RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 47 1 



ment of pale Old Red Sandstone, bearing atop a few stunted 

 tufts of vegetation. There are no neighbouring objects of a 

 known character by which to estimate its size ; the precipi- 

 tous hill-front behind is more than a thousand feet in height ; 

 the greatly taller Ward Hill of Hoy, which frowns over it 

 on the opposite side, is at least five hundred feet higher; 

 and, dwarfed by these giants, it seems a mere pavier's flag, 

 mayhap some five or six feet square, by from eighteen inches 

 to two feet in depth. It is only on approaching it within 

 a few yards that we find it to be an enormous stone, nearly 

 thirty feet in length by almost fifteen feet in breadth, and in 

 some places, though it thins, wedge-like, towards one of the 

 edges, more than six feet in thickness, forming altogether 

 such a mass as the quarrier would detach from the solid rock, 

 to form the architrave of some vast gateway, or the pediment 

 of some colossal statue. A cave-like excavation, nearly three 

 feet square, and rather more than seven feet in depth, opens 

 on its gray and lichened side. The excavation is widened 

 within, along the opposite walls, into two uncomfortably 

 short beds, very much resembling those of the cabin of a 

 small coasting vessel. One of the two is furnished with a 

 protecting ledge and a pillow of stone, hewn out of the solid 

 mass ; while the other, which is some five or six inches shorter 

 than its neighbour, and presents altogether more the appear- 

 ance of a place of penance than of repose, lacks both cushion 

 and ledge. An aperture, which seems to have been origi- 

 nally of a circular form, and about two and a half feet in dia- 

 meter, but which some unlucky herd-boy, apparently in the 

 want of better employment, has considerably mutilated and 

 widened, opens at the inner extremity of the excavation to 

 the roof, as the hatch of a vessel opens from the hold to 

 the deck ; for it is by far too wide in proportion to the size 

 of the apartment to be regarded as a chimney. A gray, 

 rudely-hewn block of sandstone, which, though greatly too 



