CHAP. xr. HUGH MILLER'S DESCRIPTION. 145 



pieces, not unfurnished with turret and tower, and wide 

 yawning portals that rise a thousand feet over the waves ; 

 the tall stacks of Duncansby, Canisbay, ornately Gothic 

 in their style of ornament, with the dizzy chasms of the 

 neighbouring headland, in which the tides of the Pentland 

 Firth for ever eddy and toil, and the surf for ever 

 roars ; and the strangely fractured precipices of Holborn 

 Head, where, through dark crevice and giddy chasm, the 

 gleam of the sun may be seen reflected far below on the 

 green depths of the sea, and venerable and grey, like 

 some vast cathedral, a dissevered fragment of the coast 

 descried rising beyond, are all rock scenes of the Old 

 Red Sandstone. 



" When I last stood on the heights of Holborn there 

 was a heavy surf toiling far below along the base of the 

 overhanging wall of cliff which lines the coast, and deep 

 under my feet I could hear a muffled roaring amid the 

 long corridor-like caves into which the headland is 

 hollowed, and which, opening to the light and air far 

 inland by narrow vents and chasms, send up at such 

 seasons, high over the blighted sward, clouds of impal- 

 pable spray, that resemble the smoke of great chimneys. 

 As I peered into one of these profound gulphs, and 

 dimly marked, hundreds of feet below, the upward dash 

 of the foam, grey in the gloom, as I looked, and ex- 

 perienced with the gaze that mingled emotion natural 

 amid such scenes, which Burke so well analyses as a 

 consciousness of great expansiveness and dimension, 

 associated with a sense of danger, my eye caught on 

 the verge of the precipice the outline of part of an old 



