Above Oldhamstocks we again found the sand-stone in the bank, but it soon disappeared under a deep cover of gravel, and the burn then divided into several rivulets which come from the hills.  We traced the one which led most directly up to the mountains, in expectation of meeting with the schistus, at least, if not the junction of it with the sandstone.  But in this we were disappointed.  We did not however lose our labour; for, though the junction which we pursued be not here visible, we met with what made it sufficiently evident, and was at the same time an object far more interesting in our eyes.

I have already quoted Mr Voigt’s description of the sol mort rouge; he says, that in places it forms entire mountains; here we have a perfect example of the same thing; and the moment we saw it, we said, here is the sol mort rouge.  We ascended to the top of the mountain through a gully of solid pudding-stone going into decay, and furnishing the country below with that great covering of gravel, soil, and water worn stones.  We were now well acquainted with the pudding-stone, which is interposed between the horizontal and alpine strata; but from what we had seen to the eastward, we never should have dreamed of meeting with what we now perceived.  What we had hitherto seen of this pudding-stone was but a few fragments of the schistus in the lower beds of sand-stone; here a mountain of water-worn schisti, imbedded in a red earth and consolidated, presented itself to our view.  It was evident that the schisti mountains, from whence those fragments had come, had been prior to this secondary mass; but here is a secondary mountain equal in height to the primary, or schisti mountains, at the basis of which we had seen the strata superinduced on the shore.  Still, however, every thing here is formed upon the same principle, and nothing here is altered except the scale on which the operation had been performed.

Upon the coast, we have but a specimen of the pudding-stone; most of the fragments had their angles entire; and few of them are rounded by attrition.  Here, on the contrary, the mountain is one pudding-stone; and most of the fragments are stones much rounded by attrition.  But the difference is only in degree, and not in kind; the stones are the same, and the nature of the composition similar.  Had we seen the mass of which this mountain is only a relict, (having been degraded by the hands of time), we should have found this pudding-stone at the bottom of our sand-stone strata; could we have penetrated below this mass of pudding-stone, we should have found our schistus which we left on the shore at St. Helens and in the Tour burn.  In Tiviotdale the vertical schisti are covered with a bed of pudding-stone, the gravel of which had been much worn by attrition, but the thickness of that bed is small; here again the wearing operation has been great, and the quantity of those materials even more than in proportion to those operations.  We returned perfectly satisfied; and Sir James Hall is to pursue this subject farther when he shall be in those mountains shooting muir game.