Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/153

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Chap. IV.]
GEOLOGICAL NOTICE.
79
1840

In the adjacent hill, south of this, another bed of coal appears at the surface for about twenty feet, also in a deep cleft in the mountain, about twenty yards up a watercourse, and fifty feet above the sea: the direction the same as the last. The coal, however, is very different, having a slaty fracture, and dull brownish-black colour: it burnt very well, the boat's crew having cooked their provisions with it. The bed is two feet in thickness, and appears again on the opposite side of the watercourse, which is twelve feet across, and traversed by a small dyke of basalt three inches in breadth. The superincumbent rock, as in the last instance, is amygdaloidal greenstone.

"In a S.E. direction from the head of the bay is an opening between the mountain ranges, found to terminate in a part of 'White Bay;' the Isthmus, five miles across, consisting of a few low ridges, and a valley of the usual trap formation. A large dyke of basalt crosses the latter in an E.N.E.½E. direction, forming a wall from three to four feet in height.

"At the S.W. end of the bay a creek runs up, beyond which is a swampy valley; and two miles from the head of the creek is a lake one mile and a half long, and nearly half a mile broad, filling up a pass in the mountains, which rise above it to the height of about 2500 feet, the highest land met with. This range presents the same trap formation of basalt, greenstone, and amygdaloid. Veins of hornstone, and an indurated claystone, were, however, first found in situ here, about a foot in thick-