THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 255 
answering fault immediately over it; and the fault where the 
triple bars and the conglomerate meet is merely a fault whose 
step of granitic gneiss stopped short ere it reached the sur. 
face. But the accompanying section (see Frontispiece, sect. 
4) will better illustrate the geology of this interesting ravine, 
than it can be illustrated by any written description. I may 
remark, ere taking leave of it, however, that its conglomer- 
ates exhibit a singularly large amount of false stratification at 
an acute angle with the planes of the real strata, and that a 
bed of mouldering sandstone near the base of the system 
may be described, from its fissile character, as a tilestone.* 
* There is a natural connection, it is said, between wild scenes and 
wild legends; and some of the traditions connected with this roman- 
tic and solitary dell illustrate the remark. ‘Till a comparatively late 
period, it was known at many a winter fireside as a favorite haunt of 
the fairies —the most poetical of all our old tribes of spectres, and at 
one time one of the most popular. I have conversed with an old 
woman, who, when a very little girl, had seen myriads of them dan- 
cing, as the sun was setting, on the further edge of the dell; and with 
a still older man, who had the temerity to offer one of them a pinch 
of snuff at the foot of the cascade. Nearly a mile from where the 
ravine opens to the sea, it assumes a gentler and more pastoral char- 
acter ; the sides, no longer precipitous, descend towards the stream in 
green, sloping banks; and a beaten path, which runs between Crom- 
arty and Rosemarkie, winds down the one side and ascends the other. 
More than sixty years ago, one Donald Calder, a Cromarty shop- 
keeper, was journeying by this path shortly after nighttall. The 
moon, at full, had just risen; but there was a silvery mist sleeping on 
the lower grounds, that obscured her light; and the dell, in all its 
extent, was so overcharged by the vapor, that it seemed an immense, 
overfiooded river winding through the landscape. Donald had 
reached its farther edge, and could hear the rush of the stream from 
the deep obscurity of the abyss below, when there rose from the op- 
posite side a strain of the most delightful music he had ever heard. 
20 * 
