Part 2 (1/2)

The space between these headlands forht, covered ood a-top, and as, and on whose steep slopes, the hawthorn, and bramble, and wild rasp, and rock strawberry, take root, with y shrub and sild flower besides; while along its base lie huge blocks of green hornblend, on a rude paveneiss, traversed at one point, for many yards, by a broad vein of milk-white quartz The quartz vein formed my central point of attraction in this wild paradise The white stone, thickly traversed by threads of purple and red, is a beautiful though unworkable rock; and I soon ascertained that it is flanked by a vein of feldspar broader than itself, of a brick-red tint, and the red stone flanked, in turn, by a drab-coloured vein of the sareat abundancein lamina, but, if I may use the term, as a sort of antic experimenter of the old world had set hiranitic rocks of the hill, and that the three parallel veins were the results of his labour Such, however, was not the sort of idea which they at this tie to Guiana, the poetic description of that upper country in which the knight's exploration of the river Corale terminated, and where, amid lovely prospects of rich valleys, and wooded hills, and winding waters, alold True, according to the voyager, the precious”some of the stones to a Spaniard of the Caraccas, was told by hiold, and that the h the quartz vein of the Cromarty Hill contained no metal more precious than iron, and but little even of that, it was, I felt sure, the ” very fine As for silver, I was pretty certain I had found the ”mother” of _it_, if not, indeed, the preciousnualena; and occasional e proh sometimes asked in humble irony, by the far the Cro siller in the stanes,” I was so unlucky as never to be able to answer their question in the affirmative

FOOTNOTE:

[2] There man of Inverness enjoyed, from time immeht to the burgh e er and there less, And of full various forht and bulk by a continual drop

Which upon each distilling fro still exactly on the crown

There break the down

Crust into stone, and (but with leisure) swell The sides, and still advance the miracle”--CHARLES COTTON

It is loater in the Firth of Cro strea; andfrom his work at the close of the day, used not unfrequently, when, according to the phrase of the place, ”there was a tide in the water,”

to strike down the hillside, and spend a quiet hour in the ebb I delighted to accompany him on these occasions There are professors of Natural History that know less of living nature than was known by Uncle Sandy; and I deemed it no small matter to have all the various productions of the sea hich he was acquainted pointed out to me in these walks, and to be in possession of histhem

He was a skilful crab and lobster fisher, and knew every hole and cranny, along several miles of rocky shore, in which the creatures were accustomed to shelter, with not a few of their own peculiarities of character Contrary to the view taken by soassiz, who hold that the crab--a genus comparatively recent in its appearance in creation--is less e, than the arded the lobster as a ent anies has alh one of which it sometimes contrives to escape when the other is stormed by the fisher; whereas the crab is usually content, like the ”rat devoid of soul,” with a hole of only one opening; and, besides, gets so angry in most cases with his assailant, as to become more bent on assault than escape, and so loses hih sheer loss of temper And yet the crab has, he used to add, soence about hiot hold, in his dark narrow recess in the rock, of soit, my uncle showed an always to experi and straitening his grasp, as if to ascertain whether it had life in it, or was merely a piece of deadoccasions, was to let the finger lie passively between his nippers, as if it were a bit of stick or tangle; when, apparently deeo; whereas, on the least atteripe, and not again relax it forwith the lobster, on the other hand, the fisher had to beware that he did not depend too ot of the creature, if it was reat claws For a rasp; he would then be sensible of a slight treht crackle; and, _presto_, the captive would straightway be off like a dart through the deep-water hole, and only the limb remain in the fisher's hand My uncle has, however, told me that lobsters do not always lose their lihtened, without first waiting to consider whether the sacrifice of a pair of legs is the besta musket immediately over a lobster just captured, he has seen it throw off both its great claws in the sudden extremity of its terror, just as a panic-struck soldier sometimes throay his weapons Such, in kind, were the anecdotes of Uncle Sandy He instructed me, too, how to find, amid thickets of laht hbourhood for the male and female fish, especially for the male; and showed me further, that the hard-shelled spawn of this creature may, ashed, be eaten raw, and forms at least as palatable a viand in that state as the imported caviare of Russia and the Caspian There were instances in which the common crow acted as a sort of jackal to us in our lump-fish explorations We would see hi and cawing as if engaged in co up to the place, we used to find the lump-fish he had killed fresh and entire, but divested of the eyes, which we found, as a matter of course, that the assailant, in order toout at an early stage of the contest

Nor was it with merely the edible that we busied ourselves on these journeys The brilliant e_ of the sea mouse (_Aphrodita_), steeped as in the dyes of the rainbow, excited our adher wonder used to be awakened by a much rarer annelid, brown, and slender as a piece of rope-yarn, and froth, which no one savethe Cromarty shores, and which, when broken in two, as so, divided its vitality so equally between the pieces, that each was fitted, we could not doubt, though unable to repeat in the case the experiment of Spallanzani, to set up as an independent existence, and carry on business for itself The annelids, too, that forrains of sand (_amphitrites_), always excited our interest Two hand-shaped tufts of golden-hued setae--furnished, however, with greatly ers--rise from the shoulders of these creatures, and ; at least the hands of the most practised builder could not set stones with nicer skill than is exhibited by these worrains which cos that, from their form and structure, seem suited to remind the antiquary of the round towers of Ireland, and, from the style of their masonry, of old Cyclopean walls Even the reatly inferior workmen to these mason _amphitrites_ I was introduced also, in our ebb excursions, to the cuttle-fish and the sea-hare, and sho the one, when pursued by an enees a cloud of ink to conceal its retreat, and that the other darkens the water around it with a lovely purple pigment, which my uncle was pretty sure would make a rich dye, like that extracted of old by the Tyrians from a whelk which he had often seen on the beach near Alexandria I learned, too, to cultivate an acquaintance with some two or three species of doris, that carry their arboraceous, tree-like lungs on their backs, as Macduff's soldiers carried the boughs of Birnam wood to the Hill of Dunsinane; and I soon acquired a sort of affection for certain shells, which bore, as I supposed, athese were, _Trochus Zizyphinus_, with its flaround of paley-brown; _Patella pellucida_, with its lustrous rays of vivid blue on its dark epiderainst a cloud; and, above all, _Cypraea Europea_, a not rare shell further to the north, but so little abundant in the Firth of Cromarty, as to render the live ani on the lae of the tide-line, with its wide orangeliberally around it, somewhat of a prize In short, the tract of sea-bottom laid dry by the ebb formed an admirable school, and Uncle Sandy an excellent teacher, under who after, I learned to detect old-ht of the sea--now aland, and anon opening to the light on so the Mountain Limestones of our own country--I have felt how very much I owed to his instructions

His facts wanted a vocabulary adequately fitted to represent theood names,” they were all founded on careful observation, and possessed that first eleinality: they were all acquired by himself

I owed more, however, to the habit of observation which he assisted , than even to his facts; and yet soh value He has shown hbourhood of the town, known for ages as the Clach Malloch, or Cursed Stone, stands so exactly in the line of loater, that the larger stream-tides of March and September lay dry its inner side, but never its outer one;--round the outer side there are always from two to four inches of water; and such had been the case for at least a hundred years before, in his father's and grandfather's days--evidence enough of itself, I have heard him say, that the relative levels of sea and land were not altering; though during the lapsed century the waves had so largely encroached on the low flat shores, that elderlysince passed away, had actually held the plough when young where they had held the rudder when old He used, too, to point out tohasty gale fro-tide, sent up the waves high upon the beach, and cut ahole roods of the soil; but the gales that usually kept larger tides froales froh, left not unfrequently fro stream-tides, that would otherwise have laid its bottom bare--a proof, he used to say, that the Gerainst our coasts to the same extent, by the violence of a very powerful east wind, as the Atlantic by the force of a comparatively moderate westerly one It is not improbable that the philosophy of the Drift Current, and of the apparently reactionary Gulf Stream, may be embodied in this simple remark

The woods on the lower slopes of the hill, when there was no access to the zones covered save at low ebb by the sea, furnished me with employment of another kind I learned to look with interest on the workings of certain insects, and to understand soe Diade h the furze thickets, I could hear its white silken cords crack as they yielded before ician, in the strange art of rendering itself invisible in the clearest light, was an especial favourite; though its great size, and the wild stories I had read about the bite of its cogener the tarantula, made me cultivate its acquaintance somewhat at a distance Often, however, have I stood beside its large hen the creature occupied its place in the centre, and, touching it with a withered grass stalk, I have seen it sullenly swing on the lines ”with its hands,” and then shake them with a motion so rapid, that--like Carathis, the mother of the Caliph Vathek, hen her hour of doolanced off in a rapid whirl, which rendered her invisible”--the eye failed to see either web or insect forappeals s, and amulets of eastern lore, that conferred on their possessors the gift of invisibility I learned, too, to take an especial interest in what, though they belong to a different family, are known as the Water _Spiders_; and have watched the by fits and starts, like skaters on the ice, across the surface of so or streamlet--fearless walkers on the waters, that, with true faith in the integrity of the implanted instinct, never made shi+pwreck in the eddy or sank in the pool It is to these little creatures that Wordsworth refers in one of his sonnets on sleep:--

”O sleep, thou art to me A fly that up and down himself doth shove Upon a fretful rivulet; now _above_, Now _on_ the water, vexed with mockery”

As shown, however, to the poet himself on one occasion, somewhat to his discomfort, by assuredly no h one of the heets ”_above_” the water Aon-flies, the crimson-speckled Burnet moths, and the s delicate harebells and cri ere I becaure of Moore,[3] or even ere the figure had been produced, the idea of flowers that had taken to flying

The wild honey bees, too, in their several species, had peculiar charms for me There were the buff-coloured carders, that erected over their honey-jars domes of moss; the lapidary red-tipped bees, that built amid the recesses of ancient cairns, and in old dry stone walls, and were so invincibly brave in defending their hoave up the quarrel till they died; and, above all, the yellow-zoned hu the dry sides of grassy banks, and were usually wealthier in honey than any of their cogeners, and existed in larger communities But the herd-boys of the parish, and the foxes of its woods and brakes, shared in my interest in the wild honey bees, and, in the pursuit of soe, were ruthless robbers of their nests I often observed, that the fox, with all his reputed shrewdness, is not particularly knowing on the subject of bees He makes as dead a set on a wasp's nest as on that of the carder or hu for his pains; for though, as shown by thethe young wasps in the chrysalis state, the undevoured reue that he is but little pleased with them as food There were occasions, however, in which even the herd-boysexcursions; and in one notable instance, the result of the adventure used to be spoken of in school and elsewhere, under our breath and in secret, as so very horrible A party of boys had stormed a huing inwards along the narroinding earth passage, they at length ca thick fronum_ The wise little workers had actually formed their nest within the hollow of the head, once occupied by the busy brain; and their spoilers, more scrupulous than Saht forth out of the eater, and the sweetness extracted froreat consternation their honey all to themselves

One of my discoveries of this early period would have been dee the woods of the hill, a short half-mile from the town, there is a morass of comparatively small extent, but considerable depth, which had been laid open by the bursting of a waterspout on the uplands, and in which the dark peaty chash the event had happened ere hly to explore it It was a black s around waved thick with silvery s of s out from the black sides of the ravine itself, and in some instances stretched across it froiants of the vegetable world, that had flourished and died long ages ere, in at least our northern part of the island, the course of history had begun

There were oaks of enor as easily with a pickaxe as one digs into a bank of clay; and at least one noble elm, which ran across the little strea the botto, that I have scooped out of its trunk, with the unassisted hand, a way for the water I have found in the ravine--which I learned very h I never failed to quit it sadly bemired--handfuls of hazel-nuts, of the ordinary size, but black as jet, with the cups of acorns, and with twigs of birch that still retained aled their silvery outer crust of bark, but whose ligneous interior existed as a mere pulp

I have even laid open, in layers of a sort of unctuous clay, rese fuller's earth, leaves of oak, birch, and hazel, that had fluttered in the wind thousands of years before; and there was one happy day in which I succeeded in digging fro deer's horn It was a broad,piece of bone, evidently old-fashi+oned in its type; and so I brought it home in triumph to Uncle James, as the antiquary of the family, assured that he could tell me all about it

Uncle Ja the horn in his hand, surveyed it leisurely on every side ”That is the horn, boy,”

he at length said, ”of no deer that now lives in this country We have the red deer, and the fallow deer, and the roe; and none of them have horns at all like that I never saw an elk; but I am pretty sure this broad, plank-like horn can be none other than the horn of an elk” My uncle set aside his work; and, taking the horn in his hand, went out to the shop of a cabinet-hbourhood, where there used to work froathered round hireed in the decision that it was an entirely different sort of horn fro deer of Scotland, and that this sur it was probably just And, apparently to enhance thein the shop at the tiravity, that it had lain in the Moss of the Willows ”for perhaps half a century” There was positive anger in the tone of my uncle's reply ”Half a century, Sir!!” he exclaio? There is no notice of the elk, Sir, in British history That horn must have lain in the Moss of the Willows for thousands of years!” ”Ah, ha, Jahbour, with a sceptical shake of the head; but as neither he nor any one else dared round, the controversy took end with the ejaculation I soon added to the horn of the elk that of a roe, and part of that of a red deer, found in the sahbours, iers to look at theth, unhappily, a relation settled in the south, who had shown me kindness, took a fancy to theeous paint-box which he had just sent me, I made them over to him entire They found their way to London, and were ultied in the collection of some obscure virtuoso, whose locality or name I have been unable to trace

The Cromarty Sutors have their two lines of caves--an ancient line hollowed by the waves o, when the sea stood, in relation to the land, fro our shores than it does now; and aout Many of the older caves are lined with stalactites, deposited by springs that, filtering through the cracks and fissures of the gneiss, find lie to acquire what is known as a _petrifying_, though, in reality, only an incrusting quality And these stalactites, under the name of ”white stones made by the water,” formed of old--as in that Cave of Slains specially mentioned by Buchanan and the Chroniclers, and in those caverns of the Peak so quaintly described by Cotton--one of the grand azetteers sufficiently copious in their details toCave” as aCave” is but one of many that look out upon the sea from the precipices of the southern Sutor, in whose dark recesses the drops ever tinkle, and the stony ceilings ever grow The wonder could not have been deee Mackenzie of Coul, well known from his travels in Iceland, and his experiments on the inflae, curious to see the sort of stones to which the old gazetteers referred, made application to the minister of the parish for a set of specihtway deputed the commission, which he believed to be not a difficult one, to one of his poorer parishi+oners, an old nailer, as a s in his way

It so happened, however, that the nailer had lost his wife by a sad accident, only a feeeks before; and the story went abroad that the poor wo back” She had been very suddenly hurried out of the world When going down the quay after nightfall one evening, with a parcel of clean linen for a sailor, her relative, she had e, and, half-brained, half-drowned, had been found in the , stone dead, at the bottom of the harbour And now, as if pressed by some unsettled business, she used to be seen, it was said, hovering after nightfall about her old dwelling, or sauntering along the neighbouring street; nay, there were occasions, according to the general report, in which she had even exchanged words with sohbours, little to their satisfaction The words, however, seemed in every instance to have wonderfully little to do with the affairs of another world I rehbour rush intoabout this time, speechless with terror, and declare, after an awful pause, during which she had lain half-fainting in a chair, that she had just seen Christy She had been engaged, as the night was falling, but ere darkness had quite set in, in piling up a load of brushwood for fuel outside the door, when up started the spectre on the other side of the heap, attired in the ordinary work-day garb of the deceased, and, in a light and hurried tone, asked, as Christy ht have done ere the fatal accident, for a share of the brushwood ”Give host; ”you have plenty--I have none” It was not knohether or no the nailer had seen the apparition; but it was pretty certain he believed in it; and as the ”Dropping Cave” is both dark and solitary, and had forty years ago a bad na in front of it even at hts--itin the momentary expectation of a visit from a dead wife So far as could be ascertained--for the nailer himself was rather close in thefro the sides for about two or three feet fro, to have taken his stand outside, where the light was good, and the way of retreat clear, and to have raked outwards to him, as far as he could reach, all that stuck to the walls, including ropy slime and mouldy damp, but not one particle of stalactite It was, of course, seen that his specie; and the minister, in the extreh with soness, as it was known that no remuneration for their trouble could be offered to thehted with the com themselves with torches and a hammer, they set out for the caves And I, of course, accompanied them--a very happy boy--armed, like themselves, with hammer and torch, and prepared devotedly to labour in behalf of science and Sir George

I had never before seen the caves by torch-light; and though what I noitnessed did not quite co the Grotto of Antiparos, or even the wonders of the Peak, it was unquestionably both strange and fine The celebrated Dropping Cave proved inferior--as is not unfrequently the case with the celebrated--to a cave al the rocks a little further to the east; and yet even _it_ had its interest It widened, as one entered, into a twilight chareen with velvety mosses, that love the dae of crystalline wells, fed by the perpetual dropping, and hollowed in what seemed an altar-piece of the depositedthe sides, there dependedmany a translucent icicle The other cave, however, we found to be of reater extent, and of more varied character It is one of three caves of the old coast line, known as the Doocot or Pigeon Caves, which open upon a piece of rocky beach, overhung by a rudely seloomy precipices The points of the semicircle project on either side into deep water--into at least water so much deeper than the fall of ordinary neaps, that it is only during the ebb of stream tides that the place is accessible by land; and in each of these bold promontories--the terminal horns of the crescent--there is a cave of the present coast-line, deeply hollowed, in which the sea stands from ten to twelve feet in depth when the tide is at full, and in which the surf thunders, when gales blow hard from the stormy north-east, with the roar of whole parks of artillery The cave in the western pro the townsfolk the name of the ”Puir Wife's Meal Kist,” has its roof drilled by two sreat deal wider than the blow-hole of a porpoise--that open externally a storreenwalls, there are certain times of the tide in which they shut up the mouth of the cave, and so coh the openings, roaring in its escape as if ten whales were blowing at once, and rises fros overhead in thite jets of vapour, distinctly visible, to the height of frohty feet If there be critics who have deeances of Goethe that he should have given life and motion, as in his fas, they would do well to visit this bold headland during some winter tempest from the east, and find his description perfectly sober and true: