walk. These excavations have been designated, from time
immemorial, by the neighboring town's-people, as "the Danes;" but
whether the name be, as is most probable, merely a corruption of an
appropriate enough Saxon word, "the dens," or derived, as a vague
tradition is said to testify, from the ages of Danish invasion, it is
not quite the part of the geologist to determine. It may be worth
mentioning, however, from its bearing on the point, that there are two
excavations in the boulder-clay near Cromarty, one of which has been
long known by the name of "the Morial's Den," while the other, greatly
smaller in size, rejoices in the double diminutive of "the Little
Dennie." For an hour or so the Danes proved agreeable though somewhat
silent companions; and then, climbing the opposite side of the valley, I
gained the high road, and, walking on to Cromarty, found myself once
more among "the old familiar faces."

In a few days the storm blew by; and as the prolonged rains had cleared
out the deep ravines of the district, and given to the boulder-clay in
which they are scooped a freshness in its section analogous to fresh
fracture in rocks of harder consistency, I availed myself of the
facilities afforded me in consequence, for exploring it once more. It
has long constituted one of the hardest of the many riddles with which
our Scottish deposits exercise the patience and ingenuity of the
geologist. I remember a time when, after passing a day under its barren
_scaurs_, or hid in its precipitous ravines, I used to feel in the
evening as if I had been travelling under the cloud of night, and had
seen nothing. It was a morose and taciturn companion, and had no
speculation in it. I might stand in front of its curved precipices, red,
yellow or gray, according to the prevailing average color of the rocks
on which it rests, and mark their water-rolled boulders, of all
qualities and sizes, sticking out in bold relief from the surface, like
the rock-like protuberances that roughen the rustic basements of the
architect, from the line of the wall; but I had no _open sesame_ to form
vistas through them into the recesses of the past. I saw merely the
stiff pastry matrix of which they are composed, and the inclosed
pebbles. But the boulder-clay has of late become more sociable; and,
though with much hesitancy and irresolution, like old Mr. Spectator on
the first formal opening of his mouth,--a consequence, doubtless, in
both cases of previous