ills of Skye seem
leaning against those of the mainland: and the tide-buffeted steamer
looked this morning as if boring her way into the earth, like a
disinterred mole, only at a rate vastly slower. First, however, with a
progress resembling that of the minute-hand of a clock, the bows
disappeared amid the heath, then the midships, then the quarter-deck and
stern, and then, last of all, the red tip of the sun-brightened
union-jack that streamed gaudily behind. I had at least two hours
before me ere the Betsey might attempt weighing anchor; and, that they
might leave some mark, I went and spent them ashore in the opening of
Glenelg,--a gneiss district, nearly identical in structure with the
district of Knock and Isle Ornsay. The upper part of the valley is bare
and treeless, but not such its character where it opens to the sea; the
hills are richly wooded; and cottages, and cornfields, with here and
there a reach of the lively little river, peep out from among the trees.
A group of tall roofless buildings, with a strong wall in front, form
the central point in the landscape; these are the dismantled Berera
Barracks, built, like the line of forts in the great Caledonian
Valley,--Fort George, Fort Augustus, and Fort William,--to overawe the
Highlands at a time when the loyalty of the Highlander pointed to a king
beyond the water; but all use for them has long gone by, and they now
lie in dreary ruin,--mere sheltering places for the toad and the bat. I
found in a loose silt on the banks of the river, at some little distance
below tide-mark, a bed of shells and coral, which might belong, I at
first supposed, to some secondary formation, but which I ascertained, on
examination, to be a mere recent deposit, not so old by many centuries
as our last raised sea-beaches. There occurs in various localities on
these western coasts, especially on the shores of the island of Pabba, a
sprig coral, considerably larger in size than any I have elsewhere seen
in Scotland; and it was from its great abundance in this bed of silt
that I was at first led to deem the deposit an ancient one.

We weighed anchor about noon, and entered the opening of Kyle Rhea.
Vessel after vessel, to the number of eight or ten in all, had been
arriving in the course of the morning, and dropping anchor, nearer the
opening or farther away, each according to its sailing ability, to await
the turn of the tide; and we now found ourselves one of the components
of a lit