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Updated: June 8, 2025


In Syenite quartz is rare or wanting, hornblende taking the place of mica, and the proportion of silica not exceeding 50 to 60 per cent. Granite often preserves a very uniform character throughout a wide range of territory, forming hills of a peculiar rounded form, usually clad with a scanty vegetation.

Huge boulders of chalk are, in fact, included in the clay, and have evidently been brought to the position they now occupy by the same agency as that which has planted blocks of syenite from Norway side by side with them. The chalk, then, is certainly older than the boulder clay. If you ask how much, I will again take you no further than the same spot upon your own coasts for evidence.

The beach consisted of large rolled stones of gneiss and syenite , amongst which many pieces of ice had grounded, and it was with difficulty that we effected a landing in a small cove under a steep cliff. These stones were worn perfectly smooth; neither in the interstices, nor at the bottom of the water, which was very clear, were there any vestiges of sea-weed.

This is the usual geological condition on the right bank of the Cataracts. On the other side we pass over masses of porphyritic trap, in contact with the same mica schists, and these probably give to the soil the great fertility we observed. The great body of the mountains is syenite.

"The amethyst," he added gayly, "is the traditional talisman against intoxication, but, although these adorned her tiara, the poor old world has drunk her fill." "But it is only water," said Cosmo, smiling. "Too much, at any rate," returned the Frenchman. "I should say," continued the mineralogist, "that the rock was some variety of syenite, from its general appearance."

Every day and all day the same pale-blue sky and the unwinking sun bent over that moving speck. Every day and all day the same black-blue water-world, untouched by any known wind, smooth as a slab of syenite, colourful as an opal, stretched out and around and beyond and before and behind us, forever, illimitable, empty. Every day the smoke of our fires veiled the streaked whiteness of our wake.

The primitive 'bucchero, still surviving alongside of the painted pottery, is very closely related to the imported vases found by Petrie in First Dynasty tombs at Abydos; and a further link with Egypt is afforded by the fact that vases of Proto-Dynastic Egyptian form in diorite and syenite were discovered in the south and east quarters of the palace at Knossos.

Geikie has since shown that there is a strong probability that this Plutonic rock may be of Miocene age, because a similar Syenite having a true granitic character in its crystallisation has modified the Tertiary volcanic rocks of Ben More, in Mull, some of which have undergone considerable metamorphism.

Taking a general view of the primitive formation of Atures, we perceive, that, like the granite of Syene in Egypt, it is a granite with hornblende, and not a real syenite formation. Many of the layers are entirely destitute of hornblende. The black crust is 0.3 of a line in thickness; it is found chiefly on the quartzose parts.

No land, however, could look more romantic than Assuan, City of the Cataracts, Greek Syene, that granite quarry whose red syenite made obelisks and sarcophagi for kings of countless dynasties.

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