FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   216   217   218   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234   235   236   237   238   239   240  
241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   260   261   262   263   264   265   >>   >|  
ent, and taxed him with gross dereliction of duty. He had left us to drive his horse and cart for a whole day, and had broken, for the sake of his wretched indulgence in the public-house, his engagement with our master; and I would report him to a certainty. The carter turned upon me with the fierceness of a wild beast; but, first catching his eye, as I would that of a maniac, I set my face very near his, and he calmed down in a moment. He could not help being late, he said: he had reached the inn at Contin not an hour after we had left it; and it was really very hard to have to travel a long day's journey in such bad shoes. We accepted his apology; and, ordering the landlord to bring in half a mutchkin of whisky, the storm blew by. The morning, like the previous night, had been thick and rainy; but it gradually cleared up as the day rose; and after breakfast we set out together along a broken footpath, never before traversed by horse and cart. We passed a solitary lake, on whose shores the only human dwelling was a dark turf shieling, at which, however, Click-Clack ascertained there was whisky to be sold; and then entered upon a tract of scenery wholly different in its composition and character from that through which our journey had previously lain. There runs along the west coast of Scotland, from the island of Rum to the immediate neighbourhood of Cape Wrath, a formation, laid down by Macculloch, in his Geological Map of the Kingdom, as Old Red Sandstone, but which underlies formations deemed primary--two of these of quartz rock, and a third of that unfossiliferous limestone in which the huge Cave of Smoo is hollowed, and to which the Assynt marbles belong. The system, which, taken as a whole--quartz-rock, lime, and sandstone--corresponds bed for bed with the Lower Old Red of the east coast, and is probably a highly metamorphic example of that great deposit, exhibits its fullest development in Assynt, where all its four component beds are present. In the tract on which we now entered, it presents only two of these--the lower quartz-rock, and the underlying red sandstone; but wherever any of its members appear, they present unique features--marks of enormous denudation, and a bold style of landscape altogether its own; and, in now entering upon it for the first time, I was much impressed by its extraordinary character. Loch Maree, one of the wildest of our Highland lakes, and at this time scarce at all known to the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   216   217   218   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234   235   236   237   238   239   240  
241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   260   261   262   263   264   265   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

quartz

 

present

 

entered

 

character

 

whisky

 

sandstone

 

Assynt

 

journey

 

broken

 

formations


wildest

 

underlies

 
primary
 

Sandstone

 

deemed

 
extraordinary
 

limestone

 

unfossiliferous

 

Geological

 
Highland

Scotland

 

scarce

 

island

 

Macculloch

 
hollowed
 

formation

 

neighbourhood

 
Kingdom
 

belong

 

enormous


component

 

denudation

 
previously
 

presents

 

members

 

unique

 

features

 
underlying
 
landscape
 

entering


corresponds

 

marbles

 

system

 

highly

 

deposit

 

exhibits

 

fullest

 
development
 

altogether

 

metamorphic