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ing. The new has swallowed up and overborne the 

 old. I had to rise at a little after four o'clock next 

 morning, to take the mail-gig from Lairg to Assynt, 

 and reached the former place at breakfast-time, passing 

 through a fine valley, that which opens into the sea, at 

 the Little Ferry, for about sixteen or eighteen miles. 

 Along the flat bottom of this valley the sea must once 

 have flowed, and the precipices along its sides are very 

 steep and abrupt, as if they still retained the forms 

 given them by the waves ; but the bottom is occupied 

 by rich corn-fields ; and cottages and trees appear where 

 once canoes may have been. 



' At Lairg I used to be well-acquainted, but it was 

 long, long ago ; and the people whom I knew were all away 

 or dead. On my way to Assynt I saw a gentleman in a 

 kilt, and, before the gig came up to him, set him down 

 from his dress as an Englishman. And an Englishman 

 he was, who had come out to the road to get his letters. 

 As a general rule Scotchmen save pipers, who are paid 

 for it, and soldiers, who can't help it don't wear the kilt. 

 Assynt is a great marble district, and it was to examine 

 the marble deposits with the rocks that lie over and 

 under them that papa has paid it the present visit. He 

 thinks he will be able to render it probable that the 

 thick, stratified beds ( to which the marbles belong 

 represent those flagstones of Caithness which abound in 

 fossil fishes, and that the quartz-rock above and red 

 sandstone below were once the Old Red Sandstone of 

 the great conglomerate, and the deposits that overlie the 

 fish-beds. But you will be able to understand all 

 this a few years hence, should you live and attend to 

 your lessons. Assynt is remarkable for its fine springs. 

 They burst out of the limestone beds in volume enough, 

 some of them, to turn a mill. Their water, too, from its 



