Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 25.djvu/97

 liberally finished off with broken bottles. As in the case of Wady Taragi, the terraced alluvium of the valley is mainly made up of fragments of gypsum ; and these are often formed into inclined planes by the slipping of the marls below.

Gharandel (see Pl. I. fig. 2). — The lower end of Wady Gharandel, where the valley proper abuts upon the alluvial plain of gravel and sand extending about a mile from the beach inland, is about 60 or 80 feet wide, between cliff's of a calcareous grit-stone, finely and regularly stratified, that comes out from underneath the gypsum-marls, which dip to the north at an angle of about 20 degrees. These beds are not very fossiliferous : only a few small Nautili, a Pecten, a small Turritella, two or three single valves of Brachiopods, and a Serpula were found ; and these required to be chiselled off the faces of the slabs in order to detach them from the rock. On the south side of the valley they form a tolerably high and steep cliff with a flat top, covered with coarse flint-gravel. South of this point, going towards Hammam Faraoun, the escarpment is lower, and frequently cut back on to dry valleys, with many detached pinnacles and square outliers of limestone of a white chalky character, nearly horizontal, and with a few layers of flint near the bottom. When broken, the white limestones are often found to be extremely bituminous ; and in a small dry valley about a mile south of Wady Gharandel, a thin layer of bitumen similar to that of the Dead Sea was found included in a fallen block. Much of the lower part of the limestone is of a snuff-brown colour, from the amount of bitumen contained, forming a material similar to the Seyssel asphalt-rock, employed for making pavements in England and on the continent of Europe.

The same order of things continues for about three miles : low ridges of soft limestone, which are often hidden for a considerable distance by the terraced gravels and alluvium of the valley called Wady Hussied, gradually approach the shore until they are succeeded by the great cliff of Bukel el Faroun, which rises from the sea to a height of about 1500 feet. This is made up of a bluish-grey or white crystalline limestone, not very distinctly stratified, but enough so to be seen dipping, at an angle of about 20 or 25 degrees, towards the north, a direction which would make it pass under the bituminous bed ; and this is most probably the case, although the exact junction is not seen, owing to the great spread of the superficial deposits of Wady Hussied. However this may be, there is no doubt of the occurrence of Nummulites both in the upper white and bituminous beds and in the more crystalline limestone below; and the same fossils were found some distance beyond the point where the springs rise. But for this there would be considerable difficulty in assigning the lower beds to their proper horizon, as they are very much unlike the Nummulitic rocks of Egypt, being of a crystalline or semi- metamorphic character. Their resemblance to the rocks of the Wady Araba, on the opposite side of the Red Sea, has led Dr. Figari Bey to regard them as belonging to the Oolitic period ; but I have been unable to concur in this view, owing to the presence of the fossils. The apparent metamorphic character of the rock is further increased