232 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



calm ; and its shadow, with that of the fresh -coloured spar 

 to which it was attached, white atop and yellow beneath, 

 formed a well-defined undulatory strip on the water, that 

 seemed as if ever in the process of being rolled up, and yet 

 still retained its length unshortened. Every recession of the 

 swell showed a patch of mainsail attached to the peak : the 

 sail had been hoisted to its full stretch when the vessel went 

 down. And thus, though no one survived to tell the story 

 of her disaster, enough remained to show that she had sprung 

 a leak when straining in the gale, and that, when staggering 

 under a, press of canvass towards the still distant shore, where, 

 by stranding her, the crew had hoped to save at least their 

 lives, she had disappeared with a sudden lurch, and all aboard 

 had perished. I remembered having read, among other me- 

 morabilia of the hurricane, without greatly thinking of the 

 matter, that " a large sloop had foundered off the Red Head, 

 name unknown." But the minute portion of the wreck 

 which I saw rising over the surface, to certify, like some frail 

 memorial in a churchyard, that the dead lay beneath, had an 

 eloquence in it which the words wanted, and at once sent the 

 imagination back to deal with the stern realities of the disas- 

 ter, and the feelings abroad to expatiate over saddened hearths 

 and melancholy homesteads, where for many a long day the 

 hapless perished would be missed and mourned, but where the 

 true story of their fate, though too surely guessed at, would 

 never be known. 



The harvest had been early ; and on to the village of Stone- 

 haven, and a mile or two beyond, where the fossiliferous de- 

 posits end and the primary begin, the country presented from 

 the deck only a wide expanse of stubble. Every farm-stead- 

 ing we passed had its piled stack-yard ; and the fields were 

 bare. But the line of demarcation between the Old Red Sand- 

 stone and the granitic districts formed also a separating line 

 between an earlier and later harvest ; the fields of the less 



