168 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



succeeded, however, in making good my claim to his acquaint- 

 ance. He had previously established the identity of the edi- 

 tor of his newspaper with his quondam fellow-workman, and 

 a single link more was all the chain wanted. We talked 

 over old matters for half an hour. His wife, a staid respect- 

 able matron, who, when I had been last in the district, was 

 exactly such a person as her eldest daughter, showed me an 

 Encyclopaedia, with coloured prints, which she wished to send, 

 if she knew but how, to the Free Church library. I walked 

 with him through his garden, and saw trees loaded with yel- 

 low-cheeked pippins, where I had once seen only unproduc- 

 tive heath, that scantily covered a barren soil of ferruginous 

 sand ; and, unwillingly declining an invitation to wait tea, 

 for a previous engagement interfered, I took leave of the 

 family, and returned to Dingwall. The following morning 

 was gloomy, and threatened rain ; and, giving up my inten- 

 tion of exploring Strathpeffer, I took the morning coach for 

 Invergordon, and then walked to Cromarty, where I arrived 

 just in time for breakfast. 



I marked from the top of the coach, about two miles to 

 the north-east of Dingwall, beds of a deep gray sandstone, 

 identical in colour and appearance with some of the gray sand- 

 stones of the Middle Old Red of Forfarshire, and learned that 

 quarries had lately been opened in these beds near Mont- 

 gerald. The Old Bed Sandstone lies in immense develop- 

 ment on the flanks of Ben-wevis ; and it is just possible that 

 the analogue of the gray flagstones of Forfar may be found 

 among its upper beds. If so, the quarriers should be in- 

 structed to look hard for organic remains, the broad-headed 

 Cephalaspis, so characteristic of the formation, and the huge 

 Crustacean, its contemporary, that disported in plates large 

 as those of the steel mail of the later ages of chivalry. The 

 geologists of Dingwall, if Dingwall has yet got its geolo- 

 gists, might do well to attempt determining the point. I 



