-floor,
over which the ligneous productions of the neighboring lands, washed
down by the streams, grew heavy and sank, and on which the belemnite
dropped its spindle and the ammonite its shell. The idea imparted of
_old_ Scotland to the geologist here,--of Scotland, proudly,
aristocratically, supereminently old,--for it can call Mont Blanc a mere
upstart, and Dhawalageri, with its twenty-eight thousand feet of
elevation, a heady fellow of yesterday,--is not that of a land settling
down by the head, like a foundering vessel, but of a land whose hills
and islands, like its great aristocratic families, have arisen from the
level in very various ages, and under the operation of circumstances
essentially diverse.

We left behind us the islands of Lunga, Luing, and Seil, and entered the
narrow Sound of Kerrera, with its border of Old Red conglomerate resting
on the clay-slate of the district. We had passed Esdaile near enough to
see the workmen employed in the quarries of the island, so extensively
known in commerce for their roofing slate, and several small vessels
beside them, engaged in loading; and now we had got a step higher in the
geological scale, and could mark from the deck the peculiar character of
the conglomerate, which, in cliffs washed by the sea, when the binding
matrix is softer than the pebbles which it encloses, roughens, instead
of being polished, by the action of the waves, and which, along the
eastern side of the Sound here, seems as if formed of cannon-shot, of
all sizes, embedded in cement. The Sound terminates in the beautiful bay
of Oban, so quiet and sheltered, with its two island breakwaters in
front,--its semi-circular sweep of hill behind,--its long white-walled
village, bent like a bow, to conform to the inflection of the
shore,--its mural precipices behind, tapestried with ivy,--its rich
patches of green pasture,--its bosky dingles of shrub and tree,--and,
perched on the seaward promontory, its old, time-eaten keep. "In one
part of the harbor of Oban," says Dr. James Anderson, in his "Practical
Treatise on Peat Moss," (1794), "where the depth of the sea is about
twenty fathoms, the bottom is found to consist of quick peat, which
affords no safe anchorage." I made inquiry at the captain of the
steamer, regarding this submerged deposit, but he had never heard of it.
There are, however, many such on the coasts of both Britain and Ireland.
We staid at Oban for several hours, waiting the arrival of