RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST; 



OR, 



TEN THOUSAND MILES OVER THE FOSSILIFEROUS 

 DEPOSITS OF SCOTLAND* 



CHAPTER L 



FROM circumstances that in no way call for explanation, my 

 usual exploratory ramble was thrown this year (1847) from 

 the middle of July into the middle of September ; and I em- 

 barked at Granton for the north just as the night began to 

 count hour against hour with the day. The weather was fine, 

 and the voyage pleasant I saw by the way, however, at least 

 one melancholy memorial of a hurricane which had swept the 

 eastern coasts of the island about a fortnight before, and filled 

 the provincial newspapers with paragraphs of disaster. Nearly 

 opposite where the Red Head lifts its mural front of Old Red 

 Sandstone a hundred yards over the beach, the steamer passed 

 a foundered vessel, lying about a mile and a half off the land, 

 with but her topmast and the point of her peak over the sur- 

 face. Her vane, still at the mast-head, was drooping in the 



* This second title bears reference to the extent of the author's geologic 

 excursions in Scotland during the nine years from 1840 to 1848 inclusive. 



