THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 191 
stories had been added. He pursues his journey and enters 
a district of micaceous schist. The hills are no longer 
truncated, or the moors unbroken; the heavy ground-swell of 
the former landscape has become a tempestuous sea, agitated 
by powerful winds and conflicting tides. The picturesque aud 
somewhat fantastic outline is composed of high, sharp peaks, 
bold, craggy domes, steep, broken acclivities, and deeply ser- 
rated ridges ; and the higher hills seem as if set round witha 
framework of props and buttresses, that stretch out on every 
side like the roots of an ancient oak. He passes on, and the 
landscape varies; the surrounding hills, though lofty, pyram- 
idal, and abrupt, are less rugged than before; and the ra- 
vines, though still deep and narrow, are walled by ridges no 
longer serrated and angular, but comparatively rectilinear and 
smooth. But the vegetation is even more scanty than for- 
merly ; the steeper slopes are covered with streams of debris, 
on which scarce a moss or lichen finds root ; and the conoidal 
hills, bare of soil from their summits half way down, seem so 
many naked skeletons, that speak of the decay and death of 
nature. All is solitude and sterility. The territory is one of 
Quartz rock. Still the traveller passes on: the mountains 
sink into low swellings; long rectilinear ridges run out 
towards the distant sea, and terminate in bluff; precipitous 
headlands. The valleys, soft and pastoral, widen into plains, 
or incline in long-drawn slopes of gentlest declivity. The 
streams, hitherto so headlong and broken, linger beside their 
banks, and then widen into friths and estuaries. The deep 
soil is covered by a thick mantle of vegetation — by forest 
trees of largest growth, and rich fields of corn ; and the soli- 
tude of the mountains has given place to a busy population. 
He has left behind him the primary regions, and entered on 
one of the secondary districts. 
