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At Irvington Landing, a little further down the river, I went ashore to pass Sunday with friends; and on the Monday following, in a dense fog, proceeded on my route to New York. Below Irvington the far-famed "Palisades," bold-faced precipices of trap-rock, offer their grandest appearance on the west side of the Hudson.
The evidences of volcanic action are everywhere apparent, in the huge masses and curious columns of basaltic and trap-rock, the lava-beds through which the rivers have found their way, and the powdery alkaline soil. The marks of glaciers are also as distinct in the bowlders, and the scooping-out of the beds of lakes.
The ground separating these waters, which must travel towards the distant channels of such spacious basins as those of the Lachlan and Darling, consists here only of some low hills of trap-rock, connected with gently sloping ridges of mica schist.
I judged them not more than four or five hundred feet high, but they are marked with elegant peaks, and present a bold perpendicular front of trap-rock, which, with the bay and harbour in the foreground, and a fine outline of hills sloping away towards the horizon, conveys a most agreeable impression to the approaching stranger of the region he is about to visit.
Immediately over our camp its waters ran over a very hard trap-rock of a black colour, the soil a stiff loam. August 16. We travelled on for the most part of this day over irregular, barren, stony ridges, and gullies, intersected by numerous small creeks, and abounding in rocky holes, all containing plenty of water.
Brown is no' to blame. It would have tak'n a man with a heart of trap-rock to have turned the woeful bit dog out." "He is well cared for and is of a hardy breed, so he is not likely to suffer; but a dog, no more than a man, cannot live on bread alone. His heart hungers for love." "Losh!" cried Mr. Brown. "Are ye thinkin' he isna gettin' it?
After a few springs I had passed the refracting angle, and, like a thought, the shadowy giants vanished into the air. The men had ridden forward after me, and having also passed the angle of refraction saw no more of the phantom host. The city, too, had disappeared; but we could trace the outlines of many a singular formation in the trap-rock strata that traversed the edge of the valley.
The Weehawken Tunnel This tunnel is now being cut through the trap-rock for the New York, Ontario, and Western Railroad, and will be completed in a few months, but will, probably, be available as a mineralogical locality for a year to come.
In fact, the whole face of the country is composed of sandstone rock, and but partially covered with vegetation. The horizon is only broken by one or two summits, which are different both in outline and quality from the surrounding country. These isolated heights generally consist of trap-rock, and are covered with rich soil and very heavy timber.
The 16th of May saw us journeying over the plain which lies between Ugombo and Mpwapwa, skirting close, at intervals, a low range of trap-rock, out of which had become displaced by some violent agency several immense boulders. On its slopes grew the kolquall to a size which I had not seen in Abyssinia. In the plain grew baobab, and immense tamarind, and a variety of thorn.
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