -, monotonous outline, ii. 8. -between Frostburg and Union, ii.21. -of sand near Toronto, ii. 88. ~’ un iforiii level of their baselines, n. 88. -, lacustrine theory, ii. 88. -, Mr. Whittlesey, ii. 91. -, Mr. Mather, ii. 91. —theory of sand-banks, ii. 93. Ripple-marks, ii. 132. Rochester sand-ridge, i. 19. -, mastodon bones, i. 19. “ Roches moutonnees,” ii. 115. Rocking-chairs, i. 1)3. Rockport, “ lake ridges,” ii. 71. Rockville, Waverley sandstone, ii. 40. Rocky River ridges, ii. 73. Hill, trap and sandstone, i. 9. Rogers, Professor W. B., i. 95 ; ii. 206. -H. D., i. 63, 71, ii. 2i. 45. , . rinity College, Cambridge, l. 239. roost, Dr., ii. 207. ruro, rapidity of tides, ii. 207. ucker, Professor, on United States population, ii. 66. uomey, Mr., i. 157. U. Unio or freshwater mussel, ii. 27. Union coal seam, ii. 22. Universal suffrage, i. 181. --, aliens, i. 181. -, Irish voters, i. 182. -, fraudulent voting, i. 184. -, New England Stales, i. 186. Universities of U. S., i- 211. INDEX. Universities of New England, i. 211. - -, divinity schools, i. 211. -, early age of quitting college, i. 214. -, Harvard College system, i. 214. — in Scotland, i. 212. -, multiplication of, i. 211. -, religious tests, i. 212. -, Irish College, i. 213. - of England, i. 215. See Oxford and Cambridge. Utica slate, ii. 218. V. Vanuxem, Mr., i. 77; ii. 208. Virginia, miocene strata of, i. 106; pre¬ face. - ■, coal, ii. 214. Voters, alien, i. 181. -, Irish, i. 182. W Walrus, fossil skull of, i. 205. Ware, Mr. Henry, i. 92. Washington, disadvantages of, i. 102. ——, national museum, i. 102. -, General, i. 103. -’s plantation, i. 158. Waterhouse, Mr., ii. 142. Waverley sandstone, ii. 40. West Indian emancipation, i. 148,152 107. Wheeling on the Ohio, ii. 28. ——, Indian mound near, ii. 29. Whewell, Dr., on the University system of Cambridge, i. 241,245. White Bluff Creek, i. 130. Whittlesey, Mr., ii. 91, 93. Wild animals, i. 53. Williamsburg university, i. 108. Wilmington, North Carolina, fossils, i. 156. Wihouski, falls of, ii. 128. Woodward, Mr. S., ii. 165. Worcester, Massachusetts, mica schist, i. 196. -, plumbaginous anthracite, i. 196; preface. THE END. f /^wwvv VESTIGES OF THE CREATION. \ \ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. By Sir Richard I Vyvyan, Bart., M. P., F. R. S., &c. One vol. 12mo. well j printed. Price 75 cents. Contents. —1. 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It is full of interest and grandeur, and must claim our readers’ ! ! special notice, as possessing, in an eminent degree, matter for their contempla- < ! tion, which cannot fail at once to elevate, to gratify, and enrich their minds.” > ’ — Forbes' Review. “ A neat little volume of much interest. Judging from a brief glance at the contents of the volume, the author lias produced a work of great interest, and one which, while it affords the reader useful instruction, cannot fail to turn his mind to a very profitable channel of reflection.”— Commer. Jidv. “ A small but remarkable work. It is a bold attempt to connect the natural sciences into a history of creation. It contains much to interest and instruct, and the book is ingenious, logical, and learned.”— Newark Adv. “ This work discovers great ingenuity and great research into the mysteries of nature. It is a noble work, and one which no intelligent person can read without finding a fresh impulse communicated to his thoughts, and gaining } some higher impressions of the Creator’s power, wisdom, and goodness.”— 5 Albany Argus. 5 “A novel and remarkable work, which will speedily attract the attention of 5 ail inquisitive readers. There is much that is new and ingenious in the book. 5 The author, whoever he is, is a man of varied philosophical and literary at- | tainments, and master of a style in conveying his thoughts, so pure, simple, ' and modest, that his treatise will be everywhere widely read.”—JV. Y. Mam¬ in g News. ACTONI AN PRIZE ESSAY, Chemistry, as exemplifying the Wisdom and Beneficence of God. By George Fownes, Ph. D., F. R. S., Etc. In 1 vol. small 8vo. Price 50 cents. ! Contents. —The Chemical History of the Earth and the At¬ mosphere; The Peculiar.''ies which characterize Organic Sub- ? stances generally ; The Composition and Sustenance of Plants ; \ On Animal Chemistry ; The Relation existing between Plant* i and Animals ; Appendix—(with various Tables.) “The object of the work is to gather up the proofs and indications of design and goodness in the structure ami relations of things disclosed by Chemistry— and it is very ably done.”—JV. Y. Post. “ It is richly worth general perusal.”—JV. T. Tribune. “The manner of treating the subject is both ingenious and recondite, and we commend it accordingly to general attention.”—JV. T. American. “ A highly interesting and valuable work. It is a most valuable addendum to other works on this subject; to those who are studying Natural Theology, it will be highly serviceable.”—JV. T. Express. “This is a meritorious work. The materials are fairly and skilfully selected out of the vast and ever-growing mass of phenomena and truths which consti¬ tute the modern science of Chemistry; and are put together with considerable dexterity, imparting an air of novelty and freshness even to the truths with which we have been long familiar.”— Christian Remembrancer. i \ HOLY BIBLE, WITH COMMENTARY. ! Now ready—Yols. 1 and 2, $4 SO each; or, numbers 1 to28, 1 of the Holy Bible, with a Critical Commentary and Para- , phrase, by Patrick, Lowth, Arnald, Whitby, and Lowman. | A new edition, with the text printed at large. To be com- S pleted in sixty numbers, at 25 ce*.its each, the whole to form | four imperial octavo volumes, containing upwards of 4,300 > pages. The value of this edition consists in the fact that \ the Text accompanies the Commentaries—thus adapting it ( to general use. 1 53“ Students, Clergymen, and others clubbing together, and remitting the Publishers the amount of five copies, will be entitled to the sixth gratis, or twelve copies for ten, and in the same proportion for a larger number. The whole cost of the publication is not required in advance, as the work ) can be forwarded in either numbers or volumes, as the party may desire. 1 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. | I The Chemistry of Vegetable and Animal Physiology. Byj Dr. G. T. Mulder, Professor of Chemistry in the Univer- \ sity of Utrecht. Translated from the Dutch, by P. F. H. \ Fromberg; with an Introduction, by Prof. J. F. W. John-i ston. First authorized American Edition; with notes and j corrections, by B. Silliman, Jr. Part I., very neatly I printed. Price 25 cents. “ In the true study of nature the principal aim ought to be, not only to make ourselves acquainted with the phenomena and laws which distinguish and j regulate living and dead matter, but also to arrange those phenomena and j laws, and exhibit them in their several relations. The more our knowledge 1 of these two departments is extended, and the nearer the several parts of the ( great science of nature seem to approximate, the more firmly must we embrace < the idea, as necessarily conformable to truth, that the same forces govern alike > the animate and inanimate kingdoms.”— Author. ? “ The celebrity of the author of this long-expected work, has raised a high J degree of expectation among the readers in this department of scientific litera- ( ture. For depth of argument and originality of views, he has surpassed all ( who have gone before him. The work is a profottnd one, and merits the care- 1 ful study of all. We look forward with interest to the future numbers of the < I work.”— Tribune. ? “ For extent and value of research, in the calm spirit of philosophic deduc- i tion which marks its peculiar character, and the absence of wild theory—it > stands pre-eminent among the numerous profound and brilliant works of a \ 5 kindred character, which the last two or three years have produced.”— Amer. j j Jour, of Science. < WASHINGTON’S REVOLUTIONARY ORDERS* Revolutionary Orders of General Washington, issued during the years 1778, ’80, ’81, and ’82; selected from the Manu¬ scripts of John Whiting, Lieutenant and Adjutant of the 2d Regiment of the Massachusetts Line, and edited by his son, Henry Whiting, Lieut. Col. U. S. Army. 1 vol. 8vo., well printed $1 50. This is a valuable publication—valuable as well from the historic interests of the orders, as from the source whence they emanated. The collection was made from manuscripts that had sutfered from inattention, and the series may therefore be incomplete. Yet the papers, now for the first time published te the world, are of an exceedingly interesting character, particularly those dated from the camp at Valley Forge, during a most trying period of the Revolution. To the military man they are invaluable as specimens of clear and concise writing, and for the information they contain touching many questions of du¬ bious interpretation under the code of war. To all they bring before the mind many of the scenes that made the name of Washington immortal, while they contributed to establish the liberty of this great Republic. v vvvw- w ' | COURSE OF ENGLISH READING. ! A Course of English Reading, adapted to every Taste and > | Capacity, with Anecdotes of Men of Genius. By Rev. J. • Pycroft. With corrections and additions, by J. G. Cogs- j well, Esq. 1 vol. 12mo. Price 75 cents. “ It is rare to meet with a work so well fitted to aid in the acquisition of j knowledge as this; indeed, we have never seen any similar directory to an j [ English reader, that seemed to us to compare with it, either in respect to its fortunate arrangement or general felicity of execution. We would recommend j to every young person who intends to give any attention to the culture of his j ! mind, to keep this book by him as a constant guide; and persons of any age or ! f any profession, will find it as a hook of reference quite invaluable.”— Albany < ! Religious Spectator. ( > “ This book is eminently fitted to be both popular and useful. For want of ! £ some such guide as this, a large part of the reading, particularly of young per- i i sons, is to little purpose; and many who deservedly acquire the character of < > great readers, really acquire very little as the fruit of their reading. The pres- j \ ent work will not only relieve the mind that is doubtful what course of reading < \ to adopt, or that has been unable to find any satisfactory course marked out, < I but it will contribute to arrange and systematize the mind’s acquisitions, so < ! that they shall be at command whenever they are needed. It will be found < ! an admirable work of reference, not only for students in the course of their i ! education, but for professional men, and for all who wish to know what the j j greatest and best minds have thought on the most important subjects.” i Albany Argus. i “This work is designed to enable the student to select such works as will < most rapidly advance his knowledge of any particular branch or subject of < literature, the arts, &c. It may be profitably consulted by all who desire to j S have their studies directed by mature judgment and experience.”— Baltimore ' S American. “ There is a vast deal of time spent to little purpose by almost every person j j who is given much to reading, from an inability to make a suitable selection of j ; books. The present work is designed and admirably adapted to remedy this < ; evil, and the course of reading which it marks out, seems to us altogether the < ; most judicious that we have ever met with. It not only gives the names of the < > most distinguished authors in the various departments of learning, but fur- \ j nishes hints by which the reader may judge of their comparative merits. To i ! the professional man, as well as to the student, the work will be invaluable.” J t —Daily Amer. Citizen. \ “ A volume which we can conscientiously recommend as marking out an J ; accurate course of historical and general reading, from which a vast acquisi- < ; tion of sound knowledge must result. The arrangements and system are no 5 I less admirable than the selection of authors pointed eut for study.”— Literary j 1 Gazette. “ We do not know of a better index than this well-considered little book to j ! a general course of reading. It might, as such, be safely and advantageously i ! put into the hands of all young persons who have finished their education, and j ! are about to take their place in society, or to begin the world.”— Atlas. ; This course is admirably adapted to promote a really intellectual study of J j history, philosophy, and the belles-lettres, as distinguished from that mere ac-? i cumulation of words and dates in the memory, which passes for education.-’— j ! Critic. “ A most admirable and simply-arranged work, fit to be placed in the hands S I of every young man about to enter on a course of English Reading. It may be j ; profitable, in truth, to every one; while the lively anecdotes intermixed with j ! the subject-matter, render it full of interest and amusement.”— Aristidean. JOHNSTON’S AGRICULTURE. ; Lectures on the Application of Chemistry and Geology to | Agriculture. By J. F. W. Johnston. Complete in one j thick vol. $1 25; or in 2 vols. $1 50. • Contents :• Part 1. — On the Organic Constituents of Plants. 2.—Or. the Inorganic Constituents of Plants. “ 3.—On the Improvement of the Soil by Mechanical and Chemical means. “ 4-—On the Products of the Soil and their use in the Feeding of Animals. Appendix. —Of Suggestions and Results of Experiments in Practical Agriculture. “It is unquestionably the most important contribution to agricultural science and destined to exert a most beneficial influence in this country.”— Professor Him /rn J J “A work of great value to the agriculturist who would avail himself of the aid of science in the cultivation of his land.”— Am. Agriculturist. “This truly valuable work forms the only complete treatise on the whole subject to be found in any language.”— Blackwood's Magazine. “The most complete account of Agricultural Chemistry we possess.”— Royal Agricultural Journal. “We only wish it were in the hands of every farmer’s son in the country Durham Advertiser. “ Nothing hitherto published lias at all equalled it, both as regards true science and sound common sense.”— Quar, Journal of Agriculture, “ A valuable and interesting Course of Lectures.”— London quar. Review. WATER CURE, FOR LADIES. j A popular work on the Health, Diet, and Regimen of Fe- < males and Children, and prevention and cure of diseases; I with a full account of the process of Water Cure, illustrated with various cases, by Mrs. M. L. Shew, revised by Joel Shew, M. D. 1 vol. Price 50 cents. | “ A valuable and instructive work on that most interesting branch of modem i medical science, the medical virtues of water.”—JV. Y. Express. “The authoress has reduced the system to practice, and found it every way equal in its curative influences to the representations of its many advocates.”— True Sun. X GARDENING FOR LADIES. Gardening for Ladies ; and Companion to the Flower-Garden. Being an Alphabetical arrangement of all the ornamental Plants usually grown in gardens and shrubberies; with j full directions for their culture. By Mrs. Loudon. First s American, from the second London edition. Revised and ! edited by A. J. Downing. 1 thick vol. 12mo., with en¬ gravings representing the processes of grafting, budding, layering, &c., &c. $1 50. 5 “ A truly charming work, written with simplicity and clearness. It is deci- S S dedly the best work on the subject, and vve strongly recommend it to all our ! } fair countrywomen, as a work they ought not to be without.”—JV. Y. Courier, t \ “ Mr. Downing is entitled to the thanks of the fair florists of our country for ! < introducing to their acquaintance this comprehensive and excellent manual, ; i which must become very popular. Besides an instructive treatment on the best ! modes of culture, transplanting, bedding, training, destroying insects, &c., and ; the management of plants in pots and green-houses, illustrated with numerous j plates; the work comprises a Dictionary of the English and Botanic names of < tlie most popular flowers, witli directions for their culture. Altogether we > should judge it to be the most valuable work in the department to which it ,, belongs .”—Newark Advertiser. S “This is a full and complete manual of instruction upon the subject of which ' it treats. Being intended for those who have little or no previous knowledge of ! gardening, it presents, in a very precise and detailed mariner, all that is neces- > sary to be known upon it, and cannot fail to awaken a more general taste for > these healthful and pleasant pursuits among the ladies of our country.”—JV. T. £ Tribune. 5 “This truly delightful work cannot be too highly commended to our faircouu- > trywomen.”—JV. Y. Journal of Commerce. i < “We cordially welcome, and heartily commend to all our fair friends, whether > S living in town or country, this very excellent work.”—JV. T. Tribune. S THE BIRDS OF LONG ISLAND- Containing a description of the habits, plumage, &c., of all the species now known to visit that section, comprising the ! larger number of birds found throughout the State of New j York, and the neighboring States. By T. P. Giraud, jr. j 1 vol. 8vo. Price $2 00. j This work, though designed chiefly for the use of the gunners and sportsmen residing on Long Island, will still serve as a book of reference for amateurs and others collecting ornithological specimens in various sections of tile United j States, particularly for those persons residing on the sea-coasts of New Jersey f and the Eastern States. ) * THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. Letters and Notes written during eight years travel among the wildest tribes of Indians in North America, with 400 | spirited illustrations, carefully engraved from his Original I Paintings. By George Catlin. A new edition in 2 vols. j royal 8vo. Price $6 00, bound in cloth. S * * Four editions of this very interesting work have been printed in London. 5 Among the subscribers were the Queen, the Queen Dowager, the King of Bel- , gium, and many of the most distinguished persons in Europe. It contains char- < acteristic and faithful records of a race of people who are rapidly becoming ex- < tinct: and it is not probable that another similar work can ever be written. ! One of the most remarkable tribes, the Mandans, are already entirely destroyed, i This work has been more extensively, copiously, and favorably reviewed in j Europe, than any other published during the last five years. ' BULL’S HINTS TO MOTHERS. Hints to Mothers, for the Management of Health during the j period of pregnancy, and in the lying-in room; with an ' exposure of popular errors in connection with those subjects. . By Thomas Bull, M. D. 1 neat vol. Fourth Edition. Price 38 cents ; or in cloth binding, 50 cents. “We recommend it to our readers; and they will confer a benefit on their i new married patients by recommending it to them.”— Forbes' Review. \ “There is no mother that will not be heartily thankful that this book ever S fell into her hands; and no husband who should not present, it to his wile. We 5 cannot urge its value too strongly on all whom it concerns.”— Med. Times. i FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA. j Flora of North America, comprising an account of all the in- \ \ digenous and naturalized plants growing north of Mexico, j i By John Torrey and Asa Gray. Vol. 1, (pp. 771,) price j | $6 00. Vol. 2, parts 1, 2, 3. $4 00. I < This is the only authentic and complete American Flora. The object of the i ^ work is to give a scientific account of all the indigenous and naturalized plants j ,> of North America at present known. It is the most extensive local flora that j < has ever been undertaken. The latest Flora of this country, that of Pursh, was s \ published twenty-eight years ago, at which period extensive regions, even within s s the United States proper, had never been visited by the Botanist. Since that s ) time, the number of known plants has vastly increased ; and the science itself i < has made such rapid advancement, that this work will present the BottJiy of ? ; this country in an entirely new aspeet. 54 DOWNING, ON LANDSCAPE GARDENING. A Treatise on Landscape Gardening; adapted to North America, with a view to the improvement of Country Re* sidences. Comprising historical notices, and general prin¬ ciples of the art; directions for laying out grounds, and > arranging plantations; description and cultivation of hardy \ trees; decorative accompaniments to the house and grounds ; j formation of pieces of artificial water, flower-gardens, etc.; ! with remarks on Rural Architecture. New edition, with f large additions and improvements, and many new and l beautiful illustrations. By A. J. Downing. 1 large vol. I 8vo. $3 50. “This volume, the (irst American treatise on this subject, will at once take the rank of the standard work.”— Silliman’s Journal. “ Downing’s Landscape Gardening is a masterly work of its kind,—more especially considering that the art is yet in its infancy in America.”— Loudon's Gardener's Magazine. “ Nothing has been omitted that can in the least contribute to a full and ana¬ lytical development of the subject; and he treats of all in the most lucid order, and with much perspicuity anu grace of diction .”—Democratic Review. “ We dismiss this work with much respect for the taste and judgment of the author, and with full confidence that it will exert a commanding influence. They are valuable and instructive, and every man of taste, though he may not need, will do well to possess it.”— J\Torth American Review. DOWNING’S FRUITS OF AMERICA. The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America ; or, the culture, pro¬ pagation, and management, in the garden and orchard, of fruit trees generally; with descriptions of all the finest varieties of fruit, native or foreign, cultivated in the gardens of this country. Illustrated with numerous engravings and outlines of fruit. By A. J. Downing. 1 vol. 12mo., (and also 8vo. *** This will be the most complete work on the subject ever published, and will, it is hoped, supply a desideratum long felt by amateurs and cultivators. ' ■'WWW' *. N. \AAA^WV | NEW WORK ON THE EAST. ; F.othen ; or, Traces of Travel brought Home from the East. > 1 neat volume, very handsomely printed on fine paper, j 50 cents. j < Contents.— Preface — Over the border — Journey from Belgrade ; to Constantinople—Constantinople—The Troad—Infidel Smyrna s S —Greek mariners—Cyprus—Lady Hester Stanhope—The Sane- ? ‘ tuary—The monks of the Holy Land—From Nazareth to Tiberias ^ —My first bivouac—The Dead Sea—The black tents—Passage 5 ' of the Jordan—Terra Sancta—The desert—Cairo and the plague a ■ —The Pyramids—The Sphynx—Cairo to Suez—Suez—Suez to j • Gaza—Gaza to Nablous—Mariam—The prophet Damoor—Da- \ , maseus—Pass of the Lebanon—Surprise of Satalieh. \ \ “ Graphic in delineation, animated in style, frank in manner, and artistical in j ! the choice and treatment of the subjects selected for presentation.”— Spectator. < “ He has wit and humor that shed an illustrative gleam on every object ? S which he describes, placing it in the happiest relief.”— Athenaeum, (first notice.), i “ The book is as ‘ light as light,’ and as lively as life, yet are there in it pas- ! sages and scenes which would make most men grave and solemn.”— Athenaeum, 1 (second notice.) “ This book with a bad title is wonderfully clever.”— Examiner. ! “We have seldom, in a word, perused a volume which so irresistibly claims i ! the attention, from the first page of the preface to the finale of the wander- 1 ; ings.”— Atlas. ' l “ If these be not poetry, and of a pure and striking kind too, we are no J ( critics.”— Literary Gazette. | “It is novel in all its details.”— Britannia. ; “ His account is brief, but were volumes written it could cot bring the actual S j scene more to our mind’s eye. We are frequently startled in the midst of mirth < ' by some great touch of nature—some terrible display of truth.”— News of the \ \ World. S “ The scenes through which he passed are exhibited with a clearness, and i ] stamped upon the mind with a strength, which is absolutely fascinating. The < ’ whole is accompanied with the strong commanding evidence of truth, and ein- J J bellished with all the beauty of poetry.”— Globe. “ This is the sort of writing for a traveller—sketchy, vigorous, and original.” < j —Morning Post. “A book which exerts a very fascinating effect on its readers.”— Morning \ ; Chronicle. S “ We have rarely met with a work of the kind, blending so successively j ( curious and instructive information with light and amusing reading.”— West- ■ minster Review. t “Nothing so sparkling, so graphic, so truthful in sentiment, so poetic in | s vein, has issued from the press for many a day.”— The Critic. ; “This is a real book—not a sham. It displays a varied and comprehensive ! I power of mind, and a genuine mastery over the first and strongest of modern j languages. The author has eg light the character and humor of the eastern S mind as completely as Anastasius, while in his gorgeous descriptions and 5 power of sarcasm he rivals Vathek. His terseness, vigor, and bold imagery; remind us of the brave old style of Fuller and of South, to which he adds a \ ! spirit, freshness, and delicacy all his own.”— Quarterly Review. k- r DR. CHEEVERS LECTURES ON BUNYAN. j Lectures on the Pilgrim’s Progress, and on the Life and ^ Times of John Bunyan. By the Rev. George B. Cheever, j D. D. 1 thick vol. 8vo., printed in large type, with fine steel-plate engravings. $3 50 ; or in 15 numbers at 25 < cents each. < Contents. —1. Bunyan and his Times; 2. Bunyan’s Tempta- I tions ; 3. Bunyan’s Examination ; 4. Bunyan in Prison ; 5. Provi¬ dence, Grace, and Genius of Bunyan ; 6. City of Destruction and Slough of Despond ; 7. Christian in the house of the Interpreter; , 8. Christian on the Hill of Difficulty; 9. Christian’s fight with ? Apollyon; 10. Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death; ? 11. Christian and Faithful in Vanity Fair; 12. Doubting Castle ( and Giant Despair; 13. The Delectable Mountains and En- ? chanted Ground; 14. Land Beulah and the River of Death; 15. | Christiana, Mercy, and the Children. > “We know of nothing in American literature more likely to be interesting ( and useful than these lectures. The beauty and force of their imagery, the ^ poetic brilliancy of their descriptions, the correctness of their sentiments, and i the excellent spirit which pervades them, must make their perusal a feast to ail f of the religious community.”— Tribune. DOWNING’S COTTAGE RESIDENCES. Designs for Cottage Residences, adapted to North America, including Elevations and Plans of the Buildings, and De¬ signs for Laying out Grounds. By A. J. Downing, Esq. 1 vol. 8vo. with very neat illustrations. Second edition, revised. $2 00. A second edition of the “ Cottage Residences” is just published, as Part I.; and it is announced by the Author that Part II., which is in preparation, will contain hints and designs for the interiors and furniture of cottages, as well as additional designs for farm buildings. One of the leading reviews remarked that “the publication of these works may be considered an era in the literature of this country.” It is certainly true that no works were ever issued from the American press which at once exerted a more distinct and extended influence on any subject than have these upon the taste of our country. Since the publication of the first edition of the “Land¬ scape Gardening,” the taste for rural embellishments has increased to a surpris- ! ing extent, and in almost every instance this volume is the text book of the improver, and the exponent of the more refined style of arrangement and keeping introduced into our country residences. The “ Cottage Residences” seems to have been equally well-timed and hap¬ pily done. Country gentlemen, no longer limited to the meager designs of un¬ educated carpenters, are erecting agreeable cottages in a. variety of styles suited to the location or scenery. Even in the West and South there are already many striking cottages and villas built wholly, or in part, from Mr. Downing’s designs; and in the suburbs of some of tbe cities, most of the new residences are modified or moulded after the hints thrown out in this work.