DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20917#0223
st. Michael's and brandon hills. 189
South-west of St. Michael's is Brandon hill, said
to be 250 feet above the level of the city. The
hill is a perfect cone, and bears strong marks
of having been sormed by a subterraneous
cause, probably volcanic. The rock which
composes it is a mass of matter resembling the
dross of iron, mixed with red-ochre, and frag-
ments of very hard slone, the whole evidently
combined by fire. But, whatever the once-fluid
substance may have consisted of originally, the
strongest spirit of nitre has now no kind of effect on
it. The manner in which the matter alluded to is
disposed seems to favour the supposition that some
violent cause urged burning masses upward srom
the earth, through a small aperture in the centre
of the hill, which still impelled, and cooling on
the surface, split in every direction, and rent the
stones carried with it. St. Michael's hill, though
separated from it only by a small valley, has
nothing indicative of ebullition ; but St. Vincent's
rocks, though esTentially different in their com-
ponent parts, may be adduced in support of my
conjectures. These conM of long strata, which
answer each other on the sides of the river Avon
so exactly, that they may be readily supposed to
have been rent asunder. Indeed, the bed of the
river forms the extreme point of an angle, to be
completed
South-west of St. Michael's is Brandon hill, said
to be 250 feet above the level of the city. The
hill is a perfect cone, and bears strong marks
of having been sormed by a subterraneous
cause, probably volcanic. The rock which
composes it is a mass of matter resembling the
dross of iron, mixed with red-ochre, and frag-
ments of very hard slone, the whole evidently
combined by fire. But, whatever the once-fluid
substance may have consisted of originally, the
strongest spirit of nitre has now no kind of effect on
it. The manner in which the matter alluded to is
disposed seems to favour the supposition that some
violent cause urged burning masses upward srom
the earth, through a small aperture in the centre
of the hill, which still impelled, and cooling on
the surface, split in every direction, and rent the
stones carried with it. St. Michael's hill, though
separated from it only by a small valley, has
nothing indicative of ebullition ; but St. Vincent's
rocks, though esTentially different in their com-
ponent parts, may be adduced in support of my
conjectures. These conM of long strata, which
answer each other on the sides of the river Avon
so exactly, that they may be readily supposed to
have been rent asunder. Indeed, the bed of the
river forms the extreme point of an angle, to be
completed