During his residence in Scotland he became greatly interested in geological pursuits, and travelled over a good deal of the country, examining its rocks. When he returned to the Continent, he settled for a time in Paris, where he wrote his Esquisse Géologique sur l’Écosse—a most valuable treatise which in many respects was far in advance of its time. Subsequently, after wandering over much of Europe, he finally fixed his home in Austria.

Having occasion in some of my own early writings to refer appreciatively to Boué’s work, I one day received a letter written in broken English and in a minute, cramped calligraphy, the lines slanting obliquely across the page. To my astonishment the letter bore the signature Ami Boué. This was the beginning of a correspondence which lasted up to the time of his death. I paid him a visit in 1869, and spent some time with him at his pleasant country-house on the last spurs of the Alps near Vöslau, where he had planted quinces, almond-trees, peaches, apples, and vines, and where I found his recollections of Edinburgh and Scotland as vivid as if he had only returned from that region a few years before.

Boué was singular in this respect, that he never thoroughly mastered any language. Although French was the tongue that in early life came most naturally to him, his French sometimes betrayed his German connections. In German he only acquired fluency after middle life, when he had settled in Vienna, and it was in German that all his later contributions to science were written. English he never learned to speak or write correctly. But he was rather proud of what he thought to be his facility in that language, and all his letters to me, extending over a period of thirteen years, were written in broken English. As a specimen of the way in which he expressed himself, I may quote a sentence from a letter written by him on 21st November, 1870, during the calamitous Franco-German war. ‘The dreadful war-pre-occupations did take me all time for thinking at scientific matter, and now perhaps that distress will approach till nearer our abode! When you will know that I have very good and near parents in both armies and you perceive the possibility of parents killing themselves without recognizing themselves, nor having the opportunity to do so, you will understand that I have often headach when I ride the newspapers or hear from the quite useless slaughters, which have been provocated only by those men at the head of the human society.’

A FIELD-GEOLOGIST

The life of a field-geologist, being spent to a large extent in the open air, brings him into contact with various classes of the people, to whom his occupation is exceedingly mysterious. They see him marching up and down the face of a rocky declivity, chipping the rock here and there, putting the chips up to his eye, scrutinising them narrowly through his lens, which is popularly supposed to be an eye-glass for extremely short sight, then perhaps wrapping them up in paper and putting them in his pocket, or in a bag slung across his shoulder. They watch him taking out a map and marking down something upon it, or whipping out a note-book and writing in it, perhaps for so long a time that the patience of the watchers behind a neighbouring wall or hedge is nearly exhausted, when off he marches again, or comes back to the place he started from, as if he had left something behind him, or had hopelessly lost his way.

A member of the Geological Survey, whose daily avocation consists in such pursuits, is of course specially liable to become the victim of curiosity and suspicion. He carries his accoutrements about his person in such a manner that they do not attract notice, so that his object and actions become extremely puzzling to the country people among whom he has taken quarters for a time. He finds himself set down now for a postman, now for a doctor, for a farmer, a cattle dealer, a travelling showman, a country gentleman, a gamekeeper, a poacher, an itinerant lecturer, a gauger, a clergyman, a playactor, and often as a generally suspicious character. A member of the Survey, who afterwards became a University Professor, received and posted many a letter entrusted to him in the belief that he was the authorised bearer of Her Majesty’s mails. Another member, also subsequently Professor, was taken for a policeman in plain clothes, and could not for some time make out why a poor woman poured into his ears a long story about her son, who had been taken up for something that he had not done, and did quite unintentionally, and was quite justified in doing.[39]

EXPERIENCES OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Gamekeepers are sometimes sorely at a loss what to make of the Geological Survey trespasser: afraid to challenge him lest he prove to be a friend of their master, and yet afraid to let him go his way for fear he be on poaching thoughts intent, though the absence of a visible gun piques their curiosity. One member of the staff, who had taken up his quarters in a coast town in Fife, was watched by the police on suspicion of having been concerned in a recent burglary. Another was stalked as a suspect who had been setting fire to farm buildings. A third was watched hammering by himself in the bed of a stream near Girvan, and as he gave vent to some strong expression when the obstinate boulder refused to part with a splinter, the onlooker on the other side of an adjoining hedge fled in terror to the village and reported that this strange man who had come among them was stark mad, and should not be left to go by himself. Sometimes the laugh goes distinctly against the geologist, as in the case of one of the most distinguished of the staff who, poking about to see the rocks exposed on the outskirts of a village in Cumberland, was greeted by an old woman as the ‘sanitary ‘spector.’ He modestly disclaimed the honour, but noticing that the place was very filthy, ventured to hint that such an official would find something to do there. And he thereupon began to enlarge on the evils of accumulating filth, resulting, among other things, in an unhealthy and stunted population. His auditor heard him out, and then, calmly surveying him from head to foot, remarked: ‘Well, young man, all I have to tell ye is, that the men o’ this place are a deal bigger and stronger and handsomer nor you.’ She bore no malice, for she offered him a cup of tea, but, like Falstaff, he was ‘as crestfallen as a dried pear,’ and could not face her any longer.

EXPERIENCES OF GEOLOGISTS

Professor James Geikie supplies me with the following record of his experience when he was on the staff of the Survey: ‘One warm summer day I was laboriously forcing my way up a narrow ravine or “cleugh” in the hills south of Colmonel, in Ayrshire. The geology being somewhat complicated, it was necessary to use my hammer at almost every step, and for this purpose I had to keep the bed of the burn where the rocks were best seen. The cleugh was not only narrow and steep, but choked in places with blackthorn, so that progress was both slow and painful. Being far from the madding crowd, there was no reason why, under a broiling sun, I should affect a philosophical coolness which I was far from feeling, and it is probable, therefore, that from time to time I may have sought relief by addressing the obnoxious thorns in vehement language. At the head of the cleugh I came upon a tall farmer-looking man, who told me he had been watching my movements, and wondering who and what I was. When he heard I was trying to find out how the world was made, he expressed no astonishment, but showed keen interest as I pointed out the evidence of glacial work—striated rocks, morainic debris, and large erratics—all of which happened to be well displayed on the hillside where we stood. As he seemed really anxious to know the meaning of the evidence, I explained it as well as I could, and then we parted. A few weeks afterwards I was dining with an old friend—the late Mr. Cathcart of Knockdolian—who told me he was quite sure I must have been recently in his neighbourhood. “Only yesterday,” he said, “I met the old farmer of G——,” who had a strange tale to tell me. “Dod! Mr. Caithcart,” he began, “I ran across the queerest body the ither day. As I was comin’ by the head o’ the cleugh I thocht I heard a wheen tinkers quarrellin’, but whan I lookit doon there was jist ae wee stoot man. Whiles he was chappin’ the rocks wi’ a hammer: whiles he was writin’ in a book, whiles fechtin’ wi’ the thorns, and miscain’ them for a’ that was bad. When he cam up frae the burn, him and me had a long confab. Dod! he tell’t me a’ aboot the stanes, and hoo they showed that Scotland was ance like Greenland, smoored in ice. A vary enterteenin’ body, Mr. Caithcart, but—an awfu’ leear.”’