bethink
me, as I passed my fingers along the larger grains, of the heaps of gems
in Aladdin's cavern, or of Sinbad's valley of diamonds.

The Hill of Cromarty formed at this time at once my true school and
favourite play-ground; and if my master did wink at times harder than
master ought, when I was playing truant among its woods or on its
shores, it was, I believe, whether he thought so or no, all for the
best. My uncle Sandy had, as I have already said, been bred a
cartwright; but finding, on his return, after his seven years' service
on board a man-of-war, that the place had cartwrights enough for all the
employment, he applied himself to the humble but not unremunerative
profession of a sawyer, and used often to pitch his saw-pit, in the more
genial seasons of the year, among the woods of the hill. I remember, he
never failed setting it down in some pretty spot, sheltered from the
prevailing winds under the lee of some fern-covered rising ground or
some bosky thicket, and always in the near neighbourhood of a spring;
and it used to be one of my most delightful exercises to find out for
myself among the thick woods, in some holiday journey of exploration,
the place of a newly-formed pit. With the saw-pit as my baseline of
operations, and secure always of a share in Uncle Sandy's dinner, I used
to make excursions of discovery on every side,--now among the thicker
tracts of wood, which bore among the town-boys, from the twilight gloom
that ever rested in their recesses, the name of "the dungeons;" and anon
to the precipitous sea-shore, with its wild cliffs and caverns. The Hill
of Cromarty is one of a chain belonging to the great Ben Nevis line of
elevation; and, though it occurs in a sandstone district, is itself a
huge primary mass, upheaved of old from the abyss, and composed chiefly
of granitic gneiss and a red splintery horn-stone. It contains also
numerous veins and beds of hornblend rock and chlorite-schist, and of a
peculiar-looking granite, of which the quartz is white as milk, and the
feldspar red as blood. When still wet by the receding tide, these veins
and beds seem as if highly polished, and present a beautiful aspect; and
it was always with great delight that I used to pick my way among them,
hammer in hand, and fill my pockets with specimens.

There was one locality which I in especial loved. No path runs the way.
On the one side, an abrupt iron-tinged promontory, so remarkable for its
human-like profi