264 GAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



CHAPTER IIL 



I PARTED from Dr Emslie, and walked on along the shore to 

 Portsoy, for three-fourths of the way over the prevailing 

 grauwacke of the county, and for the remaining fourth over 

 mica schist, primary limestone, hornblende slate, granitic and 

 quartz veins, and the various other kindred rocks of a pri- 

 mary district. The day was still gloomy and gray, and ill 

 suited to improve homely scenery ; nor is this portion of the 

 Banff coast nearly so striking as that which I had travelled 

 over the day before. It has, however, its spots of a redeem- 

 ing character, rocky recesses on the shore, half-beach, half- 

 sward, rich in wild-flowers and shells, where one could saun- 

 ter in a calm sunny morning, with one's bairns about one, 

 very delightfully ; and the interior is here and there agree- 

 ably undulated by diluvial hillocks, that, when the sun falls 

 low in the evening, must chequer the landscape with many 

 a pleasing alternation of light and shadow. The Burn of 

 Boyne, which separates, about two miles from Portsoy, a 

 grauwacke from a mica-schist district, with its bare, open 

 valley, its steep limestone banks, and its gray, melancholy 

 castle, long since roofless and windowless, and surrounded by 

 a few stunted trees, bears a deserted and solitary shagginess 

 about it, that struck me as wildly agreeable. It is such a 

 valley as one might expect to meet a ghost in, in some still, 



