114 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



from iny seat, as we drove past, the dark blue rocks in the 

 water-courses on each side the road, studded over with that 

 characteristic shell of the Lias, the Gryphcea incurva, and that 

 the dry-stone fences in the moor above exhibit fossils that 

 might figure in a museum. But we rattled by. At Broad- 

 ford, twenty-five miles from Portree, and nine miles from 

 Isle Ornsay, I partook of a hospitable meal in the house of 

 an acquaintance ; and in little more than two hours after 

 was with my friend the minister at Isle Ornsay. The night 

 wore pleasantly by. Mrs Swanson, a niece of the late Dr 

 Smith of Campbelton, so well known for his Celtic researches 

 and his exquisite translations of ancient Celtic poetry, I found 

 deeply versed in the legendary lore of the Highlands. The 

 minister showed me a fine specimen of Pterichthys which I 

 had disinterred for him, out of my first discovered fossilife- 

 rous deposit of the Old Red Sandstone, exactly thirteen years 

 before, and full seven years ere I had introduced the creature 

 to the notice of Agassiz. And the minister's daughter, a 

 little chubby girl of three summers, taking part in the gene- 

 ral entertainment, strove to make her Gaelic sound as like 

 English as she could, in my especial behalf. I remembered, 

 as I listened to the unintelligible prattle of the little thing, 

 unprovided with a word of English, that just eighteen years 

 before, her father had had no Gaelic ; and wondered what 

 he would have thought, could he have been told, when he 

 first sat down to study it, the story of his island charge in 

 Eigg, and his Free Church yacht the Betsey. Nineteen 

 years before, we had been engaged in beating over the Eathie 

 Lias together, collecting Belemnites, Ammonites, and fossil 

 wood, and striving in friendly emulation the one to surpass 

 the other in the variety and excellence of our specimens. 

 Our leisure hours were snatched, at the time, from college 

 studies by the one, from the mallet by the other : there were 

 few of them that we did not spend together, and that we 



