A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 105 



CHAPTER YIL 



I BREAKFASTED in the travellers' room with three gentlemen 

 from Edinburgh; and then, accompanied by a boy, whom I 

 had engaged to carry my bag, set out to explora The morn- 

 ing was ominously hot and breathless ; and while the sea lay 

 moveless in the calm, as a floor of polished marble, moun- 

 tain, and rock, and distant island, seemed tremulous all over, 

 through a wavy medium of thick rising vapour. I judged 

 from the first that my course of exploration for the day was 

 destined to terminate abruptly ; and as my arrangements with 

 Mr Swanson left me, for this part of the country, no second 

 day to calculate upon, I hurried over deposits which in other 

 circumstances I would have examined more carefully, con- 

 tent with a glance. Accustomed in most instances to take 

 long aims, as Cuddy Headrig did, when he steadied his mus- 

 ket on a rest, behind the hedge, and sent his ball through 

 Laird Oliphant's forehead, I had on this occasion to shoot 

 flying ; and so, selecting a large object for a mark, that I might 

 run the less risk of missing, I strove to acquaint myself rather 

 with the general structure of the district than with the or- 

 ganisms of its various fossiliferous beds. 



The long narrow island of Rasay lies parallel to the coast 

 of Skye, like a vessel laid along a wharf, but drawn out from 

 it, as if to suffer another vessel of the same size to take her 



