Inscriptions seventy or eighty years old appear covered only with a thin translucent coat of sinter, and in the Cave of Adelsberg names scratched in the walls more than six centuries ago are still perfectly legible. How many ages must, then, have passed before such colossal stalagmites could have been formed as, for instance, in the Australian cavern explored by Mr. Woods,[[13]] or in the Cave of Corneale, near Trieste, where we find one of these formations measuring fifty feet in circumference, and another rising thirty-five feet above the ground, with a trunk as massive as that of an old oak. The ruins of Thebes, or the rock-temples of Ipsamboul, appear almost as works of the present day when compared with those amazing monuments of time. But, while meditating on their colossal dimensions, the mind is necessarily carried still further back, and wanders through the countless ages which the filtering waters, collecting into subterranean streams, required for hollowing out the vast cavities on whose floor those gigantic stalagmites were subsequently deposited. An epoch of still older date presents itself when the limestone rocks, now pierced with vast stalactital caverns, were first slowly forming at the bottom of the primeval sea by the accumulation of countless exuviæ of zoophytes, star-fishes, and foraminifera, and after growing into strata many hundred feet thick, were then forced upwards by plutonic powers, and became portions of the dry land. Nor is this the end of the vast perspective, for changes still more remote loom in the fathomless distance. The mind grows giddy while thus plunging into the abyss of time, and, in spite of the ideas of sublimity awakened by such meditations, feels a painful sense of its incapacity to conceive a plan of such infinite extent.
While on land the running or filtering waters restlessly pursue their work of excavation, the tumultuous waves of the ocean impress on every rocky shore the seal of their tremendous power. As, day after day, and year after year, the billows strike against the cliffs that oppose their progress, they undermine their foundations, scoop out wide portals in their projecting headlands, and hollow out deep caverns. Here also water appears as the beautifying element, decorating inanimate nature with picturesque forms; and the sea nowhere exhibits more romantic scenes than on the bold coasts against which her waves have been beating for many a millennium. During the calm ebb tide seals are often seen sunning themselves at the entrance of the oceanic grottoes, while cormorants stand before them as guardians of the dark galleries beyond; the waves murmur in softer strains, and the screeching sea-mew glides with his silvery pinions through the tranquil air; but when the stormy flood batters against the coast, the billows rush into the caverns, scaring all animal life away, and no voice is heard but that of the ocean.
Our coasts abound in beauties such as these, particularly on the wild shores of Shetland or the stormy Hebrides—
‘Where rise no groves and where no gardens blow,
Where even the hardy heath scarce dares to grow;
But rocks on rocks, in mist and storm arrayed,
Stretch far to sea their giant colonnade.’—Scott.
Along the coast of the mainland of Shetland and the neighbouring islets of Bressay and Noss, cape follows upon cape, consisting of bold cliffs hollowed into caverns, or divided into pillars and arches of fantastic appearance, by the constant action of the waves. As the voyager passes the most northerly of these headlands, and turns into the open sea, the scenes become yet more sublime. Rocks, upwards of three or four hundred feet in height, present themselves in colossal succession, sinking perpendicularly into the sea, which is very deep, even within a few fathoms of their base. All these huge precipices abound with caves, many of which run much farther into the rock than the boldest islander has ever ventured to penetrate. One of these marine excavations, called ‘The Orkneyman’s Harbour,’ is remarkable for the circumstance of an Orkney vessel having once run in there to escape a French privateer. Sir Walter Scott, who visited this interesting spot, found the entrance lofty enough to admit his six-oared boat without striking the mast, but a sudden turn in the direction of the cave would have consigned him to utter darkness if he had gone in further. The dropping of the sea fowl and cormorants into the water from the sides of the cavern, when disturbed by his approach, had something in it wild and terrible.
The shores of Caithness and of Sutherland, and of many of the islets in the Highland seas, likewise exhibit many wonderful specimens of the fantastic architecture of the ocean; but pre-eminent above all in grandeur and renown is Fingal’s Cave.
Sir Walter Scott, who twice visited this celebrated grotto (in 1810 and 1814), pronounced it above all description sublime. ‘The stupendous columns and side-walls, the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern is filled, the variety of tints formed by stalactites dropping and petrifying between the pillars, and resembling a sort of chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble, filling the interstices of the roof—the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over a red, and in some places a violet-coloured rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars—the dreadful noise of those august billows, so well corresponding with the grandeur of the scene—are all circumstances elsewhere unparalleled.’