196 TARLAIR. CHAP. x. 



reach the top of a lofty point, you see beneath you a 

 green grassy valley indenting the rocks. At the 

 inner end of the valley is a little well-house, where 

 inland people come during summer-time, to drink 

 the mineral waters.* Eastward of Tarlair the rocky 

 cliffs ascend higher and higher, rising to their loftiest 

 height in the almost perpendicular cliff of Gamrie 

 Mohr. 



The place at which Edward met with his acci- 

 dent, occurred at the projecting point of the valley 

 above mentioned, where the rocks begin to ascend. 

 Not far from the mouth of the valley there is, in the 

 face of the rock, a very large, high, and wide-mouthed 

 cave or chasm, fronting the sea. The back wall of 

 the cave, as well as the sides, contain a number 

 of strange-like openings, and fantastical projections, 

 one of which is called " the pulpit." Edward often 

 sat in the cave, and also slept in it ; but he never 

 preached in it, though he several times brought down 

 sea-gulls and hoodie-crows with his gun. The bot- 

 tom of the cave is thickly covered with stones and 

 boulders thrown in by the sea, which, in storms, 

 dashes with great fury into its innermost recesses. 



* This is the place so well described in Johnny Gibb of Gushet- 

 neuk. "There was a little house, too, at the foot of the north 

 bank, where a drop of whisky could be got somehow in cases of 

 emergency, as when the patient got ' hoven ' with the liberal 

 libations of salt-water previously swallowed, or when the taste lay 

 strongly in that direction ; but this was no part of the recognised 



