been frozen over; and then, from the evaporation
so common in protracted frosts, the water had shrunk, and the sheet of
ice which had sunk down over the central portion of the pond exhibited
what a geologist would term very considerable marks of disturbance among
the boulders at the edges. Over one sharp-backed boulder there lay a
sheet tilted up like the lid of a chest half-raised; and over another
boulder immediately behind it there lay another uptilted sheet, like the
lid of a second half-open chest; and in both sheets, the edges, lying in
nearly parallel lines, presented a range of miniature cliffs to the
shore. Now, in the two uptilted ice-sheets of this pond I recognized a
model of the fundamental Oolitic deposits Rasay and Skye. The mainland
of Scotland had its representative in the crisp snow-covered shore of
the pond, with its belt of faded sedges; the place of Rasay was
indicated by the inner, that of Skye by the outer boulder; while the
ice-sheets, with their shoreward-turned line of cliffs, represented the
Oolitic beds, that turn to the mainland their dizzy range of precipices,
varying from six to eight hundred feet in height, and then, sloping
outwards and downwards, disappear under mountain wildernesses of
overlying trap. And it was along a portion of the range of cliff that
forms the outermost of the two uptilted lines, and which presents in
this district of Skye a frontage of nearly twenty continuous miles to
the long Sound of Rasay, that my to-day's course of exploration lay.
From the top of the cliff the surface slopes downwards for about two
miles into the interior, like the half-raised chest-lid of my
illustration sloping towards the hinges, or the uptilted ice-table of
the boulder sloping towards the centre of the pond; and the depression
behind forms a flat moory valley, full fifteen miles in length, occupied
by a chain of dark bogs and treeless lochans. A long line of trap-hills
rises over it, in one of which, considerably in advance of the others, I
recognized the Storr of Skye, famous among lovers of the picturesque for
its strange group of mingled pinnacles and towers; while directly
crossing into the valley from the Sound, and then running southwards for
about two miles along its bottom, is the noble sea-arm, Loch Portree, in
which, as indicated by the name (the King's Port) a Scottish king of the
olden time, in his voyage round his dominions, cast anchor. The opening
of the loch is singularly