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Giant's Causeway, in Ireland

them of three sides, some four, five, six, seven, eight, or even nine. Five or six sides seem to prevail most. From the bottom of the precipice to the sea at low water, along this pavement or causeway, which, from the artificial appearance it puts on, has doubtless, in a rude age, given name to the place, is a length of seven hundred and thirty feet. It has been observed to proceed into the ocean as far as can be traced by the eye in a calm and clear day. To any person who has seen both this place and Staffa, the idea naturally enough suggests itself, that they are parts of the same once continuous immense bed of columnar basalt. "There are properly three pavements proceeding into the sea, distinguished by the names of the Great Causeway, the Middle Causeway, and the West Causeway. These are three large gently sloping ridges of the ends of basaltic columns, with depressions between them, covered with large blocks or masses, that seem to have been from time to time detached, and rolled from the precipice. I had no opportunity of perceiving with what rocks the basalt of the Giant's Causeway is connected. I am told conchoidal white lime-stone meets it on both the east and west sides. There is in one place, near the east side of the Great Causeway, a green-stone vein, eight or ten feet wide, intersecting the basalt from north-west to south-east. "There was now pointed out to us by the guides a very rare and curious phenomenon, and which is particularly interesting, as it has been thought, by those who hold the igneous origin of basalt, to be a confirmation of their doctrine Nearly opposite to the West Causeway, and within about eighty feet of the top of the cliff, is found to exist a quantity of slags and ashes, unquestionably the production of fire. On ascending to this spot, which can be easily done, I found the slags and ashes deposited in a sort of bed about four feet thick, and running horizontally along the face of the basaltie precipice twenty or thirty feet. The ashes are in general observed to lie undermost, and the slags above them. They are covered with a considerable quantity of earth and stones, which all consist of basalt, are of a large size, some of them three or four feet or more in diameter, and the ashes likewise rest on the same sort of materials. What struck me here was, that these ashes and slags are entirely unconnected with any rock or formation which seems to be in situ, or in its original position. They are therefore, in my opinion, distinctly artificial, and nothing more than the remains of some large and powerful fire, which had been kept burning for a long while on the top of this precipice, used either as a signal, or for some other purpose which we cannot now ascertain; and that, owing to the part of the cliff on which the ashes were lying