to acquaint
myself with the fossiliferous deposits of Scotland, I have travelled,
hammer in hand, during the last nine years, over fully ten thousand
miles; nor has the work been in the least one of dry labor,--not more so
than that of the angler, or grouse-shooter, or deer-stalker: it has
occupied the mere leisure interstices of a somewhat busy life, and has
served to relieve its toils. I have succeeded, however, in
accomplishing but little: besides, what is discovery to-day will be but
rudimentary fact to the tyro-geologists of the future. But if much has
not been done, I have at least the consolation of George Buchanan, when,
according to Melvill, "fand sitting in his chair, teiching his young man
that servit him in his chalmer to spell a, b, ab; e, b, eb. 'Better
this,' quoth he, 'nor stelling sheipe.'"

The sun broke out in great beauty after the shower, glistening on a
thousand minute runnels that came streaming down the precipices, and
revealing, through the thin vapory haze, the horizontal lines of strata
that bar the hill-sides, like courses of ashlar in a building. I failed,
however, to detect, amid the general many-pointed glitter by which the
blue gauze-like mist was bespangled, the light of the great carbuncle
for which the Ward Hill has long been famous,--that wondrous gem,
according to Sir Walter, "that, though it gleams ruddy as a furnace to
them that view it from beneath, ever becomes invisible to him whose
daring foot scales the precipices whence it darts its splendor." The
Hill of Hoy is, however, not the only one in the kingdom that, according
to tradition, bears a jewel in its forehead. The "great diamond" of the
Northern Sutor was at one time scarce less famous than the carbuncle of
the Ward Hill. "I have been oftener than once interrogated on the western
coast of Scotland regarding the diamond rock of Cromarty; and have been
told, by an old campaigner who fought under Abercrombie, that he has
listened to the familiar story of its diamond amid the sand wastes of
Egypt." But the diamond has long since disappeared; and we now see only
the rock. Unlike the carbuncle of Hoy, it was never seen by day; though
often, says the legend, the benighted boatmen has gazed, from amid the
darkness, as he came rowing along the shore, on its clear beacon-like
flame, which, streaming from the precipice, threw a fiery strip across
the water; and often have the mariners of other countries inquired
whether the light whi