y beyond the reach
of the mere dealer in fiction. The master of one hapless vessel, a young
man, had brought his wife and only child with him on the voyage destined
to terminate so mournfully; and when the vessel first struck, he had
rushed down to the cabin to bring them both on deck, as their only
chance of safety. He had, however, unthinkingly shut the cabin-door
after him; a second tremendous blow, as not unfrequently happens in
such cases, so affected the framework of the sides and deck, that the
door was jammed fast in its frame. And long ere it could be cut
open,--for no human hand could unfasten it,--the vessel had filled to
the beams, and neither the master nor his wife and child were ever seen
more. In another ship, wrecked within a cable-length of the beach, the
mate, a man of Herculean proportions, and a skilful swimmer, stripped
and leaped overboard, not doubting his ability to reach the shore. But
he had failed to remark what in such circumstances is too often
forgotten, that the element on which he flung himself, beaten into foam
against the shallows, was, according to Mr. Bremner's shrewd definition,
not water, but a mixture of water and air, specifically lighter than the
human body; and so at the shore, though so close at hand, he never
arrived, disappearing almost at the vessel's side. "The ground was
rough," said my informant, "and the sea ran mountains high; and I can
scarce tell you how I shuddered on finding, long ere his corpse was
thrown up, his two eyes detached from their sockets, staring from a
wreath of sea-weed." There is in this last circumstance, horrible enough
surely for the wildest German tale ever written, a unique singularity,
which removes it beyond the reach of invention.

At my inn I found a pressing invitation awaiting me from the Free Church
manse, which I was urged to make my home so long as I remained in that
part of the country. A geologist, however, fairly possessed by the
enthusiasm without which weak man can accomplish nothing,--whether he be
a deer-stalker or mammoth-fancier, or angle for live salmon or dead
Pterichthyes,--has a trick of forgetting the right times of dining and
taking tea, and of throwing the burden of his bodily requirements on
early extempore breakfasts and late suppers; and so reporting myself a
man of irregular habits and bad hours, whose movements could not in the
least be depended upon, I had to decline the hospitality which would
fain have adopted m