At Duns James Geikie made a number of friends, and indeed throughout his work in the Border counties he seems to have met with much hospitality, and this even before his sojourn in Jedburgh led to his acquaintanceship with the family in which he found his wife, and to the region becoming a second homeland for him. During his stay at Duns the book was progressing steadily, despite his hard work in the field. In June he was writing to Mr Horne and Prof. Ramsay for information in regard to certain special points, and the latter was very anxious for James Geikie to accompany him on a geologising holiday to the Rhine, to investigate some disputed questions. This proposal was not accepted, however, apparently because James Geikie was dissatisfied with the only information he could obtain about glacial deposits on the south side of the Alps, and made up his mind to seek satisfaction by a personal tour to the district. This trip is mentioned in a letter written to Dr Grossart from Kelso on 20th July, in which he says:-- My summer has been spent in a ram-sham desultory sort of way. I have hammered out the geological structure of the Cheviots, which is something interesting and new, and I have also got some interesting glacial results. I have had a hard time of it with the lawyers though, having been summoned twice to London to give evidence before Committees of Parliament about that confounded Edinburgh water of which every honest man in Edinburgh is heartily sick. I know I am. But that is over now. In a fortnight I start for Italy, and am going to make a long tour of it: Paris, Geneva, Martigny, Aosta, Turin, Bologna, Verona, Venice, Trieste, and Vienna, then back through the Tyrol and down the Rhine to Rotterdam, Amsterdam, etc., and home. I shall be a fortnight or three weeks scouring along the foot of the Piedmontese Alps looking at the glacial things. My book is finished and off to the printers at last. But I fear that it will be delayed by the engraver, who does not get on with the illustrations as fast as I could wish. Anyhow I hope I shall be able to send you a copy this winter. No detailed account of the Italian trip has been preserved, but various letters make allusions to it. Thus writing to Mr Horne from Jedburgh on 17th September, he speaks of his visit to Lake Como, ending up:--“Alas! all the sunshine is over, and here I am in dull Scotch autumn, thinking sadly that the world and one’s destinies are not more amenable to one’s wishes. But Scotland is not so bad after all.” His next visit to the lake was made in company with his wife and her sister, and during the trip he told how on his first visit he had lost himself in the Alps at dark, and after some difficulty and various adventures reached a little hamlet. Here there was no inn, but the priest of the village kindly put him up for the night, the two conversing in Latin in default of any other means of communication.