The summer holiday this year was spent in Lewis, but the chief record which remains is that contained in papers contributed to the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society and the Geological Magazine. In September he writes from Norham an affectionate letter to Dr Grossart, expressing longing for a “haver,” and giving news of his glacial work. The letter goes on:—
How does the magnum opus progress? I am still working away at mine—nearly finished—both me and my book. I got some very startling facts this summer in the island of Lewis which I shall send to the London Geolog. Society—the facts, not the island.
A month later he writes from Duns to Mr Horne in regard to some specimens which he wants for a course of lectures to be given to working-men at the Museum of Science and Art during the winter. In this letter he speaks of being attacked by a form of nervous prostration which renders him incapable of continued work, so that the magnum opus is at a standstill. The task was evidently proving more severe than he anticipated, and the illness was prolonged, for in a letter to Dr Grossart, written from Edinburgh on 4th January 1873, he says:—
This winter things have gone back with me. I was laid up most of November and December, but am now all right again. But this enforced idleness has kept back my book, which the longer I stick at it seems to grow and grow till I begin to get frightened at its dimensions. This summer, however, I hope to send it to the printer.
In the same letter he speaks of his lectures at the Museum of Science and Art, and also of another on the “Antiquity of Man in Britain,” which he was to give at Birkenhead at the beginning of February. The lecture, which was duly delivered and also published, dealt with a subject to which he had been led by his glacial work. It was one in which his interest increased as time went on, and in later years “Man during the Ice Age” occupied a good deal of his leisure, up to the very end.
At Duns James Geikie made a number of friends, and indeed throughout his work in the Border counties he seems to have met with much hospitality, and this even before his sojourn in Jedburgh led to his acquaintanceship with the family in which he found his wife, and to the region becoming a second homeland for him. During his stay at Duns the book was progressing steadily, despite his hard work in the field. In June he was writing to Mr Horne and Prof. Ramsay for information in regard to certain special points, and the latter was very anxious for James Geikie to accompany him on a geologising holiday to the Rhine, to investigate some disputed questions. This proposal was not accepted, however, apparently because James Geikie was dissatisfied with the only information he could obtain about glacial deposits on the south side of the Alps, and made up his mind to seek satisfaction by a personal tour to the district. This trip is mentioned in a letter written to Dr Grossart from Kelso on 20th July, in which he says:—
My summer has been spent in a ram-sham desultory sort of way. I have hammered out the geological structure of the Cheviots, which is something interesting and new, and I have also got some interesting glacial results. I have had a hard time of it with the lawyers though, having been summoned twice to London to give evidence before Committees of Parliament about that confounded Edinburgh water of which every honest man in Edinburgh is heartily sick. I know I am. But that is over now. In a fortnight I start for Italy, and am going to make a long tour of it: Paris, Geneva, Martigny, Aosta, Turin, Bologna, Verona, Venice, Trieste, and Vienna, then back through the Tyrol and down the Rhine to Rotterdam, Amsterdam, etc., and home. I shall be a fortnight or three weeks scouring along the foot of the Piedmontese Alps looking at the glacial things.
My book is finished and off to the printers at last. But I fear that it will be delayed by the engraver, who does not get on with the illustrations as fast as I could wish. Anyhow I hope I shall be able to send you a copy this winter.
No detailed account of the Italian trip has been preserved, but various letters make allusions to it. Thus writing to Mr Horne from Jedburgh on 17th September, he speaks of his visit to Lake Como, ending up:—“Alas! all the sunshine is over, and here I am in dull Scotch autumn, thinking sadly that the world and one’s destinies are not more amenable to one’s wishes. But Scotland is not so bad after all.” His next visit to the lake was made in company with his wife and her sister, and during the trip he told how on his first visit he had lost himself in the Alps at dark, and after some difficulty and various adventures reached a little hamlet. Here there was no inn, but the priest of the village kindly put him up for the night, the two conversing in Latin in default of any other means of communication.
He speaks also of his Italian tour in a letter to Dr Grossart, dated from Jedburgh on 11th October, in which he says:—
Did I write you giving an account of my Italian trip? I know that I meant to do so. I enjoyed myself amazingly, and picked up a lot of wrinkles which will stand me in good stead. Ods man! but it was hot spielin’ the hills with the thermometer 94° in the shade. God knows but I thought it not far short of 500° in the sun.... I’m going to take it easy this winter—if I can. I have now got my magnum opus off my hands, and hope to send you a copy next month. It makes some 500 pages of demy 8vo!—a wiselike size!... The illustrations will please you, I hope. They have been beautifully engraved.... The country here is looking beautiful—woods having all their autumn colours on. I don’t wonder that emigrants who were born on the Jed, the Teviot, and the Tweed should aye have such intense longings to get back again to their native howffs. It makes one young as a boy to wander up the sweet glens and ravines in this lovely district. If I were in love I’m afraid I should use up whole reams of paper in the composing of passionate songs and sonnets. But not being so I can only croon as I trot along the half-forgotten words of some old Border ditty.