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The roofs are gone, except in a few instances where they have been restored; but the walls stand and many of the detached pillars stand too; and the pavements have endured well, so that the streets remain almost exactly as they were when this was a city of live beings instead of a tomb of dead memories, with deep groovings of chariot wheels in the flaggings, and at each crossing there are stepping stones, dotting the roadbed like punctuation marks.
He was now enabled to show us these groovings and scratchings on the rocks near Edinburgh. In order to render the records more accessible, he had the heather and mossy turf carefully removed especially from some of the most distinct evidences of glacial rock-grooving. Thus no time was lost, and we immediately saw the unquestionable markings.
The well is situated considerably westward of Salîm, midway, in fact, between that village and Nablûs, and close to the village of 'Askâr, with which the "Sychar" of S. John's Gospel has sometimes been identified. It has been cut through the solid rock to a depth of more than a hundred feet, and the groovings made by the ropes of the waterpots in far-off centuries are still visible at its mouth.
The glacial origin of these groovings on the rocks was then occupying the attention of geologists. It was a subject that Robert Chambers had carefully studied, in the Lowlands, in the Highlands, in Rhine-land, in Switzerland, and in Norway. He had also published his Ancient Sea Margins and his Tracings of the North of Europe in illustration of his views.
They were indeed, considering the apparent mass of the Metal Folk, most astonishingly fragile. Those of the Keeper, despite its eighty feet of height, could not have been more than a yard in thickness. At the edges I thought I could see groovings; noted the same appearances at the outlines of the Stars.
Connected with these phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes of hills and elsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings, such as we might suppose would be produced by a quantity of loose blocks hurried along over them by a flood.
The indications which he has to consider consist in the direction and manner in which the surface materials have been carried, the physical conditions of these materials, the shape of the surface of the underlying rock as regards its general contour, and the presence or absence of scratches and groovings on its surface.
The polishings, he said, were caused by the ice slowly grinding over the surface of the rock, and the flutings and groovings were caused, not by the ice itself, but by stones which were embedded in its under surface, and which cut the solid granite as if with chisels.
Before proceeding, however, to load, he tried the passage of the nipple with a fine needle three or four of which, thrust into a cork, and headed with sealing wax, formed a portion of the contents of his pouch brushed the cone, and the inside of the hammer, carefully, and wiped them, to conclude, with a small piece of clean white kid then measuring his powder out exactly, into a little charger, screwed to the end of his ramrod, he inverted the piece, and introduced the rod upward till the cup reached the chamber; when, righting the gun, he withdrew it, leaving the powder all lodged safely at the breech, without the loss of a single grain in the groovings.
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