The North American review Volume 121 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1822 Excerpt: ...limestone, and quartz; and the upper like the lower with trunks of trees imbedded. It is the exteut and height of this sand bank alone which make it remarkable. The arrangement of the strata and the manner of their accumulation is doubtless this: the lower unmixed part is the original sandstone which forms the bank of this part of the lake in a state of disintegration, the second layer has washed out from the bottom of the lake at the time of some great overflow, and the upper has blown on from time to time and enveloped the trees which it found growing there. Following the shore along westward, we soon come to the pictured rocks, as they are called, which is a range of sandstone of about the same height as the ridge just described, broken into various fantastic forms by the action of the elements. To judge both from the sketch and the description which Mr Schoolcraft has given of these rocks, they must bear a most marked resemblance to the sandstone formation on the Elbe above Dresden, which is called Saxon Switzerland. By contrasting pictures of the two, the resemblance will appear; and first of the pictured rocks of lake Superior.--' Surprising groups of overhanging precipices, towering walls, caverns, waterfalls, and prostrate ruins, which are h«re mingled ia the most wonderful disorder, and burst.upon the view in ever varying and pleasing succession'--are the objects selected by our author for his description of these rocks. Reichard's of Saxon Switzerland places before us,--1 Chasms and loose rocks in the form of figures the most grotesque, summits and points elevated almost beyond the reach of sight, abysses of prodigious depth, rivulets, torrents and cascades, which are either engulphed, orfoaming, rush forward on their course, grottos and cave...