SECOND MAERIAGE 208 



Part of the honeymoon was spent in North Wales. It was 

 on this occasion that, going up Snowdon, they were caught * in 

 a storm such as I have not seen in mountains since I left the 

 Himalaya,' and had ' the top of an umbrella, incautiously 

 raised, blown in.' 



Then to Glasgow, for the British Association, where they 

 stayed with his niece, Mrs. Campbell, and with the old friend 

 of the family, Miss Smith, of Jordan Hill. Thence for a week 

 to Skye, with a contingent of Lyells and Mr. Symonds ; J then 

 to other friends in Perthshire and Fife and to the Hodgsons' in 

 Gloucestershire, thus picking up the strands of many friendships. 



One scientific note of this journey is in a letter to Prof. 

 Oliver (September 25) : 



The Geology of all that part of Scotland [from Loch Maree 

 to Dingwall] seemed to me wonderfully complicated, and 

 gave me a new impression of the labours of Macculloch 

 and Murchison. Skye Geology too impressed me much ; 

 the island resembled some of the Antarctic ones in many 

 particulars ; and though volcanic on the whole, it contains 

 beds representative of most of all the British formations 

 from the Laurentians upwards ! and I could not help 

 wondering if future discoveries, say in Kerguelen's Land, 

 may not throw as much light on the Geology of the Antarctic 

 regions, as Skye alone would have done in respect of Northern 

 Europe. Perhaps the Fossil wood of Kerguelen's Land may 

 be the nucleus of a great light. 



To Darwin he adds : ' Were you aware that Dickie of 

 Aberdeen had examined the earth beneath the Glen Eoy roads 

 and found them to contain Fresh water diatoms ? ' 



But in the midst of this happiness he was deeply moved by 

 the sudden death of a young friend's wife. They had not been 

 married a year. It seemed to open up his own too recent loss 

 and to depress him utterly : 



They were so happy and she so lovable how I envied them 

 a few months ago. . . . Give the dear fellow my most 

 affectionate sympathy. ... Oh dear, oh dear, what a weary 

 world it is, and yet I should be the last to complain. 



1 See p. 197. 



