y legibly written, and we have but to
run our eye over the characters and read. An extended sea-bottom,
composed of Old Red Sandstone, already tilted up by previous
convulsions, so that the strata presented their edges, tier beyond tier,
like roofing slate laid aslant on a floor, became a centre of Plutonic
activity. The molten trap broke through at various times, and presenting
various appearances, but in nearly the same centre; here existing as an
augitic rock, there as a syenite, yonder as a basalt or amygdaloid. At
one place it uptilted the sandstone; at another it overflowed it; the
dark central masses raised their heads above the surface, higher and
higher with every earthquake throe from beneath; till at length the
gigantic Ben More attained to its present altitude of two thousand three
hundred feet over the sea-level, and the sandstone, borne up from
beneath like floating sea-wrack on the back of a porpoise, reached in
long outside bands its elevation of from six to eight hundred. And such
is the piece of history, composed in silent but expressive language, and
inscribed in the old geological character, on the rocks of Rum.

The wind lowered and the rain ceased during the night, and the morning
of Monday was clear, bracing, and breezy. The island of Rum is chiefly
famous among mineralogists for its heliotropes or bloodstones; and we
proposed devoting the greater part of the day to an examination of the
hill of Scuir More, in which they occur, and which lies on the opposite
side of the island, about eight miles from the mooring ground of the
Betsey. Ere setting out, however, I found time enough, by rising some
two or three hours before breakfast, to explore the Red Sandstones on
the southern side of the loch. They lie in this bar of the frame,--to
return once more to my old illustration,--as if it had been cut out of a
piece of cross-grained deal, in which the annular bands, instead of
ranging lengthwise, ran diagonally from side to side; stratum leans over
stratum, dipping towards the west at an angle of about thirty degrees;
and as in a continuous line of more than seven miles there seem no
breaks or repetitions in the strata, the thickness of the deposit must
be enormous,--not less, I should suppose, than from six to eight
thousand feet. Like the Lower Old Red Sandstones of Cromarty and Moray,
the red arenaceous strata occur in thick beds, separated from each other
by bands of a grayish-colored stratified clay,