151 



observable. Professor Jameson was the first to describe this 

 interesting locality, which he does with great fullness and accuracy. 

 He gives also a figure illustrating the position of the secondary or 

 cross veins (Min. of Scot. Isl., vol. i., pp. 17 and 102). 



KING'S COTE is named from King Robert Bruce having landed 

 here from Eathlin in 1307, and remained a short time, according to 

 a tradition which there is no reason to doubt. The caves are in 

 soft yellow sandstone, and are the most capacious in the island. 

 Certain characters upon the roof seem mere unmeaning scratches, 

 no one at least has yet deciphered them. In the bay south of the 

 caves, veins of pitchstone are seen in the cliffs, altering the structure 

 of the sandstone. On the summit of King's Hill, over the great 

 porphyry dike, noticed in the last Art., we observed many granite 

 boulders, chiefly of the fine variety. Among these one block was 

 most distinctly marked with glacial striae. 



DETJMADOON. Approaching this grand fa$ade of columns we 

 find on the shore a great dike of pitchstone porphyry tilting up the 

 sandstone at a high angle ; but its extension is not traceable. The 

 columnar range of Drumadoon, eighty feet in height, is composed of 

 a similar porphyry, almost exactly the same in structure as that 

 already described on the east coast (Art. 77). The pillars rest on a 

 laminar stratum, consisting of the base of the porphyry without the 

 crystals, and resembling a clay stone or metamorphic sandstone. 

 South of this there are some fine dikes. The coast scenery here is 

 most beautiful, and will bear comparison with any other in the 

 island. The botany of the sands is rich. On the summit of the 

 cliffs there are remains of extensive fortifications and rude dwellings, 

 the history of which is unknown. It has been conjectured that 

 these works, and those of a similar kind at Torcastle, near 

 Slaodridh, which are the only remains of the kind on the west 

 coast, were erected as a defence against an Irish invasion from 

 Cantire about the beginning of the sixth century; and that those 

 of the east coast, to the most remarkable of which, Dun-fion, we 

 have already alluded, probably existed before the Roman invasion, 

 when the Damnii, tribes of the mainland of Ayrshire, were at hostile 

 feud with the Epidii of the island and the opposite coast of Argyll. 

 See a paper by Mr. M c Arthur, of Partick, in Ed. New Phil. Jour., 

 vol. ix., Jan., 1859. 



BLACK- WATEE-FOOT. There are here numerous dikes of green- 

 stone, and a great bed of hard claystone, which upturns the ends of 

 the sandstone strata where they abut against it. In some places 

 the sandstone is greatly altered. The curved bands of claystone at 



