CHAPTER XIII.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

Supplementary- Isolated reptile Remains in Eigg - Small Isles revisited - The Betsey again-Storm bound-Tacking - Becalmed Medusæ caught and described - Rain A Shoal of Porpoises - Change of Weather The bedridden Woman - The Poor Law Act for Scotland Geological ExcursionBasaltic Columns - Oolitic Beds Oolitic Beds - Abundance of Organic Remains - Hybodus Teeth - Discovery of reptile Remains in situ - Musical Sand of Laig re-examined - Explanation suggested - Sail for Isle Ornsay Anchored Clouds- A Leak sprung - Peril of the Betsey At work with Pump and Pails - Safe in Harbor - Return to Edinburgh.

Ir is told of the "Spectator," on his own high authority, that having "read the controversies of some great men concerning the antiquities of Egypt, he made a voyage to Grand Cairo, on purpose to take the measure of a pyramid, and that, so soon as he had set himself right in that particular, he returned to his native country with great satisfaction." My love of knowledge has not carried me altogether so far, chiefly, I dare say, because my voyaging opportunities have not been quite so great. Ever since my ramble of last year, however, I have felt, I am afraid, a not less interest in the geologic antiquities of Small Isles than that cherished by "Spectator" with respect to the comparatively modern antiquities of Egypt; and as, in a late journey to these islands the object of my visit involved but a single point, nearly as insulated as the dimensions of a pyramid, I think I cannot do better than shelter myself under the authority of the short-faced gentleman who wrote. articles in the reign of Queen Anne. I had found in Eigg,

in considerable abundance and fine keeping, reptile remains of the Oölite; but they had occurred in merely rolled masses, scattered along the beach. I had not discovered the bed in which they had been originally deposited, and could neither tell its place in the system, nor its relation to the other rocks of the island. The discovery was but a half-discovery, the half of a broken medal, with the date on the missing portion. And so, immediately after the rising of the General Assembly in June last [1845], I set out to revisit Small Isles, accompanied by my friend Mr. Swanson, with the determination of acquainting myself with the burial-place of the old Oölitic reptiles, if it lay anywhere open to the light.

We found the Betsey riding in the anchoring ground at Isle Ornsay, in her foul-weather dishabille, with her topmast struck and in the yard, and her cordage and sides exhibiting in their weathered aspect the influence of the bleaching rains and winds of the previous winter. She was at once in an undress and getting old, and, as seen from the shore through rain and spray, for the weather was coarse and boisterous, she had apparently gained as little in her good looks from either circumstance as most other ladies do. We lay storm-bound for three days at Isle Ornsay, watching from the window of Mr. Swanson's dwelling the incessant showers sweeping down the loch. On the morning of Saturday, the gale, though still blowing right ahead, had moderated; the minister was anxious to visit this island charge, after his absence of several weeks from them at the Assembly; and I, more than half afraid that my term of furlough might expire ere I had reached my proposed scene of exploration, was as anxious as he; and so we both resolved, come what might, on doggedly beating our way adown the Sound of Sleat to Small Isles. If the wind does not fail us, said my friend, we

have little more than a day's work before us, and shall get into Eigg about midnight. We had but one of our seamen aboard, for John Stewart was engaged with his potato crop at home; but the minister was content, in the emergency, to rank his passenger as an able-bodied seaman; and so, hoisting sail and anchor, we got under way, and, clearing the loch, struck out into the Sound.

We tacked in long reaches for several hours, now opening up in succession the deep withdrawing lochs of the mainland, now clearing promontory after promontory in the island district of Sleat. In a few hours we had left a bulky schooner, that had quitted Isle Ornsay at the same time, full five miles behind us; but as the sun began to decline, the wind began to sink; and about seven o'clock, when we were nearly abreast of the rocky point of Sleat, and about half-way advanced in our voyage, it had died into a calm; and for full twenty hours thereafter there was no more sailing for the Betsey. We saw the sun set, and the clouds gather, and the pelting rain come down, and night-fall, and morning break, and the noon-tide hour pass by, and still were we floating idly in the calm. I employed the few hours of the Saturday evening that intervened between the time of our arrest and nightfall, in fishing from our little boat for medusa with a bucket. They had risen by myriads from the bottom as the wind fell, and were mottling the green depths of the water below and around far as the eye could reach. Among the commoner kinds, the kind with the four purple rings on the area of its flat bell, which ever vibrates without sound, and the kind with the fringe of dingy brown, and the long stinging tails, of which I have sometimes borne from my swimming excursions the nettle-like smart for hours,there were at least two species of more unusual occurrence, both of them very minute. The one, scarcely

mer;

larger than a shilling, bore the common umbiliferous form, but had its area inscribed by a pretty orange-colored wheel; the other, still more minute, and which presented in the water the appearance of a small hazel-nut of a brownish-yellow hue, I was disposed to set down as a species of beroe. On getting one caught, however, and transferred to a bowl, I found that the brownish-colored, melonshaped mass, though ribbed like the beroe, did not represent the true outline of the animal; it formed merely the centre of a transparent gelatinous bell, which, though scarce visible in even the bowl, proved a most efficient instrument of motion. Such were its contractile powers, that its sides nearly closed at every stroke, behind the opaque orbicular centre, like the legs of a vigorous swimand the animal, unlike its more bulky congeners, that, despite their slow but persevering flappings, seemed greatly at the mercy of the tide, and progressed all one way, shot, as it willed, backwards, forwards, or athwart. As the evening closed, and the depths beneath presented a dingier and yet dingier green, until at length all had become black, the distinctive colors of the acelpha,—the purple, the orange, and the brown,-faded and disappeared, and the creatures hung out, instead, their pale phosphoric lights, like the lanterns of a fleet hoisted high to prevent collision in the darkness. Now they gleamed dim and indistinct as they drifted undisturbed through the upper depths, and now they flamed out bright and green, like beaten torches, as the tide dashed them against the vessel's sides. I bethought me of the gorgeous description of Coleridge, and felt all its beauty:

"They moved in tracks of shining white,

And when they reared, the elfish light

Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire,

Blue, glassy green, and velvet black:

They curled, and swam, and every track

Was a flash of golden fire."

A crew of three, when there are watches to set, divides wofully ill. As there was, however, nothing to do in the calm, we decided that our first watch should consist of our single seaman, and the second of the minister and his friend. The clouds, which had been thickening for hours, now broke in torrents of rain, and old Alister got into his water-proof oil-skin and souwester, and we into our beds. The seams of the Betsey's deck had opened so sadly during the past winter, as to be no longer water-tight, and the little cabin resounded drearily in the darkness, like some dropping cave, to the ceaseless patter of the leakage. We continued to sleep, however, somewhat longer than we ought, for Alister had been unwilling to waken the minister; but we at length got up, and, relieving watch the first from the tedium of being rained upon and doing nothing, watch the second was set to do nothing and be rained upon in turn. We had drifted during the night-time on a kindly tide, considerably nearer our island, which we could now see looming blue and indistinct through the haze some seven or eight miles away. The rain ceased a little before nine, and the clouds rose, revealing the surrounding lands, island and main,- Rum, with its abrupt mountainpeaks, the dark Cuchullins of Skye,- and, far to the south-east, where Inverness bounds on Argyllshire, some of the tallest hills in Scotland, - among the rest, the dimly-seen Ben-Nevis. But long wreaths of pale gray cloud lay lazily under their summits, like shrouds half drawn from off the features of the dead, to be again spread over them, and we concluded that the dry weather had not yet come. A little before noon we were surrounded