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bay ; towards the north it falls suddenly in steep cliffs and terraces. 

 As we pass up the easy ascent striking views open southwards. 

 Starting suddenly from the water's edge to the height of 1 ,020 feet, 

 Holy Isle, with its encircling sea line, fills the foreground grandly. 

 The bay, with its fine double sweep to King's Cross point, its 

 wooded banks, debouching glens, and background of dark hills, 

 forms the right of the picture ; to the left the glassy sea sleeps 

 in the sunlight, dotted with small white moving specks, and 

 bounded by the winding line of the Ayrshire coast, with promontory, 

 creek, and bay, along which the eye may range from Ardrossan 

 heights to the Mull of Galloway. The scene is singularly sweet and 

 picturesque ; without Holy Isle as an integrant part it would want 

 character : this stamps upon it peculiar features. The northern 

 mountains, so essential and expressive in most Arran landscapes, are 

 here hidden from us ; but when we gain the highest edge of the 

 ridge, they burst upon us with startling suddenness in an aspect 

 quite new. They are grouped in a way not seen from any other 

 point, and their jagged profiles are thrown into lines of singular 

 boldness. Not less new and striking is the aspect of the lovely 

 bay, with its noble castle and hanging woods, of the glens into 

 whose far depths the eye can reach, and of the " cottage homes" 

 nestling amid groups of trees, in shelter of the hills and sloping 

 banks which enclose the smiling fields of Brodick plain. Often as 

 we have come to the edge of this ridge by the same route, we have 

 always felt the same delightful surprise when the scene first burst 

 upon us. 



77. This ridge consists chiefly of sandstone. Trap rocks form a 

 thin capping along its highest part ; they extend a little way down 

 the southern slope, thickening as they descend, but along the 

 highest ridge are so thin that sandstone occupies in some places 

 depressions in the ridge ; and the trap occurs only on the isolated 

 tabular knolls into which the ridge is cut up, especially towards the 

 west. The trap consists of felspar and augite mainly, with imbedded 

 zeolites. MacCulloch designates it augite rock ; but hornblende and 

 iron also occur. The sandstone close to its junction with the green- 

 stone of the summit is highly metamorphic, resembling a quartz 

 rock. Along the steep northern front also, west of Dun-Dhu, beds 

 of clinkstone crop out in various places, at different heights. These 

 are either of truly igneous origin, or are metamorphic sandstones, 

 altered by whin dikes, of which there are several, or by the near 

 proximity of the great igneous masses greenstones, porphyries, and 

 pitchstone which pervade the sandstone in this quarter. The asso- 



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