378 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



and so the effects of the damp were wholly confined to my- 

 self. I was soundly pummelled during the night by a fright- 

 ful female, who first assumed the appearance of the miserable 

 pauper woman whom I had seen beside the Auldgrande, and 

 then became the Lady of Balconie ; and, though sufficiently 

 indignant, and much inclined to resist, I could stir neither 

 hand nor foot, but lay passively on my back, jambed fast be- 

 side the huge gneiss boulder and the edge of the gulf. And 

 yet, by a strange duality of perception, I was conscious all 

 the while that, having got wet on the previous day, I was 

 now suffering from an attack of nightmare ; and held that it 

 would be no very serious matter even should the lady tumble 

 me into the gulf, seeing that all would be well again when I 

 awoke in the morning. Dreams of this character, in which 

 consciousness bears reference at once to the fictitious events 

 of the vision and the real circumstances of the sleeper, must 

 occupy, I am inclined to think, very little time, single mo- 

 ments, mayhap, poised midway between the sleeping and wak- 

 ing state. Next day (Sunday) I attended the Free Church 

 in the parish, where I found a numerous and attentive con- 

 gregation, descendants, in large part, of the old devout Mun- 

 roes of Ferindonald, and heard a good solid discourse. And 

 on the following morning I crossed the sea at what is known 

 as the Fowlis Ferry, to explore, on my homeward route, the 

 rocks laid bare along the shore in the upper reaches of the 

 Frith. 



I found but little by the way : black patches of bitumen 

 in the sandstone of one of the beds, with a bed of stratified 

 clay, inclosing nodules, in which, however, I succeeded in de- 

 tecting nothing organic; and a few fragments of clay- slate 

 locked up in the Eed Sandstone, sharp and unworn at their 

 edges, as if derived from no great distance, though there be 

 now no clay-slate in the eastern half of Ross ; but though 

 the rocks here belong evidently to the ichthyolitic member of 



