356 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



ringly directed, could scarce fail to unravel and work them 

 out again. They form no part of the inherent design of man's 

 nature, but have merely stuck to it in its transmissive pas- 

 sage downwards, and require to be brushed off. There was 

 a time, some four thousand years ago, when Celt and Saxon 

 were represented by but one man and his wife, with their 

 children and their children's wives ; and some sixteen or seven- 

 teen centuries earlier, all the varieties of the species, Cau- 

 casian and Negro, Mongolian and Malay, lay close packed 

 up in the world's single family. In short, Buchubai's amus- 

 ing prattle proved to me this evening no bad commentary on 

 St Paul's sublime enunciation to the Athenians, that God has 

 " made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the 

 face of the earth." I was amused to find that the little girl, 

 who listened intently as I described to the young ladies all I 

 had seen and knew of the Auldgrande, had never before heard 

 of a ghost, and could form no conception of one now. The 

 ladies explained, described, denned ; carefully guarding all 

 they said, however, by stern disclaimers against the ghost 

 theory altogether, but apparently to little purpose. At length 

 Buchubai exclaimed, that she now knew what they meant, 

 and that she herself had seen a great many ghosts in India. 

 On explanation, however, her ghosts, though quite frightful 

 enough, turned out to be not at all spiritual : they were 

 things of common occurrence in the land she had come from, 

 exposed bodies of the dead. 



Next morning as the white clouds and thin mist-streaks 

 of the preceding day had fairly foretold was close and wet ; 

 and the long trail of vapour which rises from the chasm of 

 the Auldgrande in such weather, and is known to the people 

 of the neighbourhood as the " smoke of the lady's baking," 

 hung, sliake-like, over the river. About two o'clock the rain 

 ceased, hesitatingly and doubtfully, however, as if it did not 

 quite know its own mind ; and there arose no breeze to shake 



