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We ascended to the top of this, and found it covered with blocks of gneiss, and much angular detritus. Hence the road gradually ascends, and becomes clayey. Argillaceous rocks, and a little ochreous sandstone appeared in highly-inclined strata, dipping north, and covered with great water-worn blocks of gneiss.
The boom booming of water dashing against or over the rocks is heard at a good distance from most of the burns in this upland region; hence it is never quite still. The rocks here are argillaceous schist, red and white. 19th February, 1867.
If fish can be fed upon water and stone; if siliceous bodies can, by the digesting powers of animals, be converted into argillaceous and calcareous earths; and if inflammable matter can be prepared without the intervention of vegetable bodies, we might erect a system in which this should be the natural order of things.
In descending from the Arqueros district, I crossed on the northern border of the valley, strata inclined eastward from the Pluclaro axis: on the porphyritic conglomerate there rested a mass, some hundred feet thick, of brown argillaceous limestone, in parts crystalline, and in parts almost composed of Hippurites Chilensis, d'Orbigny; above this came a black calcareous shale, and on it a red conglomerate.
Others are argillaceous clays, shales, &c., chiefly derived, probably, from the slate beds of the primary series. Others are calcareous, derived from the early limestone. As a general feature, they are softer and less crystalline than the primary rocks, as if they had endured less of both heat and pressure than the senior formation.
Practically and commercially the former is worked by the Bristol barques and the latter commences at Cape Threepoints. The bold headland, a hundred feet tall and half a mile broad by a quarter long, bounded north by its river, has a base of black micaceous granite supporting red argillaceous loam.
The coal measures of Commentry, as well as certain others, such as those of Bezenet, Swansea, etc., contain quite a large quantity of coal gravel in sandstone or argillaceous rocks.
On the shores of Lake Lagoda have been found some implements of argillaceous schist, in Carelia and in Finland tools made of slate and schist, often adorned with clumsy figures of men or of animals.
Thus, in one part of a country, the soil will be calcareous, or containing much of that species of substance; in another, again, it will be argillaceous; in another sandy, where the prevailing substance is siliceous. These are the original soils; other substances may be considered as adventitious to this soil, though natural to the surface of the earth, which is covered with plants and animals.
In like manner gneiss and mica-schist may be nothing more than altered micaceous and argillaceous sandstones, granular quartz may have been derived from siliceous sandstone, and compact quartz from the same materials.
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