The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1917-05-03
The Red Sandstone Is Millions o
Years Older Than the Gray
RaSalt

Basalt.
If We we're all as intellectually
curious as we ought to be, the foot
and the brow of the wonderful
Palisades would be lined every fair
holiday with eager readers of the
great rock-bound book of the earth's
history.
The hard, gray stone that you saw
was indeed trap rock, or basalt; the
softer, crumbling red and brown
stone was sandstone or what geol-
ogists call the Triassic, or sometimes
Jura-Trias. formation. 1t dates back
to the period Immediately succeed
ing the Carboniferous, or coal-form-
ing age. It's rocks are characterized
by their reddish color, and the red
sands found so abundantly in North
ern New Jersey are due to the dis
integration of these rocks.
They are millions of years older
than the trap which overlies them in
the skirts of the Palisades. They
were laid down as sandy deposits at
the bottom of shallow arms of the
sea, but the substance of those de-
posts was itself once in the form of
solid rocks-so often has the face
of the earth been kneaded up and
made over again.
At last came a grand outburst of
internal forces, driving great mass
of molten rock up from the depths,
forcing it through faults and assures
in the already existing rock layers,
somewhat as an old-fashioned sau-
sage machine forces corrugated roll
of ground-up meat out through its
spout, and this rock cooled into the
huge ridge of columnar basalt that
we name the Palisades.
AS the molten mass welled up, ris-
ing from the depths on an upward
incline toward the east, it pressed
wider apart the tilted rock layers
through which it was squeezing its
way, and at the same time fused
them, to greater or less extent.
Where you found alternate layers of
half-decomposed, friable, red sand
stone and hard gray trap, all bear
ing evidences of partial merging
through fusion, there must have
been tongues of the hot. viscous rock
thrust between strata of sandstone,
along the edges of the invasion.
Millions of Years Ago New Jersey
Was Built on a Mosquito Paradise.
The front of the slowly, but ire
sistibly, advancing mass where 1t
emerged above the surface present
ed a steep face toward the east. and
as it cooled it shaped itself into huge
pillars and columns, according to the
habit of such rock, as exhibited all
over the world wherever it has come
up through the cooled crust. The
Giants Causeway of Ireland, Fin
gals Cave, off the coast of Scotland;
Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom, on
the Connecticut river; East and
West Rocks, near New Haven, and
the hanging rocks above Paterson,
n. j.. are striking examples.
West of the Palisades in New Jer-
sey you will find that the red sand
stone was lifted up on the back OF
the rising mass as it crept upward
and eastward. Afterward came the
so-called Age of Ice, when glaciers
ground the summit of the Palisades,
and streams and lakes Of glacial wa
ter formed immense deposits in their
ice. now turned into picturesque, red
soiled hills.
In long trench on the west Of the
Palisades. bottomed with hard. leak
less rock, has gathered a line OF
swanlps which refuse to drain away.
and. as every form Of life on the
globe finds somewhere an environ
ment which particularly suits it, so
here the high-piping mosquito dis
covers an abode which it evidently
thinks that Providence intended it
to keep.