FIRST IMPRESSIONS
OF
ENGLAND AND ITS PEOPLE
CHAPTER I.
Led to convert an intended Voyage to Orkney into a Journey to England.—Objects of the Journey.—Carter Fell.—The Border Line.—Well for England it should have been so doggedly maintained by the weaker Country.—Otterburn.—The Mountain Limestone in England, what it is not in Scotland, a true Mountain Limestone.—Scenery changes as we enter the Coal Measures.—Wretched Weather.—Newcastle.—Methodists.—Controversy on the Atonement.—The Popular Mind in Scotland mainly developed by its Theology.—Newcastle Museum; rich in its Geology and its Antiquities; both branches of one subject.—Geologic History of the Roman Invasion.—Durham Cathedral.—The Monuments of Nature greatly more enduring than those of Man.—Cyathophyllum Fungites.—The Spotted Tubers, and what they indicated.—The Destiny of a Nation involved in the Growth of a minute Fungus.
I had purposed visiting the Orkneys, and spending my few weeks of autumn leisure in exploring the Old Red Sandstone of these islands along the noble coast sections opened up by the sea. My vacations during the five previous seasons had been devoted to an examination of the fossiliferous deposits of Scotland. I had already in some degree acquainted myself with the Palæozoic and Secondary formations of the northern half of the kingdom and the Hebrides. One vacation more would have acquainted me with those of Orkney also, and completed
