nds
similarly evoked from a highly waxed floor, or a board strewed over with
ground rosin. The sharp shrill note follows the stroke, altogether
independently of the grains driven into the air. My omission may serve
to show how much safer it is for those minds of the observant order,
that serve as hands and eyes to the reflective ones, to prefer incurring
the risk of being even tediously minute in their descriptions, to the
danger of being inadequately brief in them. But, alas! for purposes of
exact science, rarely are verbal descriptions otherwise than inadequate.
Let us look, for example, at the various accounts given us of _Jabel
Nakous_. There are strange sounds heard proceeding from a hill in
Arabia, and various travellers set themselves to describe them. The
tones are those of the convent _Nakous_, says the wild Arab;--there must
be a convent buried under the hill. More like the sounds of a
humming-top, remarks a phlegmatic German traveller. Not quite like them,
says an English one in an Oxford gown;--they resemble rather the
striking of a clock. Nay, listen just a little longer and more
carefully, says a second Englishman, with epaulettes on his shoulder:
"the sounds at their commencement may be compared to the faint strains
of an Aeolian harp when its strings first catch the breeze," but anon, as
the agitation of the sand increases, they "more nearly resemble those
produced by drawing the moistened fingers over glass." Not at all,
exclaims the warlike Zahor Ed-din Muhammed Baber, twirling his whiskers:
"I know a similar hill in the country towards Hindu-kush: it is the
sound of drums and nagarets that issues from the sand." All we really
know of this often-described music of the desert, after reading all the
descriptions, is, that its tones bear certain analogies to certain other
tones,--analogies that seem stronger in one direction to one ear, and
stronger in another direction to an ear differently constituted, but
which do not exactly resemble any other sounds in nature. The strange
music of _Jabel Nakous_, as a combination of tones, is essentially
unique.

CHAPTER V.

Trap-Dykes--"Cotton Apples"--Alternation of Lacustrine with Marine
Remains--Analogy from the Beds of Esk--Aspect of the Island on its
narrow Front--The Puffin--Ru-Stoir--Development of Old Red
Sandstone--Striking Columnar character of Ru-Stoir--Discovery of
Reptilian Remains--John Stewart's wonder at the Bones in