40 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



that group of seasons which intervened between 1835 and 

 1841 ', and then for four or five years more springs were 

 early and summers genial, as in the after group of 1842, 

 1843, and 1844. An arrangement in nature, first observ- 

 ed, as we learn from Bacon, by the people of the low coun- 

 tries, and which has since formed the basis of meteoric tables, 

 and of predictions, and elaborate cycles of the weather, 

 bound together the twelvemonths of the Oolitic period in al- 

 ternate bundles of better and worse : vegetation throve vigo- 

 rously during the summers of one group, and languished in 

 those of another in a state of partial development. 



Sending away our man shipwards, laden with a bag of fos- 

 sil-wood, we ascended by a steep broken ravine to the top of 

 the Scuir. The columns, as we pass on towards the west, di- 

 minish in size, and assume in many of the beds considerable 

 variety of direction and form. In one bed they belly over 

 with a curve, like the ribs of some wrecked vessel from which 

 the planking has been torn away ; in another they project in 

 a straight line, like muskets planted slantways on the ground 

 to receive a charge of cavalry ; in others the inclination is 

 inwards, like that of ranges of stakes placed in front of a sea- 

 dyke, to break the violence of the waves ; while in yet others 

 they present, as in the eastern portion of the Scuir, the com- 

 mon vertical direction. The ribbed appearance of every crag 

 and cliff imparts to the scene a peculiar character : every 

 larger mass of light and shadow is corded with minute stripes ; 

 and the feeling experienced among the more shattered peaks, 

 and in the more broken recesses, seems nearer akin to that 

 which it is the tendency of some magnificent ruin to excite, 

 than that which awakens amid the sublime of nature. We 

 feel as if the pillared rocks around us were like the Cyclopean 

 walls of Southern Italy,- the erections of some old gigantic 

 race passed from the earth for ever. The feeling must have 

 been experienced on former occasions amid the innumerable 



