286 GEOLOGICAL LETTERS AND NOTES 



border. If you can find time during these long evenings, pray let 

 me hear from you, and tell me what you have been doing the last 

 autumn, what progress yon have made with your County Map, how 

 near you have approached the centre of the earth, how far you have 

 ascended above the surface etc., etc. You see I have given you 

 plenty of topics for twenty letters. 



As far as regards myself, what shall I say ? truly the best way is 

 to begin with the beginniug. Before yon reach Burnmonth the Red 

 Sandstone is vertical. It has been sent heels over head by the Por- 

 phyry of the neighbouring hills, and in the steep road leading down 

 to the seaside there is a magnificient dyke thro' the Graywacke. 



My journey up the Tweed was on the whole as delightful as 

 external circumstances conld make it, and I think I understand its 

 geology. But the flow of spirits arising from entire health was 

 wanting. I was attacked with a nasty affection of the kidneys which 

 I could not shake off, and as it was a new complaint I was perhaps 

 more frightened than hurt. After spending two days with Lockhart," 

 and part of one with Sir Walter,'^ I fairly cut and ran, and took 

 shelter in a friend's house near Carlisle. From this house I made 

 one excursion to Lord Carlisle's coal pits near the end of the Crossfell 

 range. The beds are three or four feet thick, and the coal of good 

 quality. Tho' much higher than the Berwick beds they are low in 

 the Carboniferous system, being decidedly among the lead measures 



of the I could not however make out their exact 



place, and as for information, you might just as well have enquired 

 of the editor of Moore's Almanack. I then went to a friend's house 

 near Whitehaven and endeavoured to do some work there, but 

 it was sorely against the grain. At length I fairly struck and went 

 to my brother's on the edge of Westmorland, with whom I remained 

 about six or eight weeks. After submitting to most severe regimen, 

 and cooking my food in the kitchen of Esculapius for a month — a 

 confounded bad cook by the way — I was once more in walking trim, 

 and I contrived to make a very detailed section thro' the Carbon- 

 iferous mountains extending from Penigent near Settle to the foot 

 of Stainmoor. This I am employed in concocting into a paper for 

 the Geological Society. I have also got up a half crazy hypothetical 

 memoir respecting some of the great faults which have separated the 

 cluster of the Lake mountains from the great central Carboniferous 

 chain. I have sent these out as a kind of light troops to skirmish, 

 before I come to closer quarters with the hard tough formations of 

 the North. During last term my Cambridge lectures and a journey 

 to town every other week found me employment enough. At our 



^ Mr J. G. Lockhart, son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott. 

 "^ Sir Walter Scott of Abbotsford, the celebrated novelist. Sir Walter 

 died about a year after Professor Sedgewick's visit here recorded. 



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