4 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
Dogs” as one of the most disagreeable of all employments — 
to work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness occas 
sioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life 
which had already gone by had been happy beyond the com- 
mon lot. I had been a wanderer among rocks and woods — 
a reader of curious books when I could get them —a gleaner 
of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange 
all my day-dreams, and all my amusements, for the kind of 
life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to 
eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil ! 
Tne quarry in which I wrought lay on the southern shore 
of a noble inland bay, or frith, rather, with a little clear stream 
on the one side, and a thick fir wood on the other. It had 
been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of the district, and 
was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, which rose 
over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet, and 
which at this time was rent and shivered, wherever it pre- 
sented an open front to the weather, by a recent frost. A 
heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from above, 
blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment 
was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon 
blistered my hands; but the pain was by no means very 
severe, and I wrought hard and willingly, that I might see 
how the huge strata below, which presented so firm and un- 
broken a frontage, were to be torn up and removed. Picks, 
and wedges, and levers were applied by my brother-work- 
men; and simple and rude as I had been accustomed to re- 
yard these implements, I found I had much to learn in the 
way of using them. They all proved inefficient, however ; 
and the workmen had to bore into one of the inferior strata, 
and employ gunpowder. The process was new to me, and | 
deemed it a highly amusing one: it had the merit, too, of 
