RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 483 



next morning to a rather late breakfast, that he had been out 

 among the Stromness fishermen, and had returned somewhat 

 chafed. Not a single boatman could he find in a populous 

 seaport town that would undertake to carry him to the 

 Dwarfie Stone on the Sabbath, a fact, to their credit, which 

 it is but simple justice to state. I saw him afterwards in the 

 Free Church, listening attentively to a thoroughly earnest 

 and excellent discourse, by the Disruption minister of the 

 parish, Mr Learmonth ; and in the course of the evening he 

 dropped in for a short time to the Free Church Sabbath- 

 school, where he took his seat beside one of the teachers, as 

 if curious to ascertain more in detail the character of the in- 

 struction which had operated so influentially on the boatmen, 

 and which he had seen telling from the pulpit with such evi- 

 dent effect. What would not his country now give, now, 

 while drifting loose from all its old moorings, full on the 

 perils of a lee shore, for the anchor of a faith equally stead- 

 fast ! He was a Lutheran, he told me ; but, as is too com- 

 mon in Germany, his actual beliefs appeared to be very con- 

 siderably at variance with his hereditary creed. The creed 

 was a tolerably sound one, but the living belief regarding it 

 seemed to do little more than take cognizance of what te 

 deemed the fact of its death. 



I had carried with me a letter of introduction to Mr Wil- 

 liam Watt, to whom I have already had occasion to refer as 

 an intelligent geologist ; but the letter I had no opportunity 

 of delivering. Mr Watt had learned, however, of my being 

 in the neighbourhood, and kindly walked into Stromness, 

 some six or eight miles, on the morning of Monday, to meet 

 with me, bringing me a few of his rarer specimens. One of 

 the number, a minute ichthyolite, about three inches in 

 length, I was at first disposed to set down as new, but I 

 have since come to regard it as simply an imperfectly-pre- 

 served specimen of a Cromarty and Morayshire species, the 



