AND QUARTZ DEPOSITS OF ASSYNT. 3993 
blocks, the speculation did not succeed ; and although this chief 
obstacle has since been removed, no attempt has been made to 
> One of the old workings occurs in 
renew the undertaking.’ 
the neighborhood of the parish church, where a large block, 
operated upon by the saw, may still be seen in the hollow 
whence it was excavated. The marble here is of the dark 
gray variety, streaked and veined with red; but, as shown by 
the dressed surfaces of the mass left behind by the workers, it 
seems but indifferently suited to resist the action of the 
weather, in at least a climate such as that of Assynt. In little 
more than a quarter of a century the marks of the tool have 
almost entirely disappeared from the stone; and the sparry 
substance which fills the red veins has sunk considerably 
beneath the level of the darker portions which it traverses. 
At the other old working, near Ledbeg, about six miles higher 
up the valley, the white and gray varieties of marble occur ; 
and bare rounded masses may be seen from the road, rising 
. over the brown heath or peaty soil, like those wasted and par- 
tially soiled wreaths of snow that mottle at midsummer the 
upper zones of our higher hills. It formed a subject of com- 
plaint to the workmen, that the rock in this locality is so 
traversed by cracks and flaws, that they failed to procure from 
it blocks at once solid throughout, and of a size sufficient for 
such purposes as the manufacture of table-slabs or large chim- 
ney-lintels; and I have been informed that the noble proprie- 
irix of the county at the time,—the late Countess Duchess of 
Sutherland,— desirous to procure for the ancient family seat 
of Dunrobin a fine specimen of the native marble of the dis- 
trict, in the form of a chimney-piece for one of the public 
rooms, had to content herself, instead, from this cause, with 
simply a chimney-piece for one of the smaller bed-rooms. As 
the workings, however,— prosecuted for but a short time,— 
were’ but mere scratchings of the surface, it is probable that 
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