"Viewed from the railroad or from a steamboat on the river, this lofty
mural precipice with its huge weathered masses of upright columns of
bare rock, presenting a long, straight unbroken ridge overlooking the
beautiful Hudson River, is certainly extremely picturesque. Thousands
of travelers gaze at it daily without knowing what it is. This entire
ridge consists of no other rock than trap traversing the Triassic
formation in a huge vertical dike. The red sandstone formation of New
Jersey is intersected by numerous dikes of this kind, but this is much
the finest. The materials of this mountain have undoubtedly burst
through a great rent or fissure in the strata, overflowing while in a
melted or plastic condition the red sand-stone, not with the violence
of a volcano, for the adjoining strata are but little disturbed in
position, although often greatly altered by the heat, but forced up
very slowly and gradually, and probably under pressure. Subsequent
denudation has laid bare the part of the mountain now exposed along
the river. The rock is columnar basalt, sometimes called greenstone,
and is solid, not stratified like water-formed rocks, but cracked in
cooling and of a crystalline structure.
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