Knole

“ The Knoll is, I believe, an artificial mound, the tumulus of some great prehistoric chieftain, and surely no man ever chose a more spacious prospect for a sepulchre. Eastward one sees along the hills to Hythe, and thence across the Channel to where, thirty miles and more, perhaps, away, the great white lights by Gris Nez and Boulogne wink and pass and shine. Westward lies the whole tumbled valley of the Weald, visible as far as Hindhead and Leith Hill, and the valley of the Stour opens the Downs in the north to interminable hills beyond Wye. ”

“ Even if you have never learnt much of what is called geology, by keeping your eyes open and your mind awake you may see a great deal in the stones which have perhaps seemed to you most uninteresting. A block of granite from one of the Dartmoor hills, and a piece of slate from a Welsh quarry—how different these two kinds of stone are! We see this at once; but they become much more interesting when we know that each has its own history. ”

“ A conglomerate, therefore, is simply gravel bound together by cement.
Argillaceous Rocks.—Clay, strictly speaking, is a mixture of silex or flint with a large proportion, usually about one fourth, of alumina, or argil; but in common language, any earth which possesses sufficient ductility, when kneaded up with water, to be fashioned like paste by the hand, or by the potter’s lathe, is called a clay; and such clays vary greatly in their composition, and are, in general, nothing more than mud derived from the decomposition or wearing down of rocks. ”

“ Knolls, and deeply coloured spurs of naked rock, most picturesquely crowded with chod-tens, rise above the greenery, breaking the purple gloom of the gorge which cuts deeply into the mountains, and supplies from its rushing glacier torrent the living waters which create this delightful oasis. ”

“ At the point where the waters and their respective valleys unite, a knoll, partly of rock and partly of gravel, juts out from the north-east as a sort of low headland131 between the two, and is somewhat farther isolated by an expansion of the valley lower down, the general effect of which is to invest the high ground with a marshy frontier upon its west, south, and south-eastern slopes, leaving it toward the north and north-east connected with larger tracts of equally raised land. ”

“ If the upper surface of a hard stony stratum be uncovered, whether artificially in a quarry, or by the waves at the foot of a cliff, it is easy to determine towards what point of the compass the slope is steepest, or in what direction water would flow, if poured upon it. ”

“ In order to make the age of the North American rough-stone implements clear, we must study the geological evidence.
Clay and gravel are made, we know, from the primitive rocks. The atmosphere and the rain loosen large pieces of rock from the mountains, and they are broken in the beds of streams by the action of the water. The fine particles are produced by the rubbing of the stones together; the water grinds the broken rocks down smooth, and makes pebbles of them. Gravel, sand, and clay, produced in this manner, become sorted out by the action of the water, or stratified. ”

“ We stand upon a broad red granite slab, the lowest step of the actual peak of the Matterhorn: no one has stood there before us. The slab forms one end of the edge of snow, surmounted at the other end by some fifty feet of overhanging rock, the end of the ridge. ”

“ The hillsides are strewn with granite rocks that have weathered away till they have nearly lost their hold upon the ground—some actually are Logans and go seesaw—and a smart shock would send them racing down into the valleys below. Sometimes I see a rabbit start a stone off down a hill; and, when the stone comes bouncing by, I picture what would happen if the stone weighed ten or fifteen tons, and hundreds of such stones were coming like an avalanche. ”

“ On the eastern slope of Sill How are the remains of raised banks of earth and stones running in different directions, apparently for a similar purpose to those in Sale Bottom—defence against the attacks of horsemen or chariots. Crowning the hill, not far from the stone circles is a mound which, on being opened, was found to contain in the centre a small chamber formed by four flat stones set edgewise, making a cavity about eighteen inches by ten and six deep; this contained a quantity of ashes and charred bones; over it was laid a rude limestone slab about three feet long by two. ”

“ Straight facing us is a clean, sheer cliff of hardest, sternest rock. It cannot be actually perpendicular, but to all appearance it is. And the mere sight of it strengthens our souls. Here is granite solidity, and yet no mere stolid obstinacy. For these cliffs have risen—so the geologists tell us—through their own internal energy to their present proud position. ”

“ These hills, which are only parted by small valleys, never show any primitive rock, but rise from the granite like colossal heaps of stones and débris. Granitic boulders in all sizes and forms are heaped up on each other to a height of more than a hundred feet, and through crevasses and passages one may, crawling or walking, penetrate the whole of the dark interior of the mountain. ”

“ Lofty mountains, lifted up in rounded forms of granite, gneiss and other igneous rocks, massive and grand, like mighty boulders welded together, with monster trees in the valley below, and tall and straight ones high above wherever a ledge or a fissure affords their hardy roots chance to take hold, flank the road for the first ninety miles. ”

“ All the rain that falls along the range of chalk hills sinks in, soaks down, and might sink away to—goodness knows where, but that, beneath the chalk lies a bed of very dense clay, through which the water cannot descend, and between the chalk and the clay is strewn a narrow film of gravel, called the greensand, there hardly thicker than your hand. ”

“ The unstratified drift may be described as a heterogeneous mass of clay, with sand and gravel in varying proportions, inclosing the transported fragments of rock, of all dimensions, partially rounded or worn into wedge-shaped forms, and generally with surfaces furrowed or scratched, the whole material looking as if it had been scraped together. ”

“ It is remarkable, that in all the mountains in the interior I have never observed a stone building, though stone might much easier be obtained than the clay with which they are invariably built; for instance, they carry clay from the plain for the purpose of building upon granite rocks, on mountain-tops elevated two thousand feet from their base. The lion, hyæna, and panther abound in these mountains, and often commit great depredations. ”

“ It will be readily admitted by all classes of men, from the most accurate observers of nature to the simplest peasant, that there is some degree of regularity in the strata from whence our building materials are generally collected. Masons, miners, and quarrymen can identify particular beds of stone dug many miles apart; indeed, every cliff and quarry presents a true section of a great many beds of stone, which may be found of the same quality and in the same position in all or most of the neighbouring cliffs and quarries. ”

“ On descending through a small hole, just big enough to admit a spare and agile explorer, you find yourself in a lofty chamber; and at the further end of this all further passage is barred by a large conical talus, or shoot, of angular blocks of limestone mingled with clay, which has fallen through an aperture blocked up by the apex of the cone. In all probability the vertical shaft (fig. 1) under the ossiferous deposit in Windy Knoll ends in a similar cave, and has been blocked up in a similar fashion by the slow wearing away of the limestone. ”

“ The quarry in which I commenced my life of labour was, as I have said, a sandstone one, and exhibited in the section of the furze-covered bank which it presented, a bar of deep red stone beneath, and a bar of pale red clay above. Both deposits belonged to formations equally unknown, at the time, to the geologist. The deep-red stone formed part of an upper member of the Lower Old Red Sandstone; the pale red clay, which was much roughened by rounded pebbles, and much cracked and fissured by the recent frosts, was a bed of the boulder clay. ”

“ The nature of the rock, whether sandstone, shale, limestone, or greenstone, must be set down at the same place, and, to save room, a system of marks for the different rocks may be conveniently used. When a sufficient area of ground has been thus traversed, the student may find, say a row of arrows on his map all pointing due west, and indicating a set of quarries about a quarter of a mile distant from one another, the rock in each of them dipping to the west. ”

“ The numbers of immense blocks of stone also, which we continually come upon, cause great trouble and have to be got out and removed, which takes up a great deal of time, for at the moment when a large block of this kind is rolled to the edge of the slope, all of my workmen leave their own work and hurry off to see the enormous weight roll down its steep path with a thundering noise and settle itself at some distance in the Plain. ”

“ The sides of rock excavation are sometimes cut to a small slope, as one fourth or one fifth horizontal to one vertical, and sometimes cut quite perpendicularly. The earth, when it occurs, which covers the rock, is first taken out at the proper slope; a berm of one or two feet being left between the foot of the earth and the crest of the rock. ”

“ Hard quartzite or solid limestone resist best and stand out as cliffs and ridges, while softer slates and sandstones crumble and slide, giving long slopes of loose scree into which the foot sinks, the whole surface often slipping with the climber. ”

“ Thayer to his curt dismissal an hour and a half later, the interest and attention of his auditors never wavered.
His first lesson emphasized the historical phase of geology; and as he talked and pointed here and there in illustration, it seemed to the boys that every stone and boulder and pebble and overhanging cliff responded with the story of its life. This crevice, that oblique angle, this smooth indentation, that rough mass,—-each marking had its significant meaning to the enthusiastic leader. ”

“ The joints by which all rocks are traversed have been especially serviceable as dominant lines down which the rain has filtered, up which the springs have risen and into which the frost wedges have been driven. On the high bare scarps of a lofty mountain the inner structure of the mass is laid open, and there the system of joints even more than faults is seen to have determined the lines of crest, the vertical walls of cliff and precipice, the forms of buttress and recess, the position of cleft and chasm, the outline of spire and pinnacle. ”

“ Below the peat, and at the base and up the sides of the chalk hills, the rock is more or less thickly covered up with beds of gravel and light loam, in which are found the flint implements which have been the subject of so much speculation. ”

“ It consists of immense rocks piled one on the other, to the height of twenty or thirty feet, and it leans so much, that a perpendicular dropped from its top would, I may venture to say, reach the bottom fifteen or more feet from its base; and from where we stood on the ridge, its support at the base appeared so slight as if a man could shove the whole mass over the precipice. ”

“ When we see a stone building, we know that somewhere, far or near, a quarry has been opened. The courses of stone in the building may be compared to successive strata, the quarry to a ravine or valley which has suffered denudation. ”

“ In all countries the fundamental rock on which the boulder formation reposes, if it consists of granite, gneiss, marble, or other hard stone capable of permanently retaining any superficial markings which may have been imprinted upon it, is smoothed or polished, and exhibits parallel striae and furrows having a determinate direction. ”

“ The next strata is blue clay from two to four feet in thickness, containing few bones; this clay is covered with broken rocks again, above which is the soil covered with trees. The whole mass makes a hill, sloping down from the rocky bluff, of thirty or forty feet, to the creek. Mr. Koch is of opinion these animals herded together, and sought shelter under these cliffs during some great convulsion of nature, and here met their death by being crushed by crumbling rocks, and covered with debris. ”

“ The stone seems to afford a better hold for their rough-soled feet than the soil, and they always, when running, keep to the rock, turning and twisting themselves with cat-like cleverness, and running up or down apparently perpendicular cliffs with the same ease as on the level. ”

“ All these beds are traversed by numerous veins of quartz, and they alternate with each other without any regular order, the beds not forming a series passing from the coarse to the fine grained, but a fine clay slate often following close upon a coarse graywacke, and being succeeded by a similar rock. Here then we have an instance of a fact, of which the observations of every geologist will furnish many other examples, namely, the occurrence of clay slate among those rocks called rocks of transition, their alternation rendering this part of the fact indisputable. ”

“ The hillside gravel is a very remarkable deposit; it consists almost entirely of boulders and pebbles of quartz and of sericite-schist, and, when it is exposed to view, presents the appearance of a uniform white ledge running horizontally along the hillside at a height of about 700 feet above the level of the Klondike River. ”