1. On the Application of the Rocks of Ben Nevis to Ornamental Art

Extract

Many hundred tourists annually climb Ben Nevis, and shudder when they cast their eyes down its profound precipices; but no one seems to bethink him that, to view a great precipice aright, he should behold it from below, rather than from above, and consequently that the great North-Eastern Precipice should be seen from the valley opposite its base. No one, tourist or guide, visits the narrow rugged glen into which it descends; few of the neighbouring gentry—of my acquaintance at least—have made the excursion; and the only visitors I have heard of have been a few solitary geologists at long intervals of time. Nevertheless, in the year 1810, in the first volume of the Edinburgh Wernerian Society Transactions, the late Reverend Dr. Macknight, one of the ministers of this city,—a gentleman of many accomplishments, and, among these, skilled in geology,—has interspersed his geological account of the rocks of the mountain with a description, in the most glowing language, of many magnificent scenes in its great North-Eastern Precipice. But he appears to have thus encouraged only his geological successors to follow his example.