VISIT TO EUROPE: RESIDENCE IN EDINBURGH. 175 



for a movement, and indeed they occasionally gave a 

 premonition by the fall of a fragment of stone, but not 

 large enough to excite alarm. Soon, however, on looking 

 up, I saw with consternation a large mass of rock at that 

 instant separating to commence its fall. A little below me 

 a column of some magnitude, an avalanche from an earlier 

 convulsion, lay in its bed, firmly projecting, prominent from 

 the mass of ruins. It was but a glance upward and then 

 downward, when I saw my asylum, and, quick as thought, 

 with a desperate effort, I leaped over the stones and was 

 sheltered by the friendly column ; had I delayed, even the 

 few beats of the pulse, while the ruin was beginning its 

 fall, it might have been too late. Thank Heaven ! I was 

 securely sheltered while the desolation was passing by. One 

 mass of rock as large as a barrel struck about twenty feet 

 above where I had stood, and, rebounding, flew with great 

 velocity down the mountain, passing in the line of my for 

 mer position, at about the height of a man's breast, and of 

 course might have been fatal to me had I remained where 

 I was. In my flight I had left behind me my collected 

 minerals, and my cane, which stuck fast in the crevices of 

 the rock. Thinking that the avalanche was past, I was, 

 with some hesitation, stepping forward to recover my relics, 

 when another mass, which must have weighed twenty 

 tons, broke off from the cliff, and came thundering down 

 with a loud crash, filling the air with flying rocks and frag 

 ments and dust, and covering all that tract of the moun 

 tain where I had been exploring, and to which I was re 

 turning, with ruins and desolation. Had the fall been 

 delayed for only one minute, I should have been in the 

 midst of the space which it swept, and a more brief narra 

 tive by some other hand would have related the result. 

 Such was the noise produced by this avulsion, that the 

 people living in the vicinity and in the Palace of Holy- 

 rood came running out to learn the cause. 



