TRACES OF THE DISRUPTION. 357 



the fence of a field formed of upright flags I saw numer- 

 ous scales, occipital-plates, and gill-covers of some of the 

 better known fish of the Old Red, but nothing worth 

 bringing away. 



' On the journey south I saw from the top of the 

 coach several melancholy marks of the Disruption, 

 preaching tents on green hill-sides with a few rude 

 forms around them, and not far distant parish churches 

 locked up. There is no preaching in the vacated 

 churches in Caithness ; Moderatism is sitting down 

 helplessly and attempting nothing. The poor people of 

 Scotland have been grievously injured, but the extent of 

 the injury is not yet felt. The coach passed great 

 numbers going to a Free Church sacrament. As the 

 hour was comparatively early, it was chiefly elderly men 

 and women we saw, who, to use their own phrase, were 

 " stepping on before," the more vigorous walkers not yet 

 having taken the road. I passed on through Helmsdale 

 to Port Gower, where I now am in a very pleasant little 

 inn. The scenery in the immediate neighbourhood is 

 not so fine as at Helmsdale, which is a very striking 

 place in the opening of a deep, grand glen ; but the 

 situation is more central for geological inquiry, and 

 Helmsdale lies within reach of an ordinary excursion. 

 I have been out for a few hours among the rocks, but 

 they do not seem at all rich in the neighbourhood of the 

 inn. The cliffs on the shore are of a rude and very 

 hard breccia, which, save foi some two or three belem- 

 nites that I have detected in it, I would not know to be 

 oolitic at all. You can have no idea how thick the 

 population lies on this narrow border of coast. The 

 bases of the hills are so studded over with miserable 

 cottages surrounded by miserable patches of corn land, 

 not larger than ordinary-sized gardens, that for miles 



