embers--Knock Farril and its Vitrified Fort--The old Highlanders
an observant race--The Vein of Silver--Summit of Knock Farril--Mode
of accounting for the Luxuriance of Herbage in the ancient Scottish
Fortalices--The green Graves of Culloden--Theories respecting the
Vitrification of the Hill-forts--Combined Theories of Williams and
Mackenzie probably give the correct account--The Author's
Explanation--Transformations of Fused Rocks--Strathpeffer--The
Spa--Permanent Odoriferous Qualities of an ancient Sea-bottom
converted into Rock--Mineral Springs of the Spa--Infusion of the
powdered rock a substitute--Belemnite Water--The lively young
Lady's Comments--A befogged Country seen from a
hill-top--Ben-Wevis--Journey to Evanton--A Geologist's
Night-mare--The Route Home--Ruins of Craighouse--Incompatibility of
Tea and Ghosts--End of the Tour.

I was once more on the Great Conglomerate,--here, as elsewhere, a
picturesque, boldly-featured deposit, traversed by narrow, mural-sided
valleys, and tempested by bluff abrupt eminences. Its hills are greatly
less confluent than those of most of the other sedimentary formations of
Scotland; and their insulated summits, recommended by their steep sides
and limited areas to the old savage Vaubans of the Highlands, furnished,
ere the historic eras began, sites for not a few of the ancient
hill-forts of the country. The vitrified fort of Craig Phadrig, of the
Ord Hill of Kessock, and of Knock Farril,--two of the number, the first
and last, being the most celebrated erections of their kind in the north
of Scotland,--were all formed on hills of the Great Conglomerate. The
Conglomerate exists here as a sort of miniature Highlands, set down at
the northern side of a large angular bay of Palaeozoic rock, which
indents the _true_ Highlands of the country, and which exhibits in its
central area a prolongation of the long moory ridge of the Black Isle,
formed, as I have already had occasion to remark, of an _upper_ deposit
of the same lower division of the Old Red,--a deposit as noticeable for
affecting a confluent, rectilinear character in its elevations, as the
Conglomerate is remarkable for exhibiting a detached and undulatory one.
Exactly the same features are presented by the same deposits in the
neighborhood of Inverness; the _undulatory_ Conglomerate composing, to
the north and west of the town, the picturesque wavy ridge compr