START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY*** E-text prepared by Eric Hutton, Greg Bergquist, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Transcriber's note: The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The pointing finger symbol in the advertisement section is represented by -->. THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY; Or, A Summer Ramble Among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides. With RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST; Or, Ten Thousand Miles Over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland. by HUGH MILLER, LL. D., Author of "The Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," "My Schools and Schoolmasters," "The Testimony of the Rocks," Etc. Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 59 Washington Street. New York: Sheldon and Company. Cincinnati: Geo. S. Blanchard. 1862. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by Gould and Lincoln, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Authorized Edition. By a special arrangement with the late Hugh Miller, Gould And Lincoln became the authorized American publishers of his works. By a similar arrangement made with the family since his decease, they will also publish his POSTHUMOUS WORKS, of which the present volume is the first. Electrotyped by W. F. Draper, Andover, Mass. Printed by Geo. C. Rand & Avery, Boston. PREFACE. Naturalists of every class know too well how HUGH MILLER died--the victim of an overworked brain; and how that bright and vigorous spirit was abruptly quenched forever. During the month of May (1857) Mrs. Miller came to Malvern, after recovering from the first shock of bereavement, in search of health and repose, and evidently hoping to do justice, on her recovery, to the literary remains of her husband. Unhappily the excitement and anxiety naturally attaching to a revision of her husband's works proved over much for one suffering under such recent trial, and from an affection of the brain and spine which ensued; and, in consequence, Mrs. Miller has been forbidden, for the present, to engage in any work of mental labor. Under these circumstances, and at Mrs. Miller's request, I have undertaken the editing of "The Cruise of the Betsey, or a Summer Ramble among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides," as well as "The Rambles of a Geologist," hitherto unpublished, save as a series of articles in the "Witness" newspaper. The style and arguments of HUGH MILLER are so peculiarly his own, that I have not presumed to alter the text, and have merely corrected some statements incidental to the condition of geological knowledge at the time this work was penned. "The Cruise of the Betsey" was written for that well-known paper the "Witness" during the period when a disputation productive of much bitter feeling waged between the Free and Established Churches of Scotland; but as the Disruption and its history possesses little interest to a large class of the readers of this work, who will rejoice to follow their favorite author among the isles and rocks of the "bonnie land," I have expunged _some_ passages, which I am assured the author would have omitted had he lived to reprint this interesting narrative of his geological rambles. HUGH MILLER battled nobly for his faith while living. The sword is in the scabbard: let it rest! W.S. SYMONDS. PENDOCK RECTORY, APRIL 1, 1858. CONTENTS. PART I. THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY. CHAPTER I. Preparation--Departure--Recent and Ancient Monstrosities--A Free Church Yacht--Down the Clyde--Jura--Prof. Walker's Experiment--Whirlpool near Scarba--Geological Character of the Western Highlands--An Illustration--Different Ages of Outer and Inner Hebrides--Mt. Blanc and the Himalayas "mere upstarts"--Esdaile Quarries--Oban--A Section through Conglomerate and Slate examined--McDougal's Dog-stone--Power of the Ocean to move Rocks--Sound of Mull--The Betsey--The Minister's Cabin--Village of Tobermory--The "Florida," a Wreck of the Invincible Armada--Geologic Exploration and Discovery--At Anchor. 15 CHAPTER II. The Minister's Larder--No Harbor--Eigg Shoes--_Tormentilla erecta_--For the _Witness'_ Sake--Eilean Chaisteil--Appearance of Eigg--Chapel of St. Donan--Shell-sand--Origin of Secondary Calcareous Rock suggested--Exploration of Eigg--Pitchstone Veins--A Bone Cave--Massacre at Eigg--Grouping of Human Bones in the Cave--Relics--The Horse's Tooth--A Copper Sewing Needle--Teeth found--Man a worse Animal than his Teeth show him to have been designed for--Story of the Massacre--Another Version--Scuir of Eigg--The Scuir a Giant's Causeway--Character of the Columns--Remains of a Prostrate Forest. 31 CHAPTER III. Structure of the Scuir--A stray Column--The Piazza--A buried Pine Forest the Foundation of the Scuir--Geological Poachers in a Fossil Preserve--_Pinites Eiggensis_--Its Description--Witham's Experiments on Fossil Pine of Eigg--Rings of the Pine--Ascent of the Scuir--Appearance of the Top--White Pitchstone--Mr. Greig's Discovery of Pumice--A Sunset Scene--The Manse and the Yacht--The Minister's Story--A Cottage Repast--American Timber drifted to the Hebrides--Agency of the Gulf Stream--The Minister's Sheep. 49 CHAPTER IV. An Excursion--The Chain of Crosses--Bay of Laig--Island of Rum--Description of the Island--Superstitions banished by pure Religion--Fossil Shells--Remarkable Oyster Bed--New species of Belemnite--Oölitic Shells--White Sandstone Precipices--Gigantic Petrified Mushrooms--"Christabel" in Stone--Musical Sand--_Jabel Nakous_, or Mountain of the Bell--Experiments of Travellers at _Jabel Nakous_--Welsted's Account--_Reg-Rawan_, or the Moving Sand--The Musical Sounds inexplicable--Article on the subject in the North British Review. 66 CHAPTER V. Trap-dykes--"Cotton Apples"--Alternation of Lacustrine with Marine Remains--Analogy from the Beds of Esk--Aspect of the Island on its narrow Front--The Puffin--Ru Stoir--Development of Old Red Sandstone--Striking Columnar character of Ru Stoir--Discovery of Reptilian Remains--John Stewart's wonder at the Bones in the Stones--Description of the Bones--"Dragons, Gorgons, and Chimeras"--Exploration and Discovery pursued--The Midway Shieling--A Celtic Welcome--Return to the Yacht--"Array of Fossils new to Scotch Geology"--A Geologist's Toast--Hoffman and his Fossil. 85 CHAPTER VI. Something for Non-geologists--Man Destructive--A Better and Last Creation coming--A Rainy Sabbath--The Meeting House--The Congregation--The Sermon in Gaelic--The Old Wondrous Story--The Drunken Minister of Eigg--Presbyterianism without Life--Dr. Johnson's Account of the Conversion of the People of Rum--Romanism at Eigg--The Two Boys--The Freebooter of Eigg--Voyage resumed--The Homeless Minister--Harbor of Isle Ornsay--Interesting Gneiss Deposit--A Norwegian Keep--Gneiss at Knock--Curious Chemistry--Sea-cliffs beyond Portsea--The Goblin Luidag--Scenery of Skye. 105 CHAPTER VII. Exploration resumed--Geology of Rasay--An Illustration--The Storr of Skye--From Portree to Holm--Discovery of Fossils--An Island Rain--Sir R. Murchison--Labor of Drawing a Geological Line--Three Edinburgh Gentlemen--_Prosopolepsia_--Wrong Surmises corrected--The Mail Gig--The Portree Postmaster--Isle Ornsay--An Old Acquaintance--Reminiscences--A Run for Rum--"Semi-fossil Madeira"--Idling on Deck--Prognostics of a Storm--Description of the Gale--Loch Scresort--The Minister's lost _Sou-wester_--The Free Church Gathering--The weary Minister. 123 CHAPTER VIII. Geology of Rum--Its curious Character illustrated--Rum famous for Bloodstones--Red Sandstones--"Scratchings" in the Rocks--A Geological Inscription without a Key--The Lizard--Vitality broken into two--Illustrations--Speculation--Scuir More--Ascent of the Scuir--The Bloodstones--An Illustrative Set of the Gem--M'Culloch's Pebble--A Chemical Problem--The solitary Shepherd's House--Sheep _versus_ Men--The Depopulation of Rum--A Haul of Trout--Rum Mode of catching Trout--At Anchor in the Bay of Glenelg. 139 CHAPTER IX. Kyles of Skye--A Gneiss District--Kyle Rhea--A Boiling Tide--A "Take" of Sillocks--The Betsey's "Paces"--In the Bay at Broadford--Rain--Island of Pabba--Description of the Island--Its Geological Structure--Astrea--Polypifers--_Gryphoea incurva_--Three Groups of Fossils in the Lias of Skye--Abundance of the Petrifactions of Pabba--Scenery--Pabba a "piece of smooth, level England"--Fossil Shells of Pabba--- Voyage resumed--Kyle Akin--Ruins of Castle Maoil--A "Thornback" Dinner--The Bunch of Deep Sea Tangle--The Caileach Stone--Kelp Furnaces--Escape of the Betsey from sinking. 159 CHAPTER X. Isle Orusay--The Sabbath--A Sailor-minister's Sermon for Sailors--The Scuir Sermon--Loch Carron--Groups of Moraines--A sheep District--The Editor of the _Witness_ and the Establishment Clergyman--Dingwall--Conon-side revisited--The Pond and its Changes--New Faces.--The Stonemason's Mark--The Burying-ground of Urquhart--An old Acquaintance--Property Qualification for Voting in Scotland--Montgerald Sandstone Quarries--Geological Science in Cromarty--The Danes at Cromarty--The Danish Professor and the "Old Red Sandstone"--Harmonizing Tendencies of Science. 178 CHAPTER XI. Ichthyolite Beds--An interesting Discovery--Two Storeys of Organic Remains in the Old Red Sandstone--Ancient Ocean of Lower Old Red--Two great Catastrophes--Ancient Fish Scales--Their skilful Mechanism displayed by examples--Bone Lips--Arts of the Slater and Tiler as old as Old Red Sandstone--Jet Trinkets--Flint Arrow-heads--Vitrified Forts of Scotland--Style of grouping Lower Old Red Fossils--Illustration from Cromarty Fishing Phenomena--Singular Remains of Holoptychius--Ramble with Mr. Robert Dick--Color of the Planet Mars--Tombs never dreamed of by Hervey--Skeleton of the Bruce--Gigantic Holoptychius--"Coal money Currency"--Upper Boundary of Lower Old Red--Every one may add to the Store of Geological Facts--Discoveries of Messrs. Dick and Peach. 192 CHAPTER XII. Ichthyolite Beds of Clune and Lethenbarn--Limestone Quarry--Destruction of Urns and Sarcophagi in the Lime-kiln--Nodules opened--Beautiful coloring of the Remains--Patrick Duff's Description--New Genus of Morayshire Ichthyolite described--Form and size of the Nodules or Stone Coffins--Illustration from Mrs. Marshall's Cements--Forest of Darnaway--The Hill of Berries--Sluie--Elgin--Outliers of the Weald and the Oölite--Description of the Weald at Linksfield--Mr. Duff's _Lepidotus minor_--Eccentric Types of Fish Scales--Visit to the Sandstones of Scat-Craig--Fine suit of Fossils at Scat-Craig--True graveyard Bones, not mere Impressions--Varieties of pattern--The Diker's "Carved Flowers"--_Stagonolepis_, a new Genus--Termination of the Ramble. 212 CHAPTER XIII. SUPPLEMENTARY. Supplementary--Isolated Reptile Remains in Eigg--Small Isles revisited--The Betsey again--Storm bound--Tacking--Becalmed--Medusæ caught and described--Rain--A Shoal of Porpoises--Change of Weather--The bed-ridden Woman--The Poor Law Act for Scotland--Geological Excursion--Basaltic Columns--Oölitic Beds--Abundance of Organic Remains--Hybodus Teeth--Discovery of reptile Remains _in situ_--Musical Sand of Laig re-examined--Explanation suggested--Sail for Isle Ornsay--Anchored Clouds--A Leak sprung--Peril of the Betsey--At work with Pump and Pails--Safe in Harbor--Return to Edinburgh. 233 PART II. RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. CHAPTER I. Embarkation--A foundered Vessel--Lateness of the Harvest dependent on the Geological character of the Soil--A Granite Harvest and an Old Red Harvest--Cottages of Redstone and of Granite--Arable Soil of Scotland the result of a Geological Grinding Agency--Locality of the Famine of 1846--Mr. Longmuir's Fossils--Geology necessary to a Theologian--Popularizers of Science when dangerous--"Constitution of Man," and "Vestiges of Creation"--Atop of the Banff Coach--A Geologist's Field Equipment--The trespassing "Stirk"--Silurian Schists inlaid with Old Red--Bay of Gamrie, how formed--Gardenstone--Geological Free-masonry illustrated--How to break an Ichthyolite Nodule--An old Rhyme mended--A raised Beach--Fossil Shells--Scotland under Water at the time of the Boulder-clays. 255 CHAPTER II. Character of the Rocks near Gardenstone--A Defunct Father-lasher--A Geological Inference--Village of Gardenstone--The drunken Scot--Gardenstone Inn--Lord Gardenstone--A Tempest threatened--The Author's Ghost Story--The Lady in Green--Her Appearance and Tricks--The Rescued Children--The murdered Peddler and his Pack--Where the Green Dress came from--Village of Macduff--Peculiar Appearance of the Beach at the Mouth of the Deveron--Dr. Emslie's Fossils--_Pterichthys quadratus_--Argillaceous Deposits of Blackpots--Pipe-laying in Scotland--Fossils of Blackpots Clay--Mr. Longmuir's Description of them--Blackpots Deposit a Re-formation of a Liasic Patch--Period of its Formation. 270 CHAPTER III. From Blackpots to Portsoy--Character of the Coast--Burn of Boyne--Fever Phantoms--Graphic Granite--Maupertuis and the Runic Inscription--Explanation of the _quo modo_ of Graphic Granite--Portsoy Inn--Serpentine Beds--Portsoy Serpentine unrivalled for small ornaments--Description of it--Significance of the term _serpentine_--Elizabeth Bond and her "Letters"--From Portsoy to Cullen--Attritive Power of the Ocean illustrated--The Equinoctial--From Cullen to Fochabers--The Old Red again--The old Pensioner--Fochabers--Mr. Joss, the learned Mail-guard--The Editor a sort of Coach-guard--On the Coach to Elgin--Geology of Banffshire--Irregular paging of the Geologic Leaves--Geologic Map of the County like Joseph's Coat--Striking Illustration. 291 CHAPTER IV. Yellow-hued Houses of Elgin--Geology of the Country indicated by the coloring of the Stone Houses--Fossils of Old Red north of the Grampians different from those of Old Red south--Geologic Formations at Linksfield difficult to be understood--Ganoid Scales of the Wealden--Sudden Reaction, from complex to simple, in the Scales of Fishes--Pore-covered Scales--Extraordinary amount of Design exhibited in Ancient Ganoid Scales--Holoptychius Scale illustrated by Cromwell's "fluted pot"--Patrick Duff's Geological Collection--Elgin Museum--Fishes of the Ganges--Armature of Ancient Fishes--Compensatory Defences--- The Hermit-crab--Spines of the Pimelodi--Ride to Campbelton--Theories of the formation of Ardersier and Fortrose Promontories--Tradition of their construction by the Wizard, Michael Scott--A Region of Legendary Lore. 307 CHAPTER V. Rosemarkie and its Scaurs--Kaes' Craig--A Jackdaw Settlement--"Rosemarkie Kaes" and "Cromarty Cooties"--"The Danes," a Group of Excavations--At Home in Cromarty--The Boulder-clay of Cromarty "begins to tell its story"--One of its marked Scenic Peculiarities--Hints to Landscape Painters--"Samuel's Well"--A Chain of Bogs geologically accounted for--Another Scenic Peculiarity--"_Ha-has_ of Nature's digging"--The Author's earliest Field of Hard Labor--Picturesque Cliff of Boulder-clay--Scratchings on the Sandstone--Invariable Characteristic of true Boulder-clay--Scratchings on Pebbles in the line of the longer axis--Illustration from the Boulder-clay of Banff. 324 CHAPTER VI. Organisms of the Boulder-clay not unequivocal--First Impressions of the Boulder-clay--Difficulty of accounting for its barrenness of Remains--Sir Charles Lyell's reasoning--A Fact to the contrary--Human Skull dug from a Clay-bank--The Author's Change of Belief respecting Organic Remains of the Boulder-clay--Shells from the Clay at Wick--Questions respecting them settled--Conclusions confirmed by Mr. Dick's Discoveries at Thurso--Sir John Sinclair's Discovery of Boulder-clay Shells in 1802--Comminution of the Shells illustrated--_Cyprina islandica_--Its Preservation in larger Proportions than those of other Shells accounted for--Boulder-clays of Scotland reformed during the existing Geological Epoch--Scotland in the Period of the Boulder-clay "merely three detached groups of Islands"--Evidence of the Subsidence of the Land in Scotland--Confirmed by Rev. Mr. Cumming's conclusion--High-lying Granite Boulders--Marks of a succeeding elevatory Period--Scandinavia now rising--Autobiography of a Boulder desirable--A Story of the Supernatural. 336 CHAPTER VII. Relation of the deep red stone of Cromarty to the Ichthyolite Beds of the System--Ruins of a Fossil-charged Bed--Journey to Avoch--Red Dye of the Boulder-clay distinct from the substance itself--Variation of Coloring in the Boulder-clay Red Sandstone accounted for--Hard-pan how formed--A reformed Garden--An ancient Battle-field--Antiquity of Geologic and Human History compared--Burn of Killein--Observation made in boyhood confirmed--Fossil-nodules--Fine Specimen of _Coccosteus decipiens_--Blank strata of Old Red--New View respecting the Rocks of Black Isle--A Trip up Moray and Dingwall Friths--Altered color of the Boulder-clay--Up the Auldgrande River--Scenery of the great Conglomerate--Graphic Description--Laidlaw's Boulder--_Vaccinium myrtillus_--Profusion of Travelled Boulders--The Boulder _Clach Malloch_--Its zones of Animal and Vegetable life. 355 CHAPTER VIII. Imaginary Autobiography of the _Clach Malloch_ Boulder--Its Creation--Its Long Night of unsummed Centuries--Laid open to light on a desert Island--Surrounded by an Arctic Vegetation--Undermined by the rising Sea--Locked up and floated off on an Ice-field--At rest on the Sea-bottom--Another Night of unsummed Years--The Boulder raised again above the waves by the rising of the Land--Beholds an Altered Country--Pine Forests and Mammals--Another Period of Ages passes--The Boulder again floated off by an Iceberg--Finally at rest on the Shore of Cromarty Bay--Time and Occasion of naming it--Strange Phenomena accounted for by Earthquakes--How the Boulder of Petty Bay was moved--The Boulder of Auldgrande--The old Highland Paupers--The little Parsi Girl--Her Letter to her Papa--But one Human Nature on Earth--Journey resumed--Conon Burying Ground--An aged Couple--Gossip. 375 CHAPTER IX. The Great Conglomerate--Its Undulatory and Rectilinear Members--Knock Farril and its Vitrified Fort--The old Highlanders an observant race--The Vein of Silver--Summit of Knock Farril--Mode of accounting for the Luxuriance of Herbage in the ancient Scottish Fortalices--The green Graves of Culloden--Theories respecting the Vitrification of the Hill-forts--Combined Theories of Williams and Mackenzie probably give the correct account--The Author's Explanation--Transformations of Fused Rocks--Strathpetlier--The Spa--Permanent Odoriferous Qualities of an ancient Sea-bottom converted into Rock--Mineral Springs of the Spa--Infusion of the powdered rock a substitute--Belemnite Water--The lively young Lady's Comments--A befogged Country seen from a hill-top--Ben-Wevis--Journey to Evanton--A Geologist's Night-mare--The Route Home--Ruins of Craig house--Incompatibility of Tea and Ghosts--End of the Tour. 393 CHAPTER X. Recovered Health--Journey to the Orkneys--Aboard the Steamer at Wick--Mr. Bremner--Masonry of the Harbor of Wick--The greatest Blunders result from good Rules misapplied--Mr. Bremner's Theory about sea-washed Masonry--Singular Fracture of the Rock near Wick--The Author's mode of accounting for it--"Simple but not obvious" Thinking--Mr. Bremner's mode of making stone Erections under Water--His exploits in raising foundered Vessels--Aspect of the Orkneys--The ungracious Schoolmaster--In the Frith of Kirkwall--Cathedral of St Magnus--Appearance of Kirkwall--Its "perished suppers"--Its ancient Palaces--Blunder of the Scotch Aristocracy--The patronate Wedge--Breaking Ground in Orkney--Minute Gregarious Coccosteus--True Position of the Coccosteus' Eyes--Ruins of one of Cromwell's Forts--Antiquities of Orkney--The Cathedral--Its Sculptures--The Mysterious Cell--Prospect from the Tower--Its Chimes--Ruins of Castle Patrick. 414 CHAPTER XI. The Bishop's Palace at Orkney--Haco the Norwegian--Icelandic Chronicle respecting his Expedition to Scotland--His Death--Removal of his Remain to Norway--Why Norwegian Invasion ceased--Straw-plaiting--The Lassies of Orkney--Orkney Type of Countenance--Celtic and Scandinavian--An accomplished Antiquary--Old Manuscripts--An old Tune book--Manuscript Letter of Mary Queen of Scots--Letters of General Monck--The fearless Covenanter--Cave of the Rebels--Why the tragedy of "Gustavus Vasa" was prohibited--Quarry of Pickoquoy--Its Fossil Shells--Journey to Stromness--Scenery--Birth-place of Malcolm, the Poet--His History--One of his Poems--His Brother a Free Church Minister--New Scenery. 437 CHAPTER XII. Hills of Orkney--Their Geologic Composition--Scene of Scott's "Pirate"--Stromness--Geology of the District--"Seeking beasts"--Conglomerate in contact with Granite--A palæozoic Hudson's Bay--Thickness of Conglomerate of Orkney--Oldest Vertebrate yet discovered in Orkney--Its Size--Figure of a characteristic plate of the Asterolepis--Peculiarity of Old Red Fishes--Length of the Asterolepis--A rich Ichthyolite Bed--Arrangement of the Layers--Queries as to the Cause of it--Minerals--An abandoned Mine--A lost Vessel--Kelp for Iodine--A dangerous Coast--Incidents of Shipwreck--Hospitality--Stromness Museum--Diplopterus mistaken for Dipterus--Their Resemblances and Differences--Visit to a remarkable Stack--Paring the Soil for Fuel, and consequent Barrenness--Description of the Stack--Wave-formed Caves--Height to which the Surf rises. 457 CHAPTER XIII. Detached Fossils--Remains of the Pterichthys--Terminal Bones of the Coccosteus, etc., preserved--Internal Skeleton of Coccosteus--The shipwrecked Sailor in the Cave--Bishop Grahame--His Character, as drawn by Baillie--His Successor--Ruins of the Bishop's Country-house--Sub-aërial Formation of Sandstone--Formation near New Kaye--Inference from such Formation--Tour resumed--Loch of Stennis--Waters of the Loch fresh, brackish, and salt--Vegetation varied accordingly--Change produced in the Flounder by fresh water--The Standing Stones, second only to Stonehenge--Their Purpose--Their Appearance and Situation--Diameter of the Circle--What the Antiquaries say of it--Reference to it in the "Pirate"--Dr. Hibbert's Account. 476 CHAPTER XIV. On Horseback--A pared Moor--Small Landholders--Absorption of small holdings in England and Scotland--Division of Land favorable to Civil and Religious Rights--Favorable to social Elevation--An inland Parish--The Landsman and Lobster--Wild Flowers of Orkney--Law of Compensation illustrated by the Tobacco Plant--Poverty tends to Productiveness--Illustrated in Ireland--Profusion of Ichthyolites--Orkney a land of Defunct Fishes--Sandwick--A Collection of Coccostean Flags--A Quarry full of Heads of Dipteri--The Bergil, or Striped Wrasse--Its Resemblance to the Dipterus--Poverty of the Flora of the Lower Old Red--No true Coniferous Wood in the Orkney Flagstones--Departure for Hoy--The intelligent Boatman--Story of the Orkney Fisherman. 492 CHAPTER XV. Hoy--Unique Scenery--The Dwarfie Stone of Hoy--Sir Walter Scott's Account of it--Its Associations--Inscription of Names--George Buchanan's Consolation--The mythic Carbuncle of the Hill of Hoy--No Fossils at Hoy--Striking Profile of Sir Walter Scott on the Hill of Hoy--Sir Walter, and Shetland and Orkney--Originals of two Characters in "The Pirate"--Bessie Millie--Garden of Gow, the "Pirate"--Childhood's Scene of Byron's "Torquil"--The Author's Introduction to his Sister--A German Visitor--German and Scotch Sabbath-keeping habits contrasted--Mr. Watt's Specimens of Fossil Remains--The only new Organism found in Orkney--Back to Kirkwall--to Wick--Vedder's Ode to Orkney. 507 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY. CHAPTER I. Preparation--Departure--Recent and Ancient Monstrosities--A Free Church Yacht--Down the Clyde--Jura--Prof. Walker's Experiment--Whirlpool near Scarba--Geological Character of the Western Highlands--An Illustration--Different Ages of Outer and Inner Hebrides--Mt. Blanc and the Himalayas "mere upstarts"--Esdaile Quarries--Oban--A Section through Conglomerate and Slate examined--M'Dougal's Dog-stone--Power of the Ocean to move Rocks--Sound of Mull--The Betsey--The Minister's Cabin--Village of Tobermory--The "Florida," a Wreck of the Invincible Armada--Geologic Exploration and Discovery--At Anchor. The pleasant month of July had again come round, and for full five weeks I was free. Chisels and hammers, and the bag for specimens, were taken from their corner in the dark closet, and packed up with half a stone weight of a fine _soft_ Conservative Edinburgh newspaper, valuable for a quality of preserving old things entire. At noon on St. Swithin's day (Monday the 15th), I was speeding down the Clyde in the Toward Castle steamer, for Tobermory in Mull. In the previous season I had intended passing direct from the Oölitic deposits of the eastern coast of Scotland, to the Oölitic deposits of the Hebrides. But the weeks glided all too quickly away among the ichthyolites of Caithness and Cromarty, and the shells and lignites of Sutherland and Ross. My friend, too, the Rev. Mr. Swanson, of Small Isles, on whose assistance I had reckoned, was in the middle of his troubles at the time, with no longer a home in his parish, and not yet provided with one elsewhere; and I concluded he would have but little heart, at such a season, for breaking into rocks, or for passing from the too pressing monstrosities of an existing state of things, to the old lapidified monstrosities of the past. And so my design on the Hebrides had to be postponed for a twelvemonth. But my friend, now afloat in his Free Church yacht, had got a home on the sea beside his island charge, which, if not very secure when nights were dark and winds loud, and the little vessel tilted high to the long roll of the Atlantic, lay at least beyond the reach of man's intolerance, and not beyond the protecting care of the Almighty. He had written me that he would run down his vessel from Small Isles to meet me at Tobermory, and in consequence of the arrangement I was now on my way to Mull. St. Swithin's day, so important in the calendar of our humbler meteorologists, had in this part of the country its alternate fits of sunshine and shower. We passed gaily along the green banks of the Clyde, with their rich flat fields glittering in moisture, and their lines of stately trees, that, as the light flashed out, threw their shadows over the grass. The river expanded into the estuary, the estuary into the open sea; we left behind us beacon, and obelisk, and rock-perched castle;-- "Merrily down we drop Below the church, below the tower, Below the light house top," and, as the evening fell, we were ploughing the outer reaches of the Frith, with the ridgy table-land of Ayrshire stretching away, green, on the one side, and the serrated peaks of Arran rising dark and high on the other. At sunrise next morning our boat lay, unloading a portion of her cargo, in one of the ports of Islay, and we could see the Irish coast resting on the horizon to the south and west, like a long undulating bank of thin blue cloud; with the island of Rachrin--famous for the asylum it had afforded the Bruce when there was no home for him in Scotland,--presenting in front its mass of darker azure. On and away! We swept past Islay, with its low fertile hills of mica-schist and slate; and Jura, with its flat dreary moors, and its far-seen gigantic paps, on one of which, in the last age, Professor Walker, of Edinburgh, set water a-boil with six degrees of heat less than he found necessary for the purpose on the plain below. The Professor describes the view from the summit, which includes in its wide circle at once the Isle of Skye and the Isle of Man, as singularly noble and imposing; two such prospects more, he says, would bring under the eye the whole island of Great Britain, from the Pentland Frith to the English Channel. We sped past Jura. Then came the Gulf of Coryvrekin, with the bare mountain island of Scarba overlooking the fierce, far-famed whirlpool, that we could see from the deck, breaking in long lines of foam, and sending out its waves in wide rings on every side, when not a speck of white was visible elsewhere in the expanse of sea around us. And then came an opener space, studded with smaller islands,--mere hill-tops rising out of the sea, with here and there insulated groups of pointed rocks, the skeletons of perished hills, amid which the tide chafed and fretted, as if laboring to complete on the broken remains their work of denudation and ruin. The disposition of land and water on this coast suggests the idea that the Western Highlands, from the line in the interior, whence the rivers descend to the Atlantic, with the islands beyond to the outer Hebrides, are all parts of one great mountainous plane, inclined slantways into the sea. First, the long withdrawing valleys of the main land, with their brown mossy streams, change their character as they dip beneath the sea-level, and become salt-water lochs. The lines of hills that rise over them jut out as promontories, till cut off by some transverse valley, lowered still more deeply into the brine, and that exists as a kyle, minch, or sound, swept twice every tide by powerful currents. The sea deepens as the plain slopes downward; mountain-chains stand up out of the water as larger islands, single mountains as smaller ones, lower eminences as mere groups of pointed rocks; till at length, as we pass outwards, all trace of the submerged land disappears, and the wide ocean stretches out and away its unfathomable depths. The model of some Alpine country raised in plaster on a flat board, and tilted slantways, at a low angle, into a basin of water, would exhibit, on a minute scale, an appearance exactly similar to that presented by the western coast of Scotland and the Hebrides. The water would rise along the hollows, longitudinal and transverse, forming sounds and lochs, and surround, island-like, the more deeply submerged eminences. But an examination of the geology of the coast, with its promontories and islands, communicates a different idea. These islands and promontories prove to be of very various ages and origin. The _outer_ Hebrides may have existed as the inner skeleton of some ancient country, contemporary with the main land, and that bore on its upper soils the productions of perished creations, at a time when by much the larger portion of the _inner_ Hebrides,--Skye, and Mull, and the Small Isles,--existed as part of the bottom of a wide sound, inhabited by the Cephalopoda and Enaliosaurians of the Lias and the Oölite. Judging from its components, the Long Island, like the Lammermoors and the Grampians, may have been smiling to the sun when the Alps and the Himalaya Mountains lay buried in the abyss; whereas the greater part of Skye and Mull must have been, like these vast mountain-chains of the Continent, an oozy sea-floor, over which the ligneous productions of the neighboring lands, washed down by the streams, grew heavy and sank, and on which the belemnite dropped its spindle and the ammonite its shell. The idea imparted of _old_ Scotland to the geologist here,--of Scotland, proudly, aristocratically, supereminently old,--for it can call Mont Blanc a mere upstart, and Dhawalageri, with its twenty-eight thousand feet of elevation, a heady fellow of yesterday,--is not that of a land settling down by the head, like a foundering vessel, but of a land whose hills and islands, like its great aristocratic families, have arisen from the level in very various ages, and under the operation of circumstances essentially diverse. We left behind us the islands of Lunga, Luing, and Seil, and entered the narrow Sound of Kerrera, with its border of Old Red conglomerate resting on the clay-slate of the district. We had passed Esdaile near enough to see the workmen employed in the quarries of the island, so extensively known in commerce for their roofing slate, and several small vessels beside them, engaged in loading; and now we had got a step higher in the geological scale, and could mark from the deck the peculiar character of the conglomerate, which, in cliffs washed by the sea, when the binding matrix is softer than the pebbles which it encloses, roughens, instead of being polished, by the action of the waves, and which, along the eastern side of the Sound here, seems as if formed of cannon-shot, of all sizes, embedded in cement. The Sound terminates in the beautiful bay of Oban, so quiet and sheltered, with its two island breakwaters in front,--its semi-circular sweep of hill behind,--its long white-walled village, bent like a bow, to conform to the inflection of the shore,--its mural precipices behind, tapestried with ivy,--its rich patches of green pasture,--its bosky dingles of shrub and tree,--and, perched on the seaward promontory, its old, time-eaten keep. "In one part of the harbor of Oban," says Dr. James Anderson, in his "Practical Treatise on Peat Moss," (1794), "where the depth of the sea is about twenty fathoms, the bottom is found to consist of quick peat, which affords no safe anchorage." I made inquiry at the captain of the steamer, regarding this submerged deposit, but he had never heard of it. There are, however, many such on the coasts of both Britain and Ireland. We staid at Oban for several hours, waiting the arrival of the Fort William steamer; and, taking out hammer and chisel from my bag, I stepped ashore to question my ancient acquaintance, the Old Red conglomerate, and was fortunate enough to meet on the pier-head, as I landed, one of the best of companions for assisting in such work, Mr. Colin Elder, of Isle Ornsay,--the gentleman who had so kindly furnished my friend Mr. Swanson with an asylum for his family, when there was no longer a home for them in Small Isles. "You are much in luck," he said, after our first greeting: "one of the villagers, in improving his garden, has just made a cut for some fifteen or twenty yards along the face of the precipice behind the village, and laid open the line of junction between the conglomerate and the clay-slate. Let us go and see it." I found several things worthy of notice in the chance section to which I was thus introduced. The conglomerate lies uncomfortably along the edges of the slate strata, which present under it an appearance exactly similar to that which they exhibit under the rolled stones and shingle of the neighboring shore, where we find them laid bare beside the harbor, for several hundred yards. And, mixed with the pebbles of various character and origin of which the conglomerate is mainly composed, we see detached masses of the slate, that still exhibit on their edges the identical lines of fracture characteristic of the rock, which they received, when torn from the mass below, myriads of ages before. In the incalculably remote period in which the conglomerate base of the Old Red Sandstone was formed, the clay-slate of this district had been exactly the same sort of rock that it is now. Some long anterior convulsion had upturned its strata, and the sweep of water, mingled with broken fragments of stone, had worn smooth the exposed edges, just as a similar agency wears the edges exposed at the present time. Quarries might have been opened in this rock, as now, for a roofing-slate, had there been quarriers to open them, or houses to roof over; it was in every respect as ancient a looking stone then as in the present late age of the world. There are no sermons that seem stranger or more impressive to one who has acquired just a little of the language in which they are preached, than those which, according to the poet, are to be found in stones; a bit of fractured slate, embedded among a mass of rounded pebbles, proves voluble with ideas of a kind almost too large for the mind of man to grasp. The eternity that hath passed is an ocean without a further shore, and a finite conception may in vain attempt to span it over. But from the beach, strewed with wrecks, on which we stand to contemplate it, we see far out towards the cloudy horizon, many a dim islet and many a pinnacled rock, the sepulchres of successive eras,--the monuments of consecutive creations: the entire prospect is studded over with these landmarks of a hoar antiquity, which, measuring out space from space, constitute the vast whole a province of time; nor can the eye reach to the open, shoreless infinitude beyond, in which only God existed; and, as in a sea-scene in nature, in which headland stretches dim and blue beyond headland, and islet beyond islet, the distance seems not lessened, but increased, by the crowded objects--we borrow a larger, not a smaller idea of the distant eternity, from the vastness of the measured periods that occur between. Over the lower bed of conglomerate, which here, as on the east coast, is of great thickness, we find a bed of gray stratified clay, containing a few calcareo-argillaceous nodules. The conglomerate cliffs to the north of the village present appearances highly interesting to the geologist. Rising in a long wall within the pleasure-grounds of Dunolly castle, we find them wooded atop and at the base; while immediately at their feet there stretches out a grassy lawn, traversed by the road from the village to the castle, which sinks with a gradual slope into the existing sea-beach, but which ages ago must have been a sea-beach itself. We see the bases of the precipices hollowed and worn, with all their rents and crevices widened into caves; and mark, at a picturesque angle of the rock, what must have been once an insulated sea-stack, some thirty or forty feet in height, standing up from amid the rank grass, as at one time it stood up from amid the waves. Tufts of fern and sprays of ivy bristle from its sides, once roughened by the serrated kelp-weed and the tangle. The Highlanders call it M'Dougal's Dog-stone, and say that the old chieftains of Lorne made use of it as a post to which to fasten their dogs,--animals wild and gigantic as themselves,--when the hunters were gathering to rendezvous, and the impatient beagles struggled to break away and begin the chase on their own behalf. It owes its existence as a stack--for the precipice in which it was once included has receded from around it for yards--to an immense boulder in its base--by far the largest stone I ever saw in an Old Red conglomerate. The mass is of a rudely rhomboidal form, and measures nearly twelve feet in the line of its largest diagonal. A second huge pebble in the same detached spire measures four feet by about three. Both have their edges much rounded, as if, ere their deposition in the conglomerate, they had been long exposed to the wear of the sea; and both are composed of an earthy amygdaloidal trap. I have stated elsewhere ["Old Red Sandstone," Chapter XII.], that I had scarce ever seen a stone in the Old Red conglomerate which I could not raise from the ground; and ere I said so I had examined no inconsiderable extent of this deposit, chiefly, however, along the eastern coast of Scotland, where its larger pebbles rarely exceed two hundred weight. How account for the occurrence of pebbles of so gigantic a size here? We can but guess at a solution, and that very vaguely. The islands of Mull and Kerrera form, in the present state of things, inner and outer breakwaters between what is now the coast of Oban and the waves of the Atlantic; but Mull, in the times of even the Oölite, must have existed as a mere sea-bottom; and Kerrera, composed mainly of trap, which has brought with it to the surface patches of the conglomerate, must, when the conglomerate was in forming, have been a mere sea-bottom also. Is it not possible, that when the breakwaters _were not_, the Atlantic _was_, and that its tempests, which in the present time can transport vast rocks for hundreds of yards along the exposed coasts of Shetland and Orkney, may have been the agent here in the transport of these huge pebbles of the Old Red conglomerate? "Rocks that two or three men could not lift," say the Messrs. Anderson of Inverness, in describing the storms of Orkney, "are washed about even on the tops of cliffs, which are between sixty and a hundred feet above the surface of the sea, when smooth; and detached masses of rock, of an enormous size, are well known to have been carried a considerable distance between low and high-water mark." "A little way from the Brough," says Dr. Patrick Neill, in his 'Tour through Orkney and Shetland,' "we saw the prodigious effects of a late winter storm: many great stones, one of them of several tons weight, had been tossed up a precipice twenty or thirty feet high, and laid fairly on the green sward." There is something farther worthy of notice in the stone of which the two boulders of the Dog-stack are composed. No species of rock occurs more abundantly in the embedded pebbles of this ancient conglomerate than rocks of the trap family. We find in it trap-porphyries, greenstones, clinkstones, basalts, and amygdalolds, largely mingled with fragments of the granitic, clay-slate, and quartz rocks. The Plutonic agencies must have been active in the locality for periods amazingly protracted; and many of the masses protruded at a very early time seem identical in their composition with rocks of the trap family, which in other parts of the country we find referred to much later eras. There occur in this deposit rolled pebbles of a basalt, which in the neighborhood of Edinburgh would be deemed considerably more modern than the times of the Mountain Limestone, and in the Isle of Skye, considerably more modern than the times of the Oölite. The sunlight was showering its last slant rays on island and loch, and then retreating upwards along the higher hills, chased by the shadows, as our boat quitted the bay of Oban, and stretched northwards, along the end of green Lismore, for the Sound of Mull. We had just enough of day left, as we reached mid sea, to show us the gray fronts of the three ancient castles,--- which at this point may be at once seen from the deck,--Dunolly, Duart, and Dunstaffnage; and enough left us as we entered the Sound, to show, and barely show, the Lady Rock, famous in tradition, and made classic by the pen of Campbell, raising its black back amid the tides, like a belated porpoise. And then twilight deepened into night, and we went snorting through the Strait with a stream of green light curling off from either bow in the calm, towards the high dim land, that seemed standing up on both sides like tall hedges over a green lane. We entered the Bay of Tobermory about midnight, and cast anchor amid a group of little vessels. An exceedingly small boat shot out from the side of a yacht of rather diminutive proportions, but tautly rigged for her size, and bearing an outrigger astern. The water this evening was full of phosphoric matter, and it gleamed and sparkled around the little boat like a northern aurora around a dark cloudlet. There was just light enough to show that the oars were plied by a sailor-like man in a Guernsey frock, and that another sailor-like man,--the skipper, mayhap,--attired in a cap and pea-jacket, stood in the stern. The man in the Guernsey frock was John Stewart, sole mate and half the crew of the Free Church yacht Betsey; and the skipper-like man in the pea-jacket was my friend the minister of the Protestants of Small Isles. In five minutes more I was sitting with Mr. Elder beside the little iron stove in the cabin of the Betsey; and the minister, divested of his cap and jacket, but still looking the veritable skipper to admiration, was busied in making us a rather late tea. The cabin,--my home for the greater part of the three following weeks, and that of my friend for the greater part of the previous twelvemonth,--I found to be an apartment about twice the size of a common bed, and just lofty enough under the beams to permit a man of five feet eleven to stand erect in his night-cap. A large table, lashed to the floor, furnished with tiers of drawers of all sorts and sizes, and bearing a writing desk bound to it a-top, occupied the middle space, leaving just room enough for a person to pass between its edges and the narrow coffin-like beds in the sides, and space enough at its fore-end for two seats in front of the stove. A jealously barred skylight opened above; and there depended from it this evening a close lantern-looking lamp, sufficiently valuable, no doubt, in foul weather, but dreary and dim on the occasions when all one really wished from it was light. The peculiar furniture of the place gave evidence to the mixed nature of my friend's employment. A well-thumbed chart of the Western Islands lay across an equally well-thumbed volume of Henry's "Commentary." There was a Polyglot and a spy-glass in one corner, and a copy of Calvin's "Institutes," with the latest edition of "The Coaster's Sailing Directions," in another; while in an adjoining state-room, nearly large enough to accommodate an arm-chair, if the chair could have but contrived to get into it, I caught a glimpse of my friend's printing press and his case of types, canopied overhead by the blue ancient of the vessel, bearing, in stately six-inch letters of white bunting, the legend, "FREE CHURCH YACHT." A door opened, which communicated with the forecastle, and John Stewart, stooping very much, to accommodate himself to the low-roofed passage, thrust in a plate of fresh herrings, splendidly toasted, to give substantiality and relish to our tea. The little rude forecastle, a considerably smaller apartment than the cabin, was all a-glow with the bright fire in the coppers, itself invisible; we could see the chain-cable dangling from the hatchway to the floor, and John Stewart's companion, a powerful-looking, handsome young man, with broad bare breast, and in his shirt-sleeves, squatted full in front of the blaze, like the household goblin described by Milton, or the "Christmas Present" of Dickens. Mr. Elder left us for the steamer, in which he prosecuted his voyage next morning to Skye; and we tumbled in, each to his narrow bed,--comfortable enough sort of resting places, though not over soft; and slept so soundly, that we failed to mark Mr. Elder's return for a few seconds, a little after daybreak. I found at my bedside, when I awoke, a fragment of rock which he had brought from the shore, charged with Liasic fossils; and a note he had written, to say that the deposit to which it belonged occurred in the trap immediately above the village-mill; and further, to call my attention to a house near the middle of the village, built of a mouldering red sandstone, which had been found _in situ_ in digging the foundations. I had but little time for the work of exploration in Mull, and the information thus kindly rendered enabled me to economize it. The village of Tobermory resembles that of Oban. A quiet bay has its secure island-breakwater in front; a line of tall, well-built houses, not in the least rural in their aspect, but that seem rather as if they had been transported from the centre of some stately city entire and at once, sweeps round its inner inflection, like a bent bow; and an amphitheatre of mingled rock and wood rises behind. With all its beauty, however, there hangs about the village an air of melancholy. Like some of the other western coast villages, it seems not to have grown, piece-meal, as a village ought, but to have been made wholesale, as Frankenstein made his man; and to be ever asking, and never more incessantly than when it is at its quietest, why it should have been made at all? The remains of the Florida, a gallant Spanish ship, lie off its shores, a wreck of the Invincible Armada, "deep whelmed," according to Thompson, "What time, Snatched sudden by the vengeful blast, The scattered vessels drove, and on blind shelve, And pointed rock that marks th' indented shore, Relentless dashed, where loud the northern main Howls through the fractured Caledonian isles." Macculloch relates, that there was an attempt made, rather more than a century ago, to weigh up the Florida, which ended in the weighing up of merely a few of her guns, some of them of iron greatly corroded; and that, on scraping them, they became so hot under the hand that they could not be touched, but that they lost this curious property after a few hours' exposure to the air. There have since been repeated instances elsewhere, he adds, of the same phenomenon, and chemistry has lent its solution of the principles on which it occurs; but, in the year 1740, ere the riddle was read, it must have been deemed a thoroughly magical one by the simple islanders of Mull. It would seem as if the guns, heated in the contest with Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, had again kindled, under some supernatural influence, with the intense glow of the lost battle. The morning was showery; but it cleared up a little after ten, and we landed to explore. We found the mill a little to the south of the village, where a small stream descends, all foam and uproar, from the higher grounds along a rocky channel half-hidden by brushwood; and the Liasic bed occurs in an exposed front directly over it, coped by a thick bed of amygdaloidal trap. The organisms are numerous; and, when we dig into the bank beyond the reach of the weathering influences, we find them delicately preserved, though after a fashion that renders difficult their safe removal. Originally the bed must have existed as a brown argillaceous mud, somewhat resembling that which forms in the course of years, under a scalp of muscles; and it has hardened into a more silt-like clay, in which the fossils occur, not as petrifactions, but as shells in a state of decay, except in some rare cases, in which a calcareous nodule has formed within or around them. Viewed in the group, they seem of an intermediate character, between the shells of the Lias and the Oölite. One of the first fossils I disinterred was the Gryphæa obliquata,--a shell characteristic of the Liasic formation; and the fossil immediately after, the Pholadomy æqualis, a shell of the Oölitic one. There occurs in great numbers a species of small Pecten,--some of the specimens scarce larger than a herring scale; a minute Ostrea, a sulcated Terebratula, an Isocardia, a Pullastra, and groups of broken serpulæ in vast abundance. The deposit has also its three species of Ammonite, existing as mere impressions in the clay; and at least two species of Belemnite,--one of the two somewhat resembling the Belemnites abbreviatus, but smaller and rather more elongated: while the other, of a spindle form, diminishing at both ends, reminds one of the Belemnites minimus of the Gault. The Red Sandstone in the centre of the village occurs detached, like this Liasic bed, amid the prevailing trap, and may be seen _in situ_ beside the southern gable of the tall, deserted looking house at the hill-foot, that has been built of it. It is a soft, coarse-grained, mouldering stone, ill fitted for the purposes of the architect; and more nearly resembles the New Red Sandstone of England and Dumfriesshire, than any other rock I have yet seen in the north of Scotland. I failed to detect in it aught organic. We weighed anchor about two o'clock, and beat gallantly out the Sound, in the face of an intermittent baffling wind and a heavy swell from the sea. I would fain have approached nearer the precipices of Ardnamurchan, to trace along their inaccessible fronts the strange reticulations of trap figured by Macculloch; but prudence and the skipper forbade our trusting even the docile little Betsey, on one of the most formidable lee shores in Scotland, in winds so light and variable, and with the swell so high. We could hear the deep roar of the surf for miles, and see its undulating strip of white flickering under stack and cliff. The scenery here seems rich in legendary association. At one tack we bore into Bloody Bay, on the Mull coast,--the scene of a naval battle between two island chiefs; at another, we approached, on the mainland, a cave inaccessible save from the sea, long the haunt of a ruthless Highland pirate. Ere we rounded the headland of Ardnamurchan, the slant light of evening was gleaming athwart the green acclivities of Mull, barring them with long horizontal lines of shadow, where the trap terraces rise step beyond step, in the characteristic stair-like arrangement to which the rock owes its name; and the sun set as we were bearing down in one long tack on the Small Isles. We passed the Isle of Muck, with its one low hill; saw the pyramidal mountains of Rum looming tall in the offing; and then, running along the Isle of Eigg, with its colossal Scuir rising between us and the sky, as if it were a piece of Babylonian wall, or of the great wall of China, only vastly larger, set down on the ridge of a mountain, we entered the channel which separates the island from one of its dependencies, Eilean Chaisteil, and cast anchor in the tideway, about fifty yards from the rocks. We were now at home,--the only home which the proprietor of the island permits to the islanders' minister; and, after getting warm and comfortable over the stove and a cup of tea, we did what all sensible men do in their own homes when the night wears late,--got into bed. CHAPTER II. The Minister's Larder--No Harbor--Eigg Shoes--_Tormentilla erecta_--For the _Witness'_ Sake--Eilean Chaisteil--Appearance of Eigg--Chapel of St. Donan--Shell-sand--Origin of Secondary Calcareous Rock suggested--Exploration of Eigg--Pitchstone Veins--A Bone Cave--Massacre at Eigg--Grouping of Human Bones in the Cave--Relics--The Horse's Tooth--A Copper Sewing Needle--Teeth found--Man a worse Animal than his Teeth show him to have been designed for--Story of the Massacre--Another Version--Scuir of Eigg--The Scuir a Giant's Causeway--Character of the Columns--Remains of a Prostrate Forest. We had rich tea this morning. The minister was among his people; and our first evidence of the fact came in the agreeable form of three bottles of fine fresh cream from the shore. Then followed an ample baking of nice oaten cakes. The
{'title': 'The Cruise of the Betsey by Hugh Miller', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}