RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 381 



CHAPTER X. 



A TWELVEMONTH had gone by since a lingering indisposition, 

 which bore heavily on the springs of life, compelled me to 

 postpone a long-projected journey to the Orkneys, and led me 

 to visit, instead, rich level England, with its well-kept roads 

 and smooth railways, along which the enfeebled invalid can 

 travel far without fatigue. I had now got greatly stronger; 

 and, if not quite up to my old thirty miles per day, nor al- 

 together so bold a cragsman as I had been only a few years 

 before, I was at least vigorous enough to enjoy a middling 

 long walk, and to breast a tolerably steep hill. And so I re- 

 solved on at least glancing over, if not exploring, the fossili- 

 ferous deposits of the Orkneys, trusting that an eye some- 

 what practised in the formations mainly developed in these 

 islands might enable me to make some amends for seeing com- 

 paratively little, by seeing well. I took coach at Invergordon 

 for Wick early in the morning of Friday; and, after a weary 

 ride, in a bleak gusty day, that sent the dust of the road whirl- 

 ing about the ears of the sorely-tossed " outsides," with whom 

 I had taken my chance, I alighted in Wick, at the inn-door, 

 a little after six o'clock in the evening. The following morn- 

 ing was wet and dreary ; and a tumbling sea, raised by the 

 wind of the previous day and night, came rolling into the bay ; 

 but the waves bore with them no steamer ; and when, some 



