Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

FUNERALS. 419
nessed a contesf, not a month before, at an auction, tor a
piece of Lannionite as large as an egg, which had been
sold for five g-uineas,and I here stumbled on a mass of it
big enough to load a waggon. But even such wealth is not
seldom unattended by the punishment of Tantalus. In
the same place was a large mass of solid rock, solid and
tough withal, as iron ; and on looking into a small hole
where I could only introduce two fingers, I saw a cavity
covered with large and beautiful crystals of one of the
rarest Zeolites (ichthyophthalmite) : the entire specimen
might well have sold for twenty guineas. No ordinary
hammer could make the slightest impression on such a
mass of matter; it was the fox at the stork's supper, and
the specimen still remains to provoke those who may
chuse to risk their lives in this place.
No imagination can form a conception of the character
of the cliffs of this coast ; without thus landing- under
them. At a very small distance, they are so deceiving-,
from their simplicity, that they do not seem above a
hundred feet high ;
on account of the want of objects for
a scale. The eye, by itself, scarcely distinguishes be-
tween a wall of a hundred, and one of a thousand feet
high. Hence, the bases of these cliffs appear to be
strewed only with pebbles and gravel ;
pebbles, which on
landing, are found to be as larg-e as ordinary houses,
and the whole tumbled together in such a heap of fearful
ruins, as to convey an idea of the destructive power of
the elements, far greater than any other appearances
which I ever witnessed. Often deceived in judging of
magnitude and distance on these Western Shores, I recollect
no place where we experienced more surprise. We
had left the vessel to row to the shore, which every one
thought was a mile off. That mile was not less than eio-ht
or nme ; it cost us three hours of hard exertion. As we
approached, I saw a stony beach, which seemed to admit
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