In what state did the chasm exist when the huge boulder,—detached, mayhap, at the close of a severe frost, from some island of the archipelago that is now the northern Highlands of Scotland,—was suffered to drop beside it, from some vast ice-floe drifting eastwards on the tide? In all probability merely as a fault in the Conglomerate, similar to many of those faults which in the Coal Measures of the southern districts we find occupied by continuous dikes of trap. But in this northern region, where the trap-rocks are unknown, it must have been filled up with the boulder-clay, or with some still more ancient accumulation of debris. And when the land had risen, and the streams, swollen into rivers, flowed along the hollows which they now occupy, the loose rubbish would in the lapse of ages gradually wash downwards to the sea, as the stones thrown from the fields above were washed downwards in a later time; and thus the deep fissure would ultimately be cleared out. The boulder-stones lie thickly in this neighborhood, and over the eastern half of Ross-shire, and the Black Isle generally; though for the last century they have been gradually disappearing from the more cultivated tracts on which there were fences or farm-steadings to be built, or where they obstructed the course of the plough. We found them occurring in every conceivable situation,—high on hill-sides, where the shepherd crouches beside them for shelter in a shower,—deep in the open sea, where they entangle the nets of the fisherman,—on inland moors, where in some remote age they were painfully rolled together, to form the Druidical circle or Picts'-house,—or on the margin of the coast, where they had been piled over one another at a later time, as protecting bulwarks against the encroachments of the waves. They lie strewed more sparingly over extended plains, or on exposed heights, than in hollows sheltered from the west by high land, where the current, when it dashed high on the hill-sides, must have been diverted from its easterly course, and revolved in whirling eddies. On the top of the fine bluff hill of Fyrish, which I so admired to-day, each time I caught a glimpse of its purple front through the woods, and which shows how noble a mountain the Old Red Sandstone may produce, the boulders lie but sparsely. I especially marked, however, when last on its summit, a ponderous traveller of a vividly green hornblende, resting on a bed of pale yellow sandstone, fully a thousand feet over the present high-water level. But towards the east, in what a seaman would term the bight of the hill, the boulders have accumulated in vast numbers. They lie so closely piled along the course of the river Alness, about half a mile above the village, that it is with difficulty the waters, when in flood, can force their passage through. For here, apparently, when the tide swept along the hill-side, many an ice-floe, detained in the shelter by the revolving eddy, dashed together in rude collision, and shook their stony burdens to the bottom. Immediately to the east of the low promontory on which the town of Cromarty is built there is another extensive accumulation of boulders, some of them of great size. They occupy exactly the place to which I have oftener than once seen the drift-ice of the upper part of the Cromarty Frith, set loose by a thaw, and then carried seawards by the retreating tide, forced back by a violent storm from, the east, and the fragments ground against each other into powder. And here, I doubt not, of old, when the sea stood greatly higher than now, and the ice-floes were immensely larger and more numerous than those formed, in the existing circumstances, in the upper shallows of the Frith, would the fierce north-east have charged home with similar effect, and the broken masses have divested themselves of their boulders.
The Highland chieftain of one of our old Gaelic traditions conversed with a boulder-stone, and told to it the story which he had sworn never to tell to man. I too, after a sort, have conversed with boulder-stones, not, however, to tell them any story of mine, but to urge them to tell theirs to me. But, lacking the fine ear of Hans Anderson, the Danish poet, who can hear flowers and butterflies talk, and understand the language of birds, I have as yet succeeded in extracting from them no such articulate reply
"As Memnon's image, long renowned of old
By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch
Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string
Consenting, sounded through the warbling air."
And yet, who can doubt that, were they a little more communicative, their stories of movement in the past, with the additional circumstances connected with the places which they have occupied ever since they gave over travelling, would be exceedingly curious ones? Among the boulder group to the east of Cromarty, the most ponderous individual stands so exactly on the low-water line of our great Lammas tides, that though its shoreward edge may be reached dry-shod from four to six times every twelvemonth, no one has ever succeeded in walking dry shod round it. I have seen a strong breeze from the west, prolonged for a few days, prevent its drying, when the Lammas stream was at its point of lowest ebb, by from a foot to eighteen inches,—an indication, apparently, that to that height the waters of the Atlantic may be heaped up against our shores by the impulsion of the wind. And the recurrence, during at least the last century, of certain ebbs each season, which, when no disturbing atmospheric phenomena interfere with their operation, are sure to lay it dry, demonstrate, that during that period no change, even the most minute, has taken place on our coasts, in the relative levels of sea and shore. The waves have considerably encroached, during even the last half-century, on the shores immediately opposite; but it must have been, as the stone shows, simply by the attrition of the waves, and the consequent lowering of the beach,—not through any rise in the ocean, or any depression of the land.
The huge boulder here has been known for ages as the Clach Malloch, or accursed stone, from the circumstance, says tradition, that a boat was once wrecked upon it during a storm, and the boatmen drowned. Though little more than seven feet in height, by about twelve in length, and some eight or nine in breadth, its situation on the extreme line of ebb imparts a peculiar character to the various productions, animal and vegetable, which we find adhering to it. They occur in zones, just as on lofty hills the botanist finds his agricultural, moorland, and alpine zones rising in succession as he ascends, the one over the other. At its base, where the tide rarely falls, we find two varieties of Lobularia digitata, dead man's hand, the orange colored and the pale, with a species of sertularia; and the characteristic vegetable is the rough-stemmed tangle, or cuvy. In the zone immediately above the lowest, these productions disappear; the characteristic animal, if animal it be, is a flat yellow sponge,—the Halichondria papillaris,—remarkable chiefly for its sharp siliceous spicula and its strong phosphoric smell; and the characteristic vegetable is the smooth-stemmed tangle, or queener. In yet another zone we find the common limpet and the vesicular kelp-weed; and the small gray balanus and serrated kelp-weed form the productions of the top. We may see exactly the same zones occurring in broad belts along the shore,—each zone indicative of a certain overlying depth of water; but it seems curious enough to find them all existing in succession on one boulder. Of the boulder and its story, however, more in my next.
CHAPTER VIII.
Imaginary Autobiography of the Clach Malloch Boulder—Its Creation—Its long night of unsummed Centuries—Laid open to light on a desert Island—Surrounded by an Arctic Vegetation—Undermined by the rising Sea—Locked up and floated off on an Ice-field—At rest on the Sea-bottom—Another Night of unsummed Years—The Boulder raised again above the waves by the rising of the Land—Beholds an altered Country—Pine Forests and Mammals—Another Period of Ages passes—The Boulder again floated off by an Iceberg—Finally at rest on the Shore of Cromarty Bay—Time and Occasion of naming it—Strange Phenomena accounted for by Earthquakes—How the Boulder of Petty Bay was moved—The Boulder of Auldgrande—The old Highland Paupers—The little Parsi Girl—Her Letter to her Papa—But one Human Nature on Earth—Journey resumed—Conon Burying Ground—An aged Couple—Gossip.
The natural, and, if I may so speak, topographical, history of the Clach Malloch,—including, of course, its zoölogy and botany, with notes of those atmospheric effects on the tides, and of that stability for ages of the existing sea-level, which it indicates,—would of itself form one very interesting chapter: its geological history would furnish another. It would probably tell, if it once fairly broke silence and became autobiographical, first of a feverish dream of intense molten heat and overpowering pressure; and then of a busy time, in which the free molecules, as at once the materials and the artisans of the mass, began to build, each according to its nature, under the superintendence of a curious chemistry,—here forming sheets of black mica, there rhombs of a dark-green hornblende and a flesh-colored feldspar, yonder amorphous masses of a translucent quartz. It would add further, that at length, when the slow process was over, and the entire space had been occupied to the full by plate, molecule, and crystal, the red fiery twilight of the dream deepened into more than midnight gloom, and a chill unconscious night descended on the sleeper. The vast Palæozoic period passes by,—the scarce less protracted Secondary ages come to a close,—the Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene epochs are ushered in and terminate,—races begin and end,—families and orders are born and die; but the dead, or those whose deep slumber admits not of dreams, take no note of time; and so it would tell how its long night of unsummed centuries seemed, like the long night of the grave, compressed into a moment.