!
Island of Staffa, which Sir Joseph Banks has described
as very much resembling the ribs of a
ship. It was the more provoking, as there was
every reason to believe, from the accounts already
published, that the columns of Stappen afford the
most convincing proof of their igneous origin, being
here found buried in the midst of lava, above,
below, and around them. Here the theory of
the Neptunists, who long maintained the aqueous
origin of basalt, falls to the ground. “ All are now
agreed,” says Mr. Lyell, “ that it would have been
impossible for human ingenuity to invent one more
distant from the tru th .”
But though I had to sustain a great and mortifying
disappointment in being obliged to desist
from any further attempt to land, the extreme
kindness and liberality of Sir John Stanley, since
my return, have, in so far as valuable information
and correct description go, more than compensated
any personal gratification that I might have
received, and enabled me to give a much better
account of this place than I could hope to have
acquired by any exertion of my own. He has not
only condescended to communicate to me his ideas
regarding this most interesting quarter of Iceland,
but has supplied extracts from the Journals of the
gentlemen who accompanied him, Mr. Wright and
Mr. Benners, whose accounts of their perilous
ascent of the Snsefell Yokul will, I think, not be
the less interesting, because it was made upivards