We ascended to the top of the mountain through
a gully of solid pudding-stone going into decay, and furnishing the
country below with that great covering of gravel, soil, and water worn
stones. We were now well acquainted with the pudding-stone, which is
interposed between the horizontal and alpine strata; but from what we
had seen to the eastward, we never should have dreamed of meeting with
what we now perceived. What we had hitherto seen of this pudding-stone
was but a few fragments of the schistus in the lower beds of sand-stone;
here a mountain of water-worn schisti, imbedded in a red earth and
consolidated, presented itself to our view. It was evident that the
schisti mountains, from whence those fragments had come, had been prior
to this secondary mass; but here is a secondary mountain equal in height
to the primary, or schisti mountains, at the basis of which we had seen
the strata superinduced on the shore. Still, however, every thing here
is formed upon the same principle, and nothing here is altered except
the scale on which the operation had been performed.
Upon the coast, we have but a specimen of the pudding-stone; most of
the fragments had their angles entire; and few of them are rounded by
attrition.
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