302 ON THE RED SANDSTONE, MARBLE, 
same deposit. It is remarkable, too, for the singular copious- 
ness and number of its springs,— equally, I may mention, a 
peculiarity of the ichthyolite beds of Cromarty and Ross. 
Where the highway runs along the base of the tall limestone 
escarpment of Stronchrubie, we see that every hollow has its 
little stream of sparkling crystalline water, that comes leaping 
to the light from amid the lower strata of the precipices; and 
on the farm of Auchmore we find a spring — perhaps the larg- 
est in Scotland—which constantly discharges a current of 
four cubic feet of pure water, and goes roaring down the hill 
in its rocky channel, rapid and copious as the water of a mill- 
lade just as the miller has raised the sluice. It is really a fine 
object,— finer and more imposing than I had previously sup- 
posed a mere spring could be. It comes bursting up out of 
the earth, a little river, very clear, and in summer very cool, 
though in winter it feels warm to the hand, and during hard 
frosts smokes, as if heated over a fire; and rank aquatic plants 
of richest green, never scathed by the frosts of winter, spring 
up in a broad fringe along its edges. 
It is with this great limestone deposit that, as I have 
already intimated, the marbles of Assynt are associated. 
Though unstratified themselves, they usually occur in the 
deposit as detached strata, or beds rather, more or less con- 
tinuous for considerable distances. They are of various col- 
ors, each bed bearing its own, such as, of a pure white, or a 
white mottled with a delicate greenish yellow, or white clouded 
with gray, or altogether of a diffused light gray tint, or of a 
deep gray streaked with red; and they were wrought for orna- 
mental purposes in two several places about thirty years ago, 
by a Mr. Jopling from Newcastle. “ But owing principally,” 
say the Messrs. Anderson of Inverness, in their admirable 
“ Guide Book,” “to the disadvantages arising from the want 
of roads fit for the conveyance to the coast of the weighty 
