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I state this, because on the low plain at the foot of the northern escarpment, I crossed an immense accumulation of high sand-dunes, estimated by the Gauchos at no less than eight miles in breadth.
The passage of the great curve of the Congo had cost thirty-two fights. Now remained a difficult stretch, where the mighty river breaks in foaming falls and rapids through the escarpment which follows the line of the west coast of Africa.
But the absence of lava puzzled us. After one "bad" rapid and several "good" rapids we came to a sharp turn in the canyon. Emery was ahead and called back, "I see a little stream"; Bert joined with "I see the lava"; and the "Bold Escarpment Rapid," as we had been calling it for some time, was before us. It was more than a nasty rapid, it was a cataract! What a din that water sent up!
"Ask Yaqui to tell us where the raiders are headin', an' if there's water." It was wonderful to see the Yaqui point. His dark hand stretched, he sighted over his stretched finger at a low white escarpment in the distance. Then with a stick he traced a line in the sand, and then at the end of that another line at right angles.
The truncated edges of this marginal escarpment rising to levels of 1,000 to 1,260 feet, as in the case of Benevenagh in Co.
The ordinary route, which passes entirely to the left, by the base of Mont Maudit, through a sort of valley called the "Corridor," leads by gentle ascents to the top of the first escarpment of the Rouges rocks. The second, less frequented, turns to the right by the Goûter, and leads to the summit of Mont Blanc by the ridge which unites these two mountains.
These reactions have, in our case, been of substantially the same nature, and very nearly of the same degree of intensity throughout the whole vast eons of geological time, and they have resulted in a wonderfully complex succession of rock-formations volcanic, plutonic, and sedimentary more or less intermingled throughout the whole series, here remaining horizontal as when first deposited, there upheaved or depressed, fractured or crushed, inclined or contorted; denuded by rain and rivers with the assistance of heat and cold, of frost and ice, in an unceasing series of changes, so that however varied the surface may be, with hill and dale, plains and uplands, mountain ranges and deep intervening valleys, these are as nothing to the diversities of interior structure, as exhibited in the sides of every alpine valley or precipitous escarpment, and made known to us by the work of the miner and the well-borer in every part of the world.
The northern escarpment and southern flanks of the hills are clothed in vast forests of beech which add that grandeur to the great ramparts of chalk which the eastern ranges lack. Seen through the ever-shifting sea mists which creep up from the channel these heights take on an appearance of greater altitude and an added glamour of mystery.
Ramsay and Whitaker have shown, and the observation is a most striking one, that the great lines of escarpment in the Wealden district and those ranging across England, which formerly were looked at as ancient sea-coasts, cannot have been thus formed, for each line is composed of one and the same formation, while our sea-cliffs are everywhere formed by the intersection of various formations.
Only sparse cactus and weathered ledges dotted the great low roll of a rising escarpment. Yaqui suited the gait of his horse to the lay of the land, and his followers accepted his pace. There were canter and trot, and swift walk and slow climb, and long swing miles up and down and forward. The sun soared hot.
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