CHAP. xiii. THE PARADISE OF A GEOLOGIST. 177 



amply repays us poor mortals for years of sorrow. And 

 such a moment was mine now. There I stood with 

 evidences of Old World convulsions and changes 

 environed round about me on every side. And yet there 

 was a living cascade, merrily piping away the sunny 

 hours at my feet, the crystal drops bedecking my clay- 

 soiled boots. Columbus had never cast anchor here. 

 No philosopher had ever entered this paradise. It was 

 all a new world. To me for the moment it was The 

 World. And I triumphed in the felt conviction that a 

 humble individual like myself had, under Providence, 

 ' done the State some service ;' for the evidence that it 

 brings to bear on geological science is not to be gainsaid. 



"Not many yards inland from this fine section of 

 boulder clay, resting on cliffs of red sandstone on the 

 east side of Dunnet Cliffs, high over the Pentland Firth, 

 not many yards inland there lies, over this clay, a 

 black peat moss, which, judging from examinations 

 made in it, is at least seven or eight feet thick. How 

 old is that black moss ? Hundreds, thousands of years ? 

 Yet what is that to the time that has elapsed since the 

 icebergs went thundering over Dunnet Head ? Then 

 the sea, the wide sea, floated and stormed over all. 



" Yes ! there are thousands and millions of grey 

 lichened sandstone boulders scattered over the moory 

 top of Dunnet. There are boulders of grey granite too ! 

 Ay, and there are boulders of gneiss and of clayslate. 



" But, in the midst of these reflections, I forget that 

 I am down in a breakneck ravine, and that it is 

 necessary that I should contrive to get up again. Well ! 



