A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 71 



water lake, and then let down into a sea-bottom again. We find 

 it recorded in the " Shepherd's Calendar," that after the thaw 

 which followed the great snow-storm of 1 794, there were found 

 on a part of the sands of the Solway Frith known as the Beds 

 of Esk, where the tide disgorges much of what is thrown into 

 it by the rivers, " one thousand eight hundred and forty sheep, 

 nine black cattle, three horses, two men, one woman, forty- 

 five dogs, and one hundred and eighty hares, besides a num- 

 ber of meaner animals." A similar storm in an earlier time, 

 with a soft sea-bottom prepared to receive and retain its spoils, 

 would have formed a fresh-water stratum intercalated in a 

 marine deposit. 



Rounding the promontory, we lose sight of the Bay of Laig, 

 and find the narrow front of the island that now presents it- 

 self exhibiting the appearance of a huge bastion. The green 

 talus slopes upwards, as its basement, for full three hundred 

 feet ; and a noble wall of perpendicular rock, that towers over 

 and beyond for at least four hundred feet more, forms the 

 rampart Save towards the sea, the view is of but limited 

 extent : we see it restricted, on the landward side, to the bold 

 face of the bastion ; and in a narrow and broken dell that runs 

 nearly parallel to the shore for a few hundred yards between 

 the top of the talus and the base of the rampart, a true co- 

 vered way, we see but the rampart alone. But the dizzy 

 front of black basalt, dark as night, save where a broad belt 

 of light-coloured sandstone traverses it in an angular direc- 

 tion, like a white sash thrown across a funeral robe, the fan- 

 tastic peaks and turrets in which the rock terminates atop, 

 the masses of broken ruins, roughened with moss and lichen, 

 that have fallen from above, and lie scattered at its base, 

 the extreme loneliness of the place, for we have left behind 

 us every trace of the human family, and the expanse of so- 

 litary sea which it commands, all conspire to render the 

 scene a profoundly imposing one. It is one of those scenes 



