A SUMMER RAMBLE AMOXG THE HEBRIDES. 149 



lions ; and its upper group, abounding in Ammonites, Nau- 

 tili, Pinnae, and Serpulse. 



Friday made amends for the rains and fogs of its disagree- 

 able predecessor : the morning rose bright and beautiful, with 

 just wind enough to fill, and barely fill, the sail, hoisted high, 

 with miser economy, that not a breath might be lost j and, 

 weighing anchor, and shaking out all our canvass, we bore 

 down on Pabba to explore. This island, so soft in outline 

 and colour, is formidably fenced round by dangerous reefs ; 

 and, leaving the Betsey in charge of John Stewart and his 

 companion, to dodge on in the oifing, I set out with the minis- 

 ter in our little boat, and landed on the north-eastern side of 

 the island, beside a trap-dyke that served us as a pier. He 

 would be a happy geologist who, with a few thousands to 

 spare, could call Pabba his own. It contains less than a 

 square mile of surface ; and a walk of little more than three 

 miles and a half along the line where the waves break at 

 high water brings the traveller back to his starting point ; 

 and yet, though thus limited in area, the petrifactions of its 

 shores might of themselves fill a museum. They rise by 

 thousands and tens of thousands on the exposed planes of its 

 sea-washed strata, standing out in bold relief, like sculptur- 

 ings on ancient tombstones, at once mummies and monuments, 

 the dead, and the carved memorials of the dead. Every 

 rock is a tablet of hieroglyphics, with an ascertained alpha- 

 bet ; every rolled pebble a casket, with old pictorial records 

 locked up within. Trap-dykes, beyond comparison finer than 

 those of the Water of Leith, which first suggested to Hutton 

 his theory, stand up like fences over the sedimentary strata, 

 or run out like moles far into the sea. The entire island, too, 

 so green, rich, and level, is itself a specimen illustrative of 

 the effect of geologic formation on scenery. "We find its near- 

 est neighbour, the steep, brown, barren island of Longa, 

 which is composed of the ancient Red Sandstone of the dis- 



