RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 255 



however, stored in a concealed recess of her former apartment, 

 and the mouldering remains of the pedlar under the ash tree 

 gave evidence to the truth of her narrative. The story was 

 hardly wild enough for a night so drear and a road so lonely ; 

 its ghost-heroine was but a homely ghost-heroine, too little 

 aware that the same familiarity which, according to the pro- 

 verb, breeds contempt when exercised by the denizens of this 

 world, produces similar effects when too much indulged in by 

 the inhabitants of another. But the arrangement and resto- 

 ration of the details of the tradition, for they had been scat- 

 tered in my mind like the fragments of a broken fossil, 

 furnished me with so much amusement, when struggling with 

 the storm, as to shorten by at least one-half the seven miles 

 which intervene between Gamrie and MacdufE Instead, how- 

 ever, of pressing on to Banff, as I had at first intended, I 

 baited for the night at a snug little inn in the latter village, 

 which I reached just wet enough to enjoy the luxury of a 

 strong clear fire of Newcastle coal 



Mrs Longmuir had furnished me with a note of introduc- 

 tion to Dr Emslie of Banff, an intelligent geologist, familiar 

 with the deposits of the district ; and, walking on to his place 

 of residence next morning, in a rain as heavy as that of the 

 previous night, I made it my first business to wait on him, 

 and deliver the note. Ere, however, crossing the Deveron, 

 which flows between Banff and Macduff, I paused for a few 

 minutes in the rain, to mark the peculiar appearance pre- 

 sented by the beach where the river disembogues into the 

 frith. Occurring as a rectangular spit in the line of the shore, 

 with the expanded stream widening into an estuary on its 

 upper side, and the open sea on the lower, it marks the scene 

 of an obstinate contest between antagonist forces, the power- 

 ful sweep of the torrent, and the not less powerful waves of 

 the stormy north-east ; and exists, in consequence, as a long 

 gravelly prism, which presents as steep an angle of descent 



