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Updated: May 9, 2025
There is not a sign of life but the browsing sheep and goats. Just where the train shoots in north of San Ildefonso, if you know where to look on the right, you can see the famous Black Mesa, a huge square of black basaltic rock almost 400 feet high, which was the sacred shrine of all Indians hereabouts for a hundred miles.
The tide was now almost at its lowest ebb, and the color of the few peaks of rock that jutted up around us showed that the reef on which we had stranded was of basaltic formation. There were now only about six feet of water around the Chancellor, though with a full freight she draws about fifteen.
Then we topped the crest of the mountain and below us I saw yawning the mouth of a huge circular well, the bottom of which was lost in inky blackness. The diameter of this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet. The walls were smooth and appeared to be composed of a black, basaltic rock.
To the right of the creek, rising abruptly out of the sea, the black basaltic cliffs which formed such a bold headland to the bay stretched far out to where the extreme point of Cape Saint Louis could be seen, embracing within the compass of its arm the reef on which the Nancy Bell had been lost; and to the left, beyond the ridge at the back of the castaways' dwelling, the higher ranges of the inland mountains, which seemed to run down to the southwards and eastwards as far as the eye could reach, stood up towering in the distance above the hills immediately near in the foreground and lifting their snow-clad summits into the blue vault of the heavens.
It is broken by the Ponta da Oliveira, where there is ne'er an olive-tree, and by the grim ravine of Porto de Canico o Bispo, the 'bishop' being a basaltic pillar with mitre and pontifical robes sitting in a cave of the same material.
The specially volcanic region seems to be bounded by the depression of the Jordan, the Dead Sea, and the Arabah as far south as the Gulf of Akabah; for, although Safed, lying at the head of the Sea of Galilee on the west of the Jordan valley, is built on a basaltic sheet, and is in proximity to an extinct crater, its position is exceptional to the general arrangement of the volcanic products which may be traced at intervals from the base of Hermon into Central Arabia, a distance of about 1000 miles.
Columnar basalt in the Vincentin. Basaltic pillars of the Kasegrotte, Bertrich-Baden, half-way between Treves and Coblentz. The columnar structure is by no means peculiar to the trap rocks in which augite abounds; it is also observed in trachyte, and other feldspathic rocks of the igneous class, although in these it is rarely exhibited in such regular polygonal forms.
From the beach, the land rose up on both sides of the fiord in a gentle slope to the hills above, which latter were broken away in some places, forming flat level tables of basaltic debris that had tumbled from the tops of the cliffs; and, these stretches of table-land being under the lee of the hills, were sheltered from the snow that otherwise covered every place in sight, valley and mountain peak alike.
One of our bullocks had gone back on our tracks, and thereby prevented our starting so early as usual. We travelled in a N. 40 degrees W. direction to latitude 19 degrees 41 minutes 25 seconds. The basaltic country continued, and apparently extended a great distance from the river. The flats along the latter were less extensive.
The wonderful old rock, rising sheer naked and frowning from the bluest water in the world, seemed to those at its foot as though it were holding up the very sky itself. Precipice upon precipice dizzily scaled the basaltic heights, giving here and there, on little shelves and crannies, a foothold for a vivid vegetation.
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