y. 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 Oolitic deposits of the eastern coast of
Scotland, to the Oolitic 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 t