428 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



tance. In consequence of this mistake, a considerable 

 space elapsed before men who could render assistance 

 were apprized of the disaster ; and when they at length 

 arrived, they found exertion unavailing, for there re- 

 mained no object to call it forth. The rock was buried 

 beneath the waves, and three, whom Skinner had left 

 clinging to it with all the energy of despair, had perished. 

 Pour of the bodies have since been found, besides that 

 of the boatman who died in the fields. It is supposed 

 that the accident was occasioned by the pilot having 

 fallen asleep at the helm, as the spot where it took place 

 is considerably out of the course which the boat ought 

 to have pursued. It is not a little remarkable that since 

 the middle of autumn last a greater number of the in- 

 habitants of Cromarty have perished by sea than for the 

 thirty years preceding/ 



TO MR GEORGE ANDERSON. 



' Cromarty, Sept. 15, 1834. 



1 Whatever may be the value of my specimens, and 

 I am afraid they are very rarely of any, my discoveries 

 almost always turn out discoveries at second hand. I 

 see it is a great matter to be acquainted with what has 

 been done by others. I have spent week after week in 

 arriving at a knowledge of facts, which I could have ac- 

 quired in a few minutes from the pages of a geological 

 catechism, had I but known that I might have looked 

 for it there. I have formed theories, too, at some little 

 expense of thought, only to find that some more fortun- 

 ate speculatist had built them up much more neatly, and 

 long before. Sir Thomas D. Lauder, for instance, has 

 anticipated my theory of the formation of the great 

 Caledonian valley ; and Mr Murchison my hypothesis 

 regarding the erection of the Sutors. This is all by 



