350 ON THE RED SANDSTONE, MARBLE, 
noble pedestal, on which some colossal statue, vastly greater 
than that of Rhodes, might be advantageously placed, to form, 
like the memory of some great man in the history of a people, 
the central object of the landscape ; and when I first looked 
upon its fine proportions, relieved against the bright amber- 
tinted clouds of a gorgeous sunset, and marked how its summit 
seemed, according to the poet, “to kiss the sky,” I felt I could 
have understood, had it been told that some hoary seer had, in 
ancient times, ascended from its top into the heavens, how the 
legend had originated. 
On this quartz bed the stratified limestone rests, with its 
associated marbles. Less bold in its features than the other 
rocks of the district, apparently because of a texture less suited 
to resist the denuding and weathering influences, we find its 
place marked, amid the brown heaths which lie over the Red 
Sandstones, or amid the stony nakedness of the quartz-rock 
regions, by the rich green of the vendure which covers it. All 
the more valuable farms of Assynt lie on the limestone. At 
one point, however, on the farm of Stronchrubie, in the imme- 
diate neighborhood of Inch-na-damph, it presents a magnificent 
range of precipices, a full mile in length by about three hun- 
dred feet in height, which rises immediately above the road, 
and forms at this point the most striking feature in the pros- 
pect. The steep face of the range is barred horizontally by 
the strata, black, red, and gray, and relieved and softened 
by the bright green verdure that waves over its shelves and 
ledges, and bristles from every recess and crany. As we pass 
on to the west, the precipitous range flattens into a gentle slope, 
still, however, lined longitudinally by the projecting strata, 
which, easier of access than in the precipices, can here be 
examined in detail. Though chiefly calcareous, the rock pre- 
sents, from its decidedly flagey structure, so much the appear- 
ance of Caithness flagstone (which, however, in some of its 
