asking where he thought we could get a few
loads of water-rolled pebbles for causewaying a floor, he directed us to
the bed of a neighbouring rivulet, where we might "choose us," he said,
"smooth stones out of the brook." He spoke with great deliberation,
translating evidently his Gaelic thinking, as he went on, into
scriptural English.

CHAPTER XIII.

"A man of glee
With hair of glittering grey,
As blythe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday."--WORDSWORTH.

There existed at this time no geological map of Scotland. Macculloch's
did not appear until about six or seven years after (in 1829 or 1830),
and Sedgwick and Murchison's interesting sketch of the northern
formations[4] not until at least five years after (1828). And so, on
setting out on the morning after that of my arrival, to provide stones
for our future erection, I found myself in a _terra incognita_, new to
the quarrier, and unknown to the geologist. Most of the stratified
primary rocks make but indifferent building materials; and in the
immediate neighbourhood of our work I could find only one of the worst
of the class--the schistose gneiss. On consulting, however, the scenery
of the district, I marked that at a certain point both shores of the
open sea-loch on whose margin we were situated suddenly changed their
character. The abrupt rugged hills of gneiss that, viewed from an
eminence, resembled a tumbling sea, suddenly sank into low brown
promontories, unbroken by ravines, and whose eminences were mere flat
swellings; and in the hope of finding some change of formation
coincident with the change of scenery, I set out with my comrade for the
nearest point at which the broken outline passed into the rectilinear
or merely undulatory one. But though I did expect a change, it was not
without some degree of surprise that, immediately after passing the
point of junction, I found myself in a district of red sandstone. It was
a hard, compact, dark-coloured stone, but dressed readily to pick and
hammer, and made excellent corner-stones and ashlar; and it would have
furnished us with even hewn work for our building, had not our employer,
unacquainted, like every one else at the time, with the mineral
capabilities of the locality, brought his hewing stone in a sloop, at no
small expense, through the Caledonian Canal, from one of the quarries of
Moray--a circuitous voyage of more than two hundred miles.

Imm