430 . MAN OF SCIENCE. 



great purity and clearness, forms a contrast to that of 

 the Highlands generally, Avhich is usually tinged with 

 peat. One of those (the largest spring papa ever saw) 

 is really a fine object. It comes bursting up out of the 

 earth, a little river, very clear, and in summer very 

 cool, though in winter it feels warm, and during hard 

 frosts smokes as if it had been heated over a fire ; 

 and rank grass and rushes spring up along its edges. 

 In the neighbourhood of Edinburgh it would be of 

 great value, and would more than supply all the city. 

 The day on which I date my letter (Friday, the 20th) I 

 have spent very agreeably in tracing out the relations of 

 the rocks here to each other ; and I now think I under- 

 stand the structure of Assynt, and have succeeded in 

 reading appearances which some of the elder geologists 

 misunderstand. But you would not much care to hear 

 about these. There is not an inhabited dwelling-house 

 in sight ; and the two shattered houses, and the wasted 

 brown hills, and the solitary country, where for hours 

 together not a human being may be seen, gives one the 

 idea of a world whose inhabitants have become extinct. 

 The old castle was the stronghold of the McLeods of 

 Assynt, and is famous as the place in which Montrose 

 was confined previous to his being sent off to Edinburgh 

 to be hanged. He was apprehended and delivered up 

 by one of the McLeods, a transaction base in itself, 

 and which must have done the family no good when the 

 Restoration came on, for the lands of Assynt then 

 passed into another family, named Mackenzie. It was 

 the Mackenzies who built the comparatively modern 

 house ; but, selling the property to the old Earls of 

 Sutherland, the Mackenzies of Ross-shire were so angry 

 at them, that they came and burnt their house, and 

 houghed all their cattle. Those old times must have 



