210 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
the slow flap of wing and sharp creak peculiar to the tribe, 
drop suddenly into their nests. The great forest of Darna- 
way stretches beyond, feathering a thousand knolls, that re- 
flect a colder and grayer tint as they recede, and lessen, and 
present on the horizon a billowy line of blue. The river 
brawls along under pale red cliffs, wooded a-top. It is through 
a vast burial-yard that it has cut its way —a field of the 
dzad so ancient, that the sepulchres of Thebes and Luxor are 
but of the present day in comparison — resting-places for 
the recently departed, whose funerals are but just over. 
These mouldering strata are charged with remains, scattered 
and detached as those of a churchyard, but not less entire in 
their parts — occipital bones, jaws, teeth, spines, scales — the 
dust and rubbish of a departed creation. ‘The cliffs sink as 
the plain flattens, and green, sloping banks of diluvium take 
their place; but they again rise in the middle distance into 
an abrupt and lofty promontory, that, stretching like an im- 
mense rib athwart the level country, projects far into the 
stream, and gives an angular inflection to its course. There 
ascends from the apex a thin, blue column of smoke — that of 
alime-kiln. That ridge and promontory are composed of the 
thick limestone band, which, in Moray as in Fife, separates the 
pale red from the pale yellow beds of the Upper Old Red 
Sandstone; and the flattened tracts on both sides show how 
much better it has resisted the denuding agencies than either 
the yellow strata that rests over it, or the pale red strata 
which it overlies. 
