RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 295 



CHAPTER V. 



ROSEMAKKIE, with its long narrow valley and its red abrupt 

 scaurs,* is chiefly interesting to the geologist for its vast beds 

 of the boulder-clay. I am acquainted with no other locality 

 in the kingdom where this deposit is hollowed into ravines 

 so profound, or presents precipices so imposing and lofty. The 

 clay lies thickly over most part of the Black Isle and the pe- 

 ninsula of Easter Ross, both soft sandstone districts, bear- 

 ing everywhere an obvious relation, as a deposit, to both the 

 form and the conditions of exposure of the existing land, 

 just as the accumulated snow of a long-lying snow-storm, ex- 

 posed to the drifting wind, bears relation to the heights and 

 hollows of the tracts which it covers. On the higher emi- 

 nences the clay forms a comparatively thin stratum, and in 

 not a few instances it has been wholly worn away ; while on 

 the lower grounds, immediately over the old coast line, and 

 in the sides of hollow valleys, exactly such places as we might 

 expect to see the snow occupying most deeply after a night 

 of drift, we find it accumulated in vast beds of from eighty 

 to an hundred feet in thickness. One of these occurs in the 

 opening of the narrow valley along which my course this 

 morning lay, and is known far and wide, for it forms a 



* Scaur, Scotice, a precipice of clay. There is no single English word 

 that conveys exactly the same idea. 



