A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 13 



to have been made wholesale, as Frankenstein made his man ; 

 and to be ever asking, and never more incessantly than when 

 it is at its quietest, why it should have been made at all ? 

 The remains of the Florida, a gallant Spanish ship, lie off its 

 shores, a wreck of the Invincible Armada, " deep whelmed,*' 

 according to Thomson, 



" What time, 



Snatched sudden by the vengeful blast, 

 The scattered vessels drove, and on blind shelve, 

 And pointed rock that marks th' indented shore, 

 Relentless dashed, where loud the northern main 

 Howls through the fractured Caledonian isles." 



Macculloch relates, that there was an attempt made, rather 

 more than a century ago, to weigh up the Florida, which 

 ended in the weighing up of merely a few of her guns, some 

 of them of iron greatly corroded ; and that, on scraping them, 

 they became so hot under the hand that they could not be 

 touched, but that they lost this curious property after a few 

 hours' exposure to the air. There have since been repeated 

 instances elsewhere, he adds, of the same phenomenon, and 

 chemistry has lent its solution of the principles on which it 

 occurs ; but in the year 1740, ere the riddle was read, it 

 must have been deemed a thoroughly magical one by the 

 simple islanders of MulL It would seem as if the guns, 

 heated in the contest with Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, 

 had again kindled, under some supernatural influence, with 

 the intense glow of the lost battle. 



The morning was showery; but it cleared up a little after 

 ten, and we landed to explore. We found the mill a little 

 to the south of the village, where a small stream descends, all 

 foam and uproar, from the higher grounds along a rocky 

 channel half-hidden by brushwood : and the Liasic.bed occurs 

 in an exposed front directly over it, coped by a thick bed of 

 amygdaloidal trap. The organisms are numerous : and, when 

 we dig into the bank beyond the reach of the weathering in- 



