There are, I am convinced, few deaths less painful than some of those untimely and violent ones at which we are most disposed to shudder. We wrought so hard at pail and pump,--the occasion, too, was one of so much excitement, and tended so thoroughly to awaken our energies,--that I was conscious, during the whole time, of an exhilaration of spirits rather pleasurable than otherwise. My fancy was active, and active, strange as the fact may seem, chiefly with ludicrous objects. Sailors tell regarding the flying Dutchman, that he was a hard-headed captain of Amsterdam, who, in a bad night and head wind, when all the other vessels of his fleet were falling back on the port they had recently quitted, obstinately swore that, rather than follow their example, he would keep beating about till the day of judgment. And the Dutch captain, says the story, was just taken at his word, and is beating about still. When matters were at the worst with us, we got under the lea of the point of Sleat. The promontory interposed between us and the roll of the sea; the wind gradually took off; and, after having seen the water gaining fast and steadily on us for considerably more than an hour, we, in turn, began to gain on the water. It came ebbing out of drawers and beds, and sunk downwards along pannels and table-legs,--a second retiring deluge; and we entered Isle Ornsay with the cabin-floor all visible, and less than two feet water in the hold. On the following morning, taking leave of my friend the minister, I set off, on my return homewards, by the Skye steamer, and reached Edinburgh on the evening of Saturday. RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST; OR, TEN THOUSAND MILES OVER THE FOSSILIFEROUS DEPOSITS OF SCOTLAND. RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST; OR, TEN THOUSAND MILES OVER THE FOSSILIFEROUS DEPOSITS OF SCOTLAND.[10] CHAPTER I. Embarkation--A foundered Vessel--Lateness of the Harvest dependent on the Geological character of the Soil--A Granite Harvest and an Old Red Harvest--Cottages of Redstone and of Granite--Arable Soil of Scotland the result of a Geological Grinding Agency--Locality of the Famine of 1846--Mr. Longmuir's Fossils--Geology necessary to a Theologian--Popularizers of Science when dangerous--"Constitution of Man," and "Vestiges of Creation"--Atop of the Banff Coach--A Geologist's Field Equipment--The trespassing "Stirk"--Silurian Schists inlaid with Old Red--Bay of Gamrie how formed--Gardenstone--Geological Free-masonry illustrated--How to break an Ichthyolite Nodule--An old Rhyme mended--A raised Beach--Fossil Shells--Scotland under water at the time of the Boulder Clays.