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At the summit is a very fine entablature of curved columnar basalt, resembling the clam shell cave at Staffa, and two high, sharp, and impending peaks on the other side form a stately gateway for a stream which enters from another and broader valley; but it is but one among many small cascades, which round the arc of the falls flash out in foam among the dark foliage, and contribute their tiny warble to the diapason of the waterfall.
It is another sound they hear a low booming as of distant thunder. And that black thing away on their right scarcely visible over the darkened waves is that the channelled and sea-bird haunted Staffa, trembling through all her caves under the shock of the smooth Atlantic surge?
Along with the islands of Pladda, Treshnish, and Blackmore, Staffa is one of the outlying volcanic islands of the group, being distant about six miles from the coast of Mull, and indicates the minimum distance to which the plateau-basaltic sheets originally extended in the direction of the old marginal lands of Tiree and Coll.
I am glad you have not retreated into the desert and defenceless wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philosophy. I should not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there; I should as soon think of arguing with the peasant who informs me that the basaltic columns of Antrim or of Staffa were the works of human art and raised by the giant Finmacoul.
How I wish you and Una could be floated on a cloud over the charming region. I had set my heart upon it, but could not find any pretty enough. Every fresh spray of hawthorn on our journey renewed the prick of my disappointment. I saw dear little Rose's patron, St. Rosa, in the Staffa Gallery at Perugia, very beautiful. I have much to thank you for, dear Sophia, in all sorts of aid and sympathy.
Such is Fingal's Cave, in the island of Staffa, one of the Hebrides; such are the caves of Morgat, in the bay of Douarnenez, in Brittany, the caves of Bonifacio, in Corsica, those of Lyse-Fjord, in Norway; such are the immense Mammoth caverns in Kentucky, 500 feet in height, and more than twenty miles in length!
Thus, for example, we feel assured that the rock of Staffa, and that of the Giant's Causeway, called basalt, is volcanic, because it agrees in its columnar structure and mineral composition with streams of lava which we know to have flowed from the craters of volcanoes.
No fracture whatever appeared in the mass first presented; but in a few seconds a shelving pile appeared, of five or six columns' width, which showed their figure to be hexagonal, and their articulations similar to those of the basaltic formation at Staffa. This precipitous cliff was profusely covered with a dark red flower, precisely similar, says Dr.
So they all set out for Castle Dare; and Macleod was now walking as many a time he had dreamed of his walking with his beautiful sweetheart; and there were the very ferns that he thought she would admire; and here the very point in the fir-wood where he would stop her and ask her to look out on the blue sea, with Inch Kenneth, and Ulva, and Staffa, all lying in the sunlight, and the razor-fish of land Coll and Tiree at the horizon.
"She has the courage for that or for anything," said he. "And then, you know, she would be greatly interested in the clouds of puffins and the skarts behind Staffa, and we would take her to the great caves in the cliffs at Gribun; and I have no doubt she would like to go out to one of the uninhabited islands." Lady Macleod had preserved a stern silence.
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