THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
1 
 
 TOMB OF BLACK^DDER 
 
 238 
 
GEOLOGY 
 
 BASS ROCK, 
 
 HUGH MILLER, 
 
 WITH ITS CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC HISTORY AND 
 NOTICES OF SOME OF ITS MARTYRS, 
 
 BY DR. M'CRIE AND OTHERS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 
 
 285 BROADWAY, 
 
 1852. 
 

IDA ^90 
 
 CONTENT8. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE GEOLOGY OF THE BASS, BY HUGH 
 
 MILLER, ...... 9 
 
 THE CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 
 
 OF THE BASS, BY THOMAS M'CRIE, D.D. 151 
 THE MARTYRS OF THE BASS, . . .213 
 
 M365Q 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 THE Bass stands in the mouth of the Frith of Forth, about a 
 mile and a half from the shore. It is fully a mile in circum- 
 ference. It is about 600 feet in total length, 420 above the 
 surface of the sea. On the north it is lofty and precipitous. On 
 the south it is somewhat conical, sloping moderately down to the 
 base. Its superficies is guessed at seven acres. The Bass is 
 inaccessible, save at one point, the south-east. At one time the 
 fortification which commanded this point could be reached only 
 by ladders, or a bucket and chains raised at the crane bastion ; 
 but afterwards the ascent was by three flights of stairs within the 
 rampart, each protected by a strong gate ; these inner gates have 
 long ago disappeared. The fort and the dungeons are all unroofed 
 and in ruins ; Blackadder* s Cell is still pointed out, with it3 
 three small iron-barred windows to the west, and awakens many 
 a solemn sacred feeling. One solitary gun yet remains of the ' 
 ancient defence, now much corroded ; the few other cannon on the 
 Bass were brought thither from Leith in 1822 to salute George 
 IV. on his visit to Scotland. The king of Belgium visited the 
 Bass in 1819. 
 
 About half-way up the acclivity of the rock, a little below the 
 old exposed garden, are the interesting remains of a chapel, 
 pretty entire ; the wells for the fonts show that it was built prior 
 to the Reformation. When the Bass became the Bastile of Scot- 
 land, the state prison for the persecuted Covenanters, this chapel 
 was desecrated by being made the ammunition magazine for the 
 garrison. 
 
 The Bass for many generations was the property of an ancient 
 family styled Lauder of the Bass, one of whom is stated to have 
 been a compatriot of Wallace. This family, it would seem, at 
 length fell into decay, and the Bass underwent various 
 
Vlll PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 transferences. It was purchased by Government, in October, 
 1671, from Sir Andrew Ramsay of Abbotshall for the sum of 
 JE4000. The prisons of our northern kingdom were then gorged 
 with the persecuted, and the Bass was converted into a state prison 
 for the Covenanters under Charles II. It served this debased 
 purpose during the reigns of the last two deluded monarchs of the 
 House of Stuart. It held out for several years after the Revo- 
 lution against the new dynasty, amidst numerous and vigorous 
 enterprises for its subjection, and was signalized as the last place 
 in Great Rritain that yielded to the dominion of William III. 
 In February, 1701, he directed the fortifications to be demolished. 
 In 1706, the Bass was granted by the Crown to President Sir Hew 
 Dalrymple for one Scots penny, reserving the power of re-fortify- 
 ing the Bass, if Government at any time should think it proper 
 to do so. The fort and the prison were afterwards dismantled. 
 The walls remain in naked desolation. 
 
 The island is let to the keeper for .30 yearly, on a lease of 19 
 years. He resides at Canty Bay, an opposite hamlet on the shore, 
 a mile and a half from the rock, where boats are always to be had 
 in the season for the conveyance of visitors. The best season for 
 visiting the Bass is June and July, during the incubation of the 
 geese, and the best hours are early in the morning or evening. 
 The tenant of the Bass alone possesses the key of the Castle, and 
 it is to the honor of the keeper to record that the Sabbath is kept 
 inviolate, and on week days alone the Bass is to be visited. 
 
 There are about seven acres of grassy surface on the rock 
 which afford pasture for about 30 sheep. The pasture rent is 
 from 5 to 7 annually. The sheep are in high estimation for 
 their very peculiar excellencies, and bring a high corresponding 
 price. [Abridged from the New Statistical Account of Scot- 
 land, Article North Berwick, No. xxii., pp. 330-333.] 
 
 The Bass is now the property of Sir Hew Dalrymple, of North 
 Berwick, Baronet, the lineal descendant of Sir Hew Dalrymple, 
 who was President of the Court of Session from 7th June, 1698, 
 till his death on 1st February, 1737. 
 
flf 
 
THE BASS ROCK, AS IT NOW APPEARS p 11 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS, 
 
 " The Bass that Scottish Patmos that rock of tears and prayers 
 the Bethel as well as the dungeon of many a holy man." 
 
 "THERE are a small knot of us," said a lit- 
 erary friend, addressing the writer one evening 
 about four months ago, " getting up what will, 
 I daresay, be a rather curious volume on the 
 Bass ; and to-morrow we visit the rock in a body 
 to procure materials. Professor John Fleming 
 undertakes the Zoology of the work Professor 
 Balfour its Botany Professor Thomas M'Crie 
 the Historical portion, Civil and Ecclesiastical 
 Professor M'Crie's friend, Mr. James Ander- 
 son, a learned Covenanter, grapples with the 
 Biographies of what are termed the Bass Mar- 
 tyrs while your humble servant conducts the 
 business part of the concern, and in his capa- 
 
12 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 city of purveyor-general waits on you. Our 
 to-morrow's expedition still lacks a Geologist, and 
 our literary speculation, some one learned enough 
 in pre-Adamite history to contribute the por- 
 tion of the work analogous to that earlier part 
 of the Welsh Genealogy which preceded the 
 famous note, <N. B. About this time the world 
 was created. 7 Professor M'Crie goes no higher 
 than the days of St. Baldred the Culdee, who 
 died on the Bass some time early in the sev- 
 enth century, and was interred entire in three 
 several burying-grounds at once. Will you not 
 go with us to-morrow, and contribute to our 
 book the Geologic history of the island, from its 
 first appearance, or before, down to the times 
 of St. Baldred?" 
 
 "I spent a day on the Bass some four or five 
 . summers ago," I replied, " and saw, I believe, 
 almost the little all to be seen on it by the 
 geologist. It consists of one huge mass of 
 homogeneous trap, scarce more varied in its 
 texture than a piece of cast metal ; and what 
 would you have me to say about a mass of homo- 
 geneous trap ?" 
 
 "Anything, or everything," was the rejoin- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 13 
 
 der. u Dr. Mantell writes an ingenious little 
 book on a flint pebble scarcely larger than a 
 hen's egg. You may easily write at least part 
 of a little book on a magnificent mass of rock, 
 loftier by a deal than the dome of St. Paul's, 
 and a full mile in circumference. At all events, 
 come with us ; and if you do not find much to 
 say about the rock itself you can eke out your 
 description by notices of the geology of the 
 adjacent coast ^ and here and there stick in an 
 occasional episode, commemorative of whatever 
 adventures may befall us by the way. We re- 
 gard it as one of the essential requisites of our 
 little volume, that all its science be considera- 
 bly diluted with gossip." 
 
 I was unlucky enough to miss making one in 
 next day's party, all through lack of a railway 
 bill. And yet, convinced that the poet Gray 
 was in the right in deeming " a remark made 
 on the spot worth a cart-load of recollection," I 
 could not set myself to write the Geology of the 
 Bass with aught approaching to comfort, without 
 having first renewed with the rock the acquaint- 
 ance broken off for years. But engagements 
 interfered, and weeks and months slipped away, 
 
r 
 
 14 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 and summer passed into autumn, and autumn 
 into winter ; and yet the Bass, inaccessible, at 
 times, during the boisterous and gloomy season 
 of the year which had now set in, for weeks 
 together, was still unvisited. I had fixed on 
 one leisure day as convenient for the journey, 
 and it rose foul with rain. I had selected an- 
 other, and there came on during the night a 
 storm from the sea, that sent up the white waves 
 a full hundred feet against the eastern preci- 
 pices of the island, and bathed the old rampart 
 walls in spray. I staked my last chance on yet 
 a third leisure day ; and, though far advanced 
 in November, the morning broke clear and bright 
 as a morning in May. Half an hour after sun- 
 rise I was awaiting the downward train at the 
 Portobello station. There blew a breeze from 
 the west, just strong enough, though it scarce 
 waved the withered grass on the slopes below, 
 to set the wires of the electric telegraph a- vi- 
 brating overhead, and they rung sonorous and 
 clear in the quiet of the morning, like the strings 
 of some gigantic musical instrument. How 
 many thousand passengers must have hurried 
 along the rails during the last twelvemonth, 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 their ears so filled by the grinding noises of the 
 wheels and the snor tings of the engine, as never 
 to have discovered that each stretch from post 
 to post of the wires that accompany them 
 throughout their journey, forms a great .ZEolian 
 harp, full, when the wind blows, of all rich tones, 
 from those of the murmurs of myriads of bees 
 collecting honey-dew among the leaves of a for- 
 est, to those of the howlings of the night-hurri- 
 cane amid the open turrets and deserted cor- 
 ridors of some haunted castle. I bethought 
 me as the train, half enveloped in smoke and 
 steam, came rushing up, with shriek and groan, 
 and the melody above, wild yet singularly pleas- 
 ing, was lost in the din of Wordsworth's fine 
 lines on " the voice of tendency,'' and found that 
 they had become suddenly linked in my mind 
 with a new association : 
 
 " The mighty stream of TENDENCY 
 Utters, for elevation of our thought, 
 A clear sonorous voice, inaudible 
 To the vast multitude, whose doom it is 
 To throng the clamorous highways of the world." 
 
 The Edinburgh reader must have often mark- 
 ed the tract of comparatively level ground which 
 
16 GEOLOGY OF THE BASSv 
 
 intervenes between Arthur's Seat and the 
 Pentlands on the one hand, and those heights 
 beyond Tranent on the other that merge into 
 the Lammermoor Hills on the south, and piece 
 on to the trap eminences of Haddington and 
 North Berwick on the east. It furnishes no 
 prominent feature on which the eye can repose. 
 Nay, from this circumstance, though occupying 
 a large portion of the area of the landscape, we 
 find that an elegant poet the "Delta" of 
 Blackwootfs Magazine wholly omits it in 
 his description of the scene in which it occurs : 
 
 11 Traced like a map, the landscape lies 
 In cultured beauty, stretching wide ; 
 There Pentland's green acclivities 
 There ocean, with its azure tide 
 There Arthur's Seat, and, gleaming through, 
 Thy southern wing, Dunedin blue I 
 While in the orient, Lammer's daughters, 
 A distant giant range, are seen 
 North Berwick Law, with cone of green, 
 And Bass amid the waters." 
 
 The natural objects enumerated here of course 
 omitting the ocean are the imposing emi- 
 nences that form the opposite shores of the 
 middle expanse Arthur's Seat and the Pent- 
 lands on the one hand, and the Lammermoors, 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 17 
 
 North Berwick Law, and the Bass, on the other. 
 And the parts of the Frith opposite these bold- 
 ly-featured regions partake strikingly of their 
 character. The middle space that fronts the 
 flat district ashore does not present a single 
 island ; whereas directly opposite the upper 
 tract of hill and valley, we find numerous hill- 
 tops rising above the water, and forming the 
 islands of Inchkeith, Inchcolm, Inchgarvie, Inch- 
 mykrie, Carcraig, and Cramond ; while op- 
 posite the lower tract we find another scene of 
 half-submerged hills existing as the islets of 
 Eyebroughy, Fidra, the Lamb, Craigleith, the 
 Bass, and the May. Now, this inconspicu- 
 ous flat space between, which leaves the sea so 
 open to the mariner, and the land so free to the 
 plough, and over which the first twelve miles of 
 my journey along the rails lay this morning, 
 forms the eastern coal deposit, or basin, of the 
 Lothians. The traveller may distinguish, on 
 either hand, from the windows of his carriage, 
 the numerous workings that stud the surface, 
 by their tall brick chimneys and the .smoke of 
 their engines ; and mark the frequent train 
 sweeping by, laden with coals for the distant 
 
18 8E0LOO1 OF Tin; 
 
 city. To conceive of a its charac- 
 
 ter as a basin. one } [uairfted 
 
 with not merely tho.se external features of the 
 country to which I have adverted, but also with 
 the internal arrangement of its strata. Stand- 
 ing on the banks of a Highland lake of profound 
 depth, such as Loch Ness, or the upper portion 
 of Loch Lomond, one < <; of the 
 
 rocky hollow in which the waters are contained 
 as a vast bowl or Usin. and this altogether 
 irrespective of the form of the 1 portion 
 
 of the valley that rises over the surface. We 
 can conceive of the rocky hollow occupied by the 
 lake as a true D the 
 
 middle of so flat a moor, that in winter, when 
 the water is frozen over, and a snow->;tom. 
 deep on the earth, the surface of moor and lake 
 presented one continuous plain. W e c an 
 ceiveof a steep .sloping .side trending into u rocky 
 bottom many fathoms below : then the opp 
 side rising in an angle equally .steep : and. 
 of all, the horizontal line of ice or water stretch- 
 ing across the abyss, like the strir i the 
 
 curve formed by a bow bent tight by the archer. 
 The Coal Measures of the Lothians repn 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS, 19 
 
 pretty nearly such a lake : and their shores 
 though, unlike those of the lake of my illustra- 
 tion, sufficiently bold to strike the eye as the 
 leading features of the landscape in which they 
 are included hear no comparison in height to 
 the profound depth of the submerged portion 
 at their feet. The ancient strata trend down- 
 wards in a steep angle from their sides, to the 
 depth of at least three thousand feet, and then, 
 flattening in the centre of the lake into a curved 
 bottom, rise against the opposite eminences in 
 an angle equally steep. Were the Coal Meas- 
 ures to be removed from that deep basin of the 
 more ancient rocks in which they lie, there 
 would intervene between Arthur's Seat and the 
 Pentlands on the rid the Garlton Hills 
 
 and Gullan Point on the east, the profoundest 
 valley in Scotland a valley considerably more 
 profound than Corriskin, Glen Nevis, or Glencoe. 
 The twelve miles of railway which intervene 
 between Piershill Barracks and the Garlton 
 Hills, may be regarded as a sort of suspension 
 bridge, stretched over the vast gulf; and the 
 profound depth below is occupied by one hun- 
 dred and seventy beds of shale, sandstone, coal, 
 
20 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 and clay, ranged in long irregular curves that 
 lie parallel to the bottom, and of which no fewer 
 than thirty-three are seams of coal. And over 
 all, as their covering, like the stratum of ice 
 and snow spread over the surface of the High- 
 land lake of my illustration, lie the boulder and 
 brick clays, beds of sand and gravel, and the 
 vegetable mould. 
 
 On reaching the station-house at Drem, I 
 transferred myself from the railway vehicle to 
 an omnibus that plies between the station and 
 North Berwick ; and we drove across the coun- 
 try. A coach-top is not quite the place from 
 which the geology of a district may be most 
 carefully studied ; and yet it has its adA^antages 
 too. There cannot be a better point of observa- 
 tion from which to acquaint one's-self with what 
 may be termed the geological physiognomy of a 
 country. One sees, besides, of what materials 
 the walls that line the sides of the way are 
 composed ; and they almost always furnish their 
 modicum of evidence regarding the prevailing 
 rocks. When speeding along the railway over 
 the Coal Measures, the traveller finds that the 
 fences are constructed of sandstone ; whereas 
 
GEOLOGY OF THP: BASS. 21 
 
 in the district across which the omnibus here 
 conveys him 7 he sees that they are almost all 
 built of trap. And with this piece of evidence 
 the features of the surrounding landscape en- 
 tirely harmonize. The general surface of the 
 country ia soft and rich ; but abrupt rocks 
 the broken bones of the land here and there 
 stick out high over the surface, as if to mark the 
 wounds and fractures of ancient conflict. There 
 are the Garlton Hills behind ; a long ridge of 
 feldspar porphyry rises immediately on the 
 left ; on the right, the greenstone eminence on 
 which the old Castle of Dirleton is built ascends 
 abruptly from beside the smooth area of one of 
 the loveliest, most English-looking villages in 
 Scotland ; northwards, encircled by the sea, we 
 may descry the precipitous trap islets of Fidra, 
 the Lamb, and Craigleith ; several inland crags, 
 more in the fore-ground, and half-hidden in wood, 
 stud the sandy campaign which here lines the 
 coast ; while on the east, immensely more huge 
 than the hugest of the Egyptian pyramids, and, 
 as seen from this point, scarce less regularly 
 pyramidal in its outline, towers the noble mo- 
 narch of the scene 
 
22 GEOLOGY OF' THE BASS. 
 
 " North Berwick Law, with cone of green." 
 In passing the ancient Castle of Dirleton, 
 which, like the Castles of Dunbar, Edinburgh, 
 Stirling, and Dumbarton, owed its degree of 
 impregnability as a stronghold mainly to its 
 abrupt trap-rock, and which stood siege against 
 the English in the days of Edward L, it occur- 
 red to me as not a little curious, that the early 
 geological history of a district should so often 
 seem typical of its subsequent civil history. If 
 a country's geological history was very disturb- 
 ed if the trap-rocks broke out from below, and 
 tilted up its strata in a thousand abrupt angles, 
 steep precipices, and yawning chasms the 
 chance is as ten to one, that there succeeded 
 when man came upon the scene, a history, scarce 
 less disturbed, of fierce wars, protracted sieges, 
 and desperate battles. The stormy morning, 
 during which merely the angry elements con- 
 tend, is succeeded in almost every instance by 
 a stormy day, maddened by the turmoil of hu- 
 man passion. A moment's farther cogitation, 
 while it greatly dissipated the mystery, served 
 to show through what immense periods mere 
 physical causes may continue to operate with 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 23 
 
 moral effect ; and how, in the purposes of Him 
 who saw the end from the beginning, a scene of 
 fiery confusion of roaring waves and heaving 
 earthquakes of ascending hills and deepening 
 valleys may have been closely associated with 
 the right development, and ultimate dignity 
 and happiness, of the yet unborn moral agent of 
 creation responsible man. It is amid these 
 centres of geologic disturbance the natural 
 strongholds *of the earth that the true battles 
 of the race the battles of civilization and civil 
 liberty have been successfully maintained by 
 handfuls of hardy men, against the despot-led 
 myriads of the plains. The reader, in glancing 
 over a map of Europe and the countries adja- 
 cent, on which the mountain-groups are mark- 
 ed, will at once perceive that Greece and the 
 Holy Land, Scotland and the Swiss Cantons, 
 formed centres of great Plutonic disturbance of 
 this character. They had each their geologic 
 tremors and perturbations - their protracted 
 periods of eruption and earthquake long ere 
 their analogous civil history, with its ages of 
 convulsion and revolution, in which man was the 
 agent, had yet commenced its course. And, 
 
24 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 indirectly at least, the disturbed civil history 
 was, in each instance, a consequence of the dis- 
 turbed geologic one. 
 
 While pursuing the idea, a sudden turning of 
 the road brought me full in view of the Bass, 
 looming tall and stately through a feint gray 
 haze, that had dropped its veil of thin gauze 
 over the stern features of the rock. But the 
 Bass, though one of the Plutonic strongholds of 
 the earth, and certainly not the least impregna- 
 ble among the number, has, so far as the policy 
 and character of its old masters are exhibited 
 in the record, no very ennobling history. It 
 has been strong chiefly on the side of the des- 
 pot and the tyrant. Its name appears in our 
 earlier literature only to be associated with 
 lying legends and false miracles. Then, after 
 forming for centuries the site of a stronghold 
 little remarkable in the annals of the country, 
 save that the unfortunate James L took sail 
 from it for France previous to his long captivi- 
 ty in England, the rock was converted into a 
 State prison, at a time when to worship God 
 agreeably to the dictates of conscience was a 
 grave State offence. And so its dungeons came 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 25 
 
 to be filled with not a few of the country's best 
 men. At a still later period, it held out for 
 James VII., and was the last spot in Great 
 Britain that recognized as legitimate the event 
 which placed the Constitution of the empire on 
 its present happy basis. And then, for a time, 
 it became a haunt of lawless pirates, the dread 
 of defenceless fishermen and the honest trader. 
 How reconcile with so disreputable a history, 
 the feelings of respect and veneration with 
 which the old rock is so frequently surveyed, 
 and so extensively associated ? Johnson, in his 
 singularly vigorous and manly poem, which 
 poets, such as Sir Walter Scott, have so greatly 
 admired, but which mere critics have censured 
 as non-poetical, speaks of a virtue " sovereign 
 o'er transmuted ill." Virtue does possess a 
 transmutative power. The death of patriots 
 and heroes under the hands of public execution- 
 ers confers honor on scaffolds and gibbets ; the 
 prison cells of martyrs and confessors breathe 
 forth recollections of the endurance of the 
 persecuted, that absorb all those harsher asso- 
 ciations which link on to the memory of the per- 
 secutor. Nay, even instruments of fierce tor- 
 2 
 
26 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 ture come to be regarded less as the repulsive 
 mementoes of a ruthless cruelty, than as the 
 valued relics of a high heroism. And hence 
 the interest that attaches to the Bass. 
 
 It is now many years since I gazed on this 
 rock for the first time, from the Frith beyond ; 
 but the recollection of the emotions which it 
 excited is still fresh. Some of its more cele- 
 brated sufferers came from the immediate neigh- 
 borhood of the locality in which I passed my 
 childhood and boyhood, with my first years of 
 labor a little northern oasis, in which, during 
 the times of the persecution of Charles II. and 
 his brother, Presbyterianism was as strong and 
 vital as in any district of the south or west ; 
 and the " echoes of their fame," to employ the 
 language of Wordsworth, " ring through' 7 that 
 part of " Scotland to this hour." In the quar- 
 ry in which I first became acquainted with 
 severe toil, and an observer of geological pheno- 
 mena, I used to know when it was time to cease 
 from my labors for the day, by marking the 
 evening sun resting over the high-lying farm- 
 house of Brea the little patrimony from which 
 one of the captives of the Bass Fraser deriv- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 27 
 
 ed his title. And from the grassy knoll above 
 the hollow I could see the parish churches of 
 two of its other more noted captives M'Gilli- 
 gen of Alness, and Hog of Kilt earn. Hence 
 many an imagination about the rocky Bass, 
 with its high-lying walks and dizzy precipices, 
 had filled my rnind long ere I had seen it. I 
 have now before me, among the jottings of an 
 old journal, a brief record of the feelings with 
 which I first surveyed it from the deck of a sail- 
 ing-vessel ; nor, though the passage does smack, 
 I find, of the enthusiasm of early youth, am I 
 greatly ashamed of it. "We are bearing up 
 the Frith in gallant style, within two miles of 
 the shore, and shall in a few hours, if the breeze 
 fail not, be within sight of Edinburgh. Yonder 
 is the Bass, rising like an immense tower out 
 of the sea. Times have changed since the ex- 
 cellent of the earth were condemned by the 
 unjust and the dissolute to wear out life on that 
 solitary rock. My eyes fill as I gaze on it ! 
 The persecutors have gone to their place : the 
 last vial has long since been poured out on the 
 heads of the infatuated race who, in their short- 
 sighted policy, would fain have rendered men 
 
28 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 faithful to their Princes by making them untrue 
 to their God. But the noble constancy of the 
 persecuted, the high fortitude of the martyr, 
 still live ; there is a halo encircling the brow of 
 that rugged rock ; and from many a solitary 
 grave, and many a lonely battle-field, there 
 come voices and thunderings like those which 
 issued of old from within the cloud, that tell us 
 how this world, with all its little interests, must 
 pass away, but that for those who fight the good 
 fight, and keep the faith, there abideth a rest 
 that is eternal." 
 
 It is not uninstructive to remark, from facts 
 and feelings such as these and the instances 
 on record are very great how much more per- 
 manently good connects itself with matter, in 
 the associations of the human mind, than evil. 
 The wickedness of the wicked cannot so enfeoff 
 itself, if one may so speak, in even their contri- 
 vances of diabolical design screws, and boots, 
 and thumbkins, dolorous dungeons, and scaffolds 
 hung round with the insignia of disgrace but 
 that the virtues of their victims seize hold upon 
 them, and so entirely appropriate them in the 
 recollection of future generations, that the claim 
 
 I 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 29 
 
 of the original possessors is lost. What a strik- 
 ing comment on the sacred text, " The memory 
 of the just is blessed ; but the name of the 
 wicked shall rot !" It seems to throw a gleam 
 of light, too, athwart a deeply mysterious sub- 
 ject. It was a greatly worse time than the pre- 
 sent in this country, when the dungeons of 
 yonder rock were crowded with the country's 
 most conscientious men. And yet how intense 
 the interest with which we look back upon these 
 times ; and on the rock itself, as a sort of step- 
 ping-stone by which to ascend to their scenes 
 of ready sacrifice, firm endurance, and high 
 resolve ; and how very poor would not the na- 
 tional history become, were all its records of 
 resembling purport and character to be blotted 
 out ! The evil of the past has served but to 
 enhance its good. May there not be a time 
 'coming when the just made perfect shall look 
 back upon all ill, moral and physical, with a 
 similar feeling ! when the tree of the know- 
 ledge of good and evil shall grow once more 
 beside the tree of life in the paradise of God, 
 but when its fruit, rendered wholesome by the 
 transmutative power, shall be the subject of no 
 
30 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 punitive prohibition ; and when the world which 
 we inhabit, wrapped round with holiest associa- 
 tions, as once the dungeon-house and scaffold of 
 a Divine Sufferer, shall be regarded disrepu- 
 table as we may now deem its annals with 
 reverence and respect, as the Bass of the uni- 
 verse, and its history be deemed perhaps the 
 most precious record in the archives of heaven ? 
 I found a friend waiting me at North 
 Berwick,* who kindly accompanied me in my 
 exploratory ramble along the shore, and who, 
 as his acquaintance with the district w T as greatly 
 more minute than mine, enabled me to economize 
 much time. We passed eastwards under the 
 cliffs, and soon found ourselves on the prevail- 
 ing trap-tuff of the district, a curiously com- 
 pounded rock, evidently of Plutonic origin, and 
 yet as regularly stratified as almost any rock 
 belonging to the Neptunean series. The body 
 of the tuff consists of loosely aggregated grains, 
 in some of the beds larger, in some more minute, 
 of the various trap-rocks and minerals, such as 
 green-earth, wacke, a finely levigated basalt, 
 
 * James Cook, Esq. one of Her Majesty's Heralds, pre- 
 sently residing at North Berwick. 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 31 
 
 and decomposed greenstone ; and, inclosed in 
 this yielding matrix, there lie fragments of the 
 harder traps, some sharp and angular, others 
 water-worn and round, that vary in size from a 
 hazel-nut to a hogshead. It incloses also occa- 
 sional fragments of the aqueous rocks here a 
 mass of red sandstone, there a block of lime. 
 There occasionally occur in it, too, viewed over 
 large areas, trap and sedimentary rocks of vast 
 size, beds of the aqueous series many hundred 
 feet in extent, and masses of the Plutonic that 
 exist as tall precipices or extensive skerries ; 
 but they, of course, can be regarded as no part 
 of the tuff. As might be premised from its in- 
 coherent texture, we find it to be an exceedingly 
 yielding rock. Wherever the lofty line of ram- 
 part which it here presents to the coast en- 
 croaches on the sea, we perceive that, hollowed 
 beneath by the dash of the waves, it exhibits 
 ranges of bold over-beetling precipices ; while, 
 wherever it retires, we discover that it has 
 weathered down into steep green slopes, with 
 here arid there some of the harder masses which 
 it incloses sticking picturesquely through. The 
 enigma that most imperatively demands being 
 
32 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 read in the case of this rock is the union of 
 sedimentary arrangement with Plutonic mate- 
 rials ; nor does it seem a riddle particularly 
 difficult of solution. 
 
 In the works of the Abbe Spallanzani, a dis- 
 tinguished continental naturalist who flourished 
 during the latter half of the last century, the 
 reader may find an elaborate description of the 
 volcano of Stromboli, one of the Lipari Islands. 
 There are, it would seem, several respects in 
 which this volcano furnishes peculiar facilities 
 to the observer. It occurs not on the apex, but 
 on the side of a mountain ; and is so entirely 
 commanded, in consequence, by the heights 
 which rise over it, that the visitor, if the neces- 
 sary courage be not wanting, may approach so 
 as to look down into the boiling depths of the 
 crater. Unlike most other volcanoes, it is in a 
 state of perpetual activity ; and, what is of still 
 more importance for our present purpose, it 
 rises so immediately over the sea, that no in- 
 considerable portion of the calcined or molten 
 matter which it has been ejecting day by day, 
 and hour by hour, for at least the last two thou- 
 sand years, falls hissing into the water. The 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 33 
 
 Plutonic agent gives up its charge direct into 
 the hands of the sedimentary one. Spallanzani 
 relates, in his lively description, how, venturing 
 as near the perilous chasm as he at first deemed 
 safe, he found the view not sufficiently com- 
 manding ; and how, looking around, " he per- 
 ceived a small cavern hollowed in the rock, near 
 the gulf of the volcano," which, " taking advan- 
 tage of one of the short intervals between the 
 eruptions, 7 ' he was fortunate enough to gain. 
 " And here," he says, " protected by the roof of 
 the cavern, I could look down into the very 
 bowels of the volcano, and Truth and Nature 
 stood, as it were, unveiled before me." " I 
 found the crater," he continues, " filled to a cer- 
 tain height with a liquid red-hot matter, resem 
 bling melted brass, which is the fluid lava. 
 This lava appears to be agitated by two distinct 
 motions ; the one intestine, whirling, and tumul- 
 tuous ; the other that which impels it upwards. 
 The liquid matter is raised sometimes with 
 mone, sometimes with less rapidity within the 
 crater ; its superficies becomes inflated, and 
 covered with large bubbles, some of which are 
 several feet in diameter ; and when it has 
 
34 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 readied the distance of twenty-five or thirty 
 feet from the upper edge, a sound is heard not 
 unlike a short clap of thunder the bubbles 
 presently burst, and at the same moment a por- 
 tion of the lava, separated into a thousand 
 pieces, is thrown up with indescribable swift- 
 ness, accompanied with a copious eruption of 
 smoke, ashes, and sand. After the explosion, 
 the lava within the crater sinks, but soon again 
 rises as before, and new tumors appear, which 
 again burst, and produce new explosions." " In 
 the smaller and moderate ejections," he adds, 
 " the stones, still so hot that their redness, not- 
 withstanding the light of the sun, is distinctly 
 visible in the air, fall back into the crater, and, 
 at their collision with the fluid lava, produce a 
 sound similar to that of water struck by a num- 
 ber of staves; but in the greater ejections, a 
 considerable quantity always fall outside the 
 crater's mouth, and, bounding down the steep 
 declivity, dash into the sea, giving, on entering 
 the waves, that sharp hissing sound which in a 
 lesser degree is produced by a bar of red-hot 
 iron plunged by a smith into a trough of water." 
 The Abbe, on another occasion, approached, he 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 35 
 
 tells us, the foot of the slope on its seaward side, 
 and saw the " ignited stones " rolling down. 
 " The five sailors," he says, " who had the care 
 of the boat in which I was, and some other na- 
 tives of Stromboli who were with me, and whose 
 occupation often brought them to that part of 
 the sea, told me that the volcano might now be 
 considered as very quiet ; assuring me that in 
 its greater fits of fury red-hot stones were fre- 
 quently thrown to the distance of a mile from 
 the shore, and that, consequently, at such times 
 it was impossible to remain with a. boat so near 
 the mountain as we then were. And their as- 
 sertion appeared to me sufficiently proved by a 
 comparison of the size of the fragments thrown 
 out in the explosions I now witnessed, with that 
 of those which had been ejected in several former 
 eruptions. The first (many of which had stopped 
 at the bottom of the precipice) were not more 
 than three feet in diameter ; while many of the 
 fragments thrown out at other times, of similar 
 quality to them, and which lay in large heaps 
 on the shore, were, some four, some five feet in 
 diameter, and others even still larger." The tract 
 of sea immediately beneath is much perplexed 
 
36 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 with currents, and exposed to storms (the Lipari 
 Isles, in mythologic history, formed the kingdom 
 of old ^Eolus) ; and though, since the volcano 
 existed in its active state, lava and ashes to the 
 amount of many millions of cubical yards must 
 have been cast out and though at one time, 
 about forty-four years previous to the date of 
 Spallanzani's visit, it ejected " such an immense 
 quantity of scoriae,- that it caused," to use the ex- 
 pression of his informants, " a dry place in the 
 sea " the debris has been so diffused by the 
 waves and tides, that there is a depth of about 
 twenty fathoms found but a few hundred yards 
 in front of the crater. The ejected materials 
 are spread by the sedimentary agents over a 
 large superficies. Now, in the semi-Neptunean, 
 semi-Plutonic deposit of Stromboli, which is 
 even now in the forming, we are presented with 
 every condition necessary to the formation of 
 such a deposit of stratified tuff as that which 
 composes so considerable a portion of the coast 
 of North Berwick. There is first the general 
 matrix of ashes, sand, and triturated lava, laid 
 down in continuous layers by the aqueous 
 agent; then the embedded fragments of the 
 
r 
 
 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 37 
 
 ^ 
 
 harder Plutonic rocks, varying in bulk from the 
 size of a pea, up to blocks of more than five feet 
 in diameter ; and, lastly, with the transporting 
 agency of tides and waves at command, the 
 | occasional introduction of fragments of sedimen- 
 tary rock, either derived from strata broken up 
 when the volcano originally burst forth, or carried 
 from a distance, can be no very inexplicable 
 enigma. 
 
 As we proceeded towards the cottages of the 
 fishermen of Canty Bay, where boat for the Bass 
 is usually taken, I was informed by my com- 
 panion, that Dr. Fleming, who had been resid- 
 ing for several weeks, during the previous sum- 
 mer, at North Berwick, had detected on the 
 surfaces of the trap-rocks near the harbor, une- 
 quivocal marks of the action of icebergs. He 
 found exactly such grooves and furrows on these 
 rocks as had been found by Lyell on those of 
 the coast of Nova Scotia, where the producing 
 cause is still at work, and every scratch and 
 line may be traced to the half-stranded masses 
 that, dimly seen during the tempests of the 
 winter gone by, had grated harshly along the 
 skerries of the shore. Certainly the associa- 
 
38 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 tions of the geologist take a wide range " From 
 beds of raging fire, to starve in ice." The rocks 
 here ; in their structure and composition, speak 
 of Plutonic convulsion and the fiery abyss ; 
 while the inscriptions on their surfaces testify 
 of a time when colossal icefloes, stranded upon 
 our shores, 
 
 " Lay dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 
 Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land 
 Thaw'd not, but gathered heap, and ruin seemed 
 Of ancient pile ; all else deep snow and ice." 
 
 The Bass is perforated by a profound cavern, 
 occasionally accessible at extreme ebb. We had 
 purposed attempting its exploration ; and as 
 the tide, though fast falling, still stood high on 
 the beach, we whiled away an hour or two 
 after first securing the services of the boatmen 
 awaiting the recession of the water, in exam- 
 ining the coast still farther to the east, and in 
 surveying the magnificent ruins of Tantallan. 
 For at least several centuries the ancient edifice 
 has been associated in a familiar proverb with 
 the imposing islet opposite, as the subject of 
 two impossibilities : 
 
 " Ding down Tantallan 
 Mak' a brig to the Bass :" 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 39 
 
 a half stanza which served for ages to charac- 
 terize the sort of achievements which cannot be 
 achieved ; and which, according to an old mili- 
 tary tradition, formed the burden of the " Scots 
 March." Hamilton of Gilbertfield, a name once 
 familiar in Scotch poetry, assures Allan Ram- 
 say, in one of his metrical epistles, that 
 
 "Nowthcr Hielanman nor Lawlan', 
 
 In poetrie, 
 
 But mocht as weel ding down Tantallan 
 As match wi' thee." 
 
 But we live in times in which the family of the 
 impossibles is fast becoming extinct. The Bass 
 still remains unbridged, only because no one 
 during the late railway mania chanced to pro- 
 pose running a line in that direction ; we have 
 seen the verse of Ramsay considerably more 
 than matched by poets, both of Highland and 
 Lowland extraction ; and Time is fast " dinging 
 down" the stately towers of Tantallan. Addi- 
 son, in his vision of the picture-gallery, could 
 see among the master-pieces of the dead paint- 
 ers only one artist at work an old man with a 
 solitary tuft of long hair upon his forehead, who 
 wrought with a pencil so exceedingly minute, 
 
40 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 that a thousand strokes produced scarce any 
 visible impression, and who, as a colorist, dealt 
 chiefly in brown. I recognised the same ancient 
 gentleman seated high on the central tower of 
 Tantallan, engaged apparently in whetting a. 
 scythe on the stonework of the edifice, and ever 
 and anon blowing away the detached particles 
 of dust with, his breath. He seemed to be quite 
 as leisurely now in his habits as when seen in 
 the days of Queen Anne among the pictures. 
 But there was an expression of wonderful power 
 stamped on his calm, pale, passionless visage : 
 and when I saw the marvels which he had ac- 
 complished in his quiet way how, after laying 
 the doughty Douglases on their back, he had 
 broken down the drawbridge of their impregna- 
 ble stronghold, and half filled up the moat, and 
 torn the iron gate of their dungeon off its hinges, 
 and laid corridor and gallery open to the winds 
 of heaven and how, still as unfatigued as if his 
 tasks had but just begun, he was going on in 
 his work without rest or intermission I could 
 not avoid recognising him as one of the most 
 formidable opponents, or most potent allies, 
 that cause or party could possibly possess ; and 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 41 
 
 felt that it betrayed nought approximating to 
 conceit in Sir Walter Scott, that he should have 
 employed so confidently, and on so many occa- 
 sions, his favorite Spanish proverb, 
 
 " Time and /, gentlemen, against any two." 
 
 The castle of Tantallan consists of three 
 massive towers, united by two curtains of lofty 
 rampart, that stretch across the neck of a small 
 promontory of trap-tuff, hollowed into inaccessi- 
 ble precipices by the waves below. The entire 
 fortali.ce consists of three sides of wall-like rock, 
 and one side of rock-like wall the edifice, if 
 laid down elsewhere, would be simply a piece 
 of detached masonry, that inclosed no area, and 
 could be rendered subservient to no purpose of 
 defence ; and so it seems difficult to imagine a 
 less fortunate conception regarding it than that 
 of a local topographer, viz. : that though at 
 present " nearly insulated, it once stood at a 
 considerable distance from the sea," and what 
 is now the perpendicular cliff immediately 
 behind " ended in a gentle slope, which ex- 
 tended greatly beyond the Bass." The strong- 
 hold, so situated, would be in exactly the cir- 
 
42 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 cumstances of the old warrior in the ballad, 
 who, setting his back to a dry-stone fence to 
 defend himself against odds, found his rear laid 
 hopelessly open by the demolition of the crazy 
 erection behind. Change has not been quite so 
 rapid in its march as the myth here would 
 argue ; and the geologist may find on these 
 ruins marks, not only of its progress, but of the 
 rate at which it goes on. The two curtains, 
 with the eastern and western towers, are com- 
 posed of a pale-colored Old Red Sandstone in 
 the main a durable stone, though some of the 
 hewn surfaces have become hollowed, under the 
 weathering influences, like pieces of honey- 
 comb, and the " bloody heart" is falling away 
 piecemeal from the armorial shield over the 
 gateway. But the greater part of the central 
 tower, evidently a later erection, is formed of a 
 fine-grained trap-tuff ; and with it the agencies 
 of decomposition and decay have been working 
 strange vagaries. The surfaces of the solid 
 ashler have retreated at least half a foot from 
 the original line, while the more durable cement 
 in which they were embedded stands out around 
 and over them in thin crusts, resembling hollow 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 43 
 
 cowls projecting over wasted heads like, for 
 instance, the becowled head of the spectre monk 
 in the " Castle of Otranto." Now, this trap- 
 tuff portion of the tower evidently no part of 
 the original design, but a mere after-thought 
 is in all probability not older than the days of 
 Archibald, sixth Earl of Angus, the nephew of 
 the poet Gawin Douglas, and the stepfather of 
 James V. 3 of whom it is known, that on his re- 
 turn from exile on the death of James, he 
 greatly strengthened the edifice ; and its state 
 of keeping serves to show how much, when ope- 
 rating on such materials, the tear and wear of 
 a few centuries may do. I bethought me, in 
 front of the old wasted tower as I marked at 
 my feet a fragment of dressed stone, which, 
 covered up till very recently by the soil, still 
 retained the marks of the tool with all the ori- 
 ginal sharpness of the time-worn aspect ex- 
 hibited by the more exposed slopes and preci- 
 pices of the hills and mountains of our country, 
 compared with the dressed and polished ap- 
 pe^ance which they so often present in those 
 portions which a protecting cover of mould or 
 clay has shielded from the disintegrating influ- 
 
44 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 ences. Arthur's Seat, with its worn and li- 
 chened precipices, shattered by the frosts and 
 rains of many centuries, resembles the time- 
 wasted tower ; while the stretch of grooved and 
 furrowed rock on its southern flank, which the 
 workmen engaged in forming the Queen's Drive 
 laid bare about two years ago, and which seemed 
 at the time as if it had been operated upon by 
 some powerful polishing machine only a day or 
 two previous, represents the piece of disinterred 
 stone, sharp from the chisel. And in the case 
 of both the tower and the hill, as in many other 
 matters, things are not what they appear to be. 
 The hewn surface of the tower was a greatly 
 more ancient surface than the present one ; and 
 it is but the more modern frontage of Arthur's 
 Seat that presents the marks of a hoar anti- 
 quity ; while its dressed and polished portions, 
 which appear so modern, are portions of what 
 is truly its old skin, not yet cast off. It was 
 once all scratched and polished from base to 
 summit, just as the wasted tower once exhibited, 
 from basement to battlement, the marks of <the 
 mallet : nay, all Scotland, from the level of the 
 sea to the height of fifteen hundred or two 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 45 
 
 thousand feet, seems to have been dressed after 
 this mysterious style, as if scoured over its 
 entire area on some general cleaning night. 
 But the central tower of Tantallan tells us how 
 and why it is that only on the less exposed 
 portions of the surface of the country need we 
 look for evidence of this strange serubbing- 
 bout it is only on the buried pieces of the 
 hewn work, if we may so speak, that we find 
 the sharp markings of the tool. 
 
 The inclosed area of the fortress cut off 
 from the land by the towers and their curtains, 
 and surrounded seaw r ards by a line of inacces- 
 sible precipices we find occupied by a range 
 of sorely dilapidated buildings, that rise in 
 rough edged picturesqueness on the west, im- 
 mediately over the rock-edge, and by a piece 
 of rich garden ground, fringed on the north and 
 east by thickets of stunted elder. The ruins 
 and the neglected garden are all that remain of 
 the scene which Scott has so well described in 
 JJarinion, as a favorite haunt of the Lady 
 Clare :- 
 
 "I said, Tantallan's dizzy steep, 
 Hung o'er the margin of the deep, 
 
46 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 And many a tower and rampart there 
 
 Repelled the insult of the air ; 
 
 Which, when the tempest vexed the sky, 
 
 Half breeze, half spray, came whistling by ; 
 
 Above the booming ocean lent 
 
 The far projecting battlement ; 
 
 The billows burst in ceaseless flow, 
 
 Deep on the precipice below ; 
 
 And stcepy rock and frantic tide, 
 
 Approach of human step defied." 
 
 A fine morning had matured into a lovely 
 day. The sun glanced bright on the deep 
 green of the sea immediately beneath ; and the 
 reflection went dancing in the calm, in wave- 
 lets of light, athwart the shaded faces of the 
 precipices ; while a short mile beyond, the 
 noble Bass loomed tall in the offing, half in 
 light, half in shadow ; and, dimly discerned 
 through the slowly dissipating haze, in the back 
 ground rose the rampart-like crags of the Isle 
 of May. ISTor was the framing of the picture, 
 as surveyed through one of the shattered open- 
 ings of the edifice, without its share of pic- 
 turesque beauty : it consisted of fantastically 
 piled stone, moulded of old by the chisel, and 
 now partially o'ershadowed by tufts of withered 
 grass and half-faded wallflower. Could the old 
 
 I 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 47 
 
 stately lords of the Castle have tasted, I asked 
 myself, the poetry of a scene which they must 
 have so often surveyed? And, as if to re- 
 buke the shallow petulance that would restrict 
 whatever is exquisite in sentiment to one's 
 own superficial times, that "noble Lord of 
 Douglas blood," who " gave rude Scotland Vir- 
 gil's page," and who must a thousand times have 
 looked out upon the sublime features of the 
 prospect from the very spot on which I now 
 stood, seemed to raise his mitred front in the 
 opening, and then, stalking by, tall and stately, 
 to evanish amid the ruins. The " schot-wyndo," 
 that he " unschet ane litel on char," to look out 
 upon the bleak winter morning which he so 
 graphically describes in one of his prologues, 
 may have been the identical shot-window 
 through which, a moment before, I had cast a 
 careless glance upon the sea ; and these were 
 the vaulted passages through which he must 
 have so often paced, ere the field of Flodden 
 was stricken, calling up, as he himself ex- 
 presses it, in a line which would have stamped 
 him poet had he never written another, 
 
 " Gousty schaddois of cild and grisly deed." 
 
48 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 I succeeded in scrambling up to a middle 
 range of apartments that are hollowed in the 
 thickness of the front rampart ; but there is an 
 upper range, inaccessible without a ladder, 
 which I failed in reaching, and which, if once 
 attained, might be made good by five against 
 five hundred any day. I was informed by my 
 companion, that some four or five-and-thirty 
 years ago, when he was a boy at school, this 
 upper range was seized and garrisoned by a 
 gang of mischievous thieves, headed by an 
 old sailor, who had been wrecked shortly before 
 on the rocky islet of Fidra, and had taken a 
 fancy to the ancient ruin. They had construct- 
 ed a ladder of ropes, which could be let down 
 or drawn up at pleasure; and sallying out, 
 always in the night-time, they annoyed the 
 country week after week, by depredations on 
 portable property of all kinds, especially pro- 
 visions depredations which, though they al- 
 ways left mark enough behind them, never 
 left quite enough to trace them by to the de- 
 predators. Sheep were carried off and slaugh- 
 tered in the fields the larders of gentlemen 
 who, like all men of sense, valued good din- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 49 
 
 ners, were broken into, and turkey and tongue 
 extracted ; bakers were robbed of their flour 
 provision merchants of their hams ; a ves- 
 sel in the harbor, on the eve of sailing, was 
 lightened of her sea-stock ; one worthy burgher, 
 much in the habit of examining objects in the 
 distance, had his spy-glass stolen another was 
 denuded of his clothes ; the mansion-house 
 of Seacliff was harried the farm-house of 
 Scoughall plundered ; and quiet men and re- 
 spectable women grew nervous over three whole 
 parishes, when they thought of the light-finger- 
 ed invisibilities that wrought the mischief, and 
 asked what was to come next. Some of the 
 North Berwick fishermen had seen lights at 
 night twinkling high amid the ruins from slit 
 openings and shot-holes : but supernaturalities 
 are all according to nature in connection with 
 such ruins as Tantallan ; and so the lights ex- 
 cited no suspicion. A highlandman who had 
 been sent by his master to plant ivy against the 
 old walls, had been pelted by an unseen hand 
 with bits of lime ; but he was by much too 
 learned in such things not to know that it is 
 fatal to blab regarding the liberties which the 
 3 
 
50 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 denizens of the spiritual world take with mortals ; 
 and so he wisely held his tongue. At length, 
 however, just as the general dismay had reach- 
 ed its acme, the haunt of the thieves was discov- 
 ered by some young girls, who, when employ- 
 ed in thinning turnips in the garden of the Cas- 
 tle, were startled by the apparition of a weather- 
 beaten face, surmounted by a red Kilmarnock 
 nightcap, gazing at them as intently from a 
 window in the fourth story of the edifice, as if 
 the owner of the cap and face had been some 
 second Christy of the Cleek, and longed to eat 
 them. They fled, shrieking, along the identical 
 passage through which the " good Lord Mar- 
 niion" escaped the grim Douglas, when 
 
 " The ponderous grate behind him rung ;" 
 
 the neighborhood was raised, the hold stormed, 
 and, after a desperate resistance, the old sailor 
 captured ; and with his ultimate banishment 
 by the magistracy, the last incident in the his- 
 tory of Tantallan terminated. The earlier pas- 
 sages were of a more chivalric character ; and 
 yet, when, on groping my way into the dungeon 
 of the fortress a gloomy cell nearly level with 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 51 
 
 the moat outside I saw one narrow opening, 
 through which I could discern only a minute 
 patch of sky rising slantwise in the ponderous 
 wall to the surface, and another still narrower 
 opening, through which I could discern only a 
 minute patch of sea slanting downwards into 
 the solid rock when I had breathed for a few 
 moments the dead stagnant air of the place, and 
 marked the massive iron hinges of the door 
 corroded into mere skeletons by the unwhole- 
 some damps when I had looked upon the nak- 
 ed walls, and the rubbish-covered floor, and 
 the low-browed roof of dripping stone I deem- 
 ed it a greatly better matter to be contempora- 
 ry with low rogues, such as the sailor in the 
 red Kilmarnock nightcap, than with high-spirit- 
 ed, mail-covered, steel-helmed robbers, such as 
 those ancient lords of Tantallan who had kept 
 the key of this dolorous dungeon, and could 
 serve at will the unhappy captives which it had 
 once contained, as one of them had served Mac- 
 lellan, tutor of Bomby, in their dungeon at 
 Thrieve. 
 
 We quitted the ruins, and returned to Canty 
 Bay along; the cliffs. There occur between the 
 
52 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 bay and the Castle, as if inlaid in the trap-tuff, 
 two immense beds of the Old Red Sandstone of 
 the district ; while a third bed, of at least equal 
 extent, occurs a few hundred yards to the east 
 of the ruins, in the neighborhood of the man- 
 sion-house of Seacliff. In a locality in which 
 the surface has been so broken up that at least 
 three-fourths of its present area is composed of 
 the disturbing trap, and in which the old sedi- 
 mentary rocks exist as mere insulated patches, 
 there can, of course, be no satisfactory determi- 
 nation regarding the relations of strata. There 
 are, however, various appearances which led me 
 to believe that these beds occur, when in their 
 proper place, deep in the old Red, and that in 
 their present position they lie not far from the 
 ancient focus of disturbance. They exhibit, 
 what is greatly more common towards the base 
 than in the upper deposits of the system, a 
 large amount of false stratification ; they hold 
 a middle place, in point of distance, between 
 the last patches of the lower Coal Measures 
 which appear on the coast of Dirleton to the 
 west, and the first patches that appear on the 
 coast of Dunbar on the east ; while the lie of 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 53 
 
 their true strata, not very greatly removed in 
 some of the beds from the horizontal, indicates 
 a nearly central application of the disturbing 
 force. This last circumstance is not uuworthy 
 of notice. Insulated patches of stratified rock, 
 so covered up by soil and diluvium that their 
 relations cannot be traced, are often held to 
 have escaped the disturbing influences, if their 
 strata but rest in the original horizontal line ; 
 whereas the horizontality of their position may 
 be a consequence, not of the absence of disturb- 
 ance, but merely of its focal proximity. Behe- 
 moth, rising amid a field of float-ice, may occa- 
 sion considerable disturbance and derangement 
 among the pieces that tilt up against his sides ; 
 but the pieces which he carries up on his back 
 retain nearly their original position of undis- 
 turbed horizontality. I spent a day, early in 
 the autumn of the present year, in examining 
 that junction, at Siccar Point, of the Old Red 
 conglomerate with the still older slate rocks and 
 micaceous schists of the district which Playfair, 
 in his Memoir of Button has rendered classi- 
 cal ; and found the principle to which I refer, 
 of apparent non-disturbance immediately over 
 
54 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 the focus where the disturbance had been great- 
 est, as finely illustrated by the section as at 
 least any of the other phenomena which its ap- 
 pearances have been cited to substantiate. 
 
 I enjoyed on this occasion the companionship 
 of the Rev. Mr. Dodds of Belhaven, and found 
 his intimate acquaintance with the district, and 
 with geological fact in general, of great value. 
 On passing along the railway to the east of the 
 town, where the strata, exposed on each side by 
 the excavation, exhibit those alternations of 
 sandstone and shale so common in the Coal 
 Measures, he informed me that at this point 
 the workmen had found numerous fossils ; and 
 he afterwards kindly procured for me one of the 
 specimens a block of indurated shale, largely 
 charged with two well-known corals of the Car- 
 boniferous Limestone Cyathophyllum fungi- 
 tes and Tubipora radiatus. A full mile and 
 a quarter from where the primary rock first ap- 
 pears, we saw decided marks of the disturbance 
 which it occasioned. The Old Eed Sandstone, 
 exhibited here in sections of enormous thick- 
 ness, lies tilted up against it in an angle which 
 heightens as we proceed, till it assumes, at the 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 55 
 
 point 'of junction, a nearly vertical position. 
 But the focus of disturbance once reached, the 
 marks of disturbance cease ; and the occasion- 
 al patches of the Old Red which here and there 
 appear, rest horizontally on the primary rock. 
 They are, to return to my illustration, the ice- 
 fragments which, carried up on the broad back 
 of Behemoth, rest on their original planes, 
 while those that lean against his sides have 
 been set steeply on edge. The Siccar Point is 
 hollowed into a wildly romantic cavern, open to 
 the roll of the sea, and scooped almost exclu- 
 sively out of an ancient bed of purplish-colored 
 clay-slate, raised like the schist in which it is 
 intercalated, in a nearly vertical angle ; and 
 which presents, in the weathering, a sort of fan- 
 tastic fret-work, as if a fraternity of Chinese 
 carvers had been at work on its sides for ages. 
 And forming the roof of the cavern, and laid 
 down as nicely horizontal on the sharp edges 
 of the more ancient strata, as if the levelling 
 rule of the mason or carpenter had been em- 
 ployed in the work, we see stretching over head, 
 the lowest bed of the Old Red Sandstone. On 
 this very point, with the noble cavern full in 
 
56 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 front, old Hutton stood and lectured ; and he had 
 for his auditory, Playfair and Sir James Hall. 
 But a description of the scene in Playfair's own 
 words may at least serve to show how admira- 
 bly these Huttonians of the last age could write 
 as well as reason : 
 
 " The ridge of the Lammermuir Hills, in the 
 south of Scotland, consists," says the accom- 
 plished Professor, " of primary micaceous schis- 
 tus, and extends from St. Abb's Head west- 
 ward, till it joins the metalliferous mountains, 
 about the sources of the Clyde. The sea-coast 
 affords a transverse section of this Alpine tract 
 at its eastern extremity, and exhibits the 
 changes from the primary to the secondary 
 strata, both on the south and on the north. Dr. 
 Hutton wished particularly to examine the lat- 
 ter of these, and on this occasion Sir James 
 Hall and I had the pleasure to accompany him. 
 We sailed in a boat from Dunglas on a day 
 when the fineness of the weather permitted us 
 to keep close to the foot of the rocks which line 
 the shore in that quarter, directing our course 
 southwards in search of the termination of the 
 secondary strata. We made for a high rocky 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 57 
 
 point or headland, the tSiccar, near which, from 
 our observations on shore, we knew that the ob- 
 ject we were in search of was likely to be dis- ' 
 covered. On landing at this point, we found 
 that we actually trod on the primeval rock 
 which forms alternately the base and the sum- 
 mit of the present land. It is here a mica- 
 ceous schistus, in beds nearly vertical, highly 
 indurated, and stretching from south-east to 
 north-west. The surface of this rock runs with 
 a moderate ascent, from the level of low water 
 . at which we landed, nearly to that of high water, 
 where the schistus has a thin covering of red 
 horizontal sandstone laid over it ; and this sand- 
 stone, at the distance of a few yards farther 
 back, rises into a very high perpendicular cliff. 
 Here, therefore, the immediate contact of the 
 two rocks is not only visible, but is curiously 
 dissected and laid open by the action of the 
 waves. The rugged tops of the schistus are 
 seen penetrating into the horizontal beds of 
 sandstone, and the lowest of these last form a 
 breccia containing fragments of schistus, some 
 round and others angular, united by an arena- 
 ceous cement. 
 
 3* 
 
58 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 " Dr. Hutton," continues the Professor, " was 
 highly pleased with appearances that set in so 
 ' clear a light the different formations of the 
 parts which compose the exterior crust of the 
 earth, and where all the circumstances were 
 combined that could render the observation sat- 
 isfactory and precise. On us,, who saw these 
 phenomena for the first time, the impression 
 made will not easily be forgotten. The palpa- 
 ble evidence presented to us of one of the most 
 extraordinary and important facts in the nat- 
 ural history of the earth, gave a reality and 
 substance to those theoretical speculations, 
 which, however probable, had never till now been 
 directly authenticated by the testimony of the 
 senses. We often said to ourselves, what clearer 
 evidence could we have had of the different for- 
 mation of these rocks, and of the long interval 
 which separated these formations, had we actu- 
 ally seen them emerging from the bosom of the 
 deep? We felt ourselves necessarily carried 
 back to the time when the schistus on which we 
 stood was yet at the bottom of the sea, and 
 when the sandstone before us was only begin- 
 ning to be deposited, in the shape of sand or 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 59 
 
 mud, from the waters of a superincumbent 
 ocean. An epocha still more remote presented 
 itself, when even the most ancient of these 
 rocks, instead of standing upright in vertical 
 beds, lay in horizontal planes at the bottom of 
 the sea, and were not yet disturbed by that im- 
 measurable force which has burst asunder the 
 solid pavement of the globe. Revolutions still 
 more remote appeared in the distance of this 
 extraordinary perspective. The mind seemed 
 to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss 
 of time ; and while we listened with earnest- 
 ness and admiration to the philosopher who was 
 unfolding to us the order and series of these 
 wonderful events, we became sensible how much 
 farther reason may sometimes go, than imagi- 
 nation can venture to follow. As for the rest, 
 we were truly fortunate in the course we had 
 pursued in this excursion ; a great number of 
 other curious and important facts presented 
 themselves ; and w r e returned, having collected 
 in one day more ample materials for future 
 speculation than have sometimes resulted from 
 years of diligent and laborious research." 
 On reaching Canty Bay, we found the boat- 
 
60 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 men in readiness ; and, embarking for the Bass, 
 rowed leisurely around the island. What, per- 
 haps, first strikes the eye in the structure of 
 the precipices, as the boat sweeps outwards 
 along the western side, is the number of verti- 
 cal lines by which they are traversed. No one 
 would venture to describe the rock as columnar ; 
 and yet, like most of the trap-rocks like Salis- 
 bury Crags, for instance, or the Castle rock of 
 Edinburgh towards the south and west, or the 
 basaltic summit of Arthur's Seat the artist 
 who set himself to transfer its likeness to pa- 
 per or canvass would require to deal much more 
 largely in upright strokes of the pencil than in 
 strokes of any other kind. A similar peculiar- 
 ity may be observed in some of the primary 
 districts. The porphyritic precipices of Glen- 
 coe are barred along the course of the valley, 
 on both sides, by strongly marked vertical lines, 
 that harmonize well with the sharp perpendic- 
 ular peaks atop ; and where the vertical lines 
 and perpendicular peaks cease, whether at the 
 upper or lower opening of the glen, the travel- 
 ler may safely conclude that he has entered on 
 a different formation. As w r e pass seawards 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 61 
 
 under the higher precipices of the Bass, the ver- 
 tical lining takes a slightly outward cast ; the 
 rude columns seem bent forward like the bay- 
 onet-armed muskets of a foot-regiment placed 
 in the proper angle for repelling the charge of 
 a troop of horse ; and on the shelves formed 
 by the rude cross jointing of these columns, do 
 the innumerable birds that frequent the rock 
 find the perilous, mid -air platforms on which 
 they rear their young. At the time of my 
 former visit, to borrow from Old Dunbar 
 
 " The air was dirldt with the fowlis, 
 That cam with yammeris and with yowlis, 
 With shrykking, screeking, skrymming, scowlis, 
 And meikle noyis and showtes." 
 
 But all was silent to-day. November, accord- 
 ing to the quondam missionary of St. Kilda, 
 is the " deadest month of the year ;" " the bulk 
 of the fowls having deserted the coast, leave the 
 rocks black [i. e., white] and dead." I was not 
 sufficiently aware, during my previous visit, 
 how very much the birds add to the effect of 
 the rock scenery of the island. The gannet 
 measures from wing-tip to wing-tip full six feet ; 
 the great black gull, five ; the blue or herring 
 
 
62 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 gull, about four feet nine inches ; and, flying at 
 all heights along the precipices, thick as motes 
 in the sunbeam this one, so immediately over 
 head that the well-defined shadow which it casts 
 darkens half the yawl below that other, well 
 nigh four hundred feet in the air, though still 
 under the level of the summit they serve, by 
 their gradations of size, from where they seem 
 mere specks in the firmament, to where they 
 exhibit, almost within staff reach, their amplest 
 development of bulk, as objects to measure the 
 altitudes by. And these altitudes appear con- 
 siderably less when they are away. But an 
 abrupt rock tower, rising out of the sea to the 
 height of four hundred and twenty feet, must 
 be always an imposing object, whatever its ac- 
 companiments, or let us measure it as we may. 
 
 " Dread rock ! thy life is two eternities 
 The last in air the former in the deep ; 
 First with the whales last with the eagle skies : 
 Drowned wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep ! 
 Another cannot bow thy giant size !" 
 
 
 
 I was not fortunate enough to effect a land- 
 ing in the great cavern by which the island is j 
 perforated ; the tide had not fallen sufficiently 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 63 
 
 low to permit the approach of the boat through 
 the narrow opening to the beach within ; and, 
 pleasant as the day was, an incipient frost ren- 
 dered it rather "a naughty one for swimming 
 in." But we approached as near as the strait 
 vestibule half blocked up by a rock that at 
 every recession of the wave showed its pointed 
 tusk above water gave permission ; and I saw 
 enough of the cave to enable me to conceive of 
 its true character and formation. One of those 
 slicken-sided. lines of division so common in the 
 trap-rocks, runs across the island from east to 
 west, cutting it into two unseparated parts, im- 
 mediately under the foundations of the old chapel. 
 As is not uncommon along these lines, whether 
 occasioned by the escape of vapors from below 
 or the introduction of moisture from above, the 
 rock on both sides, so firm and unwasted else- 
 where, is considerably decomposed ; and the 
 sea, by incessantly charging direct in this soft- 
 ened line from the stormy east, has, in the lapse 
 of ages, hollowed a passage for itself through. 
 A fine natural niche, a full hundred feet in 
 height such a one, perhaps, as that which 
 Wordsworth apostrophises in his Sonnets on 
 
64 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 the River Duddon forms the opening of the 
 cavern, the roof bristling high over head, with 
 minute tufts of a beautiful rock-fern, the base- 
 ment-course, if I may so speak, roughened with 
 brown algse, and having the dark green sea for 
 its floor. But the cavern beyond seems scarce 
 worthy of such a gateway ; the roof appears 
 from this point to close in upon it ; and a pro- 
 jection from one of the sides completely shuts 
 up its long vista to the sea and the daylight on 
 the opposite side of the island. The height of 
 this tunnel of nature's forming is about thirty 
 feet throughout ; its length about a hundred 
 and seventy yards. Not far from its western 
 opening there occurs a beach of gravel, which, 
 save when the waves run high during the flood 
 of stream tides, is rarely covered. Its middle 
 space contains a dark pool, filled even at low 
 ebb with from three to four feet water ; and an 
 accumulation of rude boulders occupies the re- 
 maining portion of its length, a little within the 
 eastern entrance. It is a dark and dreary 
 recess, full of chill airs and dropping damps 
 such a cavern as that into which the famous 
 Sinbad the Sailor was lowered, at the command 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 65 
 
 of his dear friend the king, when his wife had 
 died, and agreeably to the courtesy of the coun- 
 try, he had to be buried with her alive, in order 
 to keep her company. 
 
 So quiet was this delicate winter day, as 
 Gilbert White would term it, and so smooth the 
 water, that we effected our landing on the Bass 
 without a tithe of the risk or difficulty which 
 the midsummer visitors of the rock have not 
 unfrequently to encounter. The only landing- 
 places, two in number, occur on a flat shelving 
 point which forms the south-eastern termina- 
 tion of the island. Our boatmen selected, on 
 this occasion, the landing-place in more imme- 
 diate proximity with the fortress, as the better 
 of the two ; and we found its superiority owing 
 to the circumstance r that it had been originally 
 cut, at no inconsiderable expense of labor, into 
 the living rock ; here of so solid a consistence 
 that to employ the words used by Sir Walter 
 in describing a similar undertaking " a laborer 
 who wrought at the work might in the evening 
 have carried home in his bonnet all the shivers 
 which he had struck from the mass in the course 
 of the day." 
 
66 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 The flat point in which the landing-place is 
 hollowed forms a lateral prolongation of the 
 lowest of three shelves or platforms, into which, 
 with precipitous cliffs between, the sloping sur- 
 face of the island is divided ; and the upper 
 part of this lowest shelf or platform, which rises 
 in level as it sweeps from the eastern to the 
 western precipices, is occupied by the ancient 
 fortress. The stronghold was so designed that 
 a single stretch of wall built across the point 
 and at its one extremity joining on to the here 
 inaccessible cliff which rises towards the second 
 platform of the island, and terminating, at its 
 other extremity, with the sheer rock-edge, that 
 descends perpendicularly into the sea served 
 to shut up the whole Bass. The entire plat- 
 form somewhat resembles in shape a gigantic 
 letter A the flat shelving point, with its land- 
 ing places, representing the lower part of the 
 letter, up to the transverse stroke the higher 
 portion of the platform, occupied by the various 
 buildings of the fortress, the part of the letter 
 above the stroke and the single cross wall 
 made effective in shutting up so much, the 
 transverse stroke itself. To this transverse 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 67 
 
 rampart there joins on at right angles a longi- 
 tudinal rampart a line, to follow up my pecu- 
 liarly literary illustration, drawn from the mid- 
 dle of the cross stroke of the A to the apex of 
 the letter ; or if the reader has been accustom- 
 ed to disentangle and peruse those fantastic 
 ciphers, curiously compounded of capital letters, 
 which one so frequently finds inscribed on the 
 mouldering tablets and storied lintels of ancient 
 castles, he may conceive of it as a T reversed, 
 inscribed within a greatly larger A, the central 
 cross line of the cipher serving to form the 
 transverse stroke of each of the component let- 
 ters. And this longitudinal rampart, by run- 
 ning along the middle of the inclosed portion of 
 the shelf, both served to front the sea with its 
 tier of cannon, for purposes of offence, and to 
 protect defensively from distant cannonading, 
 the buildings which lie clustered behind. The 
 whole fortalice, in short, may be conceived of, 
 in the ground plan, as a gigantic letter T, for 
 the A represents chiefly the ground on which it 
 stands. And while any part of it might be 
 battered from a distance, only the transverse 
 portion of it could be approached by an enemy 
 
68 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 from the landing-places ; the longitudinal por- 
 tion, protected in front by inaccessible rocks, 
 and in flank by the transverse wall, being as 
 entirely included in the inclosed area, outside 
 its parapet as within. 
 
 All the doors of the deserted fortalice now 
 lie open, except one a door by which the ten- 
 ant of the Bass fences against unauthorised 
 visitors the upper part of the island, with its 
 flocks of unfledged gannets and its sheep ; and 
 this door, as it occurs, not in the transverse 
 wall, but at the top of a long ascending passage 
 beyond, leaves the space in front of the longi- 
 tudinal rampart as open to the vagrant foot as 
 the shelving point in front of the transverse 
 one. The door divides the island into two un- 
 equal parts, a lower and upper ; and I am thus 
 particular in detailing the circumstance, as it 
 serves to show on what slight and trivial causes 
 the preservation or extinction of a vegetable 
 species may sometimes depend. The sheep are 
 restricted by the door to the upper division of 
 the island ; while two comparatively rare plants 
 indigenous to the place the sea-beet and the 
 Bass-mallow are found in only its lower divi- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 69 
 
 sion. The same door which protects the sheep 
 from the lawless depredator, has protected the 
 two rare plants from the sheep ; and so they con- 
 tinue to exist ; while in several other islands 
 of the Frith, in which they once found a habi- 
 tat, but enjoyed the protection of no jealous 
 door, they exist no longer. Even in the Bass 
 they seem to be in considerable danger, from the 
 recent introduction of a colony of rabbits, that 
 have already made themselves free of both the 
 lower and upper divisions of the island, and 
 that, by scooping the soil fromt under the mal- 
 lows, and by nibbling off the reproductive ger- 
 mins of the beet, have of late very sensibly 
 diminished the numbers of both. The beet 
 plants in especial seemed to be at least thrice 
 more numerous when I formerly visited the 
 place than I found them now. 
 
 The rabbits, however, though no friends to the 
 rare plants, nor yet to the ruins for with their 
 unsightly excavations, they have been working 
 sad havoc among the parapets and slimmer 
 walls did me some service as a sort of geolo- 
 gical pioneers. They had been busily at work 
 immediately under what I have described as the 
 
70 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 longitudinal wall of the fortress, where the tree 
 mallow grows thick and tall in a loose grayish- 
 colored soil, which may be now safely describ- 
 ed as vegetable mould, but which existed a 
 century and a half ago simply as the debris and 
 exuviae of the garrison. And their excavations 
 here, from two to four feet in depth, serve to lay 
 open to the visitor a formation of compara- 
 tively recent origin, the various remains of 
 which, animal and vegetable, organic and ar- 
 tistic, all speak of man. Thje accumulation 
 constitutes suck a deposit as would surely be 
 now and then unveiled by the explorer of the 
 more ancient fossiliferous beds, had there ex- 
 isted a rational tool-making creature in the 
 earlier ages of creation ; or had man, as some 
 writers fancy, been contemporary with all the 
 geologic systems in succession. 
 
 It is not unusual to bestow a name on the 
 subordinate beds of larger formations, from the 
 more characteristic organisms which they con- 
 tain. We have thus " Coral Rags," and " Ich- 
 thyolitic Beds,' 7 and " Gryphite" " Encrinal," 
 and " Pentamerous Limestones ;" and were we, 
 on a similar principle of nomenclature, to be- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 71 
 
 stow on this limited formation a name from the 
 prevalent remains which it exhibits, we would 
 have to term it the Tobacco-pipe Deposit. It 
 abounds in the decapitated stalks and broken 
 bowls of tobacco-pipes, of antique form and 
 massy proportions, any one of which would have 
 furnished materials enough for the construction 
 of two such pipes 
 
 "As smokers smoke in these degenerate days." 
 
 Assisted by my companion, I picked up in a 
 few minutes the bowls of five of these memo- 
 rials of bygone luxury, and the stalks of about 
 twice as many more. Some of the stalks at 
 their terminal points are well rounded, as if 
 long in friendly contact with the teeth ; while 
 their lack of wax or varnish shows that the art 
 of glazing for an inch or two, to protect the 
 lips from the fretting absorbescence of the pipe- 
 clay, had yet to be invented. The bowls are 
 all broken short at the neck evidence that the 
 wasteful practice of knocking out the ashes, not 
 as was Uncle Toby's wont, against the thumb- 
 nail, but against a hard stone, has been by no 
 means confined to our own anti-economic age ; 
 
72 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 and most of them still bear the darkened stain 
 of the tobacco. There are few of the heads of 
 that head-taking-off century not excepting the 
 head of the Royal Martyr himself in so excel- 
 lent a state of keeping, or that still bear about 
 them such unequivocal mark of what had most 
 engaged them in their undetached condition, 
 whether the Virginian weed, unlimited preroga- 
 tive de jure divino^ or the Canterburian cere- 
 monies. The deposit in which they occur, lies 
 parallel to and immediately in front, as has been 
 said, of the longitudinal range of rampart, along 
 which the sentinels must have paced frequent 
 and oft, humming, during the midnight watch, 
 some reckless old-world song " If ere I do 
 well 'tis a wonder," or, " Three bottles and a 
 quart" and consoling themselves, as the keen 
 sea-breeze whistled sharp and shrill through 
 embrazure and shot-hole, with a whiff of tobac- 
 co. The night is drizzly and chill ; and yonder, 
 tall in the fog, may be seen the grimly-mous- 
 tached, triangular-capped, buff-belted, duffle-be- 
 coated scoundrel of a sentry pacing along the 
 wall, and crooning an old drinking-song as he 
 goes. One pipe is already smoked out : he 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 73 
 
 stops, and firmly holding the stalk of the imple- 
 ment at the neck, he taps the bowl against the 
 edge of the par ape t, in preparation for another. 
 It breaks short in his hand ; and, with a sudden 
 oath, that forms a rather abrupt episode in the 
 tune, and disturbs poor Mr. Blackadder in his 
 cell, he sends the bowl a-whizzing over the ram- 
 part, and the stalk straightway follows it. And 
 now, after a hundred and eighty years have 
 come and gone, here is both bowl and stalk ! 
 One English poet has written verses on the de- 
 tached heel of an old shoe ; another on a re- 
 jected quid of tobacco divested of the juice. I 
 do not see why a mutilated tobacco-pipe of the 
 Bass should not make quite as good a subject 
 as either. Their abundance here seems to de- 
 monstrate that the unscrupulous soldiery of the 
 times of Charles II. must have been not a little 
 remarkable as a smoke-inhaling fraternity ; 
 while the fact that a vicar of the neighboring 
 parish of Golyn was deposed by James VI. for 
 the high crime of smoking tobacco about half a 
 century before, shows that smoke-inhaling could 
 scarce have taken rank, in the time of James* 
 grandson, among the very respectable accom- 
 4 
 
74 
 
 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 plishments. The weed, if not obnoxious to all 
 the anathemas of the pedant monarch's " Coun- 
 terblast," must have still been the subject of an 
 appreciation at least as disparaging as that of 
 Lamb's " Farewell :" 
 
 ' c Sooty retainer to the vine ; 
 Bacchus' black servant negro, fine ; 
 Sorcerer that mak'st us dote upon 
 Thy begrimmed complexion ; 
 And, for thy pernicious sake, 
 More and greater oaths to break 
 Than reclaimed lovers take * * * 
 Stinkingest of the stinking kind ; 
 Filth of the mouth, and fog of the mind; 
 Henbane, nightshade, both together, 
 Hemlock aconite." 
 
 With the broken tobacco-pipes I found nume- 
 rous fragments of beef and mutton bones, that 
 still bore mark of the butcher's saw, blent with 
 the frequent bones of birds and fractured shells 
 of the edible crab memorials, the two last, of 
 contributions furnished by the islet itself to the 
 wants of its garrison or the prisoners. I picked 
 up, besides, a little bit of brass, the ornamental 
 facing, apparently, of some piece of uniform, 
 v/ith several bits of iron, long since oxidized out 
 of all shape, and stuck round with agglomera- 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 75 
 
 tions of gravel and coal, and bits of decayed 
 wood, representative to the young geologist of 
 the components of some ancient conglomerate 
 of the Devonian or Carboniferous period, bound 
 together by a calcareous or metallic cement. 
 My companion found glittering among the debris, 
 what at the first glance seemed to be a cluster 
 of minute well-formed pearls of great beauty 
 and brilliancy, set in a little tablet ; but the 
 jewel turned out, on examination, to be merely 
 the fragment of some highly -ornamented apoth- 
 ecary's phial, embossed into semi-globular studs, 
 that owed all their iridescence to the sorely de- 
 composed state of the glass. Glass decomposes 
 under the action of the elements like many of 
 the trap-rocks, such as greenstone, basalt, and 
 the claystones by splitting into layers parallel 
 to the planes, or, as in this instance, to the 
 curves of the original mass ; and the plane of 
 each layer, under the same optical law that im 
 parts iridescence to minute sheets of mica par- 
 tially raised from the mass, reflects the prismatic 
 colors. Hence the frequent gorgeousness of old 
 stable and outhouse windows, little indebted to 
 the art of the stainer, but left to the amateur 
 
76 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 pencillings of two greatly more delicate artists 
 in this special department cobwebbed neglect 
 and decomposing damp. When examined by 
 the microscope, I found the studs of the Bass 
 specimen presenting exactly the appearance of 
 what decomposing balls of greenstone have 
 been so often compared to many coated bulbous 
 roots, such as that of the onion or lily. In green- 
 stone the disintegrating substance is commonly 
 iron ; in glass it is the fixed salt, such as kelp 
 or barilla, used as a flux in fusing the stubborn 
 silex ; and the concentric disposition affected by 
 both substances seems to be in part a conse- 
 quence of the homogeneity induced in the mass 
 by the previous fusion, through which the main 
 agent in the decomposition, whether moisture 
 or air, is permitted to act equally all round at 
 equal depths from the surface a process with 
 which the disturbing lines of stratification in a 
 sedimentary mass would scarce fail to interfere. 
 I saw a large cannon-shot, of rude form, and 
 much encased in rust, which had been laid bare 
 by the rabbits in this curious deposit a few 
 weeks before. It had lain sunk in the debris to 
 the depth of about four feet, immediately under 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 77 
 
 a partial breach in the masonry where the 
 fortress had been battered from the sea ; and it 
 had not improbably dealt it a severe blow in the 
 quarrel of William of Nassau. But what I 
 deemed perhaps the most curious remains in the 
 heap were numerous splinters of black English 
 flint, that exactly resembled the rejectamenta 
 of a gun-flint maker's shop. In digging on, to 
 ascertain, if possible, for what purpose chips of 
 black flint could have been brought to the Bass, 
 my companion disinterred a rude gun-flint ex- 
 actly such a thing as I have seen a poverty- 
 stricken north-country poacher chip at his 
 leisure, for his fowling-piece, out of a mass of 
 agate or jasper. The matchlock had yielded its 
 place only a short time before to the spring lock 
 with its hammer and flint ; but a minute subdi- 
 vision of labor had not as yet, it would seem, 
 separated the art of the gun-flint maker into a 
 distinct profession ; and so, during their leisure 
 hours on the ramparts, the soldiers of the gar- 
 rison had been in the practice of fashioning their 
 flints for themselves, and of pitching the chips, 
 with now and then an occasional abortion, such 
 as the one we had just picked up, over the walls. 
 
78 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 There was laid open a good many years since, 
 among the sand-hills of Findhorn, on the coast 
 of Moray, the debris of a somewhat similar 
 species of flint-work, blent, as in this instance, 
 with a few of the half-finished implements that 
 had been marred in the making ; but the northern 
 flint manufactory had belonged to a greatly more 
 ancient period than that of the musket or its 
 spring lock. The half-finished implements found 
 among the sand-hills were the flint-heads of 
 arrows. 
 
 My description of the time-wasted remains 
 of this little patch may be perhaps deemed too 
 minute. I am desirous, however, for the spe- 
 cial benefit of the ' uninitiated, to exhibit de- 
 duced from a few familiar objects the sort of 
 circumstantial evidence on which, drawn from 
 objects greatly less familiar, the geologist 
 founds no inconsiderable proportion of his con- 
 clusions. He is much a reasoner in the infer- 
 ential style, and expatiates largely on the de- 
 ductive and the circumstantial. It is, besides, 
 not unimportant to note that, wherever man has 
 been long a dweller, he has left enduring traces 
 behind him indubitable marks of his design- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 79 
 
 ing capacity, stamped upon metal or stone, 
 stained into glass or earthenware, or baked into 
 brick. In sa/untering along the shore, on either 
 side of the Frith of Forth, one may know when 
 one is passing the older towns such as Leith, 
 Musselburgh, or Prestonpans without once 
 raising an eye to mark the dwellings, simply 
 by observing the altered appearance of the 
 beach. Among the ordinary water-rolled peb 
 bles, composed mostly of the trap and sandstone 
 rocks of the district, there occur, in great abun- 
 dance, in the immediate neighborhood of the 
 houses, fragments of brick and tile, broken bits 
 of pottery, pieces of fractured bottles and win- 
 dow-panes, and the scoria of glass-houses, iron- 
 furnaces and gas-works. And certainly few of 
 these remains can be deemed less fitted to con- 
 tend, through greatly extended periods, v/ith 
 time and the decomposing elements, than the 
 fish and ferns, the delicate shells and minute 
 coral-lines, of the earlier geologic systems. 
 Dr. Keith found the fluted columns and sculp- 
 tured capitals of the ancient cities of the Holy 
 Land as fresh and unworn as if they had pass- 
 ed from under the tool but yesterday ; and he 
 
80 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 recognised in the enormous accumulations of 
 hewn stone, which in some localities load the 
 surface far as the eye can reach, the ready- 
 made materials with which, almost without 
 sound of hammer or of saw, as during the erec- 
 tion of the temple of old, the dwellings of re- 
 stored Judah may yet be built. The burnt 
 bricks that coated the Birs Nemroud, probably 
 the oldest ruin in the world, still retain, as 
 sharply as when they were removed from the 
 kiln in the days of the earlier Babylonian mo- 
 narchs, their mysterious inscriptions ; the 
 polished granite of the sarcophagus of Cheops 
 has not resigned, in the lapse of three thousand 
 years, a single hieroglyphic. I have been told 
 by a relative who fought in Egypt under Aber- 
 cromby, that the soldiery, in digging one of 
 their wells, passed for some eight or ten feet 
 through the debris of an ancient pottery, and 
 that even the fragments at the bottom of the 
 heap mayhap the accumulated breakage of 
 centuries, in a manufactory of the times 
 of Cleopatra or the Ptolemies retained their 
 bits of pattern as freshly as if they had been 
 moulded and broken scarce a month before. If, 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 81 
 
 in all the earlier geologic formations, from the 
 Silurian to the Tertiary inclusive, we find no 
 trace of a rational being possessed of such a 
 control over inert matter as the idea of rational- 
 ity necessarily involves, the antiquities of the 
 older historic nations, and even the debris and 
 rubbish of the more ancient towns of our own 
 country, serve to show that it is not because the 
 memorials of such a being would be either so 
 few as to escape notice, or so fragile as to defy 
 preservation. No sooner does a man appear 
 upon the scene as the last born of creation, 
 than in that upper stratum of the earth's 
 crust which represents what geologists term 
 the recent period we find abundant trace of 
 him ; and deeply interesting, when presented 
 in the geologic form, some of the more ancient 
 of these traces are. 
 
 The recent deposit of the Bass is charged, 
 as has been said, with numerous detached bones, 
 mutilated iSy the butcher's saw. One of the 
 most ancient fossils that testifies to the exist- 
 ence of man does so in a somewhat similar man- 
 ner. It exhibits him as vested in an ability, 
 possessed by none of the other carnivora, of fa- 
 4* 
 
82 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 cilitating the gratification of his appetites, or 
 the supply of his wants, by the employment of 
 cunningly-fashioned weapons of his own fabri- 
 cation and design. In the upper drift of the 
 province of Scania in Sweden there occur nu-~ 
 merous bones of a gigantic animal of the ox 
 family ; and on the skeleton of one of these, 
 singular for its degree of entireness, an ancient 
 hunter of the country seems to have left his 
 mark. " A skeleton of the Bos Urus, or Bos 
 primigenius" says Sir Roderick Murchison, 
 in his admirable paper on the Scandinavian 
 Drift, " was extracted by Professor Nilsson 
 from beneath ten feet of peat, near Ystadt, the 
 horns of the animal having been found deeply 
 buried in the subjacent blue clay on which the 
 bog has accumulated. This specimen is not 
 only most remarkable, as being the only entire 
 skeleton yet found of an animal whose bones 
 occur in the ancient drift of the diluvium of 
 many countries of Europe, as well as in Siberia 
 (where it is the associate of the Mammoth and 
 the Rhinoceros tichorhinus\ but also as exhi- 
 biting upon the vertebral column a perforation 
 which Nilsson has no doubt was inflicted by the 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 83 
 
 stone -head of a javelin thrown by one of the 
 aboriginal human inhabitants of Scania. By 
 whatever instrument inflicted, this wound has 
 its longest orifice on the anterior face of the 
 first lumbar vertebra, and diminishing gradual- 
 ly in size, has penetrated the second lumbar 
 vertebra, and has even slightly injured the 
 third. Occupying himself for many years in 
 collecting all the utensils of the aborigines of 
 his country, and in studying their uses, Profes- 
 sor Nilsson shows that the orifice in the ver- 
 tebra of the specimen of Bos primigenius in 
 question is so exactly fitted by one of the stone- 
 headed javelins found in the neighborhood, that 
 no reasonable doubt can be entertained that the 
 wound was inflicted by a human being. He 
 does not think that the wound was mortal, but 
 on the contrary, he indicates, from the manner 
 in which the bone seems afterwards to have ce- 
 mented, that the creature lived two or three 
 years after the infliction of a wound produced 
 by the hurling of a javelin horizontally in the 
 direction of the head, but which, missing the 
 head, passed between the horns, and impinged 
 on this projecting portion of the back " 
 
84 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 I insist rather on the permanency of the 
 works of men than on that of the frame-wort 
 of their bodies rather on the broadly-marked 
 traces which former generations have left be- 
 hind them, in the ruins and debris of the ex- 
 tinct nations, than on the scarce less perfectly 
 preserved human remains of ancient catacombs 
 and sepulchres ; and I do so chiefly in reference 
 to a strange suggestion not greatly insisted 
 upon in these days, but not without its portion 
 of plausibility, and peculiarly adapted to appeal 
 to the imagination. It at least addressed itself 
 very powerfully to mine, when first brought ac- 
 quainted with it, many years ago, by a friend 
 then studying at the University. I had already 
 begun to form my collection of Liasic fossils, 
 and much struck by the strangeness of their 
 forms was patiently waiting for some light re- 
 specting them, when my friend, who had seen 
 a good many such in the College Museum, and 
 had just returned home from his first year's 
 course, informed me that they were regarded as 
 belonging to a by-gone creation, of which not so 
 much as a single plant or animal continued to 
 exist. Nay, he had even heard it urged as not 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 85 
 
 improbable, that the ancient world in which 
 they had flourished and decayed a world 
 greatly older than that beyond the Flood had 
 been tenanted by rational, responsible beings, 
 for whom, as for the race to which we ourselves 
 belong, a resurrection and a day of final judg- 
 ment had awaited. But many thousands of 
 t years had elapsed since that day emphatically 
 the last to the pre- Adamite race, for whom it 
 was appointed had come and gone. Of all the 
 accountable creatures that had been summoned 
 to its bar, bone had been gathered to its bone, 
 so that not a vestige of the framework of their 
 bodies occurred in the rocks or soils in which 
 they had been originally inhumed ; and, in con- 
 sequence, only the remains of their irresponsi- 
 ble contemporaries, the inferior animals, and 
 those of the vegetable productions of their fields 
 and forests, were now to be found. How 
 strange the conception ! It filled my imagina- 
 tion for a time with visions of the remote past 
 instinct with a wild poetry, borrowed in part 
 from such conceptions-of the pre-Adamite kings, 
 and the semi-material intelligences, their con- 
 temporaries, as one finds in Beckford's " Va- 
 
86 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 theck," or Moore's " Loves of the Angels ;" and 
 invested my fossil lignites and shells, through 
 the influence of the associative faculty, with an 
 obscure and terrible sublimity, that filled the 
 whole mind. But there is not even a shadow 
 of foundation for a conception so wild : on the 
 contrary, the geologic evidence, whether pri- 
 mary and direct, or derivative and analogical, 
 militates full against it. 
 
 I say derivative and analogical, as certainly 
 as primary and direct. The rational, account- 
 able creature of the present scene of things 
 stands in his proper place on the apex of mate- 
 rial animated being ; he forms the terminal 
 point of that pyramid, the condition of all whose 
 components is vitality breathed into dust. At 
 the ample base we recognise the lower forms of 
 life shells, crustaceans, and zoophytes ; a little 
 higher up we find the vast family of the verte- 
 brate inhabitants of the waters fish; still 
 higher up we see a distinct stage in the ascent 
 occupied by birds and reptiles ; still higher up 
 are ranged those important families of the mam- 
 miferous quadrupeds, described in Scripture as 
 the " beasts of the field ;" and then, supreme 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 87 
 
 over all, and pointing to heaven, we mark on 
 the cloud-enveloped summit of the pyramid, 
 reasoning, responsible man. How incomplete 
 would not the edifice seem a mere unfinished 
 frustrum were the intermediate tiers to be 
 struck away, and man to be placed in immedi- 
 ate juxtaposition with a fish ! Such, however, 
 would be the place and relations of a rational, 
 accountable being, during the vast divisions of 
 the Palaeozoic period. Or how incomplete even 
 would not the edifice seem, were but the second 
 tier that comprising the beasts of the field 
 to be struck away, and man to be placed in im- 
 mediate juxtaposition with the bird and the 
 reptile ! And yet such would be the place and 
 relations of a rational, accountable being, during 
 the vast divisions of the Secondary period. It 
 is not merely on the palpable incompleteness 
 of the chain in either case, or on the enormous 
 width of its gaps, that we would have to insist, 
 but also on the positive helplessness of a ra- 
 tional creature so circumstanced. The moral 
 agent of such a world would be the unheeded 
 monarch of an ungovernable canaille ; and, 
 lacking the higher order of subjects, from which 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 alone his servants and ministers could be se- 
 lected, lie would lack also, in consequence, any 
 profitable command over the lower. The mighty 
 armies which he would be called on to command 
 would, from the lack of subordinate officers, be 
 mere mutinous mobs, with which no combined 
 movement could be accomplished, or general 
 achievement performed. The earth, as it ex- 
 isted in these earlier periods, could have been 
 no home for man ; and with this conclusion the 
 direct findings of the geologic record thoroughly 
 agree. In the Palaeozoic, the Secondary, and 
 the earlier Tertiary formations, we discover no 
 trace whatever of a reasoning creature, who 
 could stamp the impress of his mind on inert 
 matter. Ancient as is the earth which we in- 
 habit, we seem to be in but the first beginnings 
 of the moral government of God. 
 
 I can, of course, refer to the divine govern- 
 ment here in but its relation to agents, pos- 
 sessed, like man, of bocly as certainly as of 
 spirit, for of none other can matter furnish any 
 recognisable trace. In vain, from any existing 
 data, may we attempt to assign era or epocha, 
 amid the revolutions of the bygone eternity, to 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 89 
 
 that revolt of the unembodied powers of evil 
 which 
 
 " Raised impious war in Heaven, and battle proud." 
 
 It may have been contemporary with some of the 
 later geologic formations in our own earth ; or 
 it may have taken place, according to Milton, 
 when 
 
 " As yet this world was not, and Chaos wild 
 
 lleigned where these heavens now roll where earth now 
 
 rests, 
 Upon her centre poised." 
 
 Or it may have arisen as a Cloud in the Palaeo- 
 zoic dawn of creation, to darken with its sha- 
 dow every after scene of existence in all the suc- 
 ceeding creations those scenes in which the 
 fierce Sauroid fish battled with his cogeners, or 
 the gigantic Saurian with his kindred reptiles, 
 or the enormous Mammal with his weaker 
 brethren of the plain or forest. It may have 
 exerted a malign influence on the pre- Adam- 
 ite ages of suffering, violence, and death, just as 
 the sin of the human species now exerts a malign 
 influence on the condition of those unoffending 
 animals contemporary with man, that groan and 
 suffer because of human offence. We know re- 
 
90 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 garding neither the era nor the influence of the 
 earlier event, for on these points the voice of 
 inspiration is mute ; but God's moral govern- 
 ment, in its relation to at least embodied and 
 material agents, is but of late origin a thing 
 of but the passing ages of our planet ; and for 
 the staying of the great plague, so recently 
 broken out, the decease at Jerusalem has already 
 been accomplished. And who shall dare limit 
 the circle of worlds to which the influence of 
 that decease is destined to extend ? Many a 
 great kingdom has* been gladdened by the beam 
 which broke from the little hill of Calvary why 
 may not many a great planet be cheered Tby the 
 same beam transmitted from the little world in 
 which the little hill is included ? 
 
 The walls of the stronghold of the Bass, with 
 the exception of a few rybats and lintels, formed 
 of a light red or pale sandstone brought from 
 the shore, are built of stone quarried from the 
 rock on which it stands. The stone, originally 
 of a dingy olive-green color, like so many other 
 rocks of the trap family, exhibits, wherever ex- 
 posed to the weather, a deep tinge of chocolate- 
 browna the effect, apparently, of a slight ad- 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. ' 91 
 
 mixture of iron. In the line of rock which 
 flanks on the right the narrow passage that 
 runs between the outer and inner gateway, I 
 detected several minute veins of this widely- 
 diftused metal existing as compact red iron- 
 stone, brown in the mass, but of a deep red 
 color in the streak. A similar species of iron 
 ore, found in considerable abundance in various 
 parts of the Highlands, is employed by shep- 
 herds, under the name of keel, as a pigment for 
 marking their sheep, and yields a stain which, 
 from its metallic character, is not easily eifacea- 
 ble. The trap of the Bass has been described 
 by a celebrated Continental geologist, M. A. 
 Boue, as a compact clinkstone ; by Mr. James 
 Nicol 3 in his " Guide to the Geology of Scot- 
 land,' 5 as a " fine granular greenstone or clink- 
 stone." I may be permitted to remark, for the 
 benefit of the uninitiated, that the hard splintery 
 trap-rock on which the Castle of Edinburgh 
 stands is a clinkstone ; while the trap-rock of 
 lighter color and larger grain, which forms the 
 noble range of trap precipices that sweep along 
 the brow of Salisbury Crags, is a greenstone. 
 The trap of the Bass seems to be of an interme- 
 
92 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 diate hybrid species ; several of the fragments 
 which I detached from the rocks in the imme- 
 diate neighborhood of the landing-place con- 
 choidal in their fracture, and sprinkled over 
 with minute needle-like chrystals of feldspar, 
 that sparkle in a homogeneous base partake 
 more of the nature of clinkstone ; while in the 
 upper and middle walks of the island, where the 
 stone is less conchoidal, and both more persist- 
 ently granular, and the grains considerably 
 larger, it partakes more of the greenstone char- 
 acter. But the entire mass, whatever its minuter 
 diiferences, is evidently one in its components, 
 and was all consolidated under the refrigerating 
 influences, at some points perhaps more, at 
 others less slowly, but in exactly the same set 
 of circumstances. It may be mentioned, how- 
 ever, in the passing, that none of the detached 
 fragments exhibit the peculiar globular structure 
 so frequently shown in weathering by the green- 
 stone family ; nor, indeed, do we find among the 
 precipices of the island, save in the lime of the 
 cave, marks of weathering of any kind. The 
 angles stand out as sharp and unworn as if they 
 had been first exposed to the atmosphere but 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 93 
 
 yesterday ; and to this principle of indestructi- 
 bility, possessed in a high degree by all the 
 harder clinkstones, does the entire island owe 
 its preservation, in its imposing proportions and 
 singular boldness of outline. Had it been origi- 
 nally composed of such a yielding tuff as that on 
 which the fortress of Tantallan is erected, we 
 would now in vain seek its place amid the waters, 
 or would find it indicated merely by some low 
 skerry, dangerous to the mariner at the fall of 
 the tide. 
 
 The sloping acclivity of the Bass consists, as 
 has been said, of three great steps or terraces, 
 with steep belts of precipice rising between; 
 and of these terraces, the lowest is occupied, as 
 has been already shown, by the fortress, and 
 furnishes, where it sinks slopingly towards the 
 sea on the south-east, the two landing-places of 
 the island. The middle terrace, situated exact- 
 ly over the cave, and owing its origin apparent- 
 ly to the operations of the denuding agencies, 
 directed on the same great fissure out of which 
 the perforation has been scooped, has furnished 
 the site of the ancient chapel of the island ; 
 while the upper and largest terrace, lying but 
 
94 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 a single stage beneath the summit of the rock, 
 we find laid out into a levelled rectangular in- 
 closure, once a garden. 
 
 The chapel, though history has failed to note 
 the date of its erection, bears unequivocal marks 
 of being the oldest building on the island. A 
 few sandstone rybats line one of the sides of the 
 door ; and there is a sandstone trough within 
 which may have once contained the holy water ; 
 but these merely indicate a comparatively re- 
 cent reparation of the edifice probably not 
 long anterior in date to the times of the Refor- 
 mation. The older hewn work of the erection 
 is wrought, not in sandstone, but in a character- 
 istic well-marked claystone porphyry, occasion- 
 ally seamed by minute veins of dull red jasper, 
 which is still quarried for the purposes of the 
 builder in the neighborhood of Dirlton. Like 
 most of the porphyries, it is a durable stone ; 
 but in this exposed locality the wear of many 
 ages has told even on it, and it presents on the 
 planes, once smoothed by the tool, a deeply fret- 
 ted surface. The compact earthy base has 
 slowly yielded to the weathering influences, and 
 the embedded crystals stand out over it in bold 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 95 
 
 relief. The masonry, too, of the walls and 
 gables speaks, like the wasted porphyry, of a 
 remote age. In the rubble work of the fortress 
 below, though sufficiently rude, we invariably 
 find two simple rules respected, an attention to 
 which distinguishes, in the eye of the initiated, 
 the work of the bred mason of at least the last 
 four centuries, from that of the untaught diker 
 or cowan of the same period. The stones are 
 placed invariably on their larger, not their less- 
 er beds ; and each, though laid irregularly with 
 respect to its neighbors, ranges level on at 
 least its own bed. A ruler laid parallel to the 
 line in which it rests would be found to lie pa- 
 rallel to the line of the horizon also ; but in the 
 rubble work of the chapel above, we find no such 
 laws respected. The workmen by whom it was 
 built, like the old Cyclopean builders of Sicily 
 and Etruria, or the untaught burghers of Edin- 
 burgh, who turned out en masse to raise their 
 city-wall in troublous times, had them not in 
 their mind. And the characteristic is a very 
 general one of the mason-work of our older and 
 ruder chapels our Culdee chapels, as I may 
 perhaps venture to term them. The stones rest 
 
96 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 on whatever beds chanced to fit, or in whatever 
 angle best suited the lie of the course immedi- 
 ately below. 
 
 The garden, surrounded by a ruinous wall, 
 and a broad fringe of nettles, occupies, as has 
 been said, the upper terrace of the island. 
 When I had last seen it in the genial month of 
 June, 1842, it bore, among the long rank grass 
 that marks the richness of its soil, its delicate 
 sprinkling of "garden flowers grown wild;" 
 but the pleasant " cherry trees, of the fruit of 
 which" Mr. Eraser of Brea "several times 
 tasted," were no longer to be seen ; and now, 
 overborne by the wintry influences, the flowers 
 themselves had disappeared, and the area lay 
 covered with a sallow carpeting of withered 
 herbage. What is termed the well a deep 
 square excavation near the middle of the inclos- 
 ure I found full to overflowing with, a brown 
 turbid fluid, which gave ^honest information to 
 the organs of smell that it was neither neces- 
 sary nor advisable to consult regarding it those 
 of taste. It had proved, I was informed by the 
 boatmen, the grave of a hapless sheep during 
 one of the snow storms of last winter ; and a 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 97 
 
 cold infusion of undressed mutton for the ani- 
 mal had been left to decay where it had fallen 
 would form, I am afraid, but tolerable drinking, 
 even with the benefit of the finest of water as a 
 menstruum. The water of the Bass, however 
 and I saw considerable accumulations of it in 
 two other receptacles must be bad when at 
 the best. Mr. Eraser complains, in his Memoir, 
 that in the winter time, when communication 
 between the island and the mainland was cut 
 off by the surf, the prisoners had not unfre- 
 quently, for lack of better, to drink " corrupted 
 water, sprinkled over with a little oatmeal." 
 The frequent rains for there is no true spring 
 in the island in soaking downwards through 
 the rich soil, fattened during a long series of 
 years by the dung dropped on it by the birds, 
 becomes a sort of dilute tincture of guano 
 which, however fitted for the support of vegeta- 
 ble existence, must be but little conducive to 
 the welfare of animal life. And hence one 
 of the characteristics indicated by the laird of 
 Brea : the Bass water is " corrupted water." 
 
 A pyramid of loose stones the work of some 
 of the troops engaged in the great ordnance 
 
98 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 survey occupies the apex of the island. One 
 is sometimes inclined to regret that these con- 
 spicuous mementoes of an important national 
 undertaking, which in the remoter and wilder 
 regions of our country furnish so many central 
 resting points, from which the eye to employ 
 a phrase of Shenstone's "lets itself out on the 
 surrounding landscape," should be of so tempora- 
 ry a character. Placed, as most of them are, far 
 'out of reach of the levelling plough and harrow, 
 and of the covetous dike-builder, they would 
 form, were they but constructed of stone and 
 run lime, connecting links between the present 
 and remotely future generations, that would 
 le at least more honorable to the age of their 
 erection than monuments raised to commem- 
 orate the ferocities of barbarous clan battles, or 
 the doubtful virtues of convenient statesmen, 
 who got places for their dependents. They 
 might have their little tablets, too, commemora- 
 tive, like those of the old Roman wall, of the 
 laborious " vexillarii " who had erected them, 
 and usefully illustrative, besides, of the compar- 
 ative powers, in resisting disintegration, of the 
 various serpentines, marbles, granites, and 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 99 
 
 sandstones of the country. The stony sentinel 
 of the Bass for sentinel, at a little distance, 
 it seems occupies, like many of its fellows 
 over Scotland, what in the winter nights must 
 be a supremely drear and lonely watching sta- 
 tion quite the sort of place for the ghost of 
 some old persecuting prison-captain to take its 
 stand, what time the midnight moon looks out 
 through rack and spray, and the shadow of the 
 old chapel falls deep and black athwart the 
 sward. The island must have been less solitary 
 a-nights than now, during at least the summer 
 season, some sixty years ago, when, according 
 to an account by Alexander Wilson, the well- 
 known literary pedlar, the climbers resided per- 
 manently on the rock at breeding time, " in a 
 little hut, in which liquor and bread and cheese 
 were sold" for the "accommodation of chance 
 visitors, and of the sportsmen who frequented 
 the place for the diversion of shooting." Wil- 
 son, laden with pieces of muslin and of verse, 
 and with the prospectus of his first publication 
 in his pocket, journeyed along the coast in the 
 autumn of 1789, to make a " bold push," as he 
 somewhat quaintly informs the reader in his 
 
100 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 journal, "for the united interest of pack and 
 poems" recording each night the observations 
 and occurrences of the day. He had visited 
 Canty or, as he writes the word, Comly 
 Bay, where then, as now, " a few solitary fishers 
 lived ;" and was much struck by the appear- 
 ance of the Bass " a large rock," he says, 
 " rising out of the sea to the dreadful height of 
 six hundred feet, giving the spectator an awful 
 idea of its Almighty Founder, who weigheth the 
 mountains in scales and hills in a balance 
 who by one word raised into existence this vast 
 universe, with all these unwieldy rocks and 
 who will, when his Almighty goodness shall 
 think fit, with one word command them to their 
 primitive nothing." But though he eagerly 
 transferred to his journal all the information 
 regarding the rock which he succeeded in collect- 
 ing, he was unable, it would seem, to visit it ; 
 times were hard ; and his list, both of sales and 
 subscribers, low. 
 
 " The poor pedlar failed to be favored with sale, 
 And they did not encourage the poet." 
 
 Wilson pointedly refers, in his journal, to the 
 "prodigious number of solan geese that build 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 101 
 
 among the cliffs of the rock." With what feel- 
 ings, as he lay on the green bank ashore, did he 
 survey the flocks wheeling and screaming 
 around it, thick as midges over a woodland pool 
 in midsummer now gleaming bright in the dis- 
 tance, as they presented their white backs to 
 the sun anon disappearing for a moment, as 
 they wheeled in airy evolution, and the shaded 
 edges of their wings turned to the spectator ! 
 Did the pulses of the incipient Ornithologist 
 beat any the quicker as he gazed on the living 
 cloud ? or did there arise within him a presenti- 
 ment a sort of first glimmer of the happy 
 enthusiasm which at an after period pervaded 
 his whole mind, when, week after week, he lived 
 in the wild forests of the West, or swept in his 
 canoe over the breasts of mighty rivers for hun- 
 dreds of miles, marking every beauty of form, 
 every variety of note, every peculiarity of in- 
 stinct, vested in the feathered creation, and lay- 
 ing in, fresh from nature, the materials of his 
 magnificent descriptions ? Had we met such a 
 poor curious pedlar to-day, we would willingly 
 have indulged him in a gratis voyage to the 
 Bass, and charged the expense of his entertain- 
 
102 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 ment to the account of the forth-coming volume ; 
 but pedlars of the type of the Ornithologist are, 
 I suspect, rare. The last of the fraternity with 
 whom I came in contact was a tall, corduroy-en- 
 cased man, laden with japanned trays. There 
 was an idle report current at the time for our 
 meeting occurred shortly after the Queen's first 
 visit to Scotland that her Majesty purposed 
 purchasing Craig-Millar Castle, and getting it 
 fitted up into a royal residence ; and as the 
 castle on its noble slope, with the blue Pent- 
 lands in the back-ground, and Arthur's Seat, 
 half in shadow, half bronzed by the sun, full in 
 ^ front, formed our prospect at the time, the tall 
 pedlar was amusing himself in loyally criticis- 
 ing the landscape on behalf of his sovereign. 
 " Yes," he said, " there's a wheen bonny parks 
 there, an' there's bonny bits o' wud atween 
 them ; but yonder's a curn o' reugh hills, an' 
 it's an ugly rocky lump that Arthur's Seat. 
 Nae doubt the place is no a bad place, but it 
 wad be a hantle prettier place for a Queen, if 
 we could but tak' awa the coorse Pentlands and 
 the reugh Seat." 
 
 How vastly more strange and extravagant- 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 103 
 
 looking truth is than fiction ! Our Edinburgh 
 Reviewers deemed it one of the gravest among 
 the many grave offences of Wordsworth, that 
 he should have made the hero of the " Excur- 
 sion" a pedlar. " What," they ask, " but the 
 most wretched and provoking perversity of taste 
 and judgment could induce any one to place his 
 chosen advocate of wisdom and virtue in so ab- 
 surd and fantastic a condition ? Did Mr. 
 Wordsworth really imagine that his favorite 
 doctrines were likely to gain anything in point 
 of effect or authority, by being put into the 
 mouth of a person accustomed to higgle about 
 tape or brass sleeve-buttons ? Or is it not plain 
 that, independent of the ridicule and disgust, 
 which such a personification must give to many 
 of his readers, its adoption exposes his work 
 throughout to the charge of revolting incon- 
 gruity and utter disregard of probability or 
 nature ?" If the critics be thus severe on the 
 mere choice of so humble a hero, what would 
 they not have said had the poet ventured to 
 represent his pedlar, not only as a wise and 
 meditative man, but also as an accomplished 
 writer, and a successful cultivator of natural 
 
104 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 science the author of a great national work, 
 eloquent as that of Buffon, and incomparably 
 more true in its facts and observations ? Nay, 
 what would they have said if, rising to the 
 extreme of extravagance, he had ventured to 
 relate that the pedlar, having left the magnifi- 
 cent work unfinished at his death, an accom- 
 plished prince the nephew of by far the most 
 puissant monarch of modern times took it up 
 and completed it in a volume, bearing honorable 
 reference and testimony, in almost every page, 
 to the ability and singular faithfulness of his 
 humbler predecessor the " Wanderer." "Arid 
 yet this strange story, so full of " revolting 
 incongruity and utter disregard of probability 
 or nature," would be exactly that of the Paisley 
 pedlar, Alexander Wilson, the author of the 
 " American Ornithology" a work completed by 
 a fervent admirer of the pedlar's genius, Prince 
 Charles Lucien Bonaparte. There are several 
 passages in the journal kept by Wilson when 
 he visited Canty Bay and its neighborhood 
 though he was a young man at the time, unpos- 
 sessed of that mastery over the powers of 
 thought and composition to which he afterwards 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 105 
 
 attained that serve strikingly to remind one 
 of the peculiar vein of observation and reflec- 
 tion developed in the Wanderer of the " Excur- 
 sion." The following incident, for instance, 
 recorded during the evening on which he jotted 
 down his remarks on the Bass, seems such a 
 one as the humble hero of Wordsworth would 
 have delighted to narrate. 
 
 He had passed on from Canty Bay to Tantal- 
 lan, where he lingered long amid the broken 
 walls and nodding arches. And then, " having 
 sufficiently examined the ancient structure," he 
 says, " I proceeded forwards, and arrived at a 
 small village, where, the night coming on, I 
 obtained lodgings in a little ale-house. While 
 I sat conversing with the landlord, he communi- 
 cated to me the following incident, which had 
 recently taken place in a family in the neigh- 
 borhood. About six months ago, the master of 
 the house, who was by trade a fisher, fell sick, 
 and continued in a lingering way until about 
 three weeks ago, when his distemper increased 
 to that degree that all hopes of recovery were 
 gone. In these circumstances he prepared 
 himself for dissolution in a manner that be- 
 5* 
 
106 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 came a Christian, and agreeably to the charac- 
 ter he had all along been distinguished by when 
 in health and vigor. Meanwhile, his wife, being 
 pregnant, drew near the time of her delivery ; 
 and as the thought that he should not see his 
 last child cost the poor man no small uneasi- 
 ness, it became one of his fervent petitions to 
 Heaven that he might be spared until after its 
 birth. But his malady increased, and all his 
 relations were called on to take their last fare- 
 well. While they stood round his bed, expect- 
 ing his immediate departure, his wife was 
 taken suddenly ill, and in less than an hour was 
 delivered of twins, which the dying man no 
 sooner understood, than he made signs that 
 the minister should be sent for, who according- 
 ly in a short time came. He then attempted to 
 rise in bed, but his strength was exhausted. 
 Hereupon one of his daughters went into the 
 bed behind him, and supported his hands until 
 he held up both the children, first one and then 
 the other. Then, kissing them both, he deliv- 
 ered them over to their mother, and, reclining 
 his head softly on the pillow, expired." Such 
 is one of the more characteristic passages in 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 107 
 
 the prose " Excursion" of the Pedlar Wilson. 
 It forms, however, no part of the Geology of 
 the Bass. 
 
 Let us now see whether we cannot form some 
 consistent theory regarding the origin and 
 early history of the rock. It occurs, as has 
 been said, in a highly disturbed district, which 
 extends on the west to Aberlady Bay, and on 
 the east to near the ancient Castle of Dunbar, 
 and includes in its stormy area by far the 
 greater part of the parishes of Whitekirk, 
 Prestonkirk, North Berwick, Dirleton, and 
 Athelstaneford. The trap islands and skerries, 
 that lie on both sides parallel to the shore, show 
 that this Plutonic region does not at least im- 
 mediately terminate with the coast line ; while 
 the Isle of May a vast mass of greenstone, 
 lofty enough to raise its head above the pro- 
 founder depths of the Frith beyond may be 
 regarded as fairly indicating that, on the con- 
 trary, it stretches quite as far under the sea 
 as into the interior of the country. And occu- 
 pying nearly the centre of this disturbed dis- 
 trict, like some undressed obelisk standing 
 lichened and gray in the middle of some ancient 
 
108 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 battle-field, rises the tall column of the Bass. 
 How account for its presence there ? 
 
 The thick of the battle between the Vulcan- 
 is ts and Neptunians has always lain around ele- 
 vations of this character : they have formed posts 
 of vantage, for the possession of which the con- 
 tending parties have struggled like the British 
 and French forces at Waterloo round Hougou- 
 mont and La Haye Sainte ; but the wind of the 
 commotion has been long since laid, and they 
 may now be approached fearlessly and in safe- 
 ty. The Wernerians, some of whom could 
 believe, about the beginning of the present cen- 
 tury, that even obsidian and pumice were of 
 " aquatic formation," regarded them as mere 
 aqueous concretions, terminating abruptly be- 
 low, without communication with rocks of re- 
 sembling character, and as similar in their 
 origin to the hard insulated yolks which some- 
 times occur in beds of sandstone and of lime ; 
 while the Huttonians held them, on the other 
 hand, to be, like the lava of volcanoes, produc- 
 tions of the internal fire, and believed that they 
 communicated in every instance with the abyss 
 from which their substance was at first derived. 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 109 
 
 Both parties, of course, agreed in recognising 
 immense denudation as the agent which had 
 scooped from around them the softer rocks, in 
 which, according to the Wernerian, they had 
 consolidated under the operations of some un- 
 known chemistry ; or whose rents and chasms, 
 opened by the volcanic forces, had furnished, 
 according to the Huttonian, the moulds in which 
 they had been cast as an iron-founder casts 
 his ponderous wheels, levers, and axles, in ma- 
 trices of clay or sand, that communicate by 
 sluice with the molten reservoir of the furnace. 
 Let us take immense denudation, then, the work 
 of tides and waves operating for myriads of ages, 
 as an agent common to both parties. From 
 where Edinburgh now stands, a huge dome of 
 the Coal Measures, greatly loftier than the 
 Pentlands, and that once connected the coal- 
 field of Falkirk with that of Dalkeith, has been 
 swept away by this tremendous power ; while 
 from the western districts of Ross, a deposition 
 of the Old Red Sandstone, full three thousand 
 feet in thickness, has in iike manner been 
 ground down, and the gneiss rocks on which it 
 rested laid bare. And in the one district we 
 
110 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 find eminences of harder texture than the mass 
 that had once enveloped them such as Arthur's 
 Seat, the Castle rock, Corstorphine Hill, and 
 the Dalmahoy Crags, standing up in high re- 
 lief ; and mountains such as Suil Veinn, Coul 
 Beg, and Coul More, in the other. 
 
 "Who was it scooped these stony waves'? 
 
 Who scalp'd the brows of old Cairngorm, 
 And dug these ever-yawning caves 1 
 'Twas I, the Spirit of the storm." 
 
 And scattered over the disturbed district of 
 which the Bass nearly occupies the centre, we 
 find resembling marks of vast denudation ; the 
 Bass itself, the four adjoining islands the Isle 
 of May, the Garlton Hills near Haddington, and 
 the Law of North Berwick serving but in little 
 part to indicate the height at which th*e envel- 
 oping material once stood. These eminences 
 compose, according to the poet, the stony waves 
 of the locality, scooped out of the yielding mass 
 by the " Spirit of the storm." 
 
 With the denuding agencies granted, then, 
 by both parties, as a force operative in convert- 
 ing the inequalities in solidity of the rocks of 
 the district into inequalities of level on its sur- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. Ill 
 
 face, let us next remark, that all the eminences 
 thus scooped out are composed of hard trap ; 
 while the reduced mass out of which they have 
 been dug consists either of soft trap-tuff, or of 
 stratified shales, sandstones, and limestones 
 rocks these last, which Wernerians and Hutton- 
 ians alike recognise as of sedimentary origin. 
 From the section of the harder* traps, exhibited 
 on the general surface by the denuding forces, 
 can we alone judge of their original forms as 
 solid figures, or of that of the buried portions of 
 them ; and the difficulty of determining from 
 mere sections the form of even regular figures, 
 may serve to show how much uncertainty and 
 doubt must always attend the attempt to deter- 
 mine from mere sections the form of irregular 
 ones. Let us suppose that a mass of black 
 opaque glass, thickly charged with regularly- 
 formed cones of white china cones described 
 by angles of many various degrees of acuteness, 
 and carelessly huddled together in every possi- 
 ble angle of inclination has been ground down 
 to a considerable depth, as if by the denuding 
 agencies, and then polished. In how many 
 diverse figures of white would not the china 
 
112 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 cones be presented ! There would be paraboles 
 and hyperboles, circles, ellipses, and isosceles 
 triangles ; the circles would be of every variety 
 of size, the angles of every degree of acuteriess 
 the paraboles, hyperboles, and ellipses, of 
 every proportion and form compatible with the 
 integrity of these figures ; and who save the 
 mathematician who had studied Conies could 
 demonstrate that the one normal figure, of which 
 all these numerous forms were sections, could 
 be the cone, and the cone only ? But if the em- 
 bedded pieces of china were not of regular, but 
 of irregular figures, their forms as solids could, 
 from the sections laid open, be but conjectured, 
 not demonstrated. Such, however, is the difficulty 
 with which the geologist, whatever his school, 
 has to contend, who studies by section the forms 
 of the trap-rocks, inclosed in sedimentary or 
 tuffaceous matrices ; and, of course, great un- 
 certainty must always a.ttach to arguments, 
 whether for the support or demolition of any 
 theory, founded upon these doubtful forms. It 
 may be received as a general principle, for in- 
 stance, that dikes and veins of aqueous origin, 
 filled by the ocean from above, will terminate 
 
"""1 
 
 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 113 
 
 beneath somewhat in a wedge-like fashion, or, 
 at least, that they will terminate beneath, and 
 will be open above ; whereas of veins or dikes 
 of Plutonic origin, filled by injected matter from 
 the abyss, it may be received as a general prin- 
 ciple, that while they may in some cases termi- 
 nate in a wedge-like form above, they will be 
 always open below. And, accordingly, much 
 has been built by the Huttonian on dikes open 
 beneath, and much by the Wernerian on similar 
 dikes shut beneath, and merely open a- top. 
 But the section in such cases can convey but 
 an inadequate and doubtful idea of the inclosed 
 mass, whether deposited from above, or injected 
 from below ; and even were the idea adequate, 
 and the form of the mass demonstrably ascer- 
 tained, existing in many cases as a mere frag- 
 ment which the denuding agent has spared, 
 exceedingly little explanatory of its origin could 
 with propriety be founded upon its form. There 
 exists, I doubt not, many a wedge-shaped bed 
 of trap that has now no connection whatever 
 with the abyssmal depths. It is demonstrable, 
 however, that such trap wedges, though as en- 
 tirely insulated as yolks or concretions, may 
 
114 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 have been filled from beneath notwithstanding. 
 Let me attempt an illustration, which may serve 
 also to exemplify my theory of the Bass. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that where Edinburgh 
 Castle now stands there yawned of old the cra- 
 ter of a volcano. The molten lava boiled fierce- 
 ly within the chasm ; the imprisoned gases 
 struggled hard for egress ; ever and anon show- 
 ers of ashes and fragments of stone were emit- 
 ted, and in their descent fell all around, until at 
 length a considerable hill of a true volcanic tuff 
 came to be formed, adown which there rushed 
 from time to time vast beds of molten matter, 
 which, gradually cooling on the slopes, alternat- 
 ed, in the form of trap beds, with the tuif. At 
 length the base of the hill, ever widening by 
 this process, came in the lapse of seasons to 
 extend eastwards to what are now Salisbury 
 Crags the Crags being, let us suppose, but a 
 portion of the tuffaceous bottom, topped by one 
 of the lava beds that had issued from the cen- 
 tral crater. It will, of course, be at once seen 
 that I am not dealing here with the actual theo- 
 ry of the Crags or Castle Hill : the actual theo- 
 ry the reader may find, if he wills, ingeniously 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 115 
 
 and satisfactorily stated in Mr. Maclaren's 
 interesting " Sketches of the Geology of Fife 
 and the Lothians." I am dealing, not with the 
 actualities of the case, but, for the sake of illus- 
 tration, with what demonstrably might have 
 been. Let us suppose, farther, that in the lapse 
 of ages this volcano had become extinct that 
 the lava within had hardened in the crater, like 
 a pillar of molten bronze in its mould and that 
 then, through the gradual submergence of the 
 land, the eminence had come to be exposed to 
 the denuding powers of the great gulf-stream 
 setting in against it from the west, and the pro- 
 longed roll of the waves of the Atlantic, occa- 
 sionally aggravated by tempest. At first the 
 western base of the hill would begin to wear 
 away, as the tides and billows chafed against 
 the unsolid tuff, and the lava-beds, deeply un- 
 dermined, broke off in vast masses and tumbled 
 down. Anon the solid central column, moulded 
 in the crater, would be laid bare ; yet anon, 
 thoroughly divested of its case, it would stand 
 out as an insulated stack, with but the tail of 
 softer matter behind it, which it had shielded 
 from the denuding forces. At length, of the 
 
116 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 entire hill there would remain but the central 
 column, greatly shortened in its altitude, like 
 the trunk of a tree two-thirds cut down the 
 ridge on which the more ancient part of the city 
 now stands and a portion of the eastern base of 
 the hill, represented by Salisbury Crags, bear- 
 ing atop a wedge of trap, terminating at what 
 is called the Hunter's Bog, in a thin edge, and, 
 though at one time connected with the insulated 
 column, and by the column with the Plutonic 
 depths below, now cut off by a wide chasm from 
 both. And then at this stage, through an up- 
 heaval of the land, let us suppose that the 
 denuding agents had ceased to operate, and that 
 the extinct volcano came to exist permanently 
 as a truncated column of rock, and a detached 
 dike of consolidated lava, open above and shut 
 below the one admirably suited to form the 
 site of an impregnable stronghold the other 
 to furnish the foundation of a Wernerian argu- 
 ment, conclusive regarding the aqueous origin 
 of trap. The mode of insulation specified here, 
 is but one of many in which wedges and over- 
 lying masses of igneous rock, originally de- 
 rived from the gulf beneath, may have come 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 117 
 
 to exist in altogether as insulated a state as 
 sedimentary beds or travelled boulders. 
 
 But the grand question at issue between the 
 two schools of Geology may now be regarded as 
 finally settled ; and the trap-rocks, with the 
 exception of the tuffs, in the composition and 
 arrangement of which, as has been shown, both 
 the aqueous and the Plutonic elements may 
 have been operative, have been made over entire 
 to the Huttonian. No man would venture at 
 this time of day to stand up for the " aquatic 
 formation" of obsidian or pumice, and few in- 
 deed for the sedimentary origin of either the 
 greenstone of Salisbury Crags or the hybrid 
 clinkstone of the Bass. The volcanic districts 
 have been explored, and the passage of the lavas 
 into the traps carefully noted, with their resem- 
 bling powers of disturbance, when ejected into 
 fissures, or existing as dikes. The assistance 
 of the chemist, too, has been called in : trap has 
 been fused into a porous glass, and the glass 
 again re-fused, by a slow process, into a basal- 
 tic crystallite, undistinguishable in some speci- 
 mens from the original rock, or converted, by a 
 process less leisurely, into a liver-like wacke ; 
 
118 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS.* 
 
 and lava similarly treated has been made to 
 yield a resembling glass in the first instance, 
 and, as the experiment was conducted more or 
 less slowly, an almost identical crystallite, or a 
 liver-like wacke, in the second. The more an- 
 cient rocks have also been put to the question, 
 and a primary hornblende converted in the cru- 
 cible into an augitic basalt. The quality pos- 
 sessed by the traps of altering other rocks in 
 immediate contact with them has also been exa- 
 mined, and similar alterations produced simply 
 by the agency of heat and pressure. Coal in 
 juxtaposition with a trap-dike has been found 
 converted into coke, clay baked into lydian- 
 stone or jasper, chalk fused into marble ; and 
 what the igneous rock did of old in the bowels 
 of the earth, the experimenter has succeeded in 
 doing in his laboratory, with but heat, pressure, 
 and time for his assistants. There are few 
 points better established in the whole circle of 
 geological science, than the igneous origin of 
 the trap-rocks. 
 
 The ponderous column of the Bass, to sum up 
 my theory in a few words, is composed, as has 
 been shown, of one of the harder and more solid 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 119 
 
 of these igneous rocks. Rising near the centre 
 of the disturbed district in which it occurs, it 
 indicates, I am inclined to hold, the place of a 
 great crater, at one time filled to the top with 
 molten matter, which, when the fires beneath 
 burnt low, gradually and slowly consolidated 
 into crystallite as it cooled, until it became the 
 unyielding rock which, we now find it. The 
 tuffaceous matrix in which, it had been moulded, 
 exposed to the denuding agencies, wore piece- 
 meal away ; much even of the upper portion of 
 the column itself may have disappeared ; and 
 what remains, rising from the level of the sea- 
 bottom below to the height of six hundred feet, 
 may be regarded as the capital-divested top of 
 some pillar of the desert, that, buried by the 
 drifting sand, exhibits but a comparatively 
 small portion of its entire length over the sur- 
 face, but descends deep into the interior, com- 
 municating with the very basement of the edi- 
 fice to which it belongs. 
 
 We had now spent a considerable time on the 
 island, and a lovely day was passing into a still 
 lovelier evening. The sun hung low over the 
 western shoulder of North Berwick Law, in a 
 
120 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 sky embrowned along the horizon by a diffused 
 vapor, the effect of an incipient frost ; and the 
 light, tinged as if with blood, fell in one ruddy 
 sheet athwart the glassy surface of the sea, now 
 undisturbed by a single ripple, and imparted a 
 deep tinge of purple to the brown ruins at our 
 feet, and the lichened rocks around us. The 
 shadow of the Bass, elongated for miles, 
 stretched in darkness towards the east, like the 
 shadow of the mysterious pillar of cloud of old 
 along the sands of the desert ; while, dim in the 
 haze towards the north, we could discern, and 
 barely discern, the uncertain outline of the gray 
 cliffs of May, with its white Pharos atop, that 
 seemed a sheeted spectre the solitary inhabit- 
 ant of some island of Cloudland. The steep 
 precipices of the neighboring coast frowned 
 dark and cold in the shade, but the red beam 
 slanted 'warmly along the level expanse of fields 
 atop ; and though the stern Tantallan presented 
 to us his shady side, there was a strange bright- 
 ness in the gleam of his eyes the slant light, 
 passing sheer through window and shot-hole, 
 traversed, in long rules of ruddy bronze, the 
 stratum of frosty vapor behind. 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 121 
 
 There was a magnificent combination of fairy 
 wildness and beauty in the scene. And yet it 
 was all a .reality, though a transitory one. It 
 tarnished and faded as the sun sank lower in 
 the cloud, and in a brief half-hour all was en- 
 veloped in gray. And then, late in the night, 
 the moon, far in its wane, would arise, and re- 
 veal, amid the deep solitude of the islet, a scene 
 of drear and ghostly uncertainties jutting 
 cliffs, and broken and roofless walls, and a dark 
 sea around, traversed by one broad pathway of 
 undulating light. And then morning would 
 dawn, and the beam redden and strengthen, and 
 the canvass w r ould exhibit, within the old out- 
 lines, another and fresher succession of colors. 
 Thus, with every passing hour and season, and 
 every meteoric change, does the landscape alter 
 now tranquil in the calm, anon troubled with 
 tempest ; and thus has it ever altered ; but not 
 merely has the filling up the shades and col- 
 ors done so, but the solid outlines also ; and 
 when standing, during this exquisite evening 
 hour, beside the little pyramid on the summit 
 of the rock, I could not help wishing that, under 
 the influence of some such vision as fell upon 
 5 
 
122 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 Mirza in the " long hollow valley of Bagdad/' 
 I could see scene succeed scene in the surround- 
 ing area, from the early dawn of being in the 
 days of the Grauwacke, down to those historic 
 periods during which, doing or suffering, man 
 enacted his part upon the stage. How many 
 of those dark enigmas would not the mere sur- 
 vey serve to solve, which a true though little 
 known poet, Colton, invoked the genius of the 
 inspired Hebrew lawgiver to unriddle ! 
 
 "Oil, them that o'er the Egyptian hurled 
 Thy crystal wall, and didst a world 
 Both made and marred record Oh, deign to tell, 
 Seer of the pillared flame and granite well ! 
 Who taught old Mother Earth to hide 
 The lava's age-repeated tide ; 
 And bid though centuries toiled in vain 
 Her thousandth Eden bloom again ; 
 Or solve what eras, since the shock 
 Of flood and flame, rived hill and rock, 
 Have rolled to turn to flint and stone 
 The Bison's horn, the Mammoth's bone ! 
 Embedded deep and dark they lie, 
 'Neath mountains heaped on mountains high, 
 So long, their very race is spent 
 They exist but in their monument ; 
 But who their mausoleum made 7 
 Did earthquakes wield that mighty spade 
 That renders all old Babel piled 
 But the card castle of a child 1 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 123 
 
 Strange, that Creation can't afford 
 
 Such pomp to shroud her sixth-day's lord, 
 
 But gives each mean or monstrous thing 
 
 That burial she denies her king. 
 
 These are earth's secrets but to gain 
 
 Those of the Deep thou rent in twain, 
 
 'Twere worth a dull eternity 
 
 Of common life to question thee." 
 
 The curtain rises, and there spreads out a 
 wide sea, limited, however, in its area by a dark 
 fog that broods along the horizon, and enveloped, 
 even where best seen, in a gray obscurity, like 
 that of a misty morning in May, an hour before 
 the sun has risen. It is the ocean of our 
 Scotch Grauwacke that rolls beneath and around 
 us ; but regarding its inhabitants so exceed- 
 ingly numerous and well defined in the contem- 
 porary seas of what is now England we can 
 do little more than guess. We know merely 
 that it rolls its waves over a gray impalpable 
 mud, to whose numerous folds it communicates 
 in the shallows the characteristic ripple-mark- 
 ings ; that it possesses a chambered shell of 
 the genus Orthocera, with two or three obscure 
 brachipods ; and that the gray mud beneath 
 abounds in some localities with a curious zoo- 
 phyte, akin to the existing sea-pens of our deep 
 
124 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 submarine hollows. The most abundant deni- 
 zens of that twilight sea are creatures shaped 
 like a quill, or rather communities of creatures 
 for each quill is a little republic that enjoy 
 their central shaft with its stony axis as com- 
 mon property, and have their rows of micro- 
 scopic domiciles ranged in the filaments of the 
 web. The light brightens over the wide ex- 
 panse, and the fog rises ; myriads of ages have 
 passed by ; the countless strata of the Grau- 
 wacke are already deposited ; and we have 
 entered on the eras of the Old Red Sandstone. 
 That change has taken place, to the reality of 
 which, as conclusively indicated in space, the 
 judgment of Playfair could not refuse its assent ; 
 but with whose slow operations, as spread over 
 time almost lengthened into eternity, his im- 
 agination failed to grapple. The perspective 
 darkened as he looked along the long vista 
 of the ages gone by, and left on his mind but 
 a perplexing and shadowy idea of a dim plat- 
 form of undefined boundary, on which chaotic 
 revolutions of incalculable vastness were per- 
 formed during periods of immeasurable extent. 
 It does seem a strange fact, and yet the evi- 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 125 
 
 dence of its reality as such is incontrovertible, 
 that when the lower beds of the Old Red Sand- 
 stone were, to borrow from the philosopher, 
 "only beginning to be deposited in the shape 
 of mud or sand, from the waters of a superin- 
 cumbent ocean," the Grauwacke on which they 
 were thrown down was quite as old a looking 
 rock as it is now, and that the numerous grap- 
 tolites preserved in its strata existed at the 
 time but as the dimly preserved fossils which 
 we now see them miniature quills, with thickly 
 serrated edges, drawn in glossy bitumen on a 
 ground of gray. 
 
 With the beginnings of the Old Red Sand 
 stone a slight change takes place in the coloring 
 of the prospect. There is a flush of ochrey red 
 over yonder shallow, where the wave beats on 
 the ferruginous sand ; the skerry beyond seems 
 darkened with sea-weed; and though we are 
 still, as before, out of sight of land, and so can 
 know little regarding its productions, we may 
 see a minute branch of club-moss floating past, 
 and the trunk of some coniferous tree, and can, 
 in consequence, at least determine that land 
 there is. But mark how brightly the depths 
 
126 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 gleam with the mirror-like reflection of scales 
 scales resplendent with enamel, that owe 
 their name ganoid^ or glittering to their 
 brilliancy. How strangely uncouth the forms 
 of these ancient denizens of the deep, and, in 
 some instances, how monstrous their size ! 
 Yonder, swimming leisurely a few feet under 
 the surface, as if watching the play of a distant 
 shoal of Diplopteri, is the ponderous Astero- 
 lepis its glassy eyes set in their triangular 
 sockets, as in some families of snakes, immedi- 
 ately over its mouth its head armed with a 
 dermal covering of bone, from which a musket- 
 bullet would rebound as from a stone-wall its 
 body tiled over with oblong scales, delicately 
 carved, like the inlaid mail of a warrior its 
 jaws furnished with their outer tier of minute 
 thickly set fish-teeth, and their inner tier of 
 reptile-teeth greatly bulkier than those of the 
 crocodile, and set at wide intervals, after the 
 sauroid pattern. And yonder a member of 
 the same family, of larger scale and more squat, 
 though somewhat less colossal in its propor- 
 tions swims the strong Holoptychius. The 
 numerous flights of Pterichthys, with their 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 127 
 
 compact bodies, spread wings, and rudder-like 
 tails, resemble flocks of submarine birds ; the 
 plated Coccosteus and the broad Glyptolepis flap 
 heavily along the bottom ; crowds of minute 
 Cheiracanthi, with all their various cogeners, 
 bristling with spines, and poised on membrana- 
 ceous, scale-covered fins, dart hither, thither, 
 and athwart, in the green stratum above ; while 
 dimly seen, a huge Crustacean creeps slowly 
 over the ribbed sand beneath. But ages and 
 centuries pass in quick succession as the waves 
 roll along the surface species and genera pass 
 away, families become extinct, races perish ; 
 the rocks of the Old Red Sandstone, holding 
 in their stony folds their numerous strange or- 
 ganisms, are all laid down, as those of the 
 Grauwacke had been previously deposited ; and 
 the scene changes as the unsummed periods of 
 the system reach their close. 
 
 There is a further increase in the light, as 
 the day advances and the sun climbs the steep 
 of heaven ; but the fogs of morning still hang 
 their dense folds on the horizon. We shall look 
 out for the land when the mist rises -it cannot 
 now be far distant. The brown eddies of a 
 
128 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 freshet circle past, restricted, as where vast 
 -rivers mingle with the ocean, to an upper layer 
 of sea ; and broken reeds, withered ferns, the 
 cones of the Lycopodiaceae, and of trees of the 
 Araucarian family, float outwards in the cur- 
 rent, thick and frequent as the spoils of the 
 great Mississippi in the course of the voyager, 
 when he has. come within half-a-day's sail of the 
 shores of the delta. But our view is still re- 
 stricted, as heretofore, to a wide tract of sea 
 now whitened, where the frequent flats and 
 banks rise within a few fathoms of the surface, 
 by innumerable beds of shells, reefs of corals, 
 and forests of crinoidea. Here the water seems 
 all a-glow with the brilliant colors of the living 
 polypi that tenant the calcareous cells green, 
 scarlet, and blue, yellow and purple : we seem 
 as if looking down on gorgeous parterres, sub- 
 merged, when in full blow, or, through the dew- 
 bedimmed panes of a greenhouse, on the mag- 
 nificent heaths, geraniums, and cacti of the 
 warmer latitudes, when richest in flower. Yon- 
 der there lie vast argosies of snowy terebratula, 
 each fast anchored to the rocky bottom by the 
 fleshy cable that stretches from the circular 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 129 
 
 dead-eye in its umbone, like the mooring chain 
 from the prow of a galley. ; while directly over 
 them, vibrating in the tide, stretches the mar- 
 ble-like petals of the stone lily. The surface 
 is ploughed by the numerous sailing shells of 
 the period huge orthocera, and the whoiied 
 nautilacese and goniatites. And fish abound 
 as before, though the races are all different. 
 We may mark the smaller varieties in play over 
 the coral beds the lively Palaeoniscus, that so 
 resembles a gold-fish cased in bone and the 
 squat deeply-bodied Amblypterus, with its 
 nicely fretted scales and plates, and its strong- 
 ly rayed fins. The Gyracanthis, with its mas- 
 sy spine carved as elaborately as the 'prentice 
 pillar in Roslin, swims through the profounder 
 depths, uncertain in outline, like a moying cloud 
 by night ; while the better defined Megalich- 
 thys, with its coat of bright quadrangular 
 scales, and its closely-jointed and finely-punc- 
 tulated helmet of enamelled bone, glides vigor- 
 ously along yonder submarine field of crinoidea, 
 and the slim stony arms and tall columnar 
 stems brushed by its fins, bend, as it passes, 
 like a swathe of tall grass swept by a sudden 
 
130 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 breeze. We are full in the middle of the era 
 of the Carboniferous Limestone. And some of 
 us may be rendered both wiser and humbler, 
 mayhap, by noting a simple fact or two directly 
 connected with this formation, ere the curtain 
 drop over it. 
 
 We have already marked, in our survey, nu- 
 merous beds of shell, glimmering pale through 
 the shallows ; here argosies of terebratula an- 
 chored to the rocks beneath there fleets of 
 chambered nautilacea, careering along the sur- 
 face of the waters above. But it is chiefly on 
 the fixed shells the numerous bivalves of the 
 profounder depths that I would now ask the 
 reader to concentrate his attention. They be- 
 long, in large proportion, to a class imperfectly 
 represented in the existing seas, and which had 
 comparatively few representatives during even 
 the Secondary periods, rich as these were in 
 molluscs of high development ; though, during 
 the great Palaeozoic division, their vast abun- 
 dance formed one of the most remarkable cha- 
 racteristics of the period. Of this class (the 
 Brachipoda of the modern naturalist), many 
 hundred species have already been determined 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 131 
 
 in the older rocks of our island ; while, as 
 living inhabitants of the seas which encircle it, 
 Dr. Fleming, in his " British Animals," enume- 
 rates but four species ; and none of these 
 such is their rarity the greater part of my 
 readers ever saw.* These Brachipoda, of 
 which in the Carboniferous Lime-stone there 
 existed the numerous families of the Terebra- 
 tula, the Spirifer, and the Productus, were in 
 all their species bivalves of an exceedingly 
 helpless class : the valves, instead of being 
 united, as in the cockle, muscle, pecten, and 
 oyster, by strong elastic hinges, were merely 
 sewed together, if I may so speak, by bundles 
 of unelastic fleshy fibres ; and the opening of 
 the lips a very little apart so simple and fa- 
 cile a movement to the ordinary bivalve was 
 to the Brachipod an achievement feebly ac- 
 complished through the agency of an operose 
 and complex machinery. To compensate, how- 
 ever, for the defect, the creatures were furnish- 
 ed on both sides the mouth with numerous cilia, 
 or hair-like appendages, through the rapid vi- 
 
 * TEREBRATULA eranium, T. psiUacea, T. aurita, and 
 CRISPUS anomalus. 
 
132 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 bratory movements of which they could produce 
 minute currents in the water, and thus bring 
 into the interior of their shells, between lips 
 raised but a line apart, the numerous particles 
 of organic matter floating around them which 
 constituted their proper food. They resembled 
 in their mode of living rather the orders below 
 them radiata such as the Actinea, or zoophytes 
 such as the TubulariadcB than true mol- 
 luscs. But there are no mistakes in the work 
 of the Divine Mechanician : in the absence of 
 an elastic hinge, the minute cilia performed 
 their part ; and so throughout the vast periods 
 of the Palaeozoic division the helpless Brachi- 
 poda continued to exist in vastly greater num- 
 bers than any of their contemporaries. 
 
 Now, it is a curious circumstance that Paley, 
 when adducing, in his "Natural Theology," 
 some of the marks of design so apparent in the 
 hinge of bivalves, such as the cockle and oyster, 
 misses by far the most important point exhibit- 
 ed in its construction ; and so converts his bi- 
 valves into poor helpless brachipocla, unfurnish- 
 ed with the compensatory cilia. It is further 
 curious that, in the elaborate edition of the 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 133 
 
 "Theology," jointly published by Lord Brough- 
 am and Sir Charles Bell, though there be a 
 neat wood- cut of the Venus-heart Cockle given, 
 to illustrate their author's idea, the omitted 
 point is not noticed. "In the bivalve order of 
 shell-fish," says the Archdeacon " cockles, 
 mussels, oysters, <fcc. what contrivance can be 
 so simple or so clear as the insertion at the 
 back of a tough tendinous substance, that be- 
 comes at once the ligament which binds the 
 two shells together, and the hinge upon which 
 they open and shut." Most true ! the insert- 
 ed cartilage is both ligamenf and hinge ; but 
 even some of the helpless brachipoda have, in 
 the one insertion at their back, both ligament 
 and hinge, and are helpless brachipoda notwith- 
 standing ; whereas the cockle, oyster, mussel, 
 and all bivalves of their order, can do what the 
 brachipoda cannot open their shells with great 
 promptitude ; and at least a few of them can, 
 like the pecten, dart edgeways through the 
 water like missiles thrown by the hand, simply 
 by the rapid shutting of their valves again. 
 These have been described as the butterflies of 
 the sea. Whence comes this opening power, 
 
134 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 which Paley ? s description so evidently does not 
 involve ? The power of opening the human 
 palm resides in the muscles on the back of the 
 fore-arm ; the power of shutting it, in the mus- 
 cles in the front of the fore-arm directly oppo- 
 site. These last the muscles operative in 
 shutting the palm are in the cockle, and all 
 other bivalves of its class, represented by the 
 adductor muscles ; but what represents in the 
 shell those antagonist muscles by which the 
 palm is opened ? The bivalve, from its peculiar 
 construction, can have no antagonist muscles ; 
 its little circle of *life is bounded by the lips of 
 the two valves ; and as the proper place of the 
 antagonist muscles would be of necessity on the 
 outside of the shell, far beyond that circle of 
 vitality, antagonist muscles it cannot possibly 
 possess ; and yet, whenever the creature wills 
 it. the work of the missing muscles is promptly 
 performed. Now, mark how this happens. 
 The cartilage inserted at the back is, according 
 to Paley, at once the ligament which binds the 
 two shells together, and the hinge upon which 
 they open and shut, but it is yet something more 
 it is a powerful spring, compressed, and, if I 
 

 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 135 
 
 may use the phrase, " set on full cock," by the 
 strain of the adductor muscles ; and no sooner 
 is that strain relaxed than up flies the valve 
 like some ingeniously contrived trap-door, when 
 one releases the steel-spring in obedience to 
 the mechanical force locked up for use in the 
 powerfully elastic bit of cartilage, that without 
 derangement or confusion serves so many vari- 
 ous purposes. Sir Godfrey Kneller is said to 
 have remarked, in the plenitude of his conceit, 
 that if God Almighty had taken his advice on 
 some important points of contrivance, matters 
 would probably have been better on the whole ; 
 and the saying is recorded as characteristic of 
 the irreverent vanity of the artist. Alas, poor 
 addle-headed coxcomb ! Paley and his two 
 editors men of high standing compared with 
 Sir Godfrey could not have been entrusted, it 
 w^ould seem, by the great First Designer with 
 the construction of even the hinge of a bivalve. 
 The cockles, oysters, pectens, and mussels, 
 hinged by them, would be all helpless brachipo- 
 i da, with not only no spring in their hinges, but 
 also unfurnished with the compensatory ap- 
 paratus within, and would, in consequence, 
 
136 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 become extinct in a week. Is there no lesson 
 here ? 
 
 But, lo ! the mist rises, and slowly dissipates 
 in the sun ; and yonder, scarce half-a-mile away, 
 is the land a low swampy shore, covered by a 
 rank vegetation. Thickets of tall plants, of 
 strange form and singular luxuriance, droop 
 over the coast-edge into the sea, like those man- 
 grove jungles of Southern America, that bear 
 on their branches crops of oysters. There are 
 reeds, with their light coronals of spiky leaves 
 radiating from their numerous joints, that rival 
 the masts of vessels in size ferns, whose mag- 
 nificent fronds overshadow half a rood of surface, 
 that attain to the bulk and height of forest trees 
 club-mosses, tall as Norwegian pines and 
 strangely carved, cacti-looking, leaf-covered 
 trunks, bulky as the body of a man. Nor is 
 there any lack of true trees, that resemble 
 those of the existing period, as exhibited in the 
 southern hemisphere stately araucarians, that 
 lift their proud heads a hundred feet over the 
 soil and spiky pines, that raise their taper 
 trunks and cone-covered boughs to a scarce 
 lower elevation. And yonder green and level 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 137 
 
 land, dank with streaming vapor, and where the 
 golden light streams through long bosky vistas, 
 crowded with prodigies of the vegetable king- 
 dom Sigillaria, Favularia, and Ulodendra is 
 the land of the Coal Measures. 
 
 Three of the great geologic periods, compris- 
 ing almost the whole of the Palaeozoic division, 
 have already gone by ; and yet the history of 
 the Bass as an igneous rock is still to begin. 
 But we have at least laid down the groundwork 
 of the surrounding landscape. And be it re- 
 membered that all these scenes, however much 
 they may seem the work of fancy, were realities 
 connected with the laying of these deep founda- 
 tions realities which might have been as cer- 
 tainly witnessed from the point in space now 
 occupied by the rude crowning pyramid of the 
 Bass had there been a human eye to look 
 abroad, or a human sensorium to receive the 
 impressions which it conveyed as the scene 
 furnished by the lovely sunset of this evening. 
 Sir Roderick Murchison, in his magnificent 
 "Silurian System," has given the example of 
 rendering landscapes according to their real out- 
 lines, but colored according to the tints of the 
 
138 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 geologic map ; and the practice possesses the 
 advantage of making the diverse features of 
 the various formations address themselves with 
 peculiar emphasis to the eye. Were the real 
 landscape which the summit of the Bass com- 
 mands to be so colored, we would see its wide 
 area composed of characteristic representatives 
 of each of the three systems, whose successive 
 depositions we have described. The distant 
 promontory to the east, on which Fast Castle 
 stands, with the hills in the interior that sweep 
 along the entire back-ground of the prospect, 
 would bear the deep purple tinge appropriated 
 by the geologist to the Grauwacke. Leaning at 
 their feet, from the Siccar Point to Gilford, and 
 from Gilford to Fala, besides abutting on the 
 sea in insulated patches as at North Berwick, 
 Canty Bay, Tantallan, Seacliff, and Belhaven 
 we would next see, spread over a large space in 
 the scene, the deep chocolate tint assigned, not 
 unappropriately, to the Old Red. From Cock- 
 burnspath to Dunbar on the one hand, and from 
 Aberlady Bay to Arthur's Seat on the other, 
 the landscape would exhibit the cold gray hue 
 of the Coal Measures, here and there mottled 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 139 
 
 with tile light azure that distinguishes in the 
 map the Carboniferous Limestone ; while the trap 
 eminences, with the tuff of the opposite shore, 
 and the island mass at our feet, would fiame in 
 the deep crimson of the geologic colorist as if 
 the igneous rocks of which they are composed 
 still retained the red heat of their molten con- 
 dition. Such would be the conventional coloring 
 of the landscape ; vast tracts of purple, of choco- 
 late, of gray, and of blue, would indicate the 
 proportional space occupied in its area by the 
 three great systems that have furnished us with 
 a picture a-piece ; and what we have now to 
 conjure up the platform of the stage being 
 fairly erected, and its various coverings laid 
 down is the scene illustrative of the origin and 
 upheaval of the various trap-rocks that have 
 come to form the bolder features of the prospect 
 among the rest, supreme in the centre of the 
 disturbed district, the stately column of the Bass. 
 The land of the Coal Measures has again dis - 
 appeared ; and a shoreless but shallow ocean, 
 much vexed by currents, and often lashed by 
 tempest, spreads out around, as during the ear- 
 lier periods. But:there are more deeply-seated 
 
140 GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 
 
 heavings that proceed from the centre of the 
 immediate area over which we stand, than ever 
 yet owed their origin to storm or tide. Ever 
 and anon waves of dizzy altitude roll outwards 
 towards the horizon, as if raised by the fall of 
 some such vast pebble as the blind Cyclops sent 
 whizzing through the air after the galley of 
 Ulysses, wiien 
 
 " The whole sea shook, and refluent beat the shore/' 
 
 We may hear, too, deep from the abyss, the 
 growlings as of a subterranean thunder, loud 
 enough to drown the nearer sounds of both wave 
 and current. And now, as the huge kraken 
 lifts its enormous back over the waves, the solid 
 strata beneath rise from the bottom in a flat 
 dome, crusted with shells and corals, and dark 
 with algae. The billows roll back the bared 
 strata heave, and crack, and sever a dense 
 smouldering vapor issues from the opening rents 
 and fissures and now the stony pavement is 
 torn abruptly asunder, like some mildewed cur- 
 tain seized rudely by the hand a broad sheet 
 of flame mounts sudden as lightning through 
 the opening, a thousand fathoms into the sky 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 141 
 
 " Infuriate molten rocks and flaming globes, 
 Mount high above the clouds" 
 
 and the volcano is begun. Meanwhile the whole 
 region around, far as the eye can reach, heaves 
 wildly in the throes of Plutonic convulsion. 
 Ai>ove many a rising shallow, the sea boils and 
 roars, as amid the skerries of some rocky bay 
 open to the unbroken roll of the ocean in a time 
 of tempest ; the platform of sedimentary rock 
 over an area of many square miles is fractured 
 like the ice of some Highland tarn, during a 
 hasty spring thaw that swells every mountain 
 streamlet into a river ; waves of translation, 
 produced at once in numerous centres by the 
 sudden upheaval of the bottom, meet and con- 
 flict under canopies of smoke and ashes ; the 
 light thickens as the reek ascends, and, amid 
 the loud patter of the ejected stones and pu- 
 mice, as they descend upon the sea the roar- 
 ing of the flames the rending of rocks the 
 dash of waves and the hollow internal grum- 
 blings of earthquakes dark night comes down 
 upon the deep. Vastly extended periods pass 
 away ; there are alternate pauses and parox- 
 ysms of convulsion ; and ere the Plutonic agen- 
 
142 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 cies, worn out in the struggle, are laid fairly 
 asleep, and the curtain again rises, the entire 
 scene is changed. Of the old sedimentary rocks 
 there remain, in a wide tract, only a few insula- 
 ted beds, half-buried in enormous accumulations 
 of volcanic debris debris stratified by the 
 waves, and consolidated into a tolerably adhe- 
 sive tuff by the superincumbent pressure, and 
 here traversed by long dikes of basalt, and 
 there overlaid by ponderous beds of greenstone. 
 The Bass towers before us as a tall conical hill, 
 deeply indented atop by the now silent crater 
 its slopes formed of loose ashes and rude 
 fragments of ejected rock, and with the flush of 
 sulphur, here of a deep red, there of a golden 
 yellow, still bright on its sides. 
 
 Let us rightly conceive of the hill in this, 
 the last of its bygone aspects. Nearly two 
 centuries ago there was a large tract of land 
 covered over, in the north of Scotland, by blown 
 sand ; and among the other interred objects 
 such as human dwellings, sheep and cattle-folds, 
 gateways, and the fences of fields and gar- 
 dens there were several orchard trees, envel- 
 oped in the dry deluge, and buried up. Of one 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 143 
 
 of these it is said that the upper branches pro- 
 jected for several years from the top of the pyr- 
 amidal hillock that had formed around it, and 
 that they continued to produce in their season 
 a few stunted leaves, with here and there a 
 sickly blossom ; but the branches at length 
 dried up and disappeared, and for more than a 
 century there were scarce any of the inhabit- 
 ants of the neighboring district who seemed to 
 know what it was the conical hillock contained. 
 And then the prevailing winds that had so long 
 before covered up the orchard tree began to 
 scoop out the sides of its arenaceous tumulus, 
 and to lay bare twig and branch, and at length 
 the trunk itself ; but the rotting damps, operat- 
 ing on the wood in a state of close seclusion from 
 the free air, had wrought their natural work ; 
 and as the tumulus crumbled away, the twigs 
 and boughs, with their upper portion of the 
 trunk, crumbled away also ; till at length,* 
 when the entire enveloping material was re- 
 moved, there remained of the tree but an up- 
 right stump, that rose a few feet over the soil. 
 Now, the conical envelop or tumulus of debris 
 and ashes which at this stage composes the 
 
144 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 exterior covering of the Bass, resembles exactly 
 that which surrounded, in the buried barony of 
 Cubin, the orchard-tree ; while its stony centre 
 of trap, moulded in the tubular crater, with its 
 various branch-like arm bent earthwards like 
 those of the weeping ash the remains of erup- 
 tive currents flowing outwards and downwards 
 represent the tree itself. The denuding 
 agent is not, as in the sandy wastes of Moray, 
 the keen dry- wind of the west, but the slow 
 wear, prolonged through many ages, of waves 
 and currents. The sloping sides crumble down 
 the stony branches fall undermined, into the 
 tide, and are swept away until at length, as in 
 the orchard-tree of my illustration, there re- 
 mains but an abrupt and broken stump the 
 ancient storm- worn island of the Bass. 
 
 The enormous amount of denudation which 
 the theories of the geologist demand, however 
 consonant with his observations of fact, may 
 well startle the uninitiated. The Lower Coal 
 Measures appear on three sides of this disturb- 
 ed district ; they may be traced, as has been 
 shown in the immediate neighborhood of Dun- 
 bar to the east ; they occur at Abbey Toll, near 
 
GEOLOGY OP THE BASS. 145 
 
 Haddington, on the south ; and they extend a 
 little beyond Aberlady Bay on the west ; while 
 the sedimentary rocks that appear in the centre 
 of the area, directly opposite the Bass, belong, 
 as has also been shown, to an inferior member 
 of the Old Red Sandstone. The surrounding 
 Coal Measures from the edges of a broken dome, 
 that, upheaved originally by the volcanic forces, 
 as a bubble in a crucible of boiling sulphur is 
 inflated and upheaved by the imprisoned gas, 
 has been ground down, as it rose ; by the denud- 
 ing agencies, until in the centre of the area the 
 Lower Old Red Rocks have been laid bare. 
 And so immense was the dome, though, of 
 course, destroyed piecemeal as it rose as a log 
 in a saw-mill is cut piecemeal by being gradu- 
 ally impelled on the saw that immediately 
 over the Bass it would have now risen, had it 
 been suffered to mount unworn and unbroken, 
 to an altitude scarce inferior to that of Ben 
 Nevis or Ben Macdui. In this region of birds 
 dwellers on the dizzy cliff no bird soars half 
 so high as the imaginary dotted line some three 
 or four thousand feet over the level, at which, 
 save for the wear of the waves when the volcanic 
 
 i 
 
146 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 agencies are propelling the surface upwards, the 
 higher layers of the Coal Measures would now 
 have stood. Denudation to an extent equally 
 great has taken place immediately over the site 
 of the city of JEdinburgh. Lunardi, in his bal- 
 loon, never reached the point, high over our 
 towers and spires, at which, save for the w^aste 
 of ocean, the upper coal-seams would at this 
 moment have lain. There are various localities 
 in Scotland in which the loss of surface must 
 have been greater still ; and fancy, overborne 
 by visions of waste and attrition on a scale so 
 gigantic, can scarce take the conception in ; far 
 less can the mind, when unassisted by auxiliary 
 facts, receive it as a reality. Viewed, however, 
 in connection with the vast periods which have 
 intervened since the last of these denuded rocks 
 were formed and, be it remembered, that im- 
 mediately after their formation denudation may 
 have begun viewed, too, in connection with 
 that work of deposition which has been going on 
 during these periods elsewhere, and with the 
 self-evident truth that, mainly from the wear 
 of the older rocks have the materials of the 
 newer been derived it grows into credibility, 
 
GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 147 
 
 and takes its place among kindred wonders, 
 simply as one of the facts of a class. During 
 the denudation, to the depth of three or four 
 thousand feet, of the tract of country where the 
 capital of Scotland now stands, a deposition to 
 a vastly greater depth was taking place in the 
 tract of country occupied by the capital of Eng- 
 land. Nor does it seem in any degree more 
 strange that the rocks in the one locality should 
 have been ground down from the red sandstones 
 of Roslin to the calciferous beds which underlie 
 the Mountain Limestone, than that strata should 
 have been laid over strata in the other, from the 
 Trias sic group to the Oolite, and from the 
 Oolite to the London Clay. Had there not 
 been immense waste and attrition among the 
 Primary and Palaeozoic rocks, there could have 
 been no Secondary formations, and no Tertiary 
 system. 
 
 My history speeds on to its conclusion. We 
 dimly descry, amid fog and darkness, yet one 
 scene more. There has been a change in the 
 atmosphere, and the roar of flame, and the hol- 
 low voice of earthquake, are succeeded by the 
 howling of wintry tempests and the crash of 
 
148 GEOLOGY OF THE BASS. 
 
 icebergs. Wandering fragments of the north- 
 ern winter, bulky as hills, go careering over the 
 submerged land, grinding down its softer rocks 
 and shales into clay, leaving inscribed their 
 long streaks and furrows on its traps and its 
 limestones, and thickly strewing the surface of 
 one district with the detached ruins of another. 
 To this lust of the geologic revolutions the deep 
 grooves and furrows of the rocks in the imme- 
 diate neighborhood of North Berwick belong, 
 with the immense boulders of travelled rock 
 which one occasionally sees in the interior on 
 moors and hill sides, or standing out along the 
 sea-coast, disinterred by the waves from amid 
 their banks of gravel or clay. But this last 
 scene in the series I find drawn to my hand, 
 though for another purpose, by the poet who 
 produced the " Ancient Mariner :" 
 
 " Anon there come both mist and snow, 
 
 And it grows wondrous cold ; 
 And ice mast-high comes floating by 
 As green as emerald ; 
 
 " And through the drifts, the snowy cliffs, 
 
 Doth send a dismal sheen ; 
 Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken 
 The ice is all between. 
 
GEOLOGY OP. THE BASS. 149 
 
 " The ice is here, the ice is there, 
 
 The ice is all around ; 
 It cracks and growls and roars and howls, 
 Like noises in a swound." 
 
 But the day breaks, and the storm ceases, 
 and the submerged land lifts up its head over 
 the sea, and the Bass, in the fair morn of the 
 existing creation, looms tall and high to the 
 new-risen sun then, as now, 
 
 " An island salt and bare, 
 The haunt of seals and ores, and sea-mews' clang." 
 
ml tttift <0rrlEstiistir listnq nf tljt 
 
 BY THOMAS M'CRTB, D.D. 
 
& 
 & 
 
 B 
 
CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC HISTORY 
 OF THE BASS * 
 
 OLD HECTOR BOECE, speaking of the Bass 
 as it appeared in his day, describes it as " ane 
 wounderful crag, risand within the sea, with so 
 narrow and strait hals (passage) that na schip 
 nor boit may arrive bot allanerlie at ane part of 
 it. This crag is callet the Bas ; unwinnabill 
 by ingine of man. In it are coves, als profita- 
 ble for defence of men, as (if) thay were biggit 
 be crafty industry. Everything that is in that 
 
 * Description of the engraving: 1. The Bastion, having 
 Thomas Hog's Cell on the left ; 2. The Crane ; 3. West 
 Turret; 4. Governor's House; 5. On the east, the Prison 
 and Soldiers' Barracks on the west, ditto, containing 
 Blackadder's Cell; 6. East Turret; 7. St. Baldred's Cha- 
 pel, afterwards the Powder Magazine ; 8. Garden. 
 7* 
 
154 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 crag is ful of admiration and wounder."* Such 
 as the Bass stood in the beginning of the six- 
 teenth century when Boece flourished, so does 
 it stand in the nineteenth century, unaltered in 
 a single feature, and still "ful of admiration 
 and wounder." Eising abruptly to the height 
 of four hundred and twenty feet above the level 
 of the sea : about two miles from the shore, and 
 three miles east from the ancient royal burgh 
 of North Berwick, it presents to the stranger 
 one of the most striking objects on entering the 
 mouth of the Firth ; and to the visito*r in sum- 
 mer, when the dark-browed rock is encircled 
 with myriads of sea-fowl, wheeling around it in 
 all varieties of plumage, and screaming in all the 
 notes of the aquatic scale, when it may be said, 
 
 The Isle is full of noises, 
 Sounds, and wild airs, that give delight, and hurt not, 
 
 the scene appears like enchantment, and leaves 
 an impression not easily forgotten. 
 
 But leaving to be described by more compe- 
 tent hands, those natural features of the Bass 
 which have remained unchanged by the lapse 
 of ages, it falls to my lot to record scenes and 
 * Bellenden's Boece, vol. i. p. 37. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 155 
 
 events connected with its history which are 
 past and gone never, we hope, to return. 
 About half way up the southern slope of the 
 rock, are the remains of an ancient chapel, 
 pointing to an early date, and associated with 
 the introduction of Christianity into Scotland. 
 At the base of the same slope, clinging as it 
 were to the sides of the precipice, are the moul- 
 dering walls of a fortification, within which a 
 number of our pious countrymen were incarce- 
 rated during the reigns of the last Stuarts. 
 These two ruins, between which, judging even 
 from their outward aspect and structure, there 
 occurs a chasm of some duration, are curiously 
 enough suggestive of the two periods to which 
 our researches extend ; the interval between the 
 first and the second, embracing what have been 
 truly called the dark ages dark in an histori- 
 cal as well as religious sense ; for it is a re- 
 markable fact, that the lights of history shine 
 more brightly on our earlier annals, when the 
 simplicity of the Christian faith was retained, 
 than on later times when the Pope reigned pa- 
 ramount in our land. The old chapel carries us 
 back to these times of primitive simplicity ; 
 
156 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 while to the associations connected with the 
 battered fortress at its base, this rock, barren 
 and insignificant in itself, is mainly indebted 
 for the interest it now possesses in the eyes of 
 Scotsmen. 
 
 The first notice of the Bass in our ancient 
 records, is in connection with one of those reli- 
 gious hermits, who at a very early period, 
 driven probably by persecution, or by the wars 
 between the Scots and the Picts, selected it as 
 his place of retreat. The name of this hermit 
 of the Bass w r as Saint Baldred. He was of 
 Scottish descent, and flourished at the end of 
 the sixth and the beginning of the seventh cen- 
 tury, having died in the year of our Lord 606. 
 Our information concerning him is not only 
 meagre, but so mixed up with the legends of 
 superstition, that it is difficult to distinguish 
 between the true and the fabulous. He has 
 been termed, for example, Bishop of Glasgow, 
 and the successor of St. Kentigern or Mungo, 
 the patron saint of that city.* Whereas, so far 
 as authentic history goes, there is no evidence 
 that Mungo was a bishop at all, any more than 
 
 * Thorn. Dempster! Hist. Eccl. Gent. Scot. torn. i. p. 65. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 157 
 
 St. Columba, who is acknowledged on all hands 
 to have been no more than a Presbyter, though 
 he was the head of the monastery, or religious 
 college of lona.* This fact, resting on the au- 
 thority of the venerable Bede, has sadly puz- 
 zled our episcopal antiquaries, who have been 
 obliged to resort to the extraordinary supposi- 
 tion, that St. Columba must have kept a bishop 
 in his monastery, as a gentleman may keep a 
 family doctor, expressly for the purpose of con- 
 ferring holy orders on those whom he sent forth 
 to preach the gospel !t Of one thing we may 
 be certain, that until Palladius was sent by the 
 Pope in 420, the Scots knew nothing about 
 
 * Dalrymple's Collections, p. 136. 
 
 j* Lloyd, bishop of St. Asaph, Historical Account, p. 102. 
 Keith's Catalogue of Scottish Bishops, pref. 20. In Spots- 
 wood's list of the bishops of Glasgow, St. Baldred is omit- 
 ted, and from St. Mungo, the first bishop in 599, there is a 
 total blank to John Achaian in 1129 the small space of 
 about five centuries and a half! And yet Keith could be 
 " pretty positive that St. Mungo was truly a bishop." Spots- 
 wood's Hist. App. p. 46. Keith's Cat. p. 137. This is as good 
 as his setting down AmpJiibalus as the first archbishop of St. 
 Andrews, when it turns out that this amphibalus was the Latin 
 or rather Greek for the shag-cloak of a certain abbot, which 
 had been mistaken by some blundering monk for the proper 
 name of a bishop! Usser, Antiq. p. 281,, Lloyd, p, 151. 
 Dalrymple, p. 119, 
 
158 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 bishops. " Before his arrival," says Fordun, 
 " the Scots had presbyters and monks only, as 
 teachers of the faith and ministers of the sacra- 
 ments, following the rule of the primitive 
 church."* And it was long after this before 
 they could be prevailed on to part with their 
 ancient pastors, to whom they were naturally 
 attached as having been chosen by themselves ; 
 " for," says Bale, " they had their bishops and 
 ministers formerly elected according to the 
 Word, by the Notes of the people, as appears to 
 have been practised in Britain after the manner 
 of Asia : but this did not please the Romans, 
 who were fonder of ceremonies, and disliked the 
 Asiatics. "t 
 
 In all probability, therefore, the veritable St. 
 Baldred of the Bass was a simple Culdee pres- 
 byter, residing for safety and retirement in the 
 island, as Columba did in lona, and Adamnan, 
 another presbyter, in Inchkeith, but sallying 
 forth occasionally to teach the rude natives on 
 
 * Joan. Fordun, Scotichronicon, lib. iii. ch. viii. His 
 words are, " Ante cujus adventum, habebant Scoti fidei doc- 
 tores, ac sacramentoruin ministratores, presbyteros solum- 
 naodo vel monachos, ritum sequentes ecclesiae primitives," 
 
 f Balrei Bcrip. Brit, apud Usser. Brit. Eccl. Ant. p. 417, 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 159 
 
 the mainland the doctrines of Christianity. " Im- 
 pelled," says Bishop Lesley, " with an ardent 
 desire for propagating religion, he devoted him- 
 self to the Picts, and instructed them in the 
 way of Christ."* According to a still more an- 
 cient authority, Simeon of Durham, " the bounds 
 of his pastoral care embraced the whole coun- 
 try, from Lammermoor to Inveresk."t " In 
 these days," says Bede, " people never came 
 into a church but only for hearing the word of 
 prayer. All the care of these Doctors was to 
 serve God, not the world to feed souls, not 
 their own bodies. Wherefore a religious habit 
 was then much reverenced ; and if any priest 
 entered a village, incontinently all the people 
 would assemble, being desirous to hear the 
 word of life ; for the priests did not go into vil- 
 lages upon any other occasion, except to preach, 
 or visit the sick, or in a word to feed souls. "t 
 But only mark how our simple hermit becomes 
 transmogrified, when viewed through monkish 
 spectacles at the distance of some centuries. 
 
 * Lesl. Hist. lib. iv. p. 145. 
 
 t Statistical Account, parish of Whitekirk, vol. ii. 38. 
 
 j Bed. Hist. lib. iii. c. 26. Petrie's Hist. p. 61. 
 
160 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 " This suffragan of St. Kentigern," says one 
 of these chroniclers, " nourished in Lothian, in 
 virtues and in illustrious miracles. Being emi- 
 nently devout he renounced all worldly pomp, 
 and following the example of John the Divine, 
 resided in solitary places, and betook himself to 
 the islands of the sea. Among these, he had 
 recourse to one called Bass : where he led a con- 
 templative life, in which, for many years, he 
 held up to remembrance the most blessed Ken- 
 tigern his instructor" Then come the " illus- 
 trious miracles," of which the following is a 
 specimen : " There was a great rock between 
 the said island (the Bass) and the adjacent land, 
 which remained fixed in the middle of the pas- 
 sage, often causing shipwrecks. The blessed 
 Baldred, moved by piety, ordered himself to be 
 placed on this rock, which being done, at his nod 
 the rock was immediately lifted up, and like a 
 ship driven by the wind, proceeded to the nearest 
 shore, and thenceforth remained in the same 
 place as a memorial of this miracle, and is to 
 this day called St. Baldred's Coble, or Cock- 
 boat."* And, indeed, we are informed by a 
 * Jamieson's Hist. Culdees, p. 190. 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 161 
 
 modern writer who has made St. Baldred the 
 hero of a poem,* that a small rock at the mouth 
 of Aldhame Bay still bears the name of BOM- 
 droris Boat. We have also St. Baldred's 
 Cradle, another rock, "which tradition says 
 elegantly is rocked by the winds and the waves " 
 Baldred's Well, and Baudron's (the Scotch 
 name for Baldred's) Statue, which was demo- 
 lished by " an irreverent mason." All this cer- 
 tainly proves the existence of such a personage, 
 and the high repute in which he was held in 
 that neighborhood. But, at the risk of incur- 
 ring the epithet bestowed on the iconoclastic 
 mason, we must say, with all respect for St. 
 Baldred's nod, that the agency of a good sea- 
 storm or flood-tide appears to us a more proba- 
 ble explanation of the cock-boat story. 
 
 St. Baldred, it would seem, died on the Bass,t 
 on the 6th of March in the year 606. Even at 
 that early age, Christians had begun to pay a 
 superstitious veneration to the relics of distin- 
 guished saints ; and the honor of having the 
 
 * St. Baldred of the Bass, and other Poems ; by James 
 Miller. Edin. 1824. 
 
 t This at least is stated by Boece, though other accounts 
 mention Aldhame as a place of his death. 
 
162 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 dead body of the revered anchorite deposited 
 among them might naturally become an object 
 of competition among his rude and half-civilized 
 disciples. A story is told, however, relating to 
 his burial, which, though not without its paral- 
 lels in after times, bears too strong an impress 
 of its monkish origin, to be referred so far back 
 as the early date to which it lays claim. The 
 legend, originating probably in some pious fraud 
 of subsequent contrivance, " to avoid scandalous 
 divisions," grows in pomp and circumstance 
 even before our eyes, in the ancient records 
 which have transmitted it. The first version 
 of the story is very simple, being to the effect, 
 " that the people waxing wroth, took arms, and 
 each of them sought by force to enjoy the same ; 
 and when the matter came to issue, the said sa- 
 cred body was found all whole in three distinct 
 places of the house where he died ; so as all the 
 people of each village coming thither and carry- 
 ing the same away, placed it in their churches, 
 and kept it in great honor and veneration for 
 the miracles that at each place it pleased God 
 to work." The next version is more in accord- 
 ance with the solemnity of the occasion : " The 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 163 
 
 inhabitants of the three parishes which were 
 under his charge (Aldhame, Tynningham, and 
 Preston), as soon as they knew of his death, 
 assembled in three different troops at Aldhame, 
 where he breathed his last, severally begging 
 his body. But as they could not agree among 
 themselves, they, by the advice of a certain old 
 man, left the body unburied, and separately be- 
 took themselves to prayer. Morning being 
 come, they found three bodies perfectly alike, 
 and all prepared with equal pomp for interment." 
 So saith the Breviary of Aberdeen. Time ad- 
 vances, and the wonder gathering in bulk, and 
 catching up more rubbish in its way as it rolls 
 down the dark ages, we are informed by Hector 
 Boece in 1526, that the three bodies were found 
 by the priests, when it was hardly dawn (sub 
 dubiam lucem) ; and that, by orders of the 
 bishop, they were conveyed, amidst the devout 
 acclamations of the multitude, to the three neigh- 
 boring churches.* Another, improving on the 
 miracle still farther, assures us that it was 
 effected "by the prayers of the saint himself;" 
 and, to crown the whole, John Major adduces it 
 * H. Boeth. lib. ix. ; Dempster. Hist. Eccl. i. 65. 
 
164 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 as an irrefragable proof of transubstantiation 
 a doctrine, by the way, not even broached in the 
 Church of Rome till three centuries after the 
 death of Baldred ! * This ridiculous story, fit 
 only for the regions of romance, has been ren- 
 dered into verse by the poet already referred to : 
 
 " Each load was borne most pompously, 
 Decked with its cross and rosary; 
 While, one by one, three corpses lay 
 Like twin-brothers transformed to clay, 
 Moulded so nicely to each other, 
 The eye no difference might discover. 
 And as the tapers flickered dim, 
 
 The features looked uncouth 
 They raised the sheet from Baldred's face, 
 
 They turned the corpses where they lay ; 
 In each his features clearly trace, 
 
 Crowned with a tuft of silvery gray. 
 They deemed his bright etherial flame, 
 
 Which mortal form could not control, 
 From heaven had held a trio frame 
 
 To suit his zealous warmth of soul."f 
 
 * Jamieson's Culdees, 188. Bishop Lesley seems half- 
 ashamed of the story (De Reb. Gest. lib. iv. 145). Archdea- 
 con Nicolson, speaking of the credulity of Boece, says, 
 "His terrible story of a monstrous otter, which struck 
 down oaks with its steer the sea-monks of the Isle of Bass 
 and the wild men, who could pull up the tallest fir with as 
 much ease as an ordinary body can root up a turnip are 
 proper companions." (Scottish Hist. Library, p. 90 
 
 t St. Baldred of the Bass, part i. 19, 21. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 165 
 
 With regard to the old Chapel of the Bass, 
 though it may mark the spot of Baldred's hum- 
 ble cell> there is reason to believe that it is of 
 comparatively modern date. It would appear 
 that this island at one time formed a parish, 
 and that the " parish kirk in the craig of the 
 Bass" was consecrated in honor of St. Baldred, 
 so late as 1542, when it is more than probable 
 the structure was first erected, under the pa- 
 tronage of that notorious enemy of the Refor- 
 mation, Cardinal Beaton.* 
 
 Should any of our readers be curious to know 
 the subsequent history of this Chapel, we fear 
 they will be disappointed. All we can say 
 about it is, that it may have been occasionally 
 frequented as a place of worship till the Refor- 
 mation. Tradition says that it was customary 
 for the Cistercian nuns of the neighboring ab- 
 
 * The following is our authority : " 1542. The v. d. of 
 Jan^. M. Villielm Gybsone, byschop of Libariensis and Suf- 
 fraganeus to Dawid Beton, Cardynall and Archebysschop of 
 Santandros, consecrat and dedicat the paris Kirk in the 
 craig of the Bass, in honor of Sant Baldred, bysschop and 
 confessor, in presens of maister Jhon Lawder. arsdene in 
 Teuidaill, noter publict." (Extracta ex Chronicis Scocie, 
 p. 255. Printed by the Abbotsford Club, 1842.) 
 
166 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 bey of North Berwick, to pay an annual pil- 
 grimage to another old chapel in the adjacent 
 island of Feddery, the ruins of which still re- 
 main. They may have sometimes visited the 
 Bass chapel also. In 1544, there were twenty- 
 two of these nuns, as we learn from a document 
 which not one of the poor creatures was able to 
 subscribe ; each of them, from the prioress down- 
 wards, having this added to her signature by the 
 notary, "With my hand at y e pen."* They 
 must have been reduced to great poverty too 
 by this time, for their convent had been pillag- 
 ed, burnt, and destroyed in 1529,t full thirty 
 years before the Reformation, which has been 
 unjustly made the scape-goat of a great many 
 offences of this kind. Our Reformers were ex- 
 ceedingly desirous to keep up all the " kirks of the 
 nunneries," or places of worship connected with 
 these establishments, and to have them supplied 
 with "qualified ministers." And it is remark- 
 able how soon they provided all the parishes of 
 Scotland, either with ministers or with readers, 
 
 * Carte Monialiuni cle North Benvic, printed for the 
 Bannatyne Club, p. 60. 
 t Ibid, p. 47. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 167 
 
 a humbler class of officials, whose duty it was 
 to read the scriptures, and the simple prayers 
 of Geneva prefixed to the psalms. But they 
 had no notion of keeping up service at use- 
 less and empty shrines, where there was no po- 
 pulation ; and little did they reck where St. 
 Baldred died, or in how many places he was 
 buried. As the Bass, therefore, could furnish 
 few or no hearers, we are not surprised to find 
 in the " Buik of Assignations of the Ministers 
 and Reidars Stipends for the year 1576," the 
 following entry, " Bass and Auldhame neidis 
 na reidaris."* All we can say of its future fate 
 is comprehended in one sentence, written by 
 Fraser of Brea in 1677 : " Below the garden, 
 there is a chapel for divine service ; but in re- 
 gard no minister was allowed for it, the ammu- 
 nition of the garrison was kept therein." Not- 
 withstanding this " desecration," we are inform- 
 ed that a " young lady, in the presence of her 
 father, was here solemnly confirmed in her Ro- 
 mish faith and profession, and the due ritual 
 services were gone through in the presence of 
 
 * Register of Ministers 1567, printed for Bannatyne Club, 
 p. 74. 
 
168 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 the keeper of the Bass and his boat assist- 
 ant."* 
 
 The earliest proprietors of the island on re- 
 cord were the ancient family of the Landers, 
 who from this were usually designated the 
 Lauders of the Bass. A charter of it in favor 
 of Robert Lauder from William de Lambert, 
 bishop of St. Andrews, dates as far back as 
 1316. According to Henry the Minstrel, Ro- 
 bert Lauder accompanied Wallace in many of 
 his exploits. In the aisle of the lairds of the 
 Bass, in the old church of North Berwick, a 
 tombstone once bore the following inscription, in 
 Latin- Saxon characters " Here lies the good 
 Robert Lauder^ the great Laird of Cong alt on 
 and the Bass, who died May 1311." The 
 crest they assumed from it was quite character- 
 istic a solan goose sitting on a rock ; but the 
 motto was rather a burlesque on the original, 
 Sub umbra alarum tuarum.^ The island con- 
 tinued in the possession of this ancient family 
 for about five centuries. t 
 
 * Statistical Account, North Berwick, vol. ii. p. 331. 
 
 f Jamieson's Illustrations of Slezer. 
 
 | In the Appendix to this part, the reader will find the 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS, 169 
 
 It does not, however, appear when it first be- 
 gan to be used as a " strength" or fortified place. 
 The first time we hear of it having been thus 
 employed is in the year 1405, when it afforded 
 a temporary retreat to James, the youngest son 
 of Robert III., before embarking, under the 
 guardianship of the Earl of Orkney, on that ill- 
 fated expedition, which issued in his being 
 taken by the English, and detained nineteen 
 years in captivity. That even at that early pe- 
 riod there was a castle, or some fortification on 
 the island, is a supposition strengthened by an- 
 other fact. On the return to Scotland of that 
 young prince, now r James the First, in the year 
 1424, w r e are informed that Walter Stew r art, 
 eldest son of Murdac or Murdo, Duke of Alba- 
 ny, who had acted as Regent, was arrested and 
 " sent prisoner to the Castle of the Bass ;"* 
 and soon after, his father was committed to Carl- 
 raverock Castle, and his mother, the duchess, 
 to Tantallan, " places remote from the seat of 
 
 above-mentioned charter, and a full account of the family 
 of Lauder, kindly furnished for our volume by the lineal 
 descendant and representative of the family, Sir Thomas 
 Dick Lauder. 
 
 * Leslaei Historia, lib. vii. p. 262. 
 8 
 
170 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 their feudal influence."* This Walter Stewart 
 was the first prisoner of the Bass that we read 
 of in history a very different character, indeed, 
 from those whom the sketch at the end has 
 introduced to the readers of this volume. He 
 was a spoilt child, and a profligate youth, having, 
 with his brothers, abandoned himself to every 
 kind of licentiousness during the loose adminis- 
 tration of his father, who, like old Eli, connived 
 at, and ultimately suffered for, their misconduct. 
 " The old man had a bird," says Buchanan, 
 " which he highly prized, of the falcon species, 
 which Walter having often asked from his 
 father, and having been unable to obtain, at last, 
 in contempt, snatched from his feeble hand, and 
 wrung off its neck. To which outrage, his father 
 thus replied, c Since you cannot submit to obey 
 me, I shall bring another, whom both you and I 
 will be forced to obey :' and from that time he 
 bent his whole mind to restore his relation 
 James. "t Within a year the father and his two 
 sons were beheaded at Stirling. A lively fancy 
 might draw an affecting picture of the old duch- 
 
 * Pinkerton, Hist. vol. i. p. 113, 
 t Buch. Hist., lib. x. 25. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 171 
 
 ess, as she gazed from the opposite towers of 
 Tantallan on the ocean prison that held her 
 wayward son, and describe her feelings as she 
 saw him conveyed away to suffer an ignominious 
 death. But our Scottish ladies of that period 
 w r ere made of sterner stuff than we are apt to 
 imagine. " There is a report current," says 
 Buchanan, " although I do not find it mentioned 
 by any historian, that the king sent the heads 
 of her father, husband and children, to Isabella, 
 on purpose to try whether so violent a woman, 
 in a paroxysm of grief, as sometimes happens, 
 might not betray the secrets of her soul ; but 
 she, though affected at the unexpected sight, 
 used no intemperate expressions." I have an 
 old manuscript which records this piece of sav- 
 age brutality, and adds that the old lady " said 
 nothing, but that they worthilie died, gif that 
 whilk wes laid against them were trew /" 
 
 That the Bass continued as one of the 
 strengths or fortresses of Old Scotland, during 
 the sixteenth century, we have abundant evi- 
 dence. Boece describes it in his day (1526) 
 " as a castle in Lothian, fortified by nature in 
 the most extraordinary manner, being situated 
 
172 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 on a very high rock, more than two miles from the 
 shore, and surrounded on every .side by 
 sea."* In 1548. after the treaty of ]><. 
 ley says, the French of;' Monsieur de 
 
 .nes, de la Chapelle, and sundrie ut; 
 capitanis, remanit still in the countroy. and 
 travellit throughout the most pairt of the 
 realme, visiting the situation of the townis, the 
 strengthis of Durnbartano. Edinburgh. Tamp- 
 tallon, the Bas, Dumbar, Fast Caste! 1. Dunnot- 
 tar, Phindlatir, and many utheris, as well boith 
 upone the coast of the eist and west seyis. 
 They affearmed they had never sene in ony 
 countrey so mony strengthis to natour, within 
 ane prince's dominion, as was within the real me 
 of Scotland."! The island, with its castle, appears 
 still to have remained the private property of 
 the Lauders. In 1581, James the Sixth paid 
 a visit to the Bass,}: and seems to have cone 
 
 * Boece's Chronicles, as quoted by Demps > , . i b - 
 
 lished by Holinshed, chap. ix. 
 
 t Bishop Lesley's Historic, Bannatyne Club edit, p 
 
 $ In the Treasurer's Accounts, in tho n -i-n of fome , \ J. 
 under the above date, : id : 
 
 " Item, To Alexander Zoung, his Hienes servitour for his 
 (Jrace'0 extraordinar expenses in his jornay tawardis the 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 173 
 
 ed a strong desire to obtain possession of it for 
 the crown. It is said he offered the laird what- 
 ever he pleased to ask for it ; upon which Lau- 
 der replied, " Your Majesty must e'en resign it 
 to me, for I'll have the auld crag back again. 7 '* 
 Shortly after this, however, it fell into other 
 1 lands. In 1626, Charles L, for what reason 
 we do not learn, but very likely on no better 
 ground than his own sovereign pleasure, insti- 
 tuted a claim to the possession of the rock, 
 which was destined to share the fate of many 
 otlicir claims made by that infatuated mon- 
 arch. t 
 
 In the course of this century, there occurs a 
 curious episode in the history of the Bass, con- 
 nected with the public records of the Church 
 of Scotland. In consequence of the English 
 
 .s.s, conforms to his Iliencs precept, as the samin with his 
 acquittance producit vpon compt proportis, xl. li." (40 : 
 : 0.) 
 
 * Jlislory <>f Dmibar, by James Miller. 
 
 f Anionir his Instructions to tin- President of the Session, 
 10th November, 1020, is the following: " That you causso 
 prosecute our right concerning the Bass, with all expedi- 
 tion, for effectuatting of that end you have from us." Bal- 
 four's Annales, vol. ii. p. 160. 
 
 : 
 
174 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 invasion under Cromwell in 1650, it was thought 
 advisable to seek a shelter for these valuable 
 documents in the fortress of the Bass ; and in 
 April 1651, a requisition was sent to the keep- 
 er, " that the Bass might be made secure for 
 the registers, as it had been in a former day 
 of calamity. 5 ' And moreover, " the Laird of 
 Wauchton, to whom that strength belongs, 
 being personallie present, most gladlie offered 
 to receave them, promising his outmost care to 
 secure and preserve them from all danger." 
 But alas ! the Bass, as well as all the other 
 "strengths' 7 of Scotland, had to surrender to 
 the indomitable Cromwell before that year had 
 expired ; and in April 27, 1652, his Parliament 
 order, " That Major-General Dean cause the 
 public Records of the Kirk, taken in the said 
 isle (the Bass), to be packed up in cask, and 
 sent to the Tower of London, there to remain 
 in the same custody that the other Records 
 that came from Scotland are." These, it is be- 
 lieved, were the same records which, after tra- 
 velling back to Scotland, were again conveyed to 
 England, and perished in the conflagration 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 175 
 
 which occurred in the House of Commons. Octo- 
 ber 1834.* 
 
 But in the progress of events, " the auld 
 crag" was destined to change both masters and 
 inmates. Having fallen into the possession, 
 first of the Laird of Waughton, and thereafter 
 of Sir Andrew Ramsay, Provost of Edinburgh, 
 it was, in October, 1671, purchased from the 
 latter by Lauderdale, in the name of the Gov- 
 ernment, to become a state prison ; and, as 
 Kirkton observes, "a dear bargain it was."t 
 The transaction is thus referred to in one of the 
 brochures of that period : " Sir Andrew Ram- 
 say, having neither for a just price, nor by the 
 fairest means, got a title to a bare insignificant 
 rock in the sea, called the Bass, and to a public 
 debt, both belonging to the Lord of Wachton ; 
 my Lord Lauderdale, to gratifie Sir Andrew, 
 moves the king, upon the pretence of this pub- 
 lic debt, and that the Bass was a place of 
 strength (like to a castle in the moon), and of 
 great importance (the only nest of solan geese 
 
 * Booke of the Universall Kirk (Bannatyne edition), vol. 
 iii. ; Preface, 6 ; Appendix, 30. 
 f Kirkton's History, by Sharpe, p. 361. 
 
176 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 in these parts), to buy the rock from Sir An- 
 drew at the rate of 4000 sterling, and then 
 obtains the command and profits of it, amount- 
 ing to more than 100 sterling yearly, to be 
 bestowed upon himself."* Lauderdale thus be- 
 came, among his many other titles of honor, 
 " Captain of the Bass." " But," says honest 
 Kirkton, " the use the king made of it was, to 
 make it a prison for the Presbyterian minis- 
 ters ; and some of them thought, when they died 
 in the prison (as Mr. John Blackadder did), they 
 glorified God in the islands. But it became a 
 rule of practice among that sort of people, when- 
 ever any of them was called before the Councill, 
 that either they behoved to satisfie the bishop, 
 which never ane of them did, or else goe to the 
 Bass ; so all of them refused to appear ; and 
 our governors expected no more respect or obe- 
 dience to their summonds."t 
 
 * An Accompt of Scotland's Grievances, by reason of the 
 Duke of Lauderdale's Ministrie, p. 18. Sir George Macken- 
 zie, commenting on this transaction between Lauderdale 
 and Ramsay, who at the same time " obtained 200 lib. ster- 
 ling per annum settled upon the Provost of Edinburgh," 
 observes, " Thus they were kind to one another upon his 
 Majesty's expenses," Hist, of Scotland, p. 247. 
 
 t Kirkton's Hist., p. 361. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 177 
 
 Having now brought down the history of the 
 Bass Castle to the time when it was devoted to 
 this base use, let us endeavor to transport our- 
 selves back to the days when this Rock, now 
 the undisputed abode of the wild birds of the 
 ocean, was the Patmos of so many godly men, 
 and when these walls, now mouldering into de- 
 cay, formed their dungeon. 
 
 Th? reign, of persecution has commenced a 
 persecution which, in various respects, stands 
 without a parallel in the history of the Church. 
 The parties were Protestants ; and, with the 
 exception of the partial doings of Elizabeth and 
 Laud, it may be said to have enjoyed the unen- 
 viable distinction of being the only bona fide 
 instance of Protestant persecution on record. 
 The career of the Romish Church has been so 
 marked with blood, that we are no more sur- 
 prised at the recital of her atrocities, than at 
 those of a beast of prey ; while, on hearing of 
 Protestants imbruing their hands in the blood 
 of martyrs, we are shocked and startled as at 
 the murderous deeds of the frenzied maniac. 
 To look upon the struggle merely as the result 
 of a mad attempt, on the one hand, to enforce 
 
178 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 Prelacy on an unwilling people, and of a bigoted 
 adherence, on the other hand, to the Presbyte- 
 rian polity, is to take, not only a superficial and 
 unphilosophical, but a most erroneous view of 
 the matter. True, the contending parties may 
 be ranged under the general distinction of Pre- 
 latists and Presbyterians ; but in the prosecu- 
 tion of the crusade against the latter, there was 
 a combination of the elements of evil, aAd an 
 exhibition of the darkest and the meanest pas- 
 sions of our nature, seldom if ever equalled. 
 Presbytery, no doubt, was never a favorite with 
 our Scottish rulers, from the time that it began 
 to assert the supremacy of Christ as the Head 
 of the Church, and the consequent independence 
 of the courts of his house. Yet it admits of 
 being demonstrated, that it was not the govern- 
 ment but the godliness of Presbytery, not the 
 mere form of its polity but the fidelity of its 
 moral discipline, that rendered it odious to those 
 in power. It is said that James the Sixth 
 never forgave the rough handling of his barons 
 at the Raid of Ruthven, and more especially the 
 speech of the Master of Glamis, when placing 
 his foot at the door to prevent the egress of the 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 179 
 
 weeping young monarch, lie said, " It is no 
 matter of his tears : better that bairns should 
 weep than bearded men." And there is good 
 reason for thinking that he would sooner for- 
 get the rude shaking of his sleeve by Andrew 
 Melville, when he called" him " God's silly vas- 
 sal." than he would the faithful rebukes of the 
 princely Robert Bruce, before whom he trem- 
 bled as a naughty urchin under the rod of his 
 teacher. That his dissolute grandson, Charles 
 Second, had his eye more on the unaccommo- 
 dating discipline of Presbytery, than on the 
 plainness of its ritual, when he pronounced it 
 " not a fit religion for a gentleman,"* it would 
 
 * As a specimen of the "gentlemanly" spirit of Charles' 
 friends, the following trick, practised by the Lord Advocate 
 on an Edinburgh merchant, Robert Gray, who was brought 
 before the Council, on the accusation of a worthless woman, 
 as a harborer of the Presbyterian ministers, may be given. 
 Gray refused to implicate any ; upon which the advocate 
 took his ring from his finger, on pretence of looking at ' it, 
 and sent it to his wife, instructing the messenger to tell her 
 that her husband had discovered all he knew, and desired her 
 to do the same, in token of which he had sent his ring. The 
 consequence was, that Mrs. Gray made disclosures which 
 involved some excellent ladies in town ; on hearing of which 
 her husband sickened and died. One of these ladies, a min- 
 ister's widow, was actually threatened with the torture of the 
 
180 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 be equally easy to prove. Nor need it be mat- 
 ter of surprise that, our proud nobility and gen- 
 try, bred up with all the ideas of feudal dignity 
 and importance, should have winced under a 
 regimen which bore with equal pressure on them 
 and the meanest of their dependents. By these 
 classes, and by the great bulk of the communi- 
 ty, which then as well as now, though nominally 
 Christian, had not been brought under the 
 sanctifying influence of the truth, the Restora- 
 tion must have been hailed as a happy relief 
 from all moral restraint. In the Prelatic 
 Church of Charles, there was not (as, indeed, 
 how could there be under such a Head ?) any 
 ecclesiastic discipline. It was the age of polit- 
 ical thraldom and moral libertinism. The 
 Church was powerless for good, and contented 
 herself with shaking her palsied arm in the 
 faces of a few unfortunate witches. The irre- 
 ligious and profane, formerly the objects of her 
 discipline, remained unmolested ; while all the 
 power of the Church, transferred to the civil 
 
 boots, which were laid before her. She stood resolute, and 
 would have suffered had not Rothes interposed, and, in his 
 jeering way, remarked to the Council, that it was not proper 
 for ladies to wear boots. 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 181 
 
 government, was bent against the pious and 
 the faithful. 
 
 With this prevailing current of prejudice 
 against godliness, there was conjoined, in the 
 case of some of the persecutors, all the bitter- 
 ness of partizans, and the malignity of self-con- 
 victed apostates ; and these feelings, meeting 
 like two conflicting tides, were chafed into abso- 
 lute fury by the opposition made to their mea- 
 sures on the part of those with whom they had 
 once co-operated, and whose testimonies to the 
 truth, held up before them as they sat on the 
 bench, and sealed by death on the scaifold, must 
 have rung in their ears like the voice of the ac- 
 cusing angel before the throne of Heaven. In 
 no other way can we account for the atrocious 
 conduct of Sharpe and his brother prelates. 
 But these feelings of guilty consciousness ap- 
 pear to have been shared, more or less, by the 
 whole of the unprincipled junto to whom the 
 administration of affairs in our country was 
 then entrusted ; and they were exasperated, in 
 no small degree, by the high ground which the 
 martyrs assumed. Unlike the Hugonots of 
 France, who sought only toleration for their re- 
 9 
 
182 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 ligion, the Covenanters of Scotland pleaded for 
 the ascendancy of theirs, and that, not only on 
 the ground of its intrinsic truth, but on what 
 their enemies must have felt much more keenly, 
 " even as a sword in their bones," on the ground 
 of the national pledge in the Covenant, which 
 they had perfidiously violated, and ignominious- 
 ly burnt. 
 
 Another feature, pre-eminently visible in 
 this persecution, was its cool, unprincipled vil- 
 lany. Under the pretext of fines and confisca- 
 tions for treason, this bloated vampire sat for 
 twenty-eight years fattening on the spoil, and 
 sucking the blood of a prostrate nation. A 
 spirit of insatiable avarice, too ravenous to 
 think of concealing itself, seized on all the 
 functionaries of Government, from the bench of 
 justice, where Lauderdale sat with an indul- 
 gence in his pocket, chuckling at the gentlemen 
 brought before him to pay their fines for acces- 
 sion to conventicles, and crying, " Now, gentle- 
 men, ye know the price of a conventicle, and 
 shame fall them that tires first ;" down to the 
 military ruffian, who, on being asked by the 
 gentleman he was robbing, why he was thus 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 183 
 
 treated, replied, " Because ye have gear, and I 
 maun ha ? a share o't." Add to all this, the 
 total perversion of justice, by converting acts 
 of religion into acts of treason the employment 
 of spies and informers imprisonment for years 
 without any cause being assigned or crime sub- 
 stantiated witnesses suborned juries packed, 
 and browbeaten into a verdict against their con- 
 science tortures inflicted with the view of 
 inculpating the prisoner or his friends confes- 
 sions made upon security of the public faith 
 and the king's honor, and afterwards shame- 
 lessly adduced upon oath against the criminal 
 multitudes indicted, tried, and executed upon 
 the same day, and intercessions met with the 
 reply, that " they should have no time to pre- 
 pare for heaven, for hell was too good for them" 
 drums ordered to be beat at the execution, 
 to drown the dying words of the martyrs ; and 
 the least expression of sympathy in the crowd, 
 exposing the individual to be dragged to the 
 /scaffold, with other traits too tedious even to 
 enumerate. Such a scene of complicated vil- 
 lany and cruelty, under mask of law, it is be- 
 lieved, has never been surpassed. 
 
184 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 In fine, Popery as if it could not be absent 
 from a scene so congenial to its spirit Popery, 
 in the person of James, Duke of York, after- 
 wards James VII., must lend its aid to finish 
 the tragedy. This personage, himself the 
 greatest criminal in the kingdom, must stigma- 
 tise the Presbyterians as caitiffs, not fit for 
 human converse, and propose to eradicate them 
 entirely ; affirming withal, that " it never would 
 be well with Scotland, till all the country on 
 the south of the Forth were made a hunting 
 field." And, truly, what with leaving them to 
 be butchered in the open fields by his soldiers 
 without form or process of law transporting 
 them as slaves to Virginia, and occasionally 
 scuttling a ship on its passage, and thus saving 
 the expense of the freight by drowning the 
 passengers wholesale he bade fair soon to 
 realise his expectations. 
 
 Base and barbarous as these measures were, 
 we form a very inadequate idea of the misery 
 they occasioned, if we look no farther than the 
 victims who suffered under them, to the spoiling 
 of their goods or the loss of their lives. These 
 were comparatively few, and honor to their 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 185 
 
 memory ! But what shall we think of the mul- 
 titudes, who, to escape these sufferings, " made 
 shipwreck of the faith and a good conscience, 77 
 by swearing illegal and ensnaring oaths, re- 
 nouncing the Covenant, and owning the usurped 
 authority of the King in the matters of God ? 
 The moral and spiritual mischief thus wrought 
 is not so easily calculated ; but the melancholy 
 truth is, that in this way the consciences of 
 entire districts of the country were debauched, 
 in consequence of which the public spirit of 
 Scotland was broken, and losing the self-respect 
 that attends conscious integrity, as she would, 
 but for England, have lain at the feet of the 
 despot, so she was hardly able, even after her 
 deliverance at the Revolution, to assert her 
 just rights, either in Church or State. 
 
 For the stringent and sanguinary enactments 
 passed against conventicles,* a poor plea may 
 be set up on the ground of maintaining the pub- 
 lic peace ; but these execrable bonds imposed 
 on the consciences of good men, admit of not 
 the shadow of apology. Yet were they enforced 
 
 * These will be found noticed in the Introduction to the 
 " Martyrs of the Bass," by the Rev, James Anderson. 
 
186 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 with the most unrelenting severity. When a 
 deputation of the gentlemen of the west waited 
 on the Council, protesting their loyalty, but 
 petitioning against this imposition, Burnet in- 
 forms us that " this put Duke Lauderdale in 
 such a frenzy, that at the Council table, he 
 made bare his arms above his elbows, and swore 
 by Jehovah, that he would make them enter 
 into these bonds !" Now, if we take into view, 
 what is not generally known, that at this time our 
 rulers were so conscious the public mind had 
 been thoroughly vitiated by false swearing, that 
 they passed a law rendering parole evidence in- 
 admissible in civil matters affecting property 
 what are we to think of these same men impos- 
 ing their bonds on others, who, they well knew, 
 " feared an oath " so much that some of them, 
 even to save themselves from death, would 
 scruple to say, " God save the King," lest this 
 should be understood to involve them in the guilt 
 of perjury ! The meshes of the legal net were 
 admirably contrived to catch the good fish, and 
 allow the bad to escape. 
 
 Some have represented these odious imposi- 
 tions as a just retaliation on the Presbyterians 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 187 
 
 for having, in their day of power, enforced the 
 Covenant. But, without vindicating that step, 
 we can hardly suppose that any candid person 
 would seriously state a comparison between the 
 two cases. The Jews were far mistaken when 
 " their fear of God was taught by the command- 
 ment of men ;" but how different was this from 
 " compelling the Christians to blaspheme ?" 
 Among those who may have taken the Cove- 
 nant against their will, how few could say that 
 they had taken it against their conscience ? 
 How much fewer, that they had suffered for 
 refusing to take it ? And, however far wrong 
 it may have been to urge the irreligious to come 
 under an engagement to maintain a profession 
 which they disliked (which was very rarely 
 done), can this for a moment be compared with 
 forcing a conscientious people to forswear them- 
 selves, by renouncing a solemn obligation which 
 they had voluntarily incurred ? 
 
 To return from this digression, we may now 
 observe that, among the other methods of exter- 
 mination to which the enemies of the Presbyte- 
 rians resorted, one of the most effectual, and 
 least merciful, was imprisonment. In these days, 
 
188 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 the deprivation of personal liberty formed the 
 most tolerable portion of the prisoner's doom. 
 Immured in cells of the most diminutive propor- 
 tions, and often crowded to excess in living 
 sepulchres, from which both light and air were 
 systematically excluded, and where damp and 
 cold, the squalor carceris, and every species of 
 discomfort, were considered essential parts of 
 the punishment multitudes, it may be easily 
 believed, perished, unpitied and unknown, in 
 these frightful abodes, under the hands of brutal 
 jailors, and amidst untold privations. But, at 
 the time we write of, all the prisons and tolbooths 
 of Scotland were filled to overflowing ; it was 
 found necessary to provide more accommodation 
 for the increasing numbers of delinquents ; and 
 the Bass, from its proximity to the capital, its 
 security, and perhaps its dignity as a castle, 
 was selected as a fitting receptacle for the lead- 
 ing men, and more especially the Presbyterian 
 ministers. 
 
 A slight survey of the ruins of the fortress, 
 as they now stand in na,ked desolation, is suffi- 
 cient to corroborate the testimonies of the prison- 
 ers, and to show that they had little reason to con- 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 189 
 
 gratulate themselves on the selection of their 
 marine prison-house. Placed near the base of 
 the overhanging precipice, it must have formed 
 a sort of tank or reservoir for the perpetual 
 drippings from above, while it was washed by 
 the spray from the ocean below, and entitled by 
 exposure to the full benefit of the eastern blasts. 
 What is still pointed out by some as " Black- 
 adder's cell," is a dormitory about seven feet by 
 eight, situated on the ramparts, with a small 
 window facing the south. If so, he was better 
 appointed than his brethren in the inner prison, 
 the remains of which, though unroofed and un- 
 floored, may be still traced. On a late visit to 
 the ruins, I was struck by observing, that in 
 the western gable of this room is one small win- 
 dow which had served for light, but which is 
 placed at such a height above the floor that the 
 prisoners could see neither earth nor sky from 
 it ; while in the eastern gable, there is an- 
 other window placed at a lower elevation, but 
 so contrived that it had looked only into a nar- 
 row passage, formed by a wall built up against 
 it, and enlightened by a higher aperture in that 
 wall. By this piece of ingenious cruelty^ the 
 
190 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 poor prisoners within would be furnished with a 
 dim and borrowed light, and at the same time 
 prevented from beguiling their captivity by 
 gazing on " mountain, tower, or town," or even 
 on that heaven to which all their hopes were 
 turned, and the straggling beams of which were 
 so scantily afforded them. At the same time, 
 the sentries or keepers might at any time, by 
 creeping along this passage, manage, through 
 the inner grating, to observe the movements, 
 and hear the conversations of their prisoners. 
 There can be no question regarding " the lowest 
 cell in the dungeon," to which Thomas Hog of 
 Kiltearn was consigned, through the tender 
 mercies of Archbishop Sharp. An arched stair- 
 case, part of which still remains, leads dawn 
 under ground from the east end of the castle, to 
 what was anciently called the Bastion, on arriv- 
 ing at which the visitor finds himself in a 
 hideous cavern, arched over-head, dank and 
 dripping, with an opening towards the sea which 
 dashes within a few feet below. It was in this 
 " horrible pit," then, obviously the " dungeon- 
 keep " of the old castle in the days of its glory, 
 that the good man was deposited; and no 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS, 191 
 
 wonder that when his enfeebled frame was 
 dragged down that subterranean passage, and 
 stretched in this dismal den, he should have 
 concluded that his enemies had done their worst 
 had reached the end of their chain and that 
 the deepening darkness of the night betokened 
 the near approach of the dawn.* 
 
 But let us hear the description of the rock, as 
 given by one of the sufferers themselves, Mr. 
 Fraser of Brea : " The Bass is a very high 
 rock in the sea, two miles distant from the 
 nearest point of the land which is south of it ; 
 covered it is with grass on the uppermost parts 
 thereof, where is a garden where herbs grow, 
 with some cherry-trees, of the fruit of which I 
 several times tasted. Below which garden 
 there is a chapel for divine service ; but in re- 
 gard no minister was allowed for it, the ammu- 
 nition of the garrison was kept therein. Land- 
 ing here is very difficult and dangerous ; for if 
 any storm blow ye cannot enter, because of the 
 violence of the swelling waves, which beat with 
 a wonderful noise upon the rock, and sometimes 
 in such a violent manner, that. the broken waves, 
 * See the Martyrs of the Bass ; p. 268. 
 
, 
 192 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 reverberating on the rock with a mighty force, 
 have come up the walls of the garrison, on the 
 court before the prisoners' chambers, which is 
 above twenty cubits height : and with a full sea 
 must you land ; or if it be ebb, you must be 
 either cranned up, or climb with hands and feet 
 up some steps artificially made on the rock, and 
 must have help besides of those who are on the 
 top of the rock, who pull you up by the hand. 
 Nor is there any place of landing but one about 
 the whole rock, which is of circumference some 
 three quarters of a mile. Here may you land 
 in a fair day and full sea without great hazard, 
 the rest of it on every side being so high and 
 steep. Only on the south side thereof the rock 
 falls a little level, where you ascend several 
 steps till you come to the governor's house, 
 and from that some steps higher you ascend to 
 a level court, where a house for prisoners and 
 soldiers is ; whence likewise, by windings cut 
 out of the rock, there is a path leading you to 
 the top of the rock, whose height doth bear off 
 all north, east and west storms, lying open only 
 to the south : and on the uppermost parts of 
 the rock there is grass sufficient to feed twenty 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 193 
 
 or twenty-four sheep, which are there very fat 
 and good. In these uppermost parts of the rock 
 were sundry walks of some threescore foot 
 length, and some very solitary, where we some- 
 times entertained ourselves. The accessible 
 places were defended with several w r alls, and 
 cannon placed on them, which compassed only 
 the south parts. The rest of the rock is de- 
 fended by nature, by the huge height and steep- 
 ness of the rock, being some forty cubits high 
 in the lowest place. It w r as a part of a coun- 
 try gentleman's inheritance, which falling from 
 hand to hand, and changing many masters, it 
 was at last bought by the king, who repaired 
 the old houses and walls, and built some new 
 houses for prisoners ; and a garrison of twenty 
 or twenty-four soldiers therein are sufficient, 
 if courageous, to defend it from millions of men, 
 and only expugnable by hunger."* 
 
 Such was the " melancholy place" selected by 
 government as a state-prison, and in which 
 
 * Memoirs of the Rev. James Fraser (Wodrow Society 
 edition), pp. 344, 345, The reader may compare the above 
 description with the old sketch of " The Bass in its Forti* 
 fied State, 1690," inserted at the beginning of the present 
 dissertation, which is taken from Slezer's Illustrations. 
 
 9 
 
1.94 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 those faithful martyrs, whose biographies are 
 given in this volume, were incarcerated, during 
 periods varying from a few months to upwards 
 of six years ! The rigor of their confinement 
 was enhanced by the most vexatious and arbi- 
 trary treatment on the part of their keepers.* 
 The liberty of taking air and exercise on the 
 hill was often wantonly denied them, or obtain- 
 ed as a great favor by the intercession of a 
 friend. " My lord M'Leod, coming from his 
 travels, went to see the Bass, and procured some 
 more liberty to Mr. M'Gilligen, so that at some 
 times he was permitted to come out upon the 
 rock"^ " The Bass," says one of Blackadder's 
 sons, " was a base, cold, unwholesome prison ; 
 all their rooms ordinarily full of smoke, like to 
 suffocate and choke them, so as my father and 
 the other prisoners were necessitate many a 
 time to thrust head and shoulders out of the 
 windows to recover breath. They were obliged 
 to drink the twopenny ale of the governor's 
 brewing, scarcely worth a halfpenny the pint, 
 
 * See some account of this in " The Martyrs of the Bass," 
 an interesting work by the Rev. James Anderson, 
 t Wodrow's History, vol. ii. p. 335. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 195 
 
 and several times were sore put to it for want 
 of victual for ten or twelve days together ; the 
 boats not daring to venture to them by reason 
 of stormy weather."* No wonder that in such 
 a place, and under such treatment, many of 
 them contracted diseases which embittered and 
 shortened their lives. 
 
 But, as the old poet sings : 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 A spotless mind and innocent 
 Calls that an hermitage."* 
 
 From within these now deserted walls, the 
 voice of praise and prayer might be often heard, 
 mingling with the ribald laughter, oaths, and 
 songs of the reckless sentinels ; and the souls 
 of the captives were borne, on the wings of holy 
 meditation, far aloft and away from the dreary 
 rock within which their bodies were pent. 
 " Every day," says Eraser, " I read the scrip- 
 tures, exhorted and taught therefrom, did sing 
 psalms, and prayed with such of our society as 
 our masters did permit to worship God together, 
 
 * Crichton's Memoirs of John Blackadder, p. 296. 
 f Richard Lovelace, 1639. 
 
196 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 and this two times a-day. I studied Hebrew 
 and Greek, and gained some knowledge in these 
 oriental languages. I likewise read some divi- 
 nity, and wrote a Treatise of Faith, with some 
 other miscellanies, and some letters to Christian 
 friends and relations. Thus I spent my time, 
 and not without some fruit." Yes, indeed. " not 
 without some fruit !" And who can peruse that 
 " Treatise of Faith," breathing, with some un- 
 soundness in its theology, so much sound sense 
 and orthodox piety and then look at its date, 
 " Bass, July 9, 1679" without being impress- 
 ed with the utter impotence of persecution to 
 crush the spirit or intermeddle with the joy of 
 the Christian martyr ? " Since I was a prison- 
 er," says another of them, " I dwelt at ease, 
 and lived securely. The upper springs flowed 
 liberally and sweetly, when the nether springs 
 were embittered, and I have had the experience 
 of that saying, Tanta est dulcedo ccelestis 
 gaudii) ut si una guttula deflueret infer- 
 num. tot am amaritudinem inferni absor- 
 beret."* 
 
 * " Such is the sweetness of heaven's joy, that were the 
 least drop of it to fall into hell, it would absorb all the bit- 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 197 
 
 Here the question must start to the lips of 
 every reader, For what cause were such men 
 thrown into prison and thus treated ? For no 
 other cause, we reply, but their fidelity to their 
 engagements, and their attachment to Scotland's 
 covenanted reformation. With four exceptions, 
 all the prisoners confined in the Bass were 
 pious and peaceable Presbyterians, against 
 whom no crime could be charged, save in the 
 matters of their God. These exceptions con- 
 sisted of a quaker, charged with disorderly con- 
 duct a popish priest imprisoned for some cause 
 we have not discovered a curate, whose zeal 
 against the test seems to have carried him be- 
 yond the bounds of the usual moderation of his 
 class and a culprit, whose name is included in 
 a list of the martyrs, merely because the crime 
 he committed, and the sufferings he underwent, 
 illustrated the spirit of the times we mean, 
 James Mitchell, who attempted to assassinate 
 Sharp. " Misery," It is said, " acquaints a man 
 with strange bed-fellows. 7 ' But with these 
 exceptions, the rest were either laymen of the 
 
 terness of hell." Mr. M'Gilligen, Wodrow's History, voL 
 ii. p. 335. 
 
198 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 most respectable station in society ; or clergy- 
 men, who would hardly have owned as true 
 ministers of Christ their mitred persecutors, or 
 the curates they had intruded into their pul- 
 pits \ and who had much sounder reasons for 
 questioning the commission under which they 
 acted, than for laying down their own at the 
 bidding of such worthless satraps of the State. 
 The immediate and ostensible ground of their 
 suffering, was the right which they claimed to 
 preach the everlasting gospel, without submit- 
 ting to conditions inconsistent with their alle- 
 giance to the King of Zion. Nor could their 
 enemies charge them, even on the arbitrary in- 
 terpretation of law which they applied to the 
 case of others, with holding disloyal principles. 
 Only two of them Gordon and Shields be- 
 longed to what has been called the Cameronian 
 party. With these two exceptions, they all 
 owned the lawfulness of the civil government, 
 and submitted (too slavishly perhaps) to the 
 authority of the king in all civil matters. 
 They denied his jurisdiction only in matters 
 pertaining to conscience and to the church. 
 They gave unto Csesar the things that were 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS, 199 
 
 Caesar's, and to God the things that were 
 God's.* While they condemned and deplored 
 the public violation of the covenant by all 
 classes, they disapproved of all violent, tumul- 
 tuous, or unconstitutional methods for reviving 
 or re-enforcing that deed. In short, they were 
 the most moderate, though, at the same time, 
 firm and uncompromising, of the Presbyterian 
 clergy at that period. 
 
 Devoted to such a purpose, it might be sup- 
 posed that the Bass Rock, garrisoned as it was 
 by a rude and licentious soldiery, bristling with 
 cannon, and frowning defiance on the surround- 
 ing coast, might have kept its immediate neigh- 
 borhood at least in a state of deferential sub- 
 mission. Let the following scene show the 
 error of such a supposition, and the utter 
 inefficiency of the measures then pursued for 
 repressing the spirit of our pious forefathers. 
 On the 5th of May, 1678, being Sabbath, a large 
 assembly of people, amounting to a thousand or 
 
 * In fact, the generality of the Presbyterians at that pe- 
 riod, understood their privileges as Christians better than 
 their rights as subjects ; and were disposed, in civil things, 
 to give to Caesar something more than his due. 
 
 
 
200 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 thereby, met on the hills of Whitekirk, imme- 
 diately opposite the Bass, within sight of the 
 garrison, and almost within range of its guns. 
 It was soon discovered to be a conventicle ! 
 Indignant at what he considered an insult at 
 once to Government and to himself, the deputy- 
 governor, Charles Maitland, sallied out with 
 forty soldiers, and some country people whom 
 they forced along with them, and boldly ap- 
 proached the obnoxious assemblage. Before 
 they came up, a young man on horseback, nam- 
 ed James Learmonth, was observed riding 
 among the people and saying, " Let there be no 
 cowards here this day, sirs, and let those who 
 have arms go out foremost." On the approach 
 of the soldiers the people sat close together, 
 and when required to dismiss in the king's 
 name, one of them replied, " that they honored 
 the king, but were resolved to hear the word of 
 God when preached to them." Upon this, one 
 of the soldiers struck at the man, but he was 
 immediately felled to the ground by the staff of 
 a strong-bodied countryman. A scuffle ensued, 
 in the course of which one of the soldiers was 
 unfortunately shot, and the rest having beec 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 201 
 
 ' 
 
 surrounded and disarmed, betook themselves to 
 flight. For having been present at this con- 
 venticle, James Learmonth, though he was 
 proved to have been unarmed, was condemned, 
 after the jury had been thrust back into the 
 box for the third time to amend their verdict, 
 and threatened with an assize of error ; and he 
 was beheaded in the Grassmarket, on the 27th 
 of September following. Before his execution, 
 he calmly protested his innocence disavowed 
 the charge of sedition and disloyalty exhorted 
 the people to submission to the king and magis- 
 trates in all their just and lawful commands ; 
 and declared his adherence to the work of the 
 Reformation, and his testimony against " the 
 unjust usurpation of the crown of Jesus Christ, 
 and putting it upon the head of a mortal man 
 whose breath is in his nostrils.' 7 He also de- 
 clared his firm hope that " though it please the 
 Lord to let them triumph and insult for a time, 
 yet he will defend and revive his own work, 
 and the spirits of his own oppressed remnant 
 also in these barren places ; and that the seed 
 of the gospel that hath been sown in East Lo- 
 thian shall have a spring season and a harvest, 
 9* 
 
202 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 Jl . 
 
 in spite of devils and men, to the glory of God, 
 and the comfort of his own people."* 
 
 The scene shifts to the tenth of December, 
 1688. Beacons may be observed on the Bass, 
 North Berwick Law, and other adjacent heights, 
 erected by the Scottish Council on their first 
 alarm of the invasion of the Prince of Orange, 
 at the firing of which all fencible persons were 
 to turn out and meet at Haddington for the de- 
 fence of the kingdom. But the Prince has 
 landed in England, the government of James 
 has fallen without a struggle, and the beacons 
 remain unkindled. The inhabitants of Edin- 
 burgh have risen this day in a tumult, and have 
 offered four hundred pounds for the Chancellor, 
 the Earl of Perth, dead or alive. Meanwhile, a 
 small suspicious-looking sloop may be observed 
 making its way down the Firth. That vessel 
 contains the obnoxious Earl, who, taking the 
 alarm, has embarked at Burntisland for France, 
 "with all imaginable secrecy, himself in woman's 
 habit, and his wife in man's apparel" a sad 
 plight for the Popish Chancellor, who had ridden 
 
 * Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i. p. 13 ; Wodrow's His- 
 tory, vol. ii. p. 476 ; Naphtali, pp. 414-424. 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 203 
 
 rough-shod for so many years over the liberties 
 and religion of his country. Following hard in 
 the wake of the sloop is a light war-boat, manned 
 with thirty-six bold sailors, fully armed, under 
 the command of one Wilson, who had once been 
 a buccaneer. These are the Kirkcaldy seamen, 
 who having obtained intelligence of the prize 
 aboard the vessel as it passed their harbor, are 
 in hot pursuit after the fugitive Earl. As they 
 approach the Bass, the hardy sailors close upon 
 their prey, and just opposite that castle of which 
 Perth was the governor, and into which he had 
 committed so many of our worthies, he is seized 
 in his disguise, ignominiously brought back to 
 Kirkcaldy, and thrown, like a common felon, 
 into the prison.* 
 
 Again the scene changes. The rock, after 
 holding out under Charles Maitland, the deputy- 
 governor, in the name of the exiled king, till 
 1690, is surrendered into the hands of the new 
 government; but, strangely enough, it falls 
 again into the temporary possession of the ad- 
 
 * Crawfurd's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. i. p. 234; His- 
 tory of the late Revolution, p. 26 ; Wodrow's History, vol .ii ; 
 p. 464; Balcarras' Memoirs. 
 
204 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 herents of James. A few daring young officers 
 who had been taken prisoners at Cromdale, and 
 had been sent to the Bass, formed a plan for 
 surprising the place, which succeeded. Being 
 supplied with provisions by their friends on 
 shore, and receiving reinforcements from abroad, 
 they contrived, with a prowess and perseverance 
 worthy of a better cause, to keep their ground 
 for several years. They plundered various mer- 
 chant vessels ; made all of them pay tribute 
 that came within reach of their guns ; and 
 craning up their boats to the rock, bade defi- 
 ance to all attempts to dislodge them. One Mr. 
 Trotter having been condemned to be hanged 
 for conveying to them supplies, they discharged 
 a gun-shot among the crowd met to witness his 
 execution at Castleton, opposite the island, 
 which dispersed them, though it did not pre- 
 vent the execution at a different place. The 
 siege cost Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the new 
 governor, a vast amount of trouble and expense. 
 At length, irritated at the pertinacity of the 
 rebels, William dispatched two ships of war 
 which, aided by smaller vessels, cut off their 
 supplies, and reduced them to the necessity of 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 205 
 
 capitulating in April, 1694. The governor, it 
 is said. " who had saved some bottles of the 
 best French wine and brandy, and some fine 
 biscuit, made the commissioners sent to treat 
 with him drink plentifully, telling them there 
 was no scarcity of provisions, and unless he had 
 his own terms he would not surrender ; and after 
 they were gone, he ordered all the caputs, coats, 
 and hats, in the garrison, to be put on the muz- 
 zles of muskets, to make them believe the place 
 was full of men ; upon which their lordships re- 
 turned to the Council, and reported how they 
 were treated, which induced them to comply 
 with the governor's articles."* Thus the Bass 
 had the distinction of being the last place that 
 held out for James in Scotland. After the sur- 
 render, an order was given to the commander-in- 
 chief to demolish all the fortifications and build- 
 ings of the Bass, and to remove the cannon and 
 ammunition ; an order which, not having been 
 punctually fulfilled at the time, was finally 
 carried into execution by the command of King 
 William in ITOl.t 
 
 * Miscellanea Scotica, vol. iii. p. 35. 
 
 t In 1706, the Bass was granted by the Crown to Presi- 
 
 8 
 
206 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 The Revolution has come, and with it another 
 generation has sprung up that has lost the 
 spirit, as they knew not " the afflictions of 
 Joseph." A marked difference may be observ- 
 ed even in the immediate descendants of the 
 Covenanters. Adam Blackadder, the second 
 son of the martyr of the Bass, followed the 
 mercantile profession. He seems to have been 
 a man of the world, and a wag, making merry 
 at the remembrance of the hardships to which, 
 in early youth, he was subjected on his father's 
 account. Provost Russell of Stirling arrested 
 him when he was an apprentice. u The first 
 word he spake to me," says Adam, " was, put- 
 ting on his breeches, c Is not this bra 7 wark, 
 sirr, that we maun be troubled with the like of 
 you ?' I answered, You have got a bra' prize, 
 my Lord, that has clacht a poor prentice." 
 Then, when in prison, " the Earl of Argyle's 
 two daughters-in-law, Lady Sophia and Lady 
 Henrietta, and Lady Jean, his own daughter, 
 
 dent Sir Hew Dalrymple, reserving the power of re-fortify- 
 ing it should this be deemed expedient ; and it remains the 
 property of his lineal descendant, Sir Hew Dalrymple of 
 North Berwick, Baronet. 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 207 
 
 did me the honor to come and see me ; when I 
 remember, Lady Sophia stood up on a bench 
 and arraigned before her the Provost of Stir- 
 ling, then sentenced and condemned him to be 
 hanged for keeping me in prison ; which highly 
 enraged the poor fool provost, though it was 
 but a harmless frolic." Even when reciting a 
 visit he paid to his father in the Bass, he does 
 it more in the .spirit of mirth than of martyr- 
 dom. " We went from that to the Bass, where my 
 worthy father was lying prisoner, and had been 
 there for some years. When we were going 
 away (my father convoying us to the gate), the 
 governor bid me halt a little ; he had something 
 to say to me ere I went. l What's the matter ?' 
 says I. ' You must hold up your hand and swear.' 
 < Ou,' says I, ' who empowered you to be a 
 judge, and impose oaths ?' c I have my orders,' 
 says he. My father (who was a bold man), 
 overhearing him, said, 'I protest, governor, 
 you are impertinent, sir, to trouble the young 
 man with anything of that nature.' To which 
 the governor answered, ' I profess, Mr. Black- 
 adder, sir, I'll commit both you and him close 
 prisoners, if I hear any more of your talk.' 
 
208 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 ' Content/ says my father ; and then says to 
 me, ' Come along with me, sir !' I thought with 
 myself, ' I beg your pardon, father not so long 
 as I can do better.' Then I began to argue the 
 matter with the governor, by telling him I was 
 an utter stranger as to affairs in Scotland, and 
 knew nothing about what was passing, which 
 calmed him a little. At last he says, ' Well, 
 sir, I will not trouble you at this time ; but, I 
 assure, you, I have such orders, and that, per- 
 haps, you will find ere you come the length of 
 Edinburgh ; for every sergeant and corporal 
 may stop and challenge any man on the road.' 
 So I thanked him and came off, and went for 
 Edinburgh."* 
 
 The same scene was revisited by his brother 
 with more serious feelings. On the 21st of 
 April, 1713, a grave, military-looking man, 
 might have been observed standing by the sea- 
 beach of Dunbar ; his eyes intently fixed in the 
 direction of the Bass. This is Colonel John 
 Blackadder, the youngest son of the same wor- 
 thy sufferer, " a brave soldier and a devout 
 Christian." He had entered the army in 1689, 
 
 * Crichton's Memoirs of John Blackadder, pp. 328-338. 
 
HISTORY OP THE BASS. 209 
 
 as cadet in the Cameronian Regiment ; had dis- 
 tinguished himself in Queen Anne's wars, under 
 the great Duke of Marlborough ; and now, dis- 
 gusted with the licentiousness of the camp, he 
 has returned to his native country, and has 
 reached Dunbar on his way home to spend a 
 peaceful life as an elder of the kirk of Scotland. 
 The solitary rock where his venerable father 
 had languished and died in captivity, and which, 
 it appears, he had then visited occasionally on 
 errands of filial duty and affection, stands with 
 in a few miles of that town. This naturally at- 
 tracted his attention ; yet, even in the pious re- 
 flections to which the sight of it gave birth, we 
 may observe that his mind, with a devout ego- 
 tism common to many other good men of the pe- 
 riod, was turned less to the public cause in 
 which his father suffered, than to the workings 
 of his own personal experience. " In the eve- 
 ning," says he, " I stepped out, and walked to- 
 wards the sea-side, in sight of the Bass Island, 
 which occasioned serious thoughts, and a thank- 
 ful frame of mind, to think of the long train of 
 mercy and goodness that has followed me these 
 many years since I was there, when there was 
 
210 CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIC 
 
 far from any appearance or expectation of such 
 things as Providence has now done for me."* 
 The good Colonel was a type of the incipient 
 moderatism of the last century a well-living, 
 well-meaning gentleman himself sound as a 
 bell in the faith, but impatient of all "heats 
 and discords,' 7 " shunning extremes on either 
 hand," and who had seen so little religion of 
 any sort in the army, that he could ill brook to 
 see good men striving about it in the Church. 
 So he would sometimes stand up erect in the 
 church courts, and deliver pithy orations, plen- 
 tifully interlarded with regimental maxims, 
 sadly to the annoyance of" the hot stiff men on 
 both sides," telling the Venerable Assembly 
 that " they should not spend their fire upon one 
 another" that " they should not be like a gene- 
 ral or an army that sends out all its sentries 
 one way, and while they are looking out sharply 
 that way, the enemy comes and attacks them in 
 a different quarter, where they are not expect- 
 ing, and therefore unprepared." In short, he 
 begins to talk very much like a latitudinarian, 
 
 * Crichton's Life of Lieutenant-Colonel Blackadder, p. 
 436. 
 
HISTORY OF THE BASS. 211 
 
 and " thinks religion runs greatly in the wrong 
 channel, and may be called Presbyterianism 
 rather than Christianity strict opinions in the 
 head about public things, and oftentimes about 
 doubtful points, where good men are on both 
 sides ; while the influences of it do not go 
 through the conduct of their lives, in universal 
 obedience and charity." Had all in the Assem- 
 bly been as good Christians as Colonel Black- 
 adder, his reflections would have been more ap- 
 propriate ; but it was not in such a do-nothing 
 school that he had first learned to pray, as it 
 was not by following such pacific tactics that he 
 had learned to fight. The policy which he 
 recommended, and which subsequently became 
 predominant, issued in the burial of vital truth 
 and piety. By skinning over the wounds of the 
 Church, it left them to fester within. Partial 
 revivals were followed by long periods of spirit- 
 ual decay ; and the Christianity of the Scottish 
 Church has only revived with the revival of her 
 Presbyterianism . 
 
B Btortyis nf tjjB 38m 
 
THE MARTYRS OF THE BASS. 
 
 THE bare and sea-girt Bass, beaten upon in- 
 cessantly by the ocean, " with all its roaring 
 multitude of waves," lies at the distance of 
 about a mile and a half from the shore of East 
 Lothian, where it rounds from the North Sea 
 into the Frith of Forth. It seems, with the 
 few sheep that nibble its short sward, and the 
 myriads of clamorous sea-fowl that have made 
 it their fishing-station, to present the strongest { 
 possible contrast to the proper habitations of 
 men, such as are to be seen on the opposite 
 shore, embosomed among trees, enjoying the 
 kindly shelter of slope or hill, surrounded with 
 a teeming soil and its productions, and within 
 easy reach of one another, so as to add the sol- 
 
216 THE MARTYRS 
 
 ace of good neighborhood to the sweets of do- 
 mestic life. 
 
 But sheep and sea-fowl, though they are 
 now, have not been always the sole occupants 
 of that exposed and naked rock. That islet, 
 these crumbling ruins, speak of seventeen years 
 of solitude and of suffering, endured by above 
 fifty of Scotland's noblest and worthiest sons, 
 who, some for a longer, some for a shorter part 
 of that period, suffered a painful martyrdom, 
 rather than countenance a state of things in 
 which tyrannical rulers trampled on the crown of 
 Christ, on the independence of his church, and 
 on the dearest privileges of his people. Their 
 crime was the disowning of the government in 
 things spiritual, which God himself was soon to 
 disown, alike in things spiritual and things 
 civil, by bringing about, in his mysterious Prov- 
 idence, the marvellous revolution of 1688 an 
 event which deprived King James VII. of his 
 three kingdoms, and restored our insulted and 
 oppressed Church to her rank, her freedom, 
 and, what she most desired, her scope for doing 
 good. 
 
 As there are still extant memorials, though 
 
OF THE BASS. 217 
 
 not so ample as could be wished, of the lives 
 and sufferings of the Martyrs of the Bass, the 
 following passages are given to show how truly 
 that little island may be regarded as a Patmos, 
 to which holy men of God, like the beloved dis- 
 ciple, were banished for a season 3 for good and 
 wise purposes, though these may not be all dis- 
 coverable by us. 
 
 I. Let us take up the Memoirs of that emi- 
 nent Christian, the Rev. James Eraser of Brea, 
 written by himself. Under chap, xii., sec. 3, 
 Of my first imprisonment on the Bass, he 
 writes to this effect : 
 
 " Some two years and a half did I continue 
 intercommuned, discharging the commission I 
 had received from the Lord Jesus in great 
 weakness, and in manifold temptations, through 
 the lying in wait of those who hunted after me ; 
 for the bishops, knowing me to be a rigid non- 
 conformist, and imagining me to be of some 
 parts, and very active in preaching in the fields 
 and keeping up the secession, as they called it, 
 stirred up the king's council against me. as a 
 person of very disloyal principles and practices. 
 Accordingly, I was one of ^the three for 
 10* 
 
218 THE MARTYRS 
 
 apprehension a considerable sum was proffered, 
 although nothing could be laid to my charge of 
 sedition or insurrection, but only that I preach- 
 ed without the bishop's authority, and kept 
 such of the nation as I had influence upon, or 
 conversed with, from concurring with the pub- 
 lic courses established by law. Many attempts 
 were made against me, which for some years I 
 escaped. At last the town-major of Edinburgh, 
 at the solicitation of the archbishop, and en- 
 couraged by the promise of great rewards, did, 
 on the Lord's day night, 28th January, by the 
 treachery of a servant-maid to a relation in 
 whose house I ordinarily preached, apprehend 
 me about ten o'clock at night, as I was, after 
 supper, recommending the house and family to 
 Grod by prayer. I was then interrupted and 
 taken to prison. I did not think fit to resist, 
 lest some friends and relations then with me 
 might be made to suffer. 
 
 " The town-major went immediately to the 
 archbishop with the news of my apprehension, 
 whereat the latter was greatly rejoiced, and 
 longed impatiently for the next day, which no 
 sooner dawned than he, being a councillor, sent 
 
OF THE BASS. 219 
 
 order to the jailor that I should be kept close 
 and none allowed access to me. This was done 
 until five at night, when I appeared before a 
 meeting of some of the councillors in committee, 
 and was examined and verbally charged with 
 being a seditious person, who rent the Church 
 of Christ, and was very active to make and keep 
 up the schism ; as a preacher in field conventi- 
 cles, which was death by law, as they would 
 gladly have had me acknowledge, and likewise 
 by whom I was empowered to preach ; that I 
 was intercommuned and despised the law, so far 
 as never to have made any application to be 
 freed from that sentence ; and that I was a per- 
 son of very bad principles, destructive to all 
 government ; and thereupon the archbishop, 
 who thought to ensnare me by my own words, 
 inquired, whether I thought it lawful, upon pre- 
 tence of religion, to take up arms against the 
 king's majesty ? This was the sum, with the 
 addition that I kept correspondence with some 
 prisoners in the Bass, which the archbishop 
 confidently averred he knew. 
 
 " These things were not charged against me 
 all at once, but in a confused way ; and many 
 
220 THE MARTYRS 
 
 things by way of question. I cannot say of any 
 of the committee of the council, but that they 
 were all civil and sober persons, of whom, but 
 for the instigation and fear of the archbishop, 
 I might have been moderately dealt with ; but 
 he, in a bitter invective oration represented me 
 as a very odious and criminal person, and ag- 
 gravated my alleged crimes vehemently. 
 
 " To all this I replied, that I acknowledged 
 that I was (though most unworthy) a minister 
 of the gospel, and that I preached frequently, 
 as the Lord called me, and independently of 
 the bishop ; that the subjects of my discourses 
 and sermons were not disloyal and traitorous 
 principles and assertions, as the archbishop 
 alleged, but according as I was helped, I preach- 
 ed repentance towards God, and faith towards 
 Jesus Christ, and nothing but what was con- 
 tained in the prophets, and in the New Testa- 
 ment ; that I was so far from being terrified or 
 ashamed to own that I was a minister of Christ, 
 that, though I was of no despicable extraction, 
 yet I counted it my greatest honor to serve 
 God in the gospel of his Son ; that I never 
 preached nor stirred people to sedition, and 
 
 _J 
 
OF THE BASS. 221 
 
 cared not though the principles of my heart 
 were as perceptible to their lordships as the 
 external lineaments of my face ; that as for 
 rising against the king upon pretext or pretence 
 of religion, which the archbishop alleged I main- 
 tained, I told him he was therein abused by his 
 inferiors ; for I never knew of any, even the 
 most zealous asserters of the liberties of the 
 people, that maintain rising in arms upon pre- 
 tence of religion ; that matters of prerogative 
 and privileges were things of a thorny and 
 ticklish nature, of which, for the present, I de- 
 sired not to give my thoughts, not judging the 
 same to be within my sphere now." * * * 
 
 Enough has been given of his answers during 
 this examination to show the godly and inno- 
 cent spirit of the man, and how remote he was 
 from urging men to violent measures, even 
 against a government whose principles and prac- 
 tices alike revolted him, but which he left to the 
 judgment of God. Such, indeed, seems to have 
 been the view of Christian duty at that time 
 taken by nearly all who were imprisoned on the 
 Bass. We proceed, therefore, to relate, in his 
 own words, how Mr. Fraser was sent there, 
 
222 THE MARTYRS 
 
 what kind of life he led while thus banished 
 from the mainland of Scotland, what were his 
 occupations, and what sort of society he had. 
 
 " After this," he continues, " I was remanded 
 to prison, but ordered to be kept more straitly ; 
 my pockets were searched for letters ; knives, 
 ink. paper, and pen were taken from me, and all 
 company discharged, which filled me with some 
 melancholy apprehensions. But in my dark- 
 ness was the Lord a light round about me ; him 
 they could not shut out from me. I had one 
 of the sweetest nights I had had for ten years, 
 and was lifted up, by a sense of the Lord's fa- 
 vor, above death, sin, hell, wrath, prelates and 
 papists. * About one or two o'clock in 
 
 the morning I fell into a sound sleep, until a 
 little before six o'clock I was awakened by one 
 of the jailors, who called to me to make ready 
 against six o'clock to go to the Bass ; for so the 
 council had determined. This I very cheer- 
 fully obeyed, and so, with another person, who 
 was prisoner with me, was I, by a guard of 
 twelve horse and thirty foot, conveyed to the 
 Bass, where we safely landed on Wednesday 
 morning, having been one night on the way, and 
 
OF THE BASS. 22S 
 
 were delivered to the custody of the governor, 
 who commanded a garrison of some eighteen or 
 twenty soldiers." 
 
 Melancholy as the spot must undoubtedly 
 have been, especially during the storms and 
 long nights of winter, and with the aggravations 
 afterwards mentioned, the first things that this 
 man of God proceeds to record of his residence, 
 are the mercies he experienced there. And 
 truly if the greatness of a man's soul, and his 
 strength of mind, are to be measured by the 
 manner in which he bears up under adversity, 
 the Bass, with its Frasers, and Blackaddcrs, 
 and Hogs, carries it over St. Helena, where the 
 mightiest conqueror of modern times was tried 
 by that touchstone, and " found wanting." 
 
 " And here," continues Mr. Fraser, " I had 
 likewise experience of the goodness of God to- 
 wards me, in providing for me, without being 
 chargeable to any, for such things as I stood in 
 need of; in preserving and supporting me 
 under great pressures of spirit from sin, suffer- 
 ings, temptations, sorrows, and untenderness 
 of brethren and friends, so that I was not there- 
 with overwhelmed ; in preserving me in health 
 
224 THE MARTYRS 
 
 all that time. That in this time, partly by sell- 
 ing house-plenishing, and improving of my 
 state, I paid and cleared one hundred pounds 
 of debts. I had the comfort and edification of 
 fellow-prisoners, both ministers and others, 
 some there before me, and others brought in 
 since my coming, whose company was sweet and 
 edifying many times to me. We had liberty, 
 for the most part, of taking the air up the hill ; 
 my solitary walks were sometimes very plea- 
 sant to me. I had the comfort of friends that 
 came in kindness to see us from the city and 
 country. I had some special visits from God, 
 ordinarily in private duties, and sometimes in 
 worshipping and conferring with others. Some 
 increase (I think) I found in gifts, knowledge 
 and grace ; some further discoveries of the 
 knowledge of Christ and the gospel, such as I 
 never had before. I was made some way use- 
 ful, by writing of letters abroad, praying with, 
 preaching to, and conference with others. And 
 that I had a clearly unexpected deliverance from 
 this sad place. Some improvement I made of 
 this price that was put in my hand ; this, I 
 
OP THE BASS. 225 
 
 think, I was bound to take notice of, and be 
 thankful for to the Lord." 
 
 How natural for persons condemned to im- 
 prisonment, hardship, and exile, as they may 
 think, unjustly, to brood over their misfortunes, 
 aggravate them to their own minds by perpetu- 
 ally dwelling upon them, and in describing them 
 to others, tax their ingenuity to make them ap- 
 pear as grievous as possible. Here we see all 
 this reversed by the wonderful power of Divine 
 grace. Here we find ingenuity taxed to the ut- 
 most, in swelling the list of the prisoner's mer- 
 cies, although he tells us afterwards quite 
 enough of the sufferings he and others endured 
 there, to make it no marvel that he should, even 
 in speaking of the mercies, call the Bass first a 
 melancholy, then a sad place. 
 
 But the Bass Rock is not only a monument 
 of cheerful suffering, of rejoicing in the Lord 
 always, it is that also of sanctified industry. 
 Let us hear from the pen of the same godly man, 
 how he, and no doubt, his fellow-prisoners, em- 
 ployed their time while there : 
 
 " As for my exercises here," says he, " and 
 improvement of time, I judged when I first came, 
 10* 
 
226 THE MARTYRS 
 
 that I was called to some work and improve- 
 ment of this price put into my hand, and there- 
 fore did I exercise myself in lamenting my sins 
 and misspent life, and great shortcoming. I 
 labored after and desired some further know- 
 ledge of God, and Christ, and grace, and to glo- 
 rify God in my sufferings. Some hours, morn- 
 ing and evening, and mid-day, I spent in medi- 
 tation, in praising, and in reading the Scrip- 
 ture, for keeping up and increasing communion 
 with God, and increase of grace, and this con- 
 stantly ; besides several fast days, which were 
 my sweetest seasons and best times. Every 
 day I read the Scriptures, exhorted and taught 
 therefrom, did sing psalms, and prayed with 
 such of our society as our masters allowed to 
 worship God together, and this twice a-day. I 
 studied Hebrew and Greek, and gained some 
 knowledge in these oriental languages. I like- 
 wise read some divinity, and wrote a Treatise 
 on Faith,* with some other miscellaneous, and 
 several letters to Christian friends and rela- 
 
 * An edition was " Printed and sold by William Gray, at 
 Magdalen's Chapel, within the Cowgatehead," Edinburgh, 
 1749. The last page bears, " Bass, July 9, 1679." 
 
OP THE BASS. 227 
 
 tions. Thus I spent my time, and not without 
 some fruit.' 7 
 
 Other causes and other times have had their 
 martyrs, as well as the principles of our cove- 
 nanting forefathers, and the reigns of Charles 
 II. and James VII. Let us, for the sake of 
 contrast, look to a case of severe martyrdom 
 that occurred about fifty years ago in France. 
 In 1797, an anarchical and selfish minority of 
 the Legislative body and the Council of the 
 Ancients in that country, combined, with tw^o 
 out of the three members of the National Di- 
 rectory, to coerce and overpower their oppo- 
 nents, by making the army and the mob at once 
 dupes of their cunning, and the executors of 
 their will. As the nation at large, however, 
 had become disgusted with wholesale butcheries 
 and drownings, the successful party were re- 
 solved to find out some ostensibly less cruel 
 method of getting rid of their most formidable, 
 because ablest and most popular opponents. 
 They decreed that they should be deported, 
 that is, banished to one or other of the French 
 colonies ; and accordingly, two ships of war suc- 
 cessively carried over above 100 victims, some 
 
228 THE MARTYRS 
 
 of them among the most accomplished and able 
 public men in France, to French Guyana. 
 These men were martyrs to philosophy, for of 
 religion, alas ! they seem to have had little or 
 none ; and their experience, as recorded in the 
 still extant narratives of two of them, is highly 
 interesting and instructive. It exhibits philos- 
 ophy the refined and enlightened philosophy 
 of French liberal politicians in the 18th centu- 
 ry under suffering for consistency ; it shows 
 what resources that philosophy can afford to her 
 martyrs, when banished from friends and home, 
 and left to find happiness in their own minds, 
 instead of the excitement of democratical arid 
 revolutionary politics. The result says little 
 indeed for philosophy. Her martyrs are repre- 
 sented by two of their own number, who seem 
 to have had every wish to speak well of their 
 fellow-victims, as peevish, despairing, and full 
 of a spirit of bitter defiance and revenge. Most 
 of them were placed at a solitary fort, near the 
 mouth of one of those innumerable streams that 
 drag their languid courses through the fens and 
 forests of that part of South America to the sea. 
 One made the woods resound to his curses of 
 
OP THE BASS. 229 
 
 his enemies who had sent him there, and with 
 vain calls for justice ; another constructed mu- 
 sical instruments for the negroes to dance to ; 
 a third, the ablest and most accomplished pro- 
 bably of them all, carried on an innocent, but 
 ignoble warfare against the insects and reptiles 
 that invaded their huts ; and all, instead of 
 being knit together by suffering in a common 
 cause, and common calamity, engaged in angry 
 controversies and contentions, such as the nar- 
 rator confesses himself ashamed to detail. 
 
 It is true there was much, in the climate and 
 in the manner in which they were treated, that 
 might go far to palliate their complaints ; but 
 let it not be thought that the prisoners of 
 the Bass were exempt from severe hardships. 
 Some, such as that great and good man the Rev. 
 John Blackadder, had their deaths hastened, if 
 not purely caused, by those hardships ; and 
 what health there was among them, must have 
 been very much owing to the cheerfulness with 
 which they submitted to the will of God in 
 their sufferings, and to the uninterrupted em- 
 ployment of their minds in healthful exercises. 
 Ao;ain let us hear Mr. Fraser : 
 
230 THE MARTYRS 
 
 " But prisons must be prisons," says he, " and 
 all afflictions, though ever so well sweetened, 
 will be in some measure grievous. Though the 
 Lord was pleased ' to stay his rough wind in 
 the day of his east wind,' and to put a very 
 light yoke upon our necks, yet was it still a 
 yoke, and some bitter ingredients were mixed 
 in this cup ; something of the gall and vinegar 
 we found, both that the Lord might discover to 
 the world the cruel nature of the spirit of pre- 
 lacy, that our patience and faith might be bet- 
 ter exercised, and finally to wean us from the 
 world, and to sweeten to us the love of God. 
 For, it could not be but sad to me and my bre- 
 thren, to think that we were cast out of the 
 vineyard and become useless, our commission 
 being taken from us, so that we could not glo- 
 rify God as we had done. Absence from natu- 
 ral and civil relations and friends was bitter ; 
 now we might say, i Lover and friend hast thou 
 removed from us.' Ps. Ixxxviii. 18. The com- 
 pany of the ungodly, to whose hands we were 
 delivered, and who ruled over us, who knew 
 nothing of God, but were enemies to him, was 
 grievous. * * The days of old, when the 
 
OF THE BASS. 231 
 
 candle of the Lord shone upon our tabernacle, 
 when my wife, children, and relations were 
 about me, when I went with the multitude that 
 kept holidays, did come and assault my remem- 
 brance with a sensible affecting grief. Our own 
 servants were turned out from us, and we were 
 made to seek such as we knew not ; but this 
 turned to our good and great advantage. The 
 great comfort we had in worshipping God to- 
 gether, and eating together, was taken from us 
 by the folly or the fear of some, and envy and 
 malice of others, who grudged us this comfort, 
 and made us separate in worship and diet, 
 whereby our expenses were much increased, and 
 we deprived of the benefit of the variety of 
 gifts. Our letters that came to, or were sent 
 by us, were all looked over many times, although 
 there was no order to that effect.* Our drink 
 was dear and exceedingly bad ; we behoved to 
 take it from our governors, and to pay exorbi- 
 tantly for it. Sometimes when they would take 
 it into their heads, they would shut us all close 
 
 up, and not suffer any of us to speak to another, 
 
 i 
 
 * Such an order seems not to have been issued till 
 some years afterwards, in July 1683, 
 
232 THE MARTYRS 
 
 and this contrary to the council's order, who 
 committed us free prisoners, and to have the 
 liberty of the rock. This unwarranted restraint 
 did sometimes afflict us, but our patience over- 
 came it. They vexed us by mixing in our com- 
 pany, and there blaspheming sometimes, and 
 other times seeking to ensnare us by the words 
 of our lips, and tabling discourses of public 
 matters which, seeing their malicious ends, we 
 shunned. They labored to debauch our maid- 
 servants, on purpose to reflect upon us, inso- 
 much that we hardly could get one to wait on 
 us. They kept the poor soldiers and others 
 from conversing with, or hearing us on the 
 Lord's day, although the poor creatures would 
 gladly have done so. At the same time, like- 
 wise, I was very untenderly handled by some 
 false brethren engaged in the same public cause 
 with ourselves. We were sometimes in winter 
 and spring very hardly put to for want of vic- 
 tuals and drink, insomuch that we had only 
 snow water, or corrupted water sprinkled with 
 a little oat-meal, to drink, and some dry fish ; 
 these, with other things, made our lives some- 
 thing, and at some times, bitter to us." 
 
 
OP THE BASS. 233 
 
 He does not say who the brethren were by 
 whom he and his fellow-prisoners were " unten- 
 derly handled," whether the indulged ministers 
 from whom they differed, by refusing favors at 
 the hand of the Government, or the more fiery 
 spirits who went to the other extreme of at- 
 tempting to subvert that Government by the 
 force of arms, before God's time had come. 
 Whichever extreme it was that treated them in 
 life so untenderly, it well becomes us who tread 
 in their footsteps, to deal tenderly by their me- 
 mories. 
 
 Mr. Fraser seems to have enjoyed, on his 
 Patmos, the invaluable blessing of uninterrupt- 
 ed good health. Not so with another of its 
 martyrs, the Rev. John Blackadder, minister 
 of Troqueer, near Dumfries, and father of that 
 well-known Christian soldier, Colonel Blackad- 
 der, whose memoirs are so deservedly popular. 
 From, a MS. account of the father's sufferings 
 by one of his sons, in the Advocates' Library, 
 We learn, that 
 
 " The Bass was a base, cold, unwholesome 
 prison ; all their rooms ordinarily full of smoke, 
 like to suffocate and choke them, so as my fa- 
 
234 THE MARTYRS 
 
 ther and the other prisoners were necessitate, 
 many a time, to thrust head and shoulders out 
 of the windows to recover breath. They were 
 obliged to drink the twopenny ale of the gov- 
 ernor's brewing, scarce worth a half-penny a 
 pint, and several times were sorely put to it for 
 want of victuals for ten or twelve days toge- 
 ther the boats not daring to venture to them 
 by reason of stormy weather."* 
 
 Mr. Eraser's imprisonment on the Bass com- 
 menced in 1677, when he was in the prime of 
 life, having been born in 1639 ; Mr. Blackad- 
 der's began in 1681, and, as he was born in 
 1615, he was then well-stricken in years, and 
 his constitution, moreover, had been evidently 
 much weakened by a life of almost incredible 
 labor, and by sufferings arising from persecu- 
 tion and repeated illness. Referring the read- 
 er to his Memoirs, already quoted, for the par- 
 ticulars of his history, we shall extract from 
 that work the following passages relating to the 
 close of his course on earth : 
 
 " After Mr. Blackadder had continued about 
 
 * See Memoirs of the Rev. John Blackadder, &c., &c., 
 by Andrew Crichton. Edinburgh, 1823. 
 
OF THE BASS. 235 
 
 four years in prison, his health became so much 
 impaired by the ungenial air of the place, as to 
 endanger his life. His friends in Edinburgh, 
 having laid before the council an attested decla- 
 ration of his indisposition, gave in a petition 
 (June 20, 1685), " craving liberty for him to be 
 brought to Edinburgh, where he might have ac- 
 cess to physicians and medicines (he being dan- 
 gerously sick of complicated disorders), and to 
 die with his wife and children." 
 
 The answer to this, as given at length in the 
 Memoirs, is perhaps the most complete piece of 
 mockery that ever emanated from a royal coun- 
 cil. It bears that the prisoner was to be allow- 
 ed to leave the Bass only to go as a prisoner to 
 " the tolbuith of Dunbar, or Haddington, as he 
 shall choose," and that he shall re-enter himself 
 prisoner within the said isle of Bass, against the 
 first Thursday of , &c., "under the pe- 
 nalty of 5000 merks, in case of failzie in any of 
 the aforesaid premises." 
 
 Now, when it is remembered what sort of 
 places the old Scotch " tolbuiths" were, and how 
 amply they met that principle of our old crimi- 
 nal law that the squalor carceris should form 
 
236 THE MARTYRS 
 
 an essential part of every prisoner's punish- 
 ment, we can give a serious meaning to this ex- 
 traordinary act of grace, only by supposing that 
 what the royal councillors had in their eye was 
 the 5000 merks which they might hope Mr. B.'s 
 friends would rather forfeit than suffer the ve- 
 nerable old man to perish, while bandied from 
 the dungeons of the Bass to those of the main- 
 land and back again. This is the more likely, 
 as the caution was singularly enough required, 
 not of the magistrates and jailors, but of the 
 prisoner himself, as Mr. B. justly remarks in 
 his letter to his friends on the subject. 
 
 That letter gives substantial reasons for his 
 declining the offered favor. He remarks, that 
 as his dysentery was better, though his rheu- 
 matism was returning ; and as, instead of hav- 
 ing access to physicians and medicines at Edin- 
 burgh, he would but exchange one prison for 
 another, no better, or rather with more incon- 
 veniences, he was constrained rather to choose 
 to take God's venture, in staying where he was, 
 whether to live or die, unless they could obtain 
 leave for him either to be attended by his wife 
 and children at his own house, or to have his 
 
OP THE BASS. 237 
 
 imprisonment at Haddington reduced to con- 
 finement in a chamber there, upon caution to 
 keep that confinement. And, at the close, it is 
 interesting to see how this aged man of God re- 
 solves to maintain to his last breath an unre- 
 stricted freedom to preach the 0-ospel, in as far 
 as the engagements of his friends were con- 
 cerned : 
 
 "I hope it will be needless that I repeat it," 
 says he, " again and again to you, that no order 
 be extracted from me but what you or other 
 trusty friends see has no engagement on me or 
 my cautioner to lay any restraint upon my min- 
 istry, or the exercise thereof, for that is ab- 
 solutely our of my power, being only intrusted 
 to follow my Lord and Master's call and plea- 
 sure therein, although I be in little case, or like 
 to be, to discharge any of the duties thereof." 
 
 This breathes the true spirit of a minister of 
 Jesus Christ. Come weal, come woe, the Word 
 of God must not be bound. Why is it that 
 Scotland at this day presents so striking a con- 
 trast to France, where a Church professing the 
 same doctrines, was. at that very time, subject- 
 ed to persecutions so very similar to those un- 
 
238 THE MARTYRS 
 
 der which our fathers groaned, and was utterly 
 crushed beneath them ? To nothing, under 
 God, can we more justly ascribe this difference, 
 than to the fact, that the French Reformed 
 Churches, from their acceptance of the edict of 
 Nantes downwards, fell into the fatal course of 
 accepting indulgences, in which they consented 
 to limitations and restrictions on the ministry, 
 while, in Scotland, and more particularly with 
 the ministers confined on the Bass, all such fa- 
 vors were at once put away. 
 
 The second application was made, and again 
 repeated, on his distemper becoming more 
 alarming. At length, on the 3d of December, 
 1685, leave was granted for his coming to Edin- 
 burgh. But it arrived too late. Before he 
 could take advantage of it, the worthy old man 
 was released by a higher order, and escaped far 
 beyond the reach of all further persecution. 
 His earthly remains were buried in the church- 
 yard of North Berwick, where a handsome 
 tombstone, repaired and relettered in 1821, at 
 the expense of several gentlemen in the neigh- 
 borhood, marks the spot. The lines engraved 
 
OP THE BASS. 239 
 
 on it are rough and quaint, but far from defec- 
 tive in point of meaning. 
 
 EPITAPH. 
 
 " Blest John, for Jesus' sake, in Patmos bound, 
 His prison Bethel, Patmos Pisgah found ; 
 So the bless'd John, on yonder rock confin'd 
 His body suffer'd, but no chains could bind 
 His heav'n aspiring soul ; while day by day, 
 As from mount Pisgah's top, he did survey 
 The promis'd land, and view'd the crown by faith, 
 Laid up for those who faithful are till death : 
 Grace form'd him in the Christian hero's mould 
 Meek in his own concerns in 's Master's bold ; 
 Passions to reason chain'd, Prudence did lead 
 Zeal warm'd his breast, and Reason cool'd his head. 
 Five years on the bare rock, ye.t sweet abode, 
 He, Enoch-like, enjoy'd and walk'd with God ; 
 Till by long living on this heav'nly food, 
 His soul by love grew up. too great, too good 
 To be confin'd to jail, or flesh and blood. 
 Death broke his fetters off, then swift he fled 
 From sin and sorrow ; and, by angels led, 
 Enter'd the mansions of eternal joy ; 
 Blest soul, thy warfare's o'er ; praise, love, enjoy ; 
 His dust here rests till Jesus come again 
 Even so, bless'd Jesus ! come come, Lord ! Amen."* 
 
 We have seen how careful Mr. Blackadder 
 was to the last, of the great commission and 
 
 * See Collection of Epi'taphs. Glasgow, MacVean, 1834, 
 p. 343. 
 
240 
 
 THE MARTYRS 
 
 privilege of a minister of Christ, to preach the 
 gospel to perishing sinners, in season and out 
 of season, according as his Master might call, 
 and whether the civil magistrate should inter- 
 dict him or not. In our own days, alas ! we 
 live to see the civil magistrate, for civil causes, 
 sometimes on the ground of the respect due to 
 statute law, sometimes on that of the rights of 
 property, attempt to coerce the ministers of the 
 Gospel into the suppression of their message, 
 or the abandonment, as in the case of the quoad 
 sacra ministers, of a part of their peculiar 
 functions and authority. Many are now suf- 
 fering for their resistance to both assaults on 
 their ministerial character, and as a further 
 proof how closely their testimony resembles 
 that for maintaining which some of the Bass 
 prisoners suffered 170 years ago, we extract 
 a part, and our space allows only a part, of 
 the examination of Mr. Archibald Riddel, 
 another of those prisoners, as detailed at great 
 length by Wodrow [book iii. ch. iv.] We give 
 part of the questions and answers here for the 
 same reason that induced Wodrow to give the 
 whole" in order," says he, " that from them 
 
OP THE BASS. 241 
 
 the reader may gather the temper of this period, 
 and guess at the methods taken with others, of 
 whom I have not so distinct accounts." The 
 whole was taken from Mr. Riddel's own notes, 
 written immediately on his return to prison, and 
 when what had passed was fresh inhis memory. 
 The date is 1680. 
 
 " Linllthgow. Have you kept any field con- 
 venticles since the indemnity ? Ans. Since 
 that time, my lord, I never preached out of a 
 house." 
 
 The prisoner being asked to swear, states his 
 scruples about swearing, and confines himself 
 to his solemn affirmation. 
 
 " The Advocate. Mr. Riddel, your answer 
 to my Lord Linlithgow was You have not 
 preached out of a house ; but I suppose you are 
 not ignorant that albeit a minister preach within 
 a house, yet if there be hearers without doors, 
 by the law that is constructed to be a field con- 
 venticle I desire, therefore, you will positively 
 answer me this question, Whether or not, when 
 you preached within a house, was there any 
 hearing you without doors ? Ans. Indeed, my 
 lord, I cannot deny that, Adv. We would not 
 11 
 
242 THE MARTYRS 
 
 expect any man of such a peaceable disposition 
 as Mr. Riddel seems to be, would so far contemn 
 authority, as not to forbear to act contrary to 
 law. Ans. My lord, when there do convene 
 more than the house can contain, and I am 
 called to preach to them, dare I either dismiss 
 the Assembly without preaching, because the 
 house will not hold them, or refuse to preach to 
 them, until all without doors remove ? Really, 
 my lord, I durst not do so upon the greatest 
 hazard. Adv. It is most unreasonable that 
 every subject should take upon him to judge 
 and determine, at his pleasure, of what is lawful 
 and convenient, and not to be determined by the 
 laws of the land. This is so absurd and ridicu- 
 lous that it destroys the end of all laws, and 
 makes every man supreme to do what he pleases. 
 Ans. My lord, it cannot, I suppose, be denied, 
 that every subject must be allowed to exercise 
 a judgment of discretion in reference to his own 
 actions, and as your lordship judges that it is 
 the duty of subjects to know the laws of the 
 land, and to practise accordingly, so since it is 
 certain that the God of heaven hath given laws to 
 all subjects as well as rulers, subjects both may 
 
OF THE BASS. 243 
 
 and ought to know these laws ; and if I, know- 
 ing both God's laws and the laws of the land, 
 find the one contrary to the other, undoubtedly 
 God's laws should have the preference. Adv. I 
 think it strange that any should be so absurd 
 as to disturb the peace of a land for such a busi- 
 ness, as whether persons should keep within 
 doors or not in preaching. If we were quarrel- 
 ling, Mr. Riddel, for preaching simply, it were 
 somewhat, but to contemn and irritate authority, 
 by preaching to persons without doors, is in- 
 tolerable. Ans. My lord, if there were a full 
 and free liberty for preaching in houses, it is 
 likely the people, in process of time, might so 
 accommodate themselves, that there should be 
 no provoking the magistrate by there being any 
 without doors ; but now poor people are so dogged 
 and distressed, that preaching can hardly be 
 had in ten miles of way ; and when I am called 
 to preach, and scarce a house can be had that 
 will contain thirty or forty persons, and all the 
 rest must be without, shall the people who come 
 ten miles or more to hear a sermon, be thrust 
 away as they came? Surely if I be called to 
 preach at all, I may not decline it in any case. 
 
244 THE MARTYRS 
 
 ***** Adv. If I were of Mr. Riddel's prin- 
 ciples, and did judge the laws of the land were 
 contrary to the laws of God, and that I could 
 not conform to them, I would judge it my duty 
 to go out of the nation, and live elsewhere, than 
 disturb the peace of the land, by acting contrary 
 to its laws. Ans. My lord, if I do anything 
 contrary to the laws, I am liable to the punish- 
 ment due by the law. Adv. That is not suffi- 
 cient ; a subject that regards the public good of 
 the land, should, for the peace and welfare 
 thereof, either conform to the law or go out of 
 the land. Ans. My lord, I doubt that argu- 
 ment would militate against Christ and his 
 apostles as much as against us, who both preach- 
 ed and acted otherwise against the laws of the 
 land ; and not only did not judge it their duty 
 to go out of the land, but the apostles on the 
 contrary, reasoned with the rulers, whether it 
 be better to obey God or man, judge ye." 
 
 Here the bishop, Mr. Wodrow supposes of 
 Edinburgh, breaks in, admitting' that Mr. Rid- 
 del, whom he speaks of as a gentleman of ancient 
 and honorable family, was right in insisting that 
 as a minister he ought at all hazards to preach, 
 
OF THE BASS. 245 
 
 but quibbles on the point, that preaching did 
 not necessarily imply preaching out of a house, 
 or to persons out of a house, and insists, that as 
 Mr. Riddel could not pretend to an ordinary 
 call, since that must be determined by the laws 
 in being, he ought to Jiave miracles to appeal to 
 in proof of an extraordinary call. 
 
 Another of the Bass martyrs was the Rev. 
 John Dickson, minister of Rutherglen before 
 the Restoration, and restored to his parish at 
 the Revolution. He was confined for seven long 
 years on the Bass. From two letters written 
 by him from that Patmos, and afterwards printed, 
 we find that he must have been a man of genius 
 and eloquence his style reminding us of the 
 fervor of Gillespie, and the* exuberant fancy of 
 Rutherfurd. We shall subjoin a few specimens, 
 the letters being, no doubt, extremely rare. 
 First, take a few of his pithy sentences : 
 " An idle soul is Satan's workshop, where he 
 forgeth all his temptations. Christ is sweet 
 company, especially to prisoners and wanderers, 
 violently separated from friends and relations. 
 Solitariness with Christ is heaven upon earth. 
 Conscience is the echo and doomster of the 
 
246 THE MARTYRS 
 
 Spirit of God, the lyon-herald echoing, the lyon- 
 king-at-arms publishing the will of the King of 
 kings. Do not blemish your duties, nor make 
 yourself burdensome to others by tedious forms. 
 The life of religion consists in an indivisibility ; 
 it is contracted into a narrow point ; a sigh, a 
 groan, a tear, hath volumes of prayers concentred 
 in them. Yet who can bound the Spirit of God ? 
 When it flows, and overflows, to put a stop to it 
 were dangerous. But this falls out at extraor- 
 dinary times. Idol self is God's great antago- 
 nist. Be not curious in inquiring after news ; 
 this flows from an Athenian curiosity, blowing 
 up the spirit with wind and froth, sorrow or 
 anxiety. Yet Nehemiah may profitably ask 
 Hanani, How it fares with God's interest at 
 Jerusalem ; and Jeremiah makes choice of a 
 solitary cottage in the wilderness, to be by the 
 road of way-faring men. Curiosity in inquiring 
 in such cases, by such persons, edgeth the se- 
 rious sorrowful soul to sympathy. Glory not 
 over thy neighbor's infirmities, for the fountain 
 whence they flow is within thee. Natural, 
 moral, or gracious endowments are not of thy 
 cutting and carving, neither within the reach of 
 
OF THE BASS. 
 
 thy line and plummet. If any be of a factious 
 spirit, avoid his company, else thou wilt take 
 fire into thy bosom and be burnt. Depend much 
 upon Providence, whether as to thy meat, cloth- 
 ing, or provision for thy family. Naked came 
 we into the world, and naked shall we go out of 
 it ; the militant Church is all hanging by a 
 small, though strong, thread of quotidian (daily) 
 Providence. 75 
 
 The following passage, like a thousand others, 
 may be adduced in proof of the humble and 
 peaceful spirit of a body of men whom it has 
 been common to denounce as proud and imprac- 
 ticable fanatics : 
 
 " Beware of spiritual pride ; study humili- 
 ty ; let each esteem another better than him- 
 self. The Lord loves and dwells in the humble 
 and contrite spirit, and the proud he knows afar 
 off, and resists. Speak not evil one to (of) 
 another. Away with whisperings and back-bit- 
 ings, these are in the black roll (Rom. i.), for 
 which the wrath of God cometh on our atheisti 
 cal generation. Kevile none, of whatsoever 
 quality, place or station. Remember, that 
 Michael disputing with the devil about the body 
 
248 THE MARTYRS 
 
 of Moses, brought no railing accusation against 
 him. Bear with affronts, injuries, reproaches ; 
 vengeance is mine, and I will recompense, saith 
 the Lord. This is a time wherein offences 
 abound, wherein corruption and humors are 
 irritated ; and Satttn loves to fish in such muddy 
 waters, occasioning ruptures and discords among 
 the people of God, whom resist stedfast in the 
 faith. Guard strongly against the spirit of re- 
 venge, for Satan blows the coal towards the 
 utter breaking of the peace and tranquillity of 
 the soul. Be not too credulous in receiving re- 
 ports reflecting on the conscience or credit of 
 thy neighbor, but hear seventy-seven times ere 
 thou lay much weight upon the report, lest thou 
 be adjudged by the Lord to believe a lie, and 
 thence appear more the servant of Satan than 
 of the Lord. * * i Be careful for nothing, but in 
 everything, by prayer and supplication, make 
 known your desires unto God.' Anxiety is a 
 canker worm that eats away the sweet life of a 
 Christian. It doth not add to, but diminish 
 from the perfections of the soul. Who is he 
 that, by taking thought, can add one cubit 
 unto his stature ? Fear not future wants or 
 
OF THE BASS. 249 
 
 losses, lest thou reflect upon God's faithfulness 
 in his promise, and upon his providence in 
 governing the world whereof thou art a^part. 
 The birds of the air feed cheerfully without fear 
 of want, and sleep sweetly in their nests, when 
 they know not where to get their breakfast 
 to-morrow ; and thou art much better than many 
 sparrows."* &c. &c. 
 
 Alexander Peden,t the pious and self-deny- 
 ing Scottish martyr, was also one of the pris 
 oners of the Bass, as appears by the following 
 act, dated 26th June, 1673 : 
 
 " The Lords of his Majesty's Privy Council 
 do recommend to the Lords Register and Advo- 
 cate, or any one of them, to call for and exam- 
 ine Mr. Alexander Peden, prisoner in the Tol- 
 booth, for being in the rebellion in the year 
 1666, and who was lately apprehended keeping 
 a conventicle ; and thereafter ordain him to be 
 
 * See "A Copy OF A LETTER BY MR. JOHN DICKSON, 
 late Minister of the Gospel in RutJierglen, to some friends 
 when he 10 as prisoner in the BASS :" kindly communicated by 
 David Laing, Esq. 
 
 f This account of Peden is condensed from a very inter- 
 esting work by the Eev. James Anderson on the Martyrs 
 of the Bass. 
 
 11* 
 
250 THE MARTYRS 
 
 transported by five or six of the guard from 
 the Tolbooth of Edinburgh to the Isle of Bass, 
 and to be delivered to the governor of the gar- 
 rison there, who is hereby ordered to keep him 
 close prisoner until farther order." 
 
 Peden, there is every reason to believe, was 
 confined in the Bass upwards of four years. 
 When he first entered, his only fellow-prisoner 
 was Mr. Kobert Gillespie ; but afterwards fresh 
 prisoners were added, ^consisting of a number 
 of eminent ministers of the same principles and 
 character with himself, as Mr. Thomas Boss, 
 Mr. James Fraser of Brea, Mr. John M'Gilli- 
 gen, and others. It would have been a comfort 
 to him and them, and would have lessened the 
 weight of their afflictions, had they been per- 
 mitted to enjoy each other's society. Some- 
 times they had permission granted them to as- 
 semble together for devotional exercises in the 
 morning and evening ; and to men of kindred 
 spirits, and who were suffering in the same 
 cause, it would be exceedingly refreshing to 
 join together in reading the Scriptures, and in 
 pouring out their united prayers at the throne 
 of grace. But at other times they were wholly 
 
OF THE BASS. 251 
 
 deprived of all mutual intercourse, and closely 
 shut up in their separate cells. The Privy 
 Council, on the 26th of July, 1677, made an 
 act, partially removing such rigorous confine- 
 ment, but still leaving them under restrictions 
 sufficiently severe : 
 
 " The Lords of his Majesty's Privy Council 
 do hereby give order and warrant to the keeper 
 of the Isle of the Bass, to permit and allow the 
 prisoners in the said isle to have the liberty of 
 the isle in the day-time, betwixt stin-rising and 
 sun-setting, provided that he permit none but 
 two of them at once to have that liberty ; and 
 that he shut up these two before he allow the 
 other two to come out." 
 
 It was no doubt some small mitigation for two 
 of them to be allowed to walk together for a 
 few hours upon the island. The fresh air would 
 invigorate their health and revive their spirits, 
 while their mutual converse and sympathy would 
 strengthen one another's faith, fortitude, and 
 patience. But during all the other part of the 
 twenty-four hours, each was shut up in entire 
 seclusion in his own cell. To the sufferer thus 
 pent up for years in an unwholesome dungeon, 
 
 _J 
 
252 THE MARTYRS 
 
 by which the energy of the nervous system is 
 weakened, and the elasticity of the spirits bro- 
 ken, more fortitude is often required than to 
 brave on the field of action, and in the moment 
 of excitement, the terrors of death. The hero- 
 ism which has nobly acquitted itself in the lat- 
 ter case, has been subdued by the sufferings of 
 the former. Yet Peden, though feeling acutely 
 the rigor and hardships of his imprisonment, 
 sustained them with a resigned and submissive 
 mind. 
 
 On the 9th of October, 1677, the Council, 
 agreeably to the opinion expressed by their 
 Committee for Public Affairs, conclude, " that 
 Mr. Alexander Peden, prisoner in the Bass, be 
 liberated, he enacting himself in the books of 
 Council, to take banishment out of Scotland, 
 England, and Ireland, upon him, with certifica- 
 tion if he shall return, he shall be holden pro 
 confesso as having been in the rebellion in the 
 year 1666, and proceeded against and punished 
 accordingly." 
 
 Notwithstanding this act, he was still kept a 
 prisoner. It is, however, probable, that at this 
 time he was brought from the Bass and put in- 
 
OP THE BASS. 253 
 
 to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, where he appears 
 to have remained upwards of a year ; as may 
 be inferred from a petition presented by him to 
 the Privy Council on the 14th of November, 
 1678, praying to be liberated from the Tolbooth 
 of Edinburgh, in which he says he had lain for 
 a long time, and to be permitted to go to Ire- 
 land, where he had formerly resided for several 
 years. But the Council, though no libel had 
 ever been given in against him, and though he 
 was not charged either with house or field con- 
 venticles in Scotland now for twelve years, re- 
 fused to grant his petition, and banished him to 
 the plantations in America, discharging him 
 ever to return under the penalty of death. In 
 December, he and sixty more prisoners, on 
 whom the same sentence of banishment was 
 passed, embarked in the Roads of Leith for 
 Gravesend, London. On their arriving at 
 Gravesend, which, in consequence of the te- 
 diousness of the voyage, was five days later 
 than had been anticipated, the master of another 
 vessel who was to carry them to Virginia not 
 being there, the .ship-captain who had brought 
 them from Leith, and who was engaged to carry 
 
254 THE MARTYRS 
 
 them only to Gravesend, finding no person to 
 take them off his hand, and grudging the ex- 
 pense of maintaining them any longer, sent 
 them ashore to shift for themselves as they best 
 could. They were treated with much kindness 
 by the English, when they learned the cause of 
 their sufferings ; and the greater part reached 
 their homes in safety after an absence of about 
 nine months.* 
 
 On the 16th of April 1685, Peden made a 
 narrow escape. Being then at the house of 
 John Nisbet of Hardhill, a little before nine 
 o'clock in the morning, a troop of dragoons was 
 observed by the servants who were working in 
 the fields coming up to the house at full gallop ; 
 upon which the servants ran to conceal them- 
 selves. Peden and those who were with him in 
 the house had fled for shelter to a moss nearly 
 two miles distant from the place where the ser- 
 vants were working. The way to this moss was 
 by very steep ground, and at the edge of the 
 
 * Wodrow MSS. vol. xxxvii. 4to, no. 141. Wodrow's 
 History, vol. ii. pp. 476, 483. Walker's account differs from 
 the above in some slight particulars. Wodrow had his in- 
 formation from one of the prisoners. 
 
OP THE BASS. 255 
 
 moss there was a morass about seven or eight 
 yards broad, and altogether the place was well 
 adapted for concealment as well as for protec- 
 tion from military on horseback. Here, how- 
 ever, Peden and his companions were discovered. 
 James, son of John Nisbet, a young man about 
 sixteen years of age, had been with the servants 
 in the field when the troop of dragoons came up, 
 and in his flight, being chased by some of the 
 party, made his way accidentally to the spot 
 where Peden and about twenty more were lurk- 
 ing, which occasioned their being discovered. 
 The whole party of dragoons were quickly in- 
 formed of the prize within their reach, and about 
 three hours after they were joined by another 
 party who aided them in the pursuit. Peden 
 and his friends observing the enemy dismount- 
 ing their horses to take the moss on their feet 
 for the purpose of securing them, after some 
 firing on both sides without effect, drew off and 
 kept in the midst of the moss. When the 
 dragoons, on seeing this, mounted their horses 
 again and pursued them by the side of the moss, 
 the Covenanters always kept themselves on 
 such ground as the horses could not approach. 
 
o 
 H 
 
OF THE BASS. 257 
 
 In such circumstances, we need not wonder that 
 he was sometimes weary of life, and envied his 
 fellow-sufferers who had gone before him to re- 
 ceive their reward. On one occasion, visiting 
 the grave of Richard Cameron,* these feelings 
 rushed powerfully into his mind. Harassed 
 and vexed, he sat down by the grave, and as he 
 thought of the happiness of his beloved friend, 
 who had exchanged all his sufferings for the 
 martyr's crown, while he himself was still en- 
 during the scorching heat of persecution, meekly 
 raising his eyes to heaven, he prayed, '" to be 
 wi' Ritchie !"t 
 
 John Campbell of Wei wood, in an account of 
 his own sufferings, during the persecution, states 
 the following facts respecting Peden, with whom 
 he spent the greater part of this summer : " In 
 a little time thereafter, [after the beginning of 
 
 * Cameron, with eight* of his followers, were killed at 
 Airs -moss, after fighting bravely a party of dragoons under 
 Bruce of Earlshall, who attacked them. Cameron's head 
 and hands were cut off and taken to Edinburgh j but his 
 body, and his brave comrades who fell, were buried on the 
 spot. 
 
 f For a beautiful description of this scene see the " Lays 
 of the Kirk and Covenant," by Mrs. Menteath, published 
 by the Carters. 
 
258 THE MARTYRS 
 
 April, 1685], I got notice of Mr. Alexander Peden, 
 minister, and went to him, with whom I stayed 
 several days, having a little den underneath the 
 earth, who had a great pressure of spirit upon 
 him, and groaned most of the night over in 
 heaviest manner ; none knowing where we were 
 at first save one who brought us some sustenance." 
 At length Peden's bodily infirmities increas- 
 ing so much as to render him unable to travel, 
 he came to his brother's house in the parish of 
 Sorn, the place of his birth, where he caused 
 in the neighborhood of his brother's house a 
 cave to be dug, with a willow bush covering its 
 mouth. His persecutors getting information 
 where he was, searched every part of the house 
 on many occasions. At last, 'one day early in 
 the morning, leaving the cave he came to the 
 door of his brother's house. His brother's wife 
 warned him of his danger^ and advised him .to 
 return to his place of concealment. He told her 
 that it was needless to do that, since it was dis- 
 covered ; " but," says he, " there is no matter, 
 for within forty-eight hours, I will be beyond 
 the reach of all the devil's temptations, and his 
 instruments in hell and on earth, and they shall 
 
OF THE BASS. 259 
 
 trouble me no more." He had not been in the 
 house above three hours, when a party of soldiers 
 visited the cave, and not finding him there, they 
 searched first the barn and next the house, 
 stabbing the beds, but they did not enter the 
 place where he lay. 
 
 The prospect of death and eternity often soft- 
 ens the prejudices which the good man, from 
 various causes, may have imbibed against his 
 Christian brethren, with whom he once lived on 
 terms of intimate friendship, and opening, as it 
 were, the sluices of Christian love, makes him 
 more tender, forbearing, and charitable towards 
 them. It was so with Peden. On his death- 
 bed he sent for Mr. Ren wick, from whom he had 
 become alienated, by lending too credulous an 
 ear to misrepresentation and reproach. Ren- 
 wick came to him with all haste, and found him 
 lying in very low circumstances, having few to 
 minister to his comfort, but peaceful and happy 
 in mind. Peden raised himself upon his bed, 
 leaning on his elbow with his head upon his 
 hand to speak to his interesting visitant, and a 
 comfortable interview took place between them. 
 " Sit down, sir," said the dying man, " and give 
 
260 THE MARTYRS 
 
 me an account of your conversion, and of your 
 call to the ministry, of your principles, and the 
 grounds of your taking such singular courses in 
 withdrawing from all other ministers." Ren- 
 wick did so ; which, when Peden heard, he said, 
 " You have answered me to my soul's satisfac- 
 tion, and I am very sorry that I should have 
 believed such evil reports concerning you, which 
 not only quenched my love to you, and marred 
 my sympathy with you, but led me to express 
 myself bitterly against you." He desired Ren- 
 wick to pray before leaving him, which he did 
 with more than ordinary freedom ; and, after 
 prayer, drawing to him the pious and noble 
 youth, he kissed him, saying, " Sir, I have found 
 you a faithful servant to your Master ; go on in 
 a single dependence upon the Lord, and you 
 will get honestly through, and cleanly off the 
 stage."* 
 
 Peden died on the 28th of January, 1686, be- 
 
 * Our authority for this anecdote is Patrick Walker. 
 Biograph. Presb. vol. i. pp. 91-93. Howie says that its 
 truth has been doubted. This may have arisen from its not 
 being recorded in Shield's Life of Renwick ; but it may 
 notwithstanding b3 founded in truth. It is highly honora- 
 ble to both these good men. 
 
OF THE BASS. 261 
 
 ing upwards- of sixty years of age, and was 
 privately buried in the church of Auchinleck, 
 in the aisle of David Bos well, Esq., of Auchin- 
 leck. But his ashes were not allowed to repose 
 in peace. Though he had never been condemn- 
 ed by any jury, yet the enemy, being informed 
 of his death and burial, sent a troop of dra- 
 goons, who pulled his corpse out of the grave 
 after it had lain about six weeks, and having 
 first broken the chest, exposed his remains to 
 contempt, and then carried them to the gallows' 
 foot at Cumnock, two miles distant, and there 
 buried them.* The design of the soldiers in 
 lifting the body, was to hang it in chains upon 
 the gallows at Cumnock. But this they were 
 prevented from doing. The Countess of Dum- 
 fries, and the Lady Affleck, shocked at this bar- 
 barity, earnestly interceded that the body might 
 be again buried ; and when the savage com- 
 mander of the dragoons, determined to have it 
 
 * Wodrow MSS. vol. xxxviii. 4to, no. 103. Wodrow says 
 in his History, " This raising him after ho was buried, Mr. 
 Peden before his death did very positively foretel before 
 several witnesses, some of whom are yet alive who were 
 present, from whom I have it, else I should not have no- 
 ticed it here." Vol. iv. p. 396. 
 
262 THE MARTYRS 
 
 hung up in chains, proved unrelenting, they 
 applied to the Earl of Dumfries, a Privy Coun- 
 cillor, then at home, who. yielding to their re- 
 quest, went to the gibbet and told Murray that 
 it was erected for malefactors and murderers, 
 and not for such men as Mr. Peden. The 
 corpse was accordingly re-interred at the foot 
 of the gibbet, now within the wall of the common 
 burial-ground of Cumnock parish, and a grave- 
 stone was afterwards laid above it, with this 
 inscription : 
 
 "HERE LIES ALEXANDER PEDEN, A 
 
 FAITHFUL MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL, SOME- 
 TIME AT GrLENLUCE, WHO DEPARTED THIS 
 
 LIFE JANUARY 28, 1686, AND WAS RAISED 
 AFTER SIX WEEKS OUT OF HIS GRAVE, AND 
 BURIED HERE OUT OF CONTEMPT." 
 
 The last we shall mention, is the Rev. Thomas 
 Hog of Kiltearn in Ross-shire. His Memoirs 
 were published at Edinburgh in 1756, but are 
 now very rare. Mr. Hog seems to have been 
 cast in somewhat of the same mould with the 
 Rev. John O^en. He was full six feet high, 
 and proportionably strong and vigorous, and, 
 during his youth, was much addicted to the 
 
OF THE BASS. 263 
 
 harmless diversions of that age. An excellent 
 scholar, and a highly moral man, even before the 
 period from which he dates his conversion, he 
 was respected and esteemed by a number of 
 godly friends, in whose religious exercises he 
 used to join with a great apparent acquaintance 
 with the saving doctrines of the Cross. But all 
 this he afterwards accounted, and endeavored 
 to prove from Scripture, as nothing beyond 
 natural gifts, until it pleased God to lay him 
 under deep convictions of sin, and to commence 
 a work of true grace in his heart. He after- 
 wards became an eminent instrument in the 
 conversion of others, especially in the counties 
 of Ross and Moray. He was at one time chap- 
 lain to the Earl of Sutherland, " where," say the 
 Memoirs, " the work of God flourished in several 
 happy souls ; a great measure of charity was 
 due to the earl and several others in the family ; 
 the lady was a most eminent Christian, and of 
 great experience in soul exercise." 
 
 Of Mr. Hog's character as a minister, we read : 
 " Concerning himself, he was temperate both 
 in meat and drink. * * His more serious work, 
 his necessary diversion, as visiting of friends 
 
264 THE MARTYRS 
 
 and acquaintances, and even meaner things ; 
 were all gone about by rule. He kept time and 
 measure in everything. However lively the 
 frame of his own soul was, he never insisted 
 long in social duties, though he frequently en- 
 joyed the breathings of the Holy Spirit to a 
 very high degree. He often expressed his dis- 
 satisfaction with the length of social exercises 
 a fault very common among formal professors 
 as what could not be managed by many to a 
 good account, and as encroaching upon other 
 necessary duties belonging to our respective 
 stations. It was his constant practice, both 
 before and after family worship, to retire a little 
 into his closet. In self-examination he was very 
 exact, and set time apart for it once a month, 
 and sometimes oftener. He was most reserved 
 as to everything that tended to his own repu- 
 tation. His concern for and sympathy with the 
 ignorant was very great ;,the bulk of the people 
 in Kiltearn having become very ignorant, he 
 was at great pains to spread the catechisms and 
 other abstracts of our received principles among 
 them, and going about from house to house, he 
 prayed with, exhorted and instructed them in 
 
OF THE BASS. 265 
 
 things pertaining to the kingdom of God. ' His 
 people,' said his successor, Mr. Stuart, < were 
 awakened to hear, and he was encouraged to 
 preach Christ Jesus unto them, so that the dry 
 bones began to revive, and pleasant blossoms 
 and hopeful appearances displayed themselves 
 everywhere through the parish.' " 
 
 Such were the men whom the government of 
 that day sought not only to exclude from the 
 parish pulpits of Scotland, but even from 
 preaching at what were called conventicles. 
 The circumstances attending Mr. Hog's being 
 sent to the Bass, and his conduct and suffer- 
 ings while there, are related in the Memoirs as 
 follows : 
 
 " Mr. Hog having about the beginning of the 
 year 1676, been again apprehended for private 
 conventicles, and sent up to Edinburgh, he said 
 to some persons in company, i I thank my God 
 this messenger was most welcome to me ;' and 
 giving a scratch with his nail upon the wall, he 
 said, ' / trust in the living God, that before 
 my conscience shall get that much of a scratch, 
 this neck (pointing to it) shall go for it.'' Ac- 
 cordingly, when put to the trial, he joyfully sub- 
 12 
 
 
 
286 THE MARTYRS 
 
 mitted to a prison, rather than bind up himself 
 from preaching, and was therefore sent to the 
 Bass, where his Christian carriage and conver- 
 sation, composure, courage, and pleasantness of 
 spirit, proved very comfortable to the other suf- 
 fering ministers there. However, the air of the 
 place and close confinement affected his health 
 very soon, and he fell into a bloody flux, which 
 in his case was attended with peculiar and very 
 great danger. In this situation a physician 
 was called to his assistance from Edinburgh, 
 who gave it as his opinion, that unless he was 
 liberated from that confinement, there was no 
 hope of his recovery ; and he advised him to 
 supplicate the council for his liberation for some 
 short space, that means might be used for the 
 recovery of his health. Mr. Hog hesitated ; 
 whether, because they were a mongrel court, 
 consisting of clergy as well as laity, or because 
 they had no right to deny what he asked, or 
 because he had no prospect of succeeding, is 
 uncertain. However the doctor, of his own ac- 
 cord, and without owning Mr. Hog in it, drew 
 up a petition for him to the council in the 
 strongest terms he could devise, and the better 
 
OF THE BASS. 267 
 
 to insure a hearing, the clerk's dues were liber- 
 ally paid. The petition was read, and some of 
 | the lay lords interceded for Mr. Hog, and said 
 while he was at liberty he lived more quietly, 
 and traversed not the country so much as other 
 Presbyterians did ; upon which Archbishop 
 Sharp, taking up the argument, said that the 
 prisoner did, and was in a capacity to do, more 
 hurt to their interests sitting in his elbow 
 chair, than twenty oUhers could do by travel- 
 ling ; and if the justice of God was pursuing 
 him to take him off the stage, the clemency of 
 the government should not interpose to hinder 
 it, and therefore it was his opinion that if there 
 were any place worse than another in the pris- 
 on, he should be put there. This motion hav- 
 ing been seconded by some other of the prelates 
 and their supporters, was accordingly put to 
 the vote ; and it carried the closest prison in 
 the Bass for him, which was speedily put into 
 execution. When the keeper intimated the 
 order, Mr. Hog raised himself up with some 
 difficulty in his bed to read it, which^ said he, 
 was as severe as if Satan himself had penned 
 it. William Balloch, his servant, being with 
 
268 THE MARTYRS 
 
 him when he was carried down to a low, nasty 
 dungeon in the Bass, fell a weeping and cried, 
 Now, master, your death is unavoidable. Upon 
 this, the good man's eyes were directed to the 
 Lord as his physician, and turning to his servant, 
 with a countenance full of joy, he said -Now 
 that men have no mercy, the Lord will show 
 himself merciful ; from the moment of my en- 
 tering this dungeon, I date my recovery. And 
 so it fell out, for the ver^next day he recovered 
 to admiration, and was in a short space as well 
 as ever. And yet afterwards, when any would 
 have been speaking of the arch-prelate in his 
 hearing, he never showed any resentment, but 
 sometimes would have said somewhat merrily, 
 Commend him to me for a good physician." 
 
 Nor is the Bass a memorial of the men only 
 of those troublous times, who suffered and died 
 in maintaining the testimony of Jesus. It may 
 be regarded as a monument, also, fitted to re- 
 call the scenes and incidents in which they bore 
 a part. As a specimen of these, we may give 
 the following account of a dispensation of the 
 sacrament, conducted by five ministers, four of 
 whom (Blackadder, Riddel, and Dickson, being 
 
OF THE BASS. 269 
 
 three of them) afterwards became martyrs on 
 the Bass : 
 
 " We entered on the administration of the 
 holy ordinance, committing it and ourselves to 
 the invisible protection of the Lord of Hosts, in 
 whose name we were met together. Our trust 
 was in the arm of Jehovah, which was better than 
 weapons of war, or the strength of hills. If the 
 God of Jacob was our refuge, w r e knew that our 
 cause would prosper that in his favor there 
 was more security than in all the defences of 
 art or of nature. The place was every way 
 commodious, and seemed to be formed on pur- 
 pose. It was a green and pleasant spot, fast by 
 the w r ater side (of the Whitader). On either 
 hand there was a spacious brae, in form of a 
 half circle, covered with delightful pasture, and 
 rising with a gentle slope to a goodly height. 
 Above us was the clear blue sky, for it was a 
 sweet and calm Sabbath morning, promising to 
 be indeed one of the days of the Son of Man. 
 There was a solemnity in the place befitting the 
 occasion, and elevating the soul to a pure and 
 holy frame. The communion tables were spread 
 on the green by the water, and around them the 
 
270 THE MARTYRS 
 
 people had arranged themselves in decent order. 
 But the far greater multitude sat on the brae 
 face, which was crowded from top to bottom, full 
 as pleasant a sight as was ever seen of that 
 sort. Each day, at the congregation's dismiss- 
 ing, the ministers, with their guards, and as 
 many of the people as could, retired to their 
 quarters in three several country towns, where 
 they might be provided with necessaries for 
 man and horse for payment. 
 
 " Several of the yeomen refused to take 
 money for their provisions, but cheerfully and 
 abundantly invited both ministers and gentle- 
 men each day at dismissing. The horsemen 
 drew up in a body till the people left the place, 
 and then marched in goodly array behind at a lit- 
 tle distance, until all *were safely lodged in their 
 quarters ; dividing themselves into three squad- 
 rons, one for each town where were their respec- 
 tive lodgments. Each party had its own com- 
 mander. Watches were regularly set in empty 
 barns and other outhouses, where guards were 
 placed during the night. Scouts were sent to 
 look about, and get intelligence. In the morn- 
 ing, when the people returned to the meeting, 
 
OP THE BASS. 271 
 
 the horsemen accompanied them ; all the three 
 parties met about a mile from the spot, and 
 marched in a full body to the consecrated 
 ground. The congregation being all fairly set 
 in their places, the guardsmen took their sev- 
 eral stations as formerly. 
 
 " These accidental volunteers seem to have 
 been the gift of Providence, and they secured 
 the peace and the quiet of the audience ; for 
 from Saturday morning, when the work began, 
 until Monday afternoon, we suffered not the 
 least affront or molestation. At first, there 
 was some apprehension ; but the people sat un- 
 disturbed, and the whole was closed in as orderly 
 a way as it had been in the time of Scotland's 
 brightest noon. And, truly, the spectacle of 
 so many grave, composed, and devout faces must 
 have struck the adversaries with awe, and been 
 more formidable than any outward ability of 
 fierce looks and warlike array. We desired not 
 the countenance of earthly kings ; there was a 
 spiritual- and divine Majesty shining on the 
 work, and sensible evidence that the great 
 Master of assemblies was present in the midst. 
 
 " The ordinance of the last Supper, that me- 
 
272 THE MARTYRS 
 
 morial of His dying love till His second com- 
 ing, was signally countenanced, and backed with 
 power and refreshing from above. Blessed be 
 God, for he hath visited and confirmed his her- 
 itage when it was weary. In that day, Zion 
 put on the beauty of Sharon and Carmel ; the 
 mountains broke forth into singing, and the 
 desert was made to bud and blossom as the rose. 
 Few such days were seen in the desolate Church 
 of Scotland, and few will ever witness the like. 
 There was a rich and plentiful effusion of the 
 Spirit shed abroad on many hearts. * 
 
 " The tables were served by some gentlemen 
 and persons of the gravest deportment. None 
 were admitted without tokens, as usual, which 
 were distributed on the Saturday, but only to such 
 as were known to some of the ministers, or per- 
 sons of trust, to be free of public scandals. All 
 the regular forms were gone through. The 
 communicants entered at one end, and retired 
 at the other a way being kept clear to take 
 their seats again on the hill-side. Mr. Welsh 
 preached the action sermon, and served the first 
 two tables, as he was ordinarily put to do on 
 such occasions. The other four ministers Mr. 
 
OF THE BASS. 273 
 
 Blackadder, Mr. Dickson, Mr. Riddel, and Mr. 
 Rae exhorted the rest in their turn. The 
 table service was closed by Mr. Welsh with 
 solemn thanksgiving. And solemn it was, and 
 sweet, and edifying, to see the gravity and com- 
 posure of all present, as well as all parts of the 
 service. The communion was peaceably con- 
 cluded all the people heartily offering up their 
 gratitude, and singing with a joyful noise to the 
 Rock of their salvation. It was pleasing, as 
 the night fell, to hear their melody swelling in 
 full unison along the hill, the whole congrega- 
 tion joining with one accord, and praising God 
 with the voice of psalms. 
 
 " There were two long tables, and one short 
 across the head, with seats on each side. About 
 a hundred sat at every table ; there were six- 
 teen tables in all, so that about three thousand 
 communicated that day."* 
 
 The Bass, then, speaks with a most eloquent 
 and touching voice of past attachment to great 
 and good principles of a past testimony to 
 
 * See Crichton's Memoirs of Blackadder, where the 
 above account appears as a quotation, we suppose from the 
 Blackadder MSS. 
 
 12* 
 
274 THE MARTYRS OF THE BASS. 
 
 those principles given in the most trying cir- 
 cumstances of past consistency in rejecting all 
 ensnaring compromises of past constancy, and 
 faith, and patience and last, not least, of God's 
 fatherly care of his Church and of this nation, 
 in bringing to a close, without civil contention 
 or bloodshed, that long course of persecution 
 for conscience' sake, of which the sufferings of 
 the Martyrs of the Bass formed a part. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 I. THE LAUDERS OF THE BASS. P. [168.] 
 
 WE are indebted to the .kindness of Sir Thomas 
 Dick Lauder for the use of the old Charter of the 
 Bass, granted by the Bishop of St. Andrews to his 
 ancestor Robert Lauder of the Bass in 1316. As 
 a curious relic of antiquity in connection with the 
 subject of this volume, we insert it here with a 
 translation. 
 
 CHARTER of WILLIELMUS DE LAMBERTON, Bishop of St. 
 
 Andrews, to ROBERT LAUDER of Bass, of their part of that 
 
 Island, 4th June, 1316. 
 
 Omnibus hanc cartam visuris vel audituris Willielmus 
 miseracione diuina sancti Andrei Episcopus salutem in 
 Domino : Sciatis nos vtilitate ecclesie nostre pensata dedisse 
 concessisse et hac presenti carta nostra confirmasse Roberto 
 de Lauwedre pro homagio et seruicio suo totam partem 
 nostram Insule in mari que vocatur le Bass iuxta Aldham 
 in Laudonia ; Tenend. et habend. dicto Roberto et heredibus 
 
278 APPENDIX. 
 
 suis de nobis et successoribus nostris in perpetuum cum 
 omnibus libertatlbus commoditatibus et aysiamentis suis ac 
 pertinenciis libere et quiete in omnibus et per omnia sine 
 aliquo retinemento ; Reddendo ipse Robertus et heredus sui 
 nobis et successoribus nostris apud Tynyngham ad festum 
 Pentecostes singulis annis vnam libram cere nomine albe 
 firme tanttim pro omnibus terrenis serviciis et demandis que 
 de dicta Insula cum pertinenciis a nobis vel successoribus 
 nostris exigi poterunt vel dcmandari : Nos vero Willielmus et 
 succcssores nostri predicto Roberto et heredibus suis pre- 
 dictam partem nostram Insule del Bass cum pertinenciis 
 suis contra omncs homines et feminas warantigabimus 
 acquictabimus et defendemus in perpetuum. In cuius rei 
 testimonium present! carte sigillum nostrum fecimus apponi. 
 Dat, apud Wegdall quarto die Junii Anno Domini MCCC. sexto 
 decimo illis testibus Dominis Willielmo et Willielmo dei 
 gracia de Melros et de Dryburgh, Abbatibus Dominis Jacobo 
 de Douglas, Alexandro Senesscallo, Henrico de Sancto 
 Claro, Roberto de Keith, militibus et aliis. 
 
 Translation of Charter by WILLIAM of LAMBERTON, Bishop 
 of St. Andrews, to ROBERT LAUDER of Bass, of their part 
 of that Island, 4th June, 1316. 
 
 To ALL men by whom this Charter shall be seen and 
 heard, William, by the grace of God Bishop of Saint An- 
 drews, wishing salvation in the Lord : Know ye that we, 
 valuing highly our Church's advantage, have Granted, and 
 by this our present Charter have Confirmed, to Robert 
 Lauder for his homage and service the whole of our part of 
 the Island in the sea which is called the Bass, near to Aid- 
 ham,* in Lothian ; To HOLD and TO BE IIOLDEN by the said 
 
 * Aldham was an original parish and is now part of Whitekirk parish. 
 The church of Aldham is on the confines of North Berwick parish, and 
 adjoining to Tantallan Castle. Stat. Acct. vol. ii. p. 29. 
 
APPENDIX. 279 
 
 Robert and his heirs from us and our successors forever, 
 with all liberties, commodities, and easements, and with 
 the pertinents, freely and quietly in all and by all with- 
 out any reservation : Paying therefor the said Robert and 
 his heirs to us and our successors at Tynyngham, at the 
 term of Whitsunday yearly, one pound of white wax in 
 name of feufarm, for all lands, services, and demands which 
 can be exacted or demanded by us and our successors for 
 the said Island with the pertinents : THEREFORE we William 
 and our successors do hereby Warrant, Maintain quiet, and 
 Defend to the foresaid Robert and his heirs, our foresaid 
 part of the Island of the Bass with the pertinents of the 
 same, forever, and that against all men and women: IN 
 TESTIMONY wliereo, we have made and appointed our seal 
 to be fixed to this present Charter. Given at Wedall the 
 fourth day of June, in the year of our Lord 1316, before 
 these witnesses Lords William and William by the grace of 
 God, of Melrose and of Dryburgh, with the Lords Abbots, 
 James of Douglas, Alexander Stuart, Henry Sinclair, Robert 
 Keith, Esquires, and others. 
 
 The following Letter will throw some additional 
 light on the history of the family of Lander : 
 
 Sir THOMAS DICK LAUDER of Fountainhall, 
 
 Bart., to Mr. CRAWFORD, W. S. 
 THE G-RANGE HOUSE, ISth December, 1847. 
 DEAR SIR, It has occurred to me that it may 
 be just as well to put you in possession of the fact, 
 that the family of Lauder of Lauder Tower and 
 the Bass, continued to be the same until the time 
 of the Indenture I sent you. The Bass then went 
 
280 APPENDIX. 
 
 into a junior branch of the family, and, as the 
 shortest way of explaining this, I may quote from 
 the Burke Peerage and Baronetage the matter 
 taken from our family documents : " Sir Robert 
 Lauder of Bass, so designed in a curious indenture 
 between him and the preaching friars of Dundee, 
 of date 1531, which document was also robbed from 
 the charter-chest by the housebreaker in 1836, and 
 never recovered. Down to this Sir Robert, the ti- 
 tles of Lauder and of Bass were indiscriminately 
 used by the family, and it is his armorial bearings 
 that are given as those of Lauder of Bass in the 
 works of Lindsay of the Mount. He married 
 Alison or Marietta Cranstoun, and died in 1561. 
 Besides his eldest son, Richard Lauder of Lauder, 
 who was his successor, he left a son Robert, to whom 
 he gave the Bass, and other East Lothian lands, 
 thus creating a separate family with that title." 
 This junior family made several changes upon the 
 original family arms, for whilst they preserved the 
 griffon in the shield instead of the white lion used 
 by the chief, they took angels as supporters, and 
 instead of the crest of the chief family, a tower 
 with a man in a watching posture looking out of 
 it, they assumed the crest of a gannet sitting upon 
 a rock. One of the last lairds of Bass was with 
 
_ 
 
 APPENDIX. 281 
 
 Queen Mary upon Carberry Hill, at the time she 
 was taken to Edinburgh by the Lords. Not long 
 after this, this branch of the family fell into decay, 
 after which the Bass underwent various tranfer- 
 ences, until it was afterwards sold to the Govern- 
 ment by Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, 
 Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who was my great- 
 great-grandfather, having been father-in-law to Lord 
 Fountainhall.* The sum paid for the Bass was 
 4000, and the sale was in October, 1671. Near 
 the harbor of North Berwick, on a sandy eminence 
 close to the shore, stand the remains of what is 
 traditionally called the " Auld Kirk." In the 
 burial-place of this, which has been much encroach- 
 ed upon by the sea, a large stone lies flat in the 
 green centre of the area which the building must 
 have inclosed, and is said to mark the place of in- 
 terment of the Lauders of the Bass. 
 
 I am, dear Sir, yours truly, 
 
 THOS. DICK LAUDER. 
 
 I. THE PROPERTY OF THE BASS. 
 The following documents are interesting on two 
 accounts as showing that the Bass was used as a 
 place of confinement so early as 1583 ; and that the 
 
 * Fountainhall is in the parish of Pentcaitland and coun- 
 ty of East Lothian. See Statistical Account, vol. ii. p. 349. 
 
282 APPENDIX. 
 
 Solan geese and other fowls frequenting the island, 
 anciently were and continue to be, the private pro- 
 perty of the owner of the island. The first is a Ra- 
 tification by Parliament in 1 592, of an Act of Secret 
 Council in 1583. See Thomson's edition of the 
 Acts of Parliament, vol. iii. p. 614. 
 
 " RATIFICATIOUN of ane act of secreit Counsaill 
 
 in favouris of the Laird of Bass. 
 ' Forsamekle as oure soverane Lord w 1 avise of 
 the lordis of his hieness Secreit Counsaill be speciall 
 act and ordinance thairof, maid upon the xxj day of 
 Januar the zeir of god J ra V c fourscoir thre zeiris, 
 Understanding how profitable the solane geiss and 
 utheris fowlis, qlk hantis reparis and biggis, within 
 the lie of bass zeirlie ar to the comoun weal of this 
 realme, and haill leigis of the same, and how hurtfull 
 the slaying and distroying thairof ar to the haill 
 subiectis of this realme, Maide and constitute Mais- 
 ter george lauder of bass, his aris and assignais and 
 successouris lardis of bass, his hienes comissioners, 
 To tak and apprehend all and quhatsumevir persoun 
 or personis quha happynis to slay ony of the saidis 
 geiss or uther kind of fowlis and birdis, and To mi- 
 nister justice upoun thame as accordis of the law, 
 like as at mair lenth is contenit in the said act of 
 secreitt counsaill, of the dait foirsaid Quhilk act oure 
 
APPENDIX. 283 
 
 said soverane lord with express avise & consent of 
 the estatis of this present parliament, Ratifies and 
 apprevis in all pointis clausses articles and condi- 
 tionis therein contenit after the forme and tennor 
 of the same in all points & decernis and ordanis 
 the same to be insert therein, as ane act maid in this 
 present parliament, and the saniy to stand as ane 
 perpetuall law statute and ordinance, and to be put 
 to decre executionn agains the contravenaris thairof 
 in all points perpetuallie in all tymes euming, off the 
 qlk act the tennour followis : Apud halyruidhous 
 vigesimo primo die mensis Januarji anno dni mille- 
 simo quigentissimo octuagesimo tertio, Forsamekle as 
 the kings Majestic and lordis of secreit counsaill, 
 Understanding that be the speciall benefite and pro- 
 visioun of god, the solane geiss and utheris profitable 
 fowlis hauntiss and repairis in the He of the bass, and 
 has thair nestis and nutriment thairin and brings 
 furth zeirlie thair burdis and foullis in grite quanti- 
 tie and nowmer, and almaist in na uther pairt of this 
 realme, to the greit weill and comoditie of the hail 
 subjectis of this realme, duelland nixt adjacent thair- 
 to, sua that reasone guid order and policie requiris 
 that the benefite qlk god hes placit in ane realme, 
 for the weillfair of the haill inhabitantis thereof suld 
 not be certane privat and invyious persons be impe- 
 
284 APPENDIX. 
 
 dit and distroyit, as in vray deid, the inhabitants of 
 the cuntries of fyff and angus, and utheris partis of 
 the north lyand adjacent to the sey cost, As alsua 
 the sienien of fischeraw, acbesons heaven, salt pans, 
 north beruik, dunbar, skaitraw, haymouth and uthe- 
 ris sey townis on the south syd of forth ceiss not 
 pntlie, like as thai haue not ceissit thir dyvers zeiris 
 bygane To slay and destroy the saidis Solane geiss, 
 be casting off neittis & hykis with bait and burris 
 To draw and allure the auld solane geiss to the bait- 
 tis quhairin the saidis personis and marinaris ar, 
 and then to take and slay the saidis solane geiss, for 
 na uther benefite or comoditie of thame bot for t'hair 
 fedderis onlie ; ffor the saidis solane geis quhen thai 
 depairt fra the said ile as they do continwally anys 
 in the zeir, are auld and leyne, unable for any man's 
 meitt. as alsua quhen thay returne anys in the zeir, 
 hame agane to the Ile are unhable to the nurische- 
 ment of ony persoun, and sua the saidis auld Solane 
 geiss being so zeirly slayne and distroyit as saidis, 
 thay ar maid unhable to deck young birds & geis 
 apt for the nutriment of the subjectis of this realme; 
 and will not decist and ceis theirfra w th out his hieness 
 and his counsaill put remeid tharto : QUHAIFOIR his 
 Majestic w l advise of the saidis Lordis of his secreit 
 counsaill for stancheing of the lyk enormitie in tymo 
 
APPENDIX. 285 
 
 cuming hes Ordanit and ordanis all skeppairs and ma- 
 rinars of schipps or boittes and every personis quhat- 
 sumevir, usaris of sick moyen ingy ne & inventioun, for 
 destroying and slaying of the saidis foullis and solane 
 geis, To be callit and convenit befoir the baillies of 
 dunbar, or utheris jugeis to be depute be M r george 
 Lauder of bass, and his successouris lardis of bass, 
 qlkis jugeis the saidis Jordis be thir presentis gevis 
 thame power ta mak and depute als oft as neid beis 
 for quhome they sal be halden to ans , To sitt and 
 hald courtis within either dunbar or ony uther toun 
 or place, for taking cognitioun in the said caus, and 
 To call and convene the saidis personis before the 
 saidis Jugeis, and gif thai be fund culpable of the 
 saidis crimes To decerne the contravenaris the fault 
 being proven be famous witnesses, Ilk ane of thame 
 in the pane of twentie pundis toties quoties, The 
 ane half thairof to be employit to his Maiestie & 
 payment thereof, to his Majesties thesaurer, in his 
 name to mak, and the uther half to the said Mr 
 George and his successouris to apply, and in cais 
 the personis quhilkis sal happin to be convenit as 
 said is, be unable and unresponsal to pay the saidis 
 pecunial panis, To decerne thair personis to be 
 wardit within the place of bass or ony uther pairt 
 quhair the said Mr George or his saidis successouris 
 
r 
 
 286 APPENDIX. 
 
 sail pleis, during the space of ane zeir thaireftir, 
 upon their awin expenss With full power and comis- 
 sioun to saidis Jugeis To direct preceptis in their 
 awin names for callin and convening of the saidis per- 
 sonis afoir thame, and poynding of the guidis & geir 
 of the personis contravenaris for the foirsaid sowme, 
 as alsna for sumoning of Witneses Ilk persoun 
 under the panes of Ten poundis, The absentis 
 to amerciate adjudge &> unlaw in the said sowme, 
 And for the same be thair awin preceptis lykwyis 
 to poynd and distrenzie, to be applyd as is above 
 mentionat, Clerkisfiandis. dempstaris and all utheris 
 officiaris and memberis of court neidful To mak, creat, 
 substitute & ordane, for qlkis the said lard of bass 
 shall be halden to answer, and generallie all and 
 sundrie uther things to do exerce & use, qlkis in the 
 premisses, and for the executioun thairof is necessa- 
 rilie requirit to be done fferme & stable halding and 
 for to hald, and quhatsumevir thingis the saids jugeis 
 sail lawfullie do heir in decerning ordaning and de- 
 claring be thir presentis. That the decrettis to be 
 given & pronunsit be the said Jugeis sal have the 
 lyk strenth force & effect, for poynding of the 
 guidis & geir of the personis contravenaris of thir 
 presentis as the decreit of ony other juge within 
 this realnie, And that l res be direct for intimatioun 
 
APPENDIX. 287 
 
 and publication heirof be oppin proclamatioun at 
 the mercat eroces of dundie, abirbrothok, montrose, 
 sandandrois, craill, anstruther, pittenveme, sant 
 monanis, weymis, dysrt, kircaldie, kingorne, burnt 
 Hand, ahindor, Inverkething, and utheris sej townis, 
 on the north syd of forth As alsua in the Townis 
 and heavynis of south ferie, cramond, leith, fischer- 
 rjiw, salt pan is of Prestoun, northberuik. dunbar, 
 Skaitraw, aymouth, and utheris places neidfull, 
 quhauttnow nane pretend ignorance of the same, 
 and to comand and charge all our soverane lordis 
 leigis To concur fortifie & assist the said jugeis, in 
 the executioun of the premisses And to do nor at- 
 tempt na thing to their hinderance, as thai ilk one of 
 thame will answer to his Majesfcie upoun thair obe- 
 dience, and at thair uttermaist charge & perell. 
 Extractum de libro actorum Secreti Consilii, S. D. 
 JSL regis 1 F. C. 
 
 The property of the Bass was acquired by Presi* 
 dent Dalrymple by Charter from the crown, dated 
 31st July, 1706. The description in the Charter is 
 as follows : 
 
 " Totam et Integram Insulam vel rupem vocat lie 
 Bass ad nos proprie pertinen jacen. infra parochiam 
 de Northberwick, constabularium de Haddingtown 
 et vicecomitatum de Edinburgh, cum singulis dom- 
 
288 APPENDIX. 
 
 ibus edificiis partibus pendiculis et pertinen. pro- 
 ficuis casualitatibus et emolumentis eidem pertinen. 
 cum omni Jure titulo interesse proprietate et pos- 
 sessione quae nos aut praedecessores nostri quobis 
 modo Habuimus habemus aut praetendere vel cla- 
 mare potuimus proficuis ex eadem levan. et partic- 
 ulariter absq. ullo prejudicio diet, generalitatis Jus 
 et Dispositionem diet. Insula de Bass per demor- 
 tuum Dominum Andream Ramsay de Abbotshall 
 tanquam successorem per progressum Domini de 
 Bass. In favorem nostro avunculo Carole Secundi 
 Regis beatse memoriae concess." 
 
 This Charter was ratified by Parliament in March 
 1707, and the Island has been ever since in the un- 
 interrupted possession of the Dalrymple family. 
 
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