THE BRORA. 363 



passing through the village it has cut for itself a deep 

 trench, thirty feet deep at least, in a white sandstone 

 which, though extremely soft, stands the weather, and 

 thus preserves on both sides a perpendicular frontage. 

 The appearance in consequence for some distance is 

 rather that of a canal at the masonry of the locks, than 

 of a river, a curious exemplification of how geological 

 phenomena affect scenery. Where the walls are steep- 

 est, and the water blackest, there is a bridge thrown 

 over which the public road passes/ 



' Wednesday morning. 



' After taking tea last night, and then filling the 

 opposite page, I walked out along the southern bank of 

 the Brora for about half a mile. The path led through 

 a sort of rectilinear ravine, evidently artificial ; on reach- 

 ing an extensive hollow the rectilinear ravine became a 

 rectlinear mound, and I found it terminate at an old pit 

 mouth. Those I saw last year lie on the opposite side 

 of the stream. Though about two hundred feet in 

 depth, it is now filled up with water to within thirty 

 feet of the opening. The appearance of the hollow in 

 which it has been opened struck me as remarkable. 

 All around, between me and the sea, I saw a sloping 

 rampart, terminating atop in a long even height, and, in 

 the bottom, in a level plain laid out in fields and with a 

 wooded island rising from out of it with the same slope 

 as the surrounding rampart. I saw at once that it 

 could not be the result of any glacial action, as the 

 body of the rampart is not of debris, but, as shown by 

 the artificial ravine, of white sandstone. On climbing a 

 height to survey its general appearance, I marked that 

 the trench-like appearance of the bed of the river, to 

 which I referred last evening, commenced exactly at the 

 hollow, it is a breach in the rampart, such a breach 



