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Updated: May 14, 2025
Physically indeed it is little more than a block of limestone which has been broken off by some natural convulsion from the promontory of Sorrento, and changed by the strait of blue water which now parts it from the mainland into the first of a chain of islands which stretch across the Bay of Naples.
Like all limestone strata, they present a great number of caverns, to which, as places of retreat, frequent allusion is made in the books of Samuel and of the Kings. There is one near Damascus, capable of containing four thousand men; and it must have been in a similar recess that David and his men encountered the ill-fated Saul when pursued by him on the hills of the wild goats.
"Bang! says I, an the dirty blackburd comes fluttherin' down, an' dhropped in the haggard like a log o' limestone. "Ye should have seen that fellow! The landlord wid the whole rout o' thim runs out. 'What's the matter? says he, starin' round like a sick cod-fish.
We, at its base, were on comparatively low ground here, with another low line of cliffs shading us from the light-beams of the city. Mercer and Anina stopped and pointed upward at the cliff. A huge seam of the soft, chalky limestone ran laterally for five hundred feet or more across its face. I saw embedded in this seam great irregular masses of sulphur. "There you are," said Mercer triumphantly.
Small parties of prospectors had been sent out to ascertain the resources of the island; and, among many other valuable products, coal, iron, clay of exceptionally fine quality for the manufacture of bricks and tiles, marble, granite, basalt, limestone, pine, satinwood, teak, and sandalwood in exceedingly large quantities had been found.
Some few years ago MM. Cartailhac and Boule discovered one of these primitive quarries at Mur de Barrez, the chief town of the department of Aveyron. They made out eight shafts in the face of a layer of limestone some eighty-one feet long, and at every turn of their excavations they came to fresh shafts.
"From what we've seen already, it looks promising. Of course, there'll be a deal of work to do; but there are excellent possibilities here. First rate." Fortune seemed bent on favoring them. The limestone cliff, fantastically eroded, offered a score of shelters, some shallow and needing to be walled up in front, others deep and tortuous. All was in utter confusion.
He came to our part of the country in an early day he used to explain that they caught him in the trees, when he was drinking creek water, eating sheep-sorrel, and running wild with a buffalo tail for a trolley, and that the first thing they did, after teaching him to eat out of a plate, was to set him at work in the grading gang that was laying out the Cottonwood and Walnut Rivers and putting the limestone in the hills.
The whole plain of the Murrumbidgee has been, at not a very distant date, beneath the ocean; as the Madrepores, and other fossils in the limestone cliffs of the river testify. Earthquakes have been felt in South Australia since its settlement. A very intelligent gentleman there told me that he had noted eleven since his arrival; quite perceptible enough to leave no doubt as to their character.
En route we found two small streams, to the largest of which my attention was first attracted by the noise of rapids at its mouth. This is called by the Indians, Ta-tzun-in. Ascending it by wading, with considerable difficulty, its bed was seen to be chiefly limestone rock.
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