32 FAMOUS SCOTS 



trict, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, 

 and which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly 

 thirty feet.' 



He was to experience constant fits of depression and 

 exhaustion, which caused sleep-walking; and though 

 this after a time passed away, it was yet in later years to 

 recur with fatal effects. In his master he was fortunate. 

 He was one who would fully have come up to Carlyle's 

 standard of his own father, ' making a conscience of 

 every stone he laid.' Unconsciously, also, the appren- 

 tice was laying the foundations of the educated sense of 

 sight so essential to the mason, and which was to stand 

 him in excellent service in later years of geological 

 ramblings. But the life was a hard one, from the 

 surroundings in which the trade of a north-country mason 

 had to be carried on. Living in a small village, where the 

 lack of steady employment was naturally often felt, he 

 had to eke out a living by odd jobs in the country, build- 

 ing farm-steadings or outhouses, with but scanty shelter 

 and in surroundings too often unfavourable to comfort 

 or morality. His experience of the bothy-system 

 thus acquired by personal hardship he was in later years 

 to turn to account in his leaders in The Witness ' I have 

 lived,' he says, ' in hovels that were invariably flooded 

 in wet weather by the over-flowings of neighbouring 

 swamps, and through whose roofs I could tell the hour 

 at night, by marking from my bed the stars that were 

 passing over the openings along the ridge.' He was 

 now to feel the truth of his uncles' warnings in dis- 



