CHAPTER X.

Isle Ornsay-The Sabbath -A Sailor-minister's Sermon for Sailors - The Scuir Sermon-Loch Carron-Groups of Moraines-A sheep District The Editor of the Witness and the Establishment Clergyman - DingwallConon-side revisited The Pond and its Changes - New Faces — The Stone-mason's Mark - The Burying Ground of Urquhart An old acquaintance - Property Qualification for Voting in Scotland Montgerald Sandstone Quarries - Geological Science in Cromarty - The Danes at Cromarty The Danish Professor and the "Old Red Sandstone " - Harmonizing tendencies of Science.

THE anchoring ground at Isle Ornsay was crowded with coasting vessels and fishing boats; and when the Sabbath came round, no inconsiderable portion of my friend's congregation was composed of sailors and fishermen. His text was appropriate, "He bringeth them into their desired haven;" and as his sea-craft and his theology were alike excellent, there were no incongruities in his allegory, and no defects in his mode of applying it, and the seamen were hugely delighted. John Stewart, though less a master of English than of many other things, told me he was able to follow the minister from beginning to end, a thing he had never done before at an English preaching. The sea portion of the sermon, he said, was very plain: it was about the helm, and the sails, and the anchor, and the chart, and the pilot,—about rocks, winds, currents, and safe harborage; and by attending to this simpler part of it, he was led into the parts that were less simple, and so succeeded in comprehending the whole. I would fain see this unique discourse, preached by a sailor minister to a sailor congregation, preserved in some permanent form, with at least one

other discourse, — of which I found trace in the island of Eigg, after the lapse of more than a twelvemonth, — that had been preached about the time of the Disruption, full in sight of the Scuir, with its impregnable hill-fort, and in the immediate neighborhood of the cave of Frances, with its heaps of dead men's bones. One note stuck fast to the islanders. In times of peril and alarm, said the minister, the ancient inhabitants of the island had two essentially dif ferent kinds of places in which they sought security; they had the deep, unwholesome cave, shut up from the light and the breath of heaven, and the tall rock summit, with its impregnable fort, on which the sun shone and the wind blew. Much hardship might no doubt be encountered on the one, when the sky was black with tempest, and rains beat, or snows descended; but it was found associated with. no story of real loss or disaster,-it had kept safe all who had committed themselves to it; whereas, in the close atmosphere of the other there was warmth, and, after a sort, comfort; and on one memorable day of trouble the islanders had deemed it the preferable sheltering place of the two. And there survived mouldering skeletons and a frightful tradition, to tell the history of their choice. Places of refuge of these very opposite kinds, said the minister, continuing his allegory, are not peculiar to your island; never was there a day or a place of trial in which they did not advance their opposite claims: they are advancing them even now all over the world. The one kind you find described by one great prophet as low-lying "refuges of lies,” over which the desolating "scourge must pass," and which the destroying "waters must overflow;" while the true character of the other may be learned from another great prophet, who was never weary of celebrating his "rock and his fortress." "Wit succeeds more from being happily addressed," says Goldsmith, "than even from its native

poignancy." If my friend's allegory does not please quite as well in print and in English as it did when delivered viva voce in Gaelic, it should be remembered that it was addressed to an out-door congregation, whose minds were filled with the consequences of the Disruption, that the bones of Uamh Fraingh lay within a few hundred yards of them, and that the Scuir, with the sun shining bright on its summit, rose tall in the back-ground, scarce a mile away.

On Monday I spent several hours in reëxploring the Lias of Lucy Bay and its neighborhood, and then walked on to Kyle-Akin, where I parted from my friend Mr. Swanson, and took boat for Loch Carron. The greater part of the following day was spent in crossing the country to the east coast in the mail-gig, through long dreary glens, and a fierce storm of wind and rain. In the lower portion of the valley occupied by the river Carron, I saw at least two fine groups of moraines. One of these, about a mile and a half above the parish manse, marks the place where a glacier, that had once descended from a hollow amid the northern range of hills, had furrowed up the gravel and earth before it in long ridges, which we find running nearly parallel to the road; the other group, which lies higher up the valley, and seems of considerably greater extent, indicates where one of those river-like glaciers that fill up long hollows, and impel their irresistible flood downwards, slow as the hourhand of a time-piece, had terminated towards the sea. I could but glance at the appearances as the gig drove past, and point them out to a fellow passenger, the Establishment minister of * * *, remarking, at the same time, how much more dreary the prospect must have seemed than even it did to-day, though the fog was thick and the drizzle disa greeable, when the lateral hollows on each side were blocked up with ice, and overhanging glaciers, that ploughed the rock bare in their descent, glistened on the bleak hill-sides.

I wore a gray maud over a coat of rough russet, with waistcoat and trowsers of plaid; and the minister, who must have taken me, I suppose, for a southland shepherd looking out for a farm, gave me much information of a kind I might have found valuable had such been my condition and business, regarding the various districts through which we passed. On one high-lying farm, the grass, he said, was short and thin, but sweet and wholesome, and the flocks throve steadily, and were never thinned by disease; whereas on another farm, that lay along the dank bottom of a valley, the herbage was rank and rich, and the sheep fed and got heavy, but braxy at the close of autumn fell upon them like a pestilence, and more than neutralized to the farmer every advantage of the superior fertility of the soil. It was not uninteresting, even for one not a sheep-farmer, to learn that the life of the sheep is worth fewer years' purchase in one little track of country than in another adjacent one; and that those differences in the salubrity of particular spots which obtain in other parts of the world in regard to our own species, and which make it death to linger on the luxuriant river-side, while on the arid plain or elevated hill-top there is health and safety, should exist in contiguous walks in the Highlands of Scotland in reference to some of the inferior animals. The minister and I became wonderfully good friends for the time. All the seats in the gig, both back and front, had been occupied ere he had taken his pas sage, and the postman had assigned him a miserable place on the narrow elevated platform in the middle, where he had to coil himself up like a hedgehog in its hole, sadly to the discomfort of limbs still stout and strong, but stiffened by the long service of full seventy years. And, as in the case made famous by Cowper, of the "softer sex" and the old-fashioned iron-cushioned arm-chairs, the old man had, as became his years, "'gan murmur." I contrived, by sitting

on the edge of the gig on the one side, and by getting the postman to take a similar seat on the other, to find room for him in front; and there, feeling he had not to do with savages, he became kindly and conversible. We beat together over a wide range of topics;—the Scotch banks, and Sir Robert Peel's intentions regarding them, the periodical press of Scotland, the Edinburgh literati, - the Free Church even: he had been a consistent Moderate all his days, and disliked renegades, he said; and I, of course, disliked renegades too. We both remembered that, though civilized nations give quarter to an enemy overpowered in open fight, they are still in the habit of shooting deserters. In short, we agreed on a great many different matters; and, by comparing notes, we made the best we could of a tedious journey and a very bad day. At the inn at Garve, a long stage from Dingwall, we alighted, and took the road together, to straighten our stiffened man was engaged in changing horses. short in the middle of a discussion. terms, he said: you know who I am, and I don't know you: we did not start fair at the beginning, but let us start fair now. Ah, we have agreed hitherto, I replied; but I know not how we are to agree when you know who I am: are you sure you will not be frightened? Frightened! said the minister sturdily; no, by no man. Then, I am the Editor of the Witness. There was a momentary pause. "Well," said the minister, "it's all the same: I'm glad we should have met. Give me, man, a shake of your hand." And so the conversation went on as before till we parted at Dingwall, the Establishment clergyman wet to the skin, the Free Church editor in no better condition; but both, mayhap, rather less out of conceit with the ride than if it had been ridden alone.

limbs, while the post The minister stopped We are not on equal

I had intended passing at least two days in the neigh