Then there are dykes of
dark brown trap or ancient lava, from four to ten feet wide running
across the islands from south-west to north-east, and others again at
right-angles to these. This would seem to indicate that the elevation
above the surrounding plateau was due to volcanic action. The structure
of White Island is very different from the others, a large portion of
the rock being studded with innumerable small garnets, while veins of
some grayish white minerals run through it in which there are still
smaller garnets.
How did these bare, bleak and barren rocks come to be inhabited?
Originally it was from love of gold. Men will go wherever there is money
to be made, and wherever men go women are pretty sure to follow. In 1879
a city suddenly arose in the most desolate and uncomfortable part of the
Rocky Mountains; and in the middle of the last century there was a large
settlement on the Isles of Shoals, with a young ladies' boarding-school
at Appledore, and a fort on Star Island for protection against pirates
and Indians. Fish merchants carried on a flourishing trade with France
and Spain. In course of time however cod and haddock became largely
fished out and the settlement on Appledore disappeared with them,
boarding-school and all. So it is predicted that some day Leadville will
again become a silent wilderness. In 1850 the population of the Shoals
had dwindled to about a dozen families of poor fishermen when a fresh
impulse was given to the activity of the place from a direction that
nobody could ever have imagined.
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