A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 33 



CHAPTER IIL 



As we climbed the hill-side, and the Shinar-like tower before 

 us rose higher over the horizon at each step we took, till it 

 seemed pointing at the middle sky, we could mark peculiari- 

 ties in its structure which escape notice in the distance. We 

 found it composed of various beds, each of which would make 

 a Giant's Causeway entire, piled over each other like storeys 

 in a building, and divided into columns, vertical, or nearly 

 so, in every instance except in one bed near the base, in 

 which the pillars incline to a side, as if losing footing under 

 the superincumbent weight Innumerable polygonal frag- 

 ments, single stones of the building, lie scattered over the 

 slope, composed, like almost all the rest of the Scuir, of a 

 peculiar and very beautiful stone, unlike any other in Scot- 

 land, a dark pitchstone-porphyry, which, inclosing crystals 

 of glassy feldspar, resembles in the hand-specimen a mass of 

 black sealing-wax, with numerous pieces of white bugle stuck 

 into it. Some of the detached polygons are of considerable 

 size ; few of them larger and bulkier, however, than a piece 

 of column of this characteristic porphyry, about ten feet in 

 length by two feet in diameter, which lies a full mile away 

 from any of the others, in the line of the old burying-ground, 

 and distant from it only a few hundred yards. It seems to 

 have been carried there by man : we find its bearing from 



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