Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

LOCH BERNERA. 227
of Lake Superior, when neither sun nor moon nor star
exists to lead him on his way. By this, when entangled
in the midnight forest, he finds his path "straight as
De Moivre without rule or line ;" as the spider himself,
influenced by a rival bump, " designs his parallels."
Thus also, doubtless, did the VikingT traverse the stormy
seas of the North, as Phenicia and Greece and Carthage
had done before them ; astonishing those who seem to
have forgotten that the same deeds are performed at this
day, and who have consequently written nonsense to
prove that those ancient navigators never quitted the
sight of land. And this, directed to other objects, is the
coup d'ceil of the soldier. For this Philopoemen was cele-
brated by Plutarch, for this have been celebrated the
Saxes and the Marlboroughs and the Wellingtons. It is
this which constitutes the geologist, which enables him
to see within the earth, to seize with a glance the distri-
bution and the nature of the rocks that are concealed
from his corporeal eye. He who has this bump will
never lose his road ; and, whenever he pleases, he may
take the helm into his own hand, and navigate Loch
Bernera without a compass, and the Western Islands
without a pilot.
It is very amusing to observe the various grounds on
which reputation is founded in different societies j just
as the orator of one circle is dumb in another. I imagine
that my talent for starboard and larboard would be
treated with as much contempt at the Royal Society or
in a London assembly, as La Fleur's acquisitions in spat-
terdash making and in drum beating. Here, on the con-
trary, the anxious, and often perilous pursuit of stones
and drawings and antiquities, was viewed with a proper
and just mixture of wonder and contempt; but when the
" Saxon philosopher" took the helm Avhich the seamen
had abandoned, or carried the vessel into an anchprage
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