andstone one, and
exhibited in the section of the furze-covered bank which it presented, a
bar of deep red stone beneath, and a bar of pale red clay above. Both
deposits belonged to formations equally unknown, at the time, to the
geologist. The deep-red stone formed part of an upper member of the
Lower Old Red Sandstone; the pale red clay, which was much roughened by
rounded pebbles, and much cracked and fissured by the recent frosts, was
a bed of the boulder clay. Save for the wholesome restraint that
confined me for day after day to this spot, I should perhaps have paid
little attention to either. Mineralogy, in its first rudiments, had
early awakened my curiosity, just as it never fails to awaken, with its
gems and its metals, and its hard glittering rocks, of which tools may
be made, the curiosity of infant tribes and nations. But in unsightly
masses of mechanical origin, whether sandstone or clay, I could take no
interest; just as infant societies take no interest in such masses, and
so fail to know anything of geology; and it was not until I had learned
to detect among the ancient sandstone strata of this quarry exactly the
same phenomena as those which I used to witness in my walks with Uncle
Sandy in the ebb, that I was fairly excited to examine and inquire. It
was the necessity which made me a quarrier that taught me to be a
geologist. Further, I soon found that there was much to be enjoyed in a
life of labour. A taste for the beauties of natural scenery is of itself
a never-failing spring of delight; and there was scarce a day in which I
wrought in the open air, during this period, in which I did not
experience its soothing and exhilarating influence. Well has it been
said by the poet Keats, that "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever." I
owed much to the upper reaches of the Cromarty Firth, as seen, when we
sat down to our mid-day meal, from the gorge of the quarry, with their
numerous rippling currents, that, in the calm, resembled streamlets
winding through a meadow, and their distant grey promontories tipped
with villages that brightened in the sunshine; while, pale in the
background, the mighty hills, still streaked with snow, rose high over
bay and promontory, and gave dignity and power to the scene.

Still, however, with all my enjoyments, I had to suffer some of the
evils of excessive toil. Though now seventeen, I was still seven inches
short of my ultimate stature; and my frame, cast more at the time in