M 



Journal of Travel and Natural Hislorv 



zontal beds of red sandstone, as a pyramid is built ujj of le\L'l 

 tiers of hewn-work. The strata of one mountain can Ije carried 

 with the eye through the intervening air, across deep and wide 

 valleys, till they join the corresponding strata along the side of the 

 mountain beyond. Nor does it require more than a cursory in- 

 spection, to be convinced that the strata which may thus be 

 connected by the eye, were of old in reality prolonged so as to 

 form one mass. In short, these great hills are but fragments of a 



Vie. 4. — View of the cliffs of curved Silurian strata to the uorlh-wost of St Abb's Head. — See p. 13. 



covering of red sandstone, at least 7000 feet thick, which once 

 spread over the north-west Highlands, but which has been worn 

 away till it exists only in scattered hills, though these, by their 

 grandeur, remain as suggestive memorials at once of the magnitude 

 of the old Cambrian formation in that region, and of the ]iotency 

 of those agencies of destruction by which so enormous an amount 

 of solid rock has been removed from the surface. 



Another illustration of the same great truths is furnished to us 

 by that singular rock, the Scuir of Kigg, which rises into such a 

 conspicuous landmark among the western islands. I have else- 

 where described tlie geological history of this hill, but it furnishes 



