RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 361 



CHAPTER IX. 



I WAS once more on the Great Conglomerate, here, as else- 

 where, a picturesque, boldly-featured deposit, traversed by 

 narrow mural-sided valleys, and tempested by bluff abrupt 

 eminences. Its hills are greatly less confluent than those of 

 most of the other sedimentary formations of Scotland ; and 

 their insulated summits, recommended by their steep sides 

 and limited areas to the old savage Yaubans of the High- 

 lands, furnished, ere the historic eras began, sites for not a 

 few of the ancient hill-forts of the country. The vitrified 

 fort of Craig Phadrig, of the Ord Hill of Kessock, and of 

 Knock Farril, two of the number, the first and last, being 

 the most celebrated erections of their kind in the north of 

 Scotland, were all formed on hills of the Great Conglome- 

 rate. The Conglomerate exists here as a sort of miniature 

 Highlands, set down at the northern side of a large angular 

 bay of Palaeozoic rock, which indents the true Highlands of 

 the country, and which exhibits in its central area a prolon- 

 gation of the long moory ridge of the Black Isle, formed, as 

 I have already had occasion to remark, of an upper deposit 

 of the same lower division of the Old Red, a deposit as 

 noticeable for affecting a confluent, rectilinear character in 

 its elevations, as the Conglomerate is remarkable for exhi- 

 biting a detached and undulatory one. Exactly the same 



