124 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY j OR, 



and clearly ; but here was a story not clearly told. It sum- 

 moned up doubtful, ever-shifting visions, now of a vast ice 

 continent, abutting on this far isle of the Hebrides from the 

 Pole, and trampling heavily over it, now of the wild rush 

 of a turbid, mountain-high flood breaking in from the west, 

 and hurling athwart the torn surface, rocks, and stones, and 

 clay, now of a dreary ocean rising high along the hills, and 

 bearing onward with its winds and currents, huge icebergs, 

 that now brushed the mountain-sides, and now grated along 

 the bottom of the submerged valleys. The inscription on the 

 polished surfaces, with its careless mixture of groove and 

 scratch, is an inscription of very various readings. 



We passed along a transverse hollow, and then began to 

 ascend a hill-side, from the ridge of which the water sheds 

 to the opposite shore of the island, and on which we catch 

 our first glimpse of Scuir More, standing up over the sea, 

 like a pyramid shorn of its top. A brown lizard, nearly five 

 inches in length, startled by our approach, ran hurriedly 

 across the path ; and our guide, possessed by the general 

 Highland belief that the creature is poisonous, and injures 

 cattle, struck at it with a switch, and cut it in two immedi- 

 ately behind the hinder legs. The upper half, containing all 

 that anatomists regard as the vitals, heart, brain, and viscera, 

 all the main nerves, and all the larger arteries, lay stunned 

 by the blow, as if dead ; nor did it manifest any signs of vi- 

 tality so long as we remained beside it ; whereas the lower 

 half, as if the whole life of the animal had retired into it, 

 continued dancing upon the moss for a full minute after, like 

 a young eel scooped out of some stream, and thrown upon 

 the bank ; and then lay wriggling and palpitating for about 

 half a minute more. There are few things more inexplicable 

 in the province of the naturalist than the phenomenon of 

 what may be termed divided life, vitality broken into two, 

 and yet continuing to exist as vitality in both the dissevered 



