CHAP. xin. CAITHNESS SUBMERGED. 187 



is he that is out of tune, and not Nature not the 

 Creator of the universe. 



"Here is a magnificent amphitheatre of heather! 

 One must turn round, and again round, to take in the 

 beauty of the whole. What a marvellous extent of 

 boulder clay formation ! I crossed and recrossed the 

 heath-adorned mounds, and I saw that the stony clay 

 was not confined to a mere central strip in the vicinity 

 of the Mossy Burn. It extends to a great distance on 

 either side of it. Marking the scenery very attentively, I 

 could come to no other conclusion, than that when the clay 

 on which I stood was laid down, the whole of the country 

 was occupied by a sea, wave tumbling upon wave ! 



" It could not have been any trivial outburst of the 

 sea, no rising wave from Dunnet Bay. For the clay 

 copes the red sandstone debris, on the side of Wart 

 Hill, at an elevation of a hundred feet higher than the 

 surface of the beds alongside the bum. It seems to me 

 impossible that a rush of water, sweeping down such a 

 declivity, could go so far out of its course, and climb a 

 hillside. And then, when I reflected that Dunnet Head 

 has its boulder stones, that there is a blue stony clay in 

 deep water in Dunnet Bay, and that on the hillside 

 above East Murkle, there is a granite boulder, many tons 

 in weight, some three or four hundred feet above the sea- 

 level, it seemed like mockery to speak of an eruption, 

 or outburst, or rise of the sea wave, producing these things. 

 No ! The sea then submerged the whole land, on the east 

 and on the west, on the north and on the south. The sea 

 then held dominion over all. Its sway was supreme. 



