what was the more serious part of the business, the person he had given
the seat to had taken possession of the gig; and so we had to compound
the matter by carrying a passenger additional. The incident is scarce
worth relating; but the postmaster was so vehement and terrible, so
defiant of us all,--post, stabler, and simple passenger,--and so justly
impressed with the importance of being postmaster of Portree, that, as I
am in the way of describing rare specimens at any rate, I must refer to
him among the rest, as if he had been one of the minor carnivorae of a
Skye deposit,--a cuttlefish, that preyed on the weaker molluscs, or a
hungry polypus, terrible among the animalculae.

We drove heavily, and had to dismount and walk afoot over every steeper
acclivity; but I carried my hammer, and only grieved that in some one or
two localities the road should have been so level. I regretted it in
especial on the southern and eastern side of Loch Sligachan, where I
could see from my seat, as we drove past, the dark blue rocks in the
water-courses on each side the road, studded over with that
characteristic shell of the Lias, the _Gryphaea incurva_, and that the
dry-stone fences in the moor above exhibit fossils that might figure in
a museum. But we rattled by. At Broadford, twenty-five miles from
Portree, and nine miles from Isle Ornsay, I partook of a hospitable meal
in the house of an acquaintance; and in little more than two hours after
was with my friend the minister at Isle Ornsay. The night wore
pleasantly by. Mrs. Swanson, a niece of the late Dr. Smith of
Campbelton, so well known for his Celtic researches and his exquisite
translations of ancient Celtic poetry, I found deeply versed in the
legendary lore of the Highlands. The minister showed me a fine specimen
of Pterichthys which I had disinterred for him, out of my first
discovered fossiliferous deposit of the Old Red Sandstone, exactly
thirteen years before, and full seven years ere I had introduced the
creature to the notice of Agassiz. And the minister's daughter, a
little chubby girl of three summers, taking part in the general
entertainment, strove to make her Gaelic sound as like English as she
could, in my especial behalf. I remembered, as I listened to the
unintelligible prattle of the little thing, unprovided with a word of
English, that just eighteen years before, her father had had no Gaelic;
and wondered what he would have thought, could he have been told,