Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-05-14
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From Hugh Milers popular Geology. u
HOW BOULDERS TRAVEL.


Some of my audience may have heard of n
boulder, well known on both sides of the Mo
ray Firth as the Travelled Stone of Petty
a district which includes the Moor of Cullod-
en-, and at whose parish church Hector Boece
saw the gigantic bones of the colossal Little
John. The CIdch din n-AbaR or black stone
of the white bog-tor such is the graphically
descriptive Gaelic name of the moss-meas-
ures about six feet in hight by from six to sew
en- feet i'll breadth and thickness, and served.
up to the 18th of February, 1899, as a march
stone between the properties of Castle Stuart
and Culloden. 1t lay just within foodmark,
near where little stream empties itself into a
shallow sandy bay. There had been a severe.
long-continued frost throughout the early part
of the month and the upper portions of the
bay had acquired, mainly through the agency
of the streamlet, continuous covering of ice,
that had attained round the base of the stone.
which it clasped fast, a thickness of eighteen
inches. On the night of the 10th the tide rose
unusually high on the beach, and there brUke
out a violent hurricane from the eastsouth-
east, accompanied by a snow storm. There is
a meal mill in the immediate neighborhood of
the stone; and when the old miler-as he re-
lated the story to the late Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder-got up on the morning of the 20th so
violent was the storm, and SO huge the snow
wreaths that blocked up every window and
door, and rose over the caves, that he could
hardly make his way to his barns, a journey
of but few yards and in returning again
from them to his dwelling, he narrowly
escaped losing himself in the drift. In
looking towards the bay, in one Of the paus-
es OF the storm, he could scarce credit his eye
sight; the immense Clach dhH n-Abdn had dis
ppeared-vanished-go clean off the ground
and he called to his wife in astonishment and
oil fl,otS tIo
honest woman looked out, and then rubbed her
eyes as if to verify their evidence; but the
fact was unquestionabe--th "meikle stane"
certainly ''was ava, and there remained but
hollow pit in the sand, with long, shallow
furrow, stretching from the pit outwards to
where the snow rhine closed thick over the sea,
to mark where it had been. When, however,
the weather cleared up the stone again became
visible, lying out in the sands uncovered by
the ebb, seven hundred and eighty feet from its
former position. In the evening of the day,
the neighbors fiocked out by scores to examine
the scene of so extraordinary a prodigy.
Where the stone had lain they found but the
deep dent, connected by the furrow which lay
athwart the bay, in the line of the hurricane,
with the stone ITSELF around the base of which
there still projected thick cornice of ice In
its new position the stone still les and only
few years ago-mayhap, still-a wooden
post, which marked the point where the two
contiguous properties met, marked the spot
from which, after a rest of ages, it had set out
on its short voyage.
My other case Of boulder trayelling-in
some respects a more curious case than the
one related-occurred early in the present
century, on the eastern coast of Sutherland
shire. Near the small hamlet of Torribal, in
the upper part of Loeb Fleet there stood,
about fifty years ago, a rude obelisk Of I'M
dressed stone, generally regarded as Danish,
which, though more ancient and authentic his
tory, or even tradition, in the district, was less
so bad than the old coast line as it had been
evidently erected, subsequent to the last
change Of level, on the fiat marginal strip
which interVenes between the old line and the
sea, 1t rose in the middle Of Il swampy hol-
low, which protracted rains sometimes con-
verted into strip Of water, and which was
sometimes swept by the overhowings Of
neighboring river. On the eve of the incident
which proved the terminating one in its histo-
nv, the hollow, previously filled with rain wa
ter, had been frozen to the bottom by CON
tinued frost, which was, however, on the eve
of breaking up and a dense log lay timex IN
the valley, when benighted Highlander, re-
turning tipsy from market by the light of the
moon, came staggering in the direction Of the
standing stone and in drunken frolic set his
bonnet on the top of it and then, wandering
off into the mist he lost sight Of both stone and
bonnet and, failing to regain them, he had to
return bareheaded TO his home. The rain came
on I; the river rose over its banks; the ice-cake
around the obelisk fioated high above the lev
elwrenching up the obelisk along with it, as the
ice of the St. Lawrence wrenched up the stakes
described by Sir Charles Lyell and both ice
cake and obelsk foated down the loch to the
sea. As the morning broke-a fierce morning
of flood and tempest-they were seen passing
what some forty years ago was known as the
Little Ferry and the alarm went abroad along
the shores on both sides, that there was man
standing in the middle Of the Loeb on the
floating ice, and in course of being swept out
to the ocean. Poor man he had been cross
ing the river it was inferred, when the ice
broke up, and though the enterprise was a
somewhat perous one, for the ice fragments |
were rushing fnriously along on the wild tide
of the loch, maddened by the inundation, a
boat, double manned, shot out from the shore
to the rescue, and soon neared the drifting ice
foe 1t was ultimately seen, however, that
the supposed man was but Danish obelisk
bearing on its head a mysterious bonnet; and
bonnet and obelisk were left to find their way
to the German Ocean, in which it is probable
they now both lie. These modern instances Of
boulder travelling may serve to show how
huge stones originally associated with the boul-
der clay, may have come to rest on the arena
ceous or gravelly deposits which overlie it.
Through the second voyage of the Petty boul-
der, it was deposited ON a recently formed bed
of sand and the standing-stone of Torribal
may now rest on sea-shells that were living
half century ago