north of the Tweed, with scarcely any examples of secondary formations of late date, except in patches; and on the southern border, highly fossiliferous sedimentary strata predominate. Not only is the proportion of unproductive land in the former division vastly greater, but the soil and climate in the cultivable area are much less favourable to the progress of vegetation. The eastern coast of Scotland, however, bears a general resemblance to that of England, being more regular than the western, while the shores of both countries on the easterly side are remarkably free from islands, except a few of very small dimensions. Most of the important rivers likewise flow eastwardly to the basin of the North Sea.

The greatest extent of the mainland is north and south; and amounts to 287 miles, following a slightly diagonal line drawn from Dunnet Head to the Mull of Galloway, the northern and southern extremities. The breadth is extremely various, owing to the far advancing inlets on the eastern and western sides, which produce contractions so remarkable as to suggest the idea of the country being about to fall into fragments. Where the maximum expansion occurs under the parallel of 57° 30′, between Buchan Ness, the most easterly point, and the west coast of Ross-shire, the distance measures about 140 miles. But on the south, under the parallel of 56°, the opposite salt waters of the Forth and the Clyde are not more than 32 miles apart, and further north, between the head of Loch Broom and the mouth of the Oykel River, the width is diminished to 24 miles. On the east coast, all the principal indentations are river-estuaries, termed 'firths' (from the Scandinavian fiord'), and include those of the Forth, Tay, Moray, Cromarty, and Dornoch, passing from south to north. The west coast has only the estuary of the Clyde, which, however, surpasses all the rest in commercial importance. But to the northward of it, there is a continued series of long winding inlets which the waves of the Atlantic have contributed to scoop out, somewhat unfortunately called lochs, as the same term is applied to the inland lakes, and is apt to create confusion. These sea-lochs, together with the firths, increase enormously the coast-line of Scotland, the entire length of which is not less than 2500 miles. They place also every part of the surface, even where it is most solid, within little more than forty miles of the salt water. The interior of the country is commonly stated to consist of two distinct regions—the Highlands, generally in the north and west; and the Lowlands, in the south and east. The line of division between them is marked by a valley or plain, which extends across the entire island from north-east to south-west, or from the foot of the Grampians, where the range touches the shore of the North Sea, to the Clyde estuary, varying in width, and subject to hilly interruptions in its more southerly prolongation. This dividing-line is known in a principal part of its course as Strathmore, the 'great strath' or valley. The distinction of the surface into highland and lowland regions is of old historical date, and true to nature; but for descriptive purposes, it is more convenient to consider Scotland as distributed into three divisions, equally well marked by nature-southern, middle, and northern.

Southern Scotland comprehends the country extending from the narrow isthmus between the Clyde and Forth to the Irish Sea and the English border. It contains various tracts of gently undulating surface, cultivated with the highest degree of skill, but is also to some extent a hilly region, studded with isolated elevations, and traversed by continuous ranges, to which the name of the Southern Highlands is often applied. These ranges are distinguished generally by rounded or flat summits, gradual slopes, and a grassy clothing, features wholly distinct from the naked, precipitous, and frequently savage aspect of the Highlands proper. Towards the centre of the district rise the Lowther Hills, from which branches run north into Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire, and south through

Dumfriesshire and Kirkcudbrightshire, the Pentland, Moorfoot, and Lammermuir Hills, on the north and north-east, the Cheviots, forming in part the boundary between Scotland and England. The dales that lie between these ranges have their names from the streams flowing through them, as Tweeddale, Clydesdale, Nithsdale, and Annandale. They are celebrated in pastoral life and border song. The highest points are around the head waters of the Tweed and Clyde, where Queensberry Hill rises 2260 feet; Tinto Hill, 2316; Hart Fell, 2636; and Broadlaw, the loftiest summit, 2761 feet above the sea. In fine weather, from the green flat summit of Hart Fell, the view embraces Skiddaw in Cumberland on the south, and Ben Lomond on the north, at a direct distance of full seventy miles. The neighbourhood is remarkable for the Deil's Beef Tub, a wide hollow of great depth from which the infant stream of the Annan emerges. The mining village of Leadhills, where lead-mines have long been worked, and the native place of Allan Ramsay the poet, is said to be the highest inhabited spot in Great Britain, with exception of the huts of shepherds and gamekeepers in the Highlands, only occasionally occupied. Silurian rocks are extensively developed in the centre of this division, running too from coast to coast, with granite in the south-west, and the carboniferous formation on the north, in the basins of the Forth and Clyde, through which trap rocks have been variously erupted.

Middle Scotland, the main mass of the country, extends from the preceding district to Glenmore, or the 'great glen,' which stretches diagonally across the island from Fort William to Inverness, and is occupied by several lakes connected together by the Caledonian Canal, forming with it a bond of union between the Atlantic and the North Sea. In this region, the Sidlaw and Ochill Hills, ranges of moderate elevation, form the southern boundary of Strathmore; while on its northern and western sides tower the majestic Grampians, apparently an impassable barrier, in the recesses of which the old Caledonians found a secure asylum from the Roman legions. Formations of the old red sandstone and carboniferous series occupy the south and east, while the mountains in the opposite directions are composed chiefly of crystalline schists, with granite in the higher parts. The Grampians have a stern and desolate aspect, a broken and serrated outline, and seem solitudes of nature into which man and his labours may not intrude. In fact, it is only by following some of the streams which break through the rampart, that admission to its wilds is gained. Naked rocks, or rocks scantily clothed with brown heath and lichens; frowning precipices unsoftened by the hand of time, as if just rifted from equally angular masses; narrow glens where the dark-brown streams foam over a craggy bed; broad straths, where the torrent slumbers for a while in some deep black lake; and bleak moors only diversified by moss-grown stones and solitary tarns, with the scarlet crest and bright eye of the moorcock, are the leading features of the scenery. The Central Grampians, the highest elevations in the United Kingdom, stretch east and west from shore to shore, a length of nearly a hundred miles, and have a breadth varying from twelve to twentyfive miles, with an average height of from 2000 to 3000 feet. But many summits attain a much greater altitude. At the western extremity, Ben Nevis, the culminatingpoint of the Britannic system, rises to 4406 feet above the sea. From the western side of the central chain, the mountain masses are prolonged from north to south, reaching to the estuary of the Clyde, and are conveniently called the Southern Grampians, of which Ben Lomond (3192 feet) is the most southerly important member, well known from being contiguous to the great centres of population.

The monarch-mountain of the kingdom, Ben Nevis, has the advantage of being detached, and hence its entire outline is exhibited in a single view. On one side the base is almost washed by the tides of Loch Eil, while in other directions, river-valleys separate it from all the neighbouring highlands. It shoots up from the level of a moor,

has a circuit of more than twenty-four miles, and consists of two hills, geologically distinct, placed one upon the other. The lower, nearly 3000 feet high, is an oblong mass of granite, forming a generally flat plateau, on which lies a mossy tarn, plentifully fed by the mists from the western ocean, and the source of a torrent. The upper hill, or true vertex, is a naked irregular four-sided prism of black or dark-gray porphyry, with a zone of the subjacent granite completely surrounding its base. It forms a terrific precipice on the north-east, with a sheer descent of not less than 1500 feet from the summit. Though the line of perpetual congealation is not reached, it is very closely approached.

Hence the higher portions of the Grampians long retain the winter's snow, and it often remains throughout the summer in beds and patches in the sheltered ravines. A northern offset of the main range consists of a group of mountains remarkable for huge proportions and great general altitude-Ben Avon, 3826 feet; Cairngorm, 4090; Cairntoul, 4245; Braeriach, 4280; and Ben Macdhui, 4295 feet. These are

'The grisly champions that guard
The infant rills of Highland Dee,'

lying around the sources of the river. Ben Macdhui was ascended by the Queen in October 1857.

Northern Scotland includes the remainder of the country up to the Pentland Firth, and is a region of high moorlands, wild, barren, and desolate, covered with heath and bog, the platform of mountain-ranges, with some extent of productive soil on the eastern

RIVERS OF SCOTLAND.

391 shores. The great general elevation of the surface detracts from the apparent height of the summits, but Ben Wyvis, near Dingwall, attains 3422 feet, and Ben Attow 4000, on the borders of Ross and Inverness. In the two northern counties, the surface lowers from west to east, and the greater part of Caithness is a plain, largely clothed with stunted heath, properly belonging to the Scottish lowlands.

All the rivers of importance in Scotland carry their waters to the North Sea, with the exception of the Clyde. Arranged according to the magnitude of their basins, they rank in the following order:

The Tay, the most considerable river in the length of its course and its area of drainage, descends from the mountains on the western side of Perthshire, forms the beautiful, long, narrow expanse of Loch Tay, flows very circuitously through the county, receiving many feeders, and passes through an extensive estuary to the sea, ten miles below Dundee. Sands obstruct the mouth, and increase the difficulties of navigation by their shifting nature. The upper part of its course lies through a wild and highly-romantic country, and its basin is geologically interesting as supplying examples of everything connected with the action of running water, the erosion of rocks, the transport of soil, and the changes to which lakes and valleys are subject. In point of value the Tay stands at the head of the salmon rivers. Shoals of porpoises, numbering hundreds of individuals, haunt the mouth during the fishing-season on the look-out for their prey, and droves of watchful seals never leave the estuary. The stream is remarkable for the quantity of water it brings down, not owing to the depth or width of the channel, but the rapidity of the current, and the numerous feeders connected with cloudy mountain regions and long snow-clad heights. It exceeds in this respect every other river in the kingdom. The mean discharge, according to careful estimates, amounts to 273,117 cubic feet of water per minute, while that of the Thames is stated to be only 80,220, or less than one-third that of the Tay.

The historic Tweed and the commercial Clyde descend from the highland centre of Southern Scotland, and offer an example of streams having closely contiguous sources, and flowing off to opposite basins. The Tweed, pure and limpid, once famous for its strong square towers erected to keep the English borderers in check, on the top of which beacon-fires blazed as signals of alarm, travels eastward to the North Sea, which it enters at Berwick; while the Clyde, after some feeders have run at first towards the east, turns to the north-west, and joins the Atlantic through one of the great indentations of the western coast. This river remarkably changes its character, being an impetuous mountaintorrent in the upper part of its course, and having a calmly-flowing current covered with ships in the lower, on the surface of which the first steamer built in the United Kingdom was launched. It forms celebrated falls in the neighbourhood of Lanark, two above and two below the town. The uppermost, Bonnington Linn, is a perpendicular descent of thirty feet; the second and grandest, Corra Linn, is a fall of eighty-four feet, in three leaps; the third, Dundaff Linn, is small; the fourth, Stonebyres, is a descent of seventysix feet, broken into three distinct falls by two projecting rocks. To the Spey, the

distinction belongs of being the wildest, most capricious, and rapid of all British rivers, with the peculiarity of the rapidity distinguishing the lower portions of its course. It issues from a small pool within a few miles of a western sea-loch, and after slumbering in dark mossy lakes, rushes on with headlong speed to an opposite north-eastern shore. The

stream passes through the strath of the same name, Strathspey, one of the best wooded parts of the Highlands, and affords water-carriage for the timber, large quantities of which are dd floated down to the sea, entered below Fochabers. A peculiar feature also belongs to the Dee, that of descending from the highest spring in the British Islands. The Wells of Dee are near the top of Braeriach, one of the Cairngorm group of mountains, at the height of 4060 feet above the sea. Dr Skene Keith, in the middle of July, the hottest month of the year, found the main source still running under an arch of

snow,

The Forth is formed by the junction of two streams, both of which descend from the north-eastern slope of Ben Lomond, and come to a confluence at Aberfoyle. The river flows from thence through low alluvial plains to the magnificent firth on which Leith and Edinburgh are situated. It is

very remarkable for its windings, which are specially definite and numerous between Stirling and Alloa, rendering the intermediate distance by water twelve miles, while by land it is only six. These windings, called the 'Links of Forth,' form a series of small peninsulas of extreme fertility, which gave rise to the rhyming proverb:

"A lairdship in the bonnie Links o' Forth
Is better than an earldom o' the North.'

The Firth of Forth is about fifty miles long by four to five miles broad from Leith to Burntisland, and has the small islands of Inchgarvie, Inchcolm, Inchkeith, and May in its basin.

The great superficial irregularities of the country render most of the rivers unnavigable, and originate numerous waterfalls, some of which form very effective scenery, with their accompaniments of wood and rock. Besides those of the Clyde, already noticed, the Grey Mare's Tail, in the county of Dumfries, denominates a lofty cascade of the Moffat