sandstone. Such is the appearance which it presents where
weathered; but its general aspect is that of a porphyritic trap. Be it
what it may, the fact is not at all affected, that the shores, wherever
it occurs on this tract of insular coast, are strewed with reptilian
remains of the Oolite.

The day passed pleasantly in the work of exploration and discovery; the
sun had already declined far in the west; and, bearing with us our
better fossils, we set out, on our return, by the opposite route to that
along the Bay of Laig, which we had now thrice walked over. The grassy
talus so often mentioned continues to run on the eastern side of the
island for about six miles, between the sea and the inaccessible rampart
of precipice behind. It varies in breadth from about two to four hundred
yards; the rampart rises over it from three to five hundred feet; and a
noble expanse of sea, closed in the distance by a still nobler curtain
of blue hills, spreads away from its base: and it was along this grassy
talus that our homeward road lay. Let the Edinburgh reader imagine the
fine walk under Salisbury Crags lengthened some twenty times,--the line
of precipices above heightened some five or six times,--the gravelly
slope at the base not much increased in altitude, but developed
transversely into a green undulating belt of hilly pasture, with here
and there a sunny slope level enough for the plough, and here and there
a rough wilderness of detached crags and broken banks; let him further
imagine the sea sweeping around the base of this talus, with the nearest
opposite land--bold, bare and undulating atop--some six or eight miles
distant; and he will have no very inadequate idea of the peculiar and
striking scenery through which, this evening, our homeward route lay. I
have scarce ever walked over a more solitary tract. The sea shuts it in
on the one hand, and the rampart of rocks on the other; there occurs
along its entire length no other human dwelling than a lonely summer
shieling; for full one-half the way we saw no trace of man; and the
wildness of the few cattle which we occasionally startled in the
hollows showed us that man was no very frequent visitor among them.
About half an hour before sunset we reached the midway shieling.

Rarely have I seen a more interesting spot, or one that, from its utter
loneliness, so impressed the imagination. The shieling, a rude
low-roofed erection of turf and stone, with a door in the centre som