THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 201 
should present so rugged a line of wall to the distant sea, as 
that the Western Ghauts of India should invariably turn their 
steepest declivities to the basin of the Indian Ocean, or that, 
from the Arctic Circle to the southern extremity of Patagonia, 
the huge mountain-chain of America should elevate its dizzy 
precipices in the line of the Pacific. 
Let us take another view of this section. It stretches be- 
tween two of the granitic knobs or wedges to which I have 
had such frequent occasion to refer— the Southern Sutor of 
Cromarty, and the Hill of Eathie; and the edges of the strata 
somewhat remind one of the edges of a bundle of deals laid 
flatways on two stones, and bent towards the middle by their 
own weight. But their more brittle character is shown by 
the manner in which their ends are broken and uptilted against 
the granitic knobs on which they seem to rest; and towards 
the western knob the whole bundle has been broken across 
from below, and the opening occasioned by the fracture forms 
a deep, savage ravine, skirted by precipices, that runs far into 
the interior, and exhibits the lower portion of the system to 
well nigh its base. Will the reader spend a very few minutes 
in exploring the solitary recesses of this rocky trench —it 
matters not whether as a scene-hunter or a geologist? We 
pass onwards along the beach through the middle line of the 
denuded hollow. The natural rampart that rises on the right 
ascends towards the uplands in steep slopes, lined horizontally 
by sheep-walks, and fretted by mossy knolls, and churchyard 
like ridges—or juts out into abrupt and weathered crags, 
crusted with lichens and festooned with ivy — or recedes into 
bosky hollows, roughened by the sloe-thorn, the wild-rose, 
and the juniper; on the left the wide extent of the Moray 
Frith stretzhes out to the dim horizon, with its vein-like cur- 
rents, and its undulating lines of coast; while before us we 
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