406 C. CALLAWAY ON THE NEWER GNEISSIC
We have thus a twofold discordance. Prom north to south gneiss
is brought against higher beds of quartzite, and quartzite is brought
against higher beds of gneiss.
Junction North of Hope Ferry. — The high ground above the ferry is
occupied by gneiss on the strike of the gneiss on Ben Arnaboll; and
this rock forms the crags overhanging the Hope river to near
Inverhope, where the Quartzite comes in. In the cliffs to the north-
east of Inverhope the gneiss is sometimes very hornblendic, sometimes
passing into hornblende-schist. Here there is also a felspathic schist,
somewhat like a banded halleninta. No actual junction is seen,
but the Arnaboll gneiss apparently overlies the inverted Quartzite.
We now come to the striking and instructive section exposed in
Whitten Head (fig. 11). In these tremendous cliffs, the junction
Fig. 11. — Section at Whitten Head. (Scale 1 inch to about 500 feet.)
W. E.
of the two groups is exposed as clearly as in a diagram, the snow-
white quartzite forming a vivid contrast to the gneiss, with its
stripes of red and dark-green colours. The line of separation is an
irregular fracture, which first inclines for a short distance towards
the west, then turning at an obtuse angle it hades in an easterly
direction down to the base of the precipice. The hade being to the
upthrow, the fault is of course reversed. Both series dip easterly
at about the same angle, the result being that, at some parts of
the fault, the gneiss rests conformably upon quartzite. Had the
rocks been exposed only upon horizontal surfaces, the two groups
would have seemed perfectly conformable. This section thus shows
how those appearances have sometimes been caused which have
led observers to infer a " clear ascending series."
North of the Head are two remarkable pinnacles of quartzite
rising like gigantic columns out of the sea. Nearer the cliffs is a
third stack, into which, according to Murchison, " a shaft of felspar-
rock " has been intruded. My reading of the facts is widely
different. The pinnacle is a mass of quartzite dipping gently to
the west, and resting upon a base of red and dark-green gneiss.
There may be granite veins in the gneiss (the distance from which
the rock was observed was too great for the determination of this
point) ; but certainly no intrusive rock passed up into the quartzite,
the basement beds being unbroken and nearly horizontal. This