478 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



deposit of the Lower Old Red in this locality, out of which 

 the mountains of Hoy have been scooped, once overlaid the 

 flagstones of all Orkney, and stretched on and away to Dun- 

 net Head, Tarbet Ness, and the Black Isle ; and yet such is 

 the story, variously authenticated, to which their nearly hori- 

 zontal strata and their abrupt precipices lend their testimony. 

 In no case has this superior deposit of the formation of the 

 Coccosteus been known to furnish a single fossil ; nor did it 

 yield me on this occasion, among the Hills of Hoy, what it 

 had denied me everywhere else on every former one. My 

 search, however, was by no means either very prolonged or 

 very careful. 



I found I had still several hours of day-light before me ; 

 and these I spent, after my return on a rough tumbling sea 

 to Stromness, in a second survey of the coast, westwards from 

 the granitic axis of the island, to the bishop's palace, and the 

 ichthyolitic quarry beyond. From this point of view the 

 high terminal Hill of Hoy, towards the west, presents what 

 is really a striking profile of Sir Walter Scott, sculptured in 

 the rock front by the storms of ages, on so immense a scale, 

 that the Colossus of Rhodes, Pharos and all, would scarce 

 have furnished materials enough to supply it with a nose. 

 There are such asperities in the outline as one might expect 

 in that of a rudely modelled bust, the work of a master, from 

 which, in his fiery haste, he had not detached the superfluous 

 clay; but these interfere in no degree with the fidelity, I 

 had almost said spirit, of the likeness. It seems well, as it 

 must have waited for thousands of years ere it became the 

 portrait it now is, that the human profile, which it preceded 

 so long, and without which it would have lacked the element 

 of individual truth, should have been that of Sir Walter. 

 Amid scenes so heightened in interest by his genius as those 

 of Orkney, he is entitled to a monument. To the critical 

 student of the philosophy and history of poetic invention it 



