The 1834 journal regards Scotland,--a country I have since visited
several times, including the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the voyage round
from Thurso _viâ_ Cape Wrath to the Hebrides; whereof, perhaps, more
anon. For a specimen page of this let me give what follows; the locality
is near Inverness and the Caledonian Canal: "We now bent our steps
toward Craig Phadrick, two miles north. This is the site of one of the
celebrated vitrified forts, concerning the creation of which there has
been so much learned discussion. And verily there is room, for there is
mystery: I will detail what we saw. On the summit of a steep hill of
conglomerate rock we could trace very clearly a double oblong enclosure
of eighty yards by twenty, with entrances east and west, a space of five
yards being between the two oblongs. The mounds were outwardly of turf,
but under a thin skin of this was a thick continuous wall of molten
stone, granite, gneiss, and sandstone, bubbling together in a hotchpot!
The existence of these forts (occurring frequently on the heights and of
various shapes) is attempted to be explained by divers theories. One man
tells us they were beacons; but, first, what an enormous one is here,
one hundred and twenty-four feet by sixty of blazing wood, timber being
scarce too! next, they sometimes occur in low situations from which a
flame could scarcely be seen; thirdly, common wood fire will not melt
granite. Another pundit says they are volcanic. O wondrous volcano to
spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best
explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by
means of coarse glass, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and
seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had
some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this
Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland
in 1835. My record of just fifty years ago is much what it might be now,
starvation, beggary, and human wretchedness of all sorts in the midst of