.,-,// I,IT<JS .iug\J we*
EHWAAD I.
3tn
NATURAL ENGINES, TOOL-MARKS & CHIPS
WITH
SKETCHES TAKEN AT HOME AND ABROAD
BY A TRAVELLER
THK AINSA MRTEORITK.
VOL. II.
PHILADELPHIA : J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
MDCCCLXV.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PAGE
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES l
CHAPTER XXIX.
BALTIC CURRENT 2 BRITISH ISLES 2 IRELAND 1 CONNEMARA
GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES . . . . .18
CHAPTER XXX.
BALTIC CURRENT 3 BRITISH ISLES 3 IRELAND 2 CONNEMARA 2
NORTH-WESTERN AND NORTH-EASTERN COASTS GALWAY, WEST-
PORT, AND 1)ERRY VEAGH CURVES . . . .42
CHAPTER XXXI.
BALTIC CURRENT 4 BRITISH ISLES 4 SCOTLAND GALWAY CURVE
ARRAN ........ 65
CHAPTER XXXII.
BALTIC CURRENT 5 BRITISH ISLES 5 SCOTLAND 2 WESTPORT CURVE
CEANTIRE 72
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PAGE
BALTIC CURRENT 6 GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES ARGYLL, ETC. 78
CHAPTER XXXIV.
BALTIC CURRENT 7 BRITISH ISLES 6 SCOTLAND 3 GALWAY CURVE
LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC. . . .93
CHAPTER XXXV.
BALTIC CURRENT 8 BRITISH ISLES 7 SCOTLAND 4 GALWAY CURVE
NORTH-EAST COAST ...... 107
CHAPTER XXXVI.
BALTIC CURRENT 9 BRITISH ISLES 8 SCOTLAND 5 NEWPORT LINE
CENTRAL SCOTLAND . . . . .118
CHAPTER XXXVII.
BALTIC CURRENT 10 BRITISH ISLES 9 SCOTLAND 6 DERRY VEAGH
CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL AND NORTHERN SCOTLAND , 132
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
BALTIC CURRENT 11 BRITISH ISLES 10 SCOTLAND 7 STRATH BRAN,
BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. . . . .151
CHAPTER XXXIX.
BALTIC CURRENT 12 BRITISH ISLES 11 ISLE OF MAN . .168
CHAPTER XL.
BALTIC CURRENT 13 BRITISH ISLES 12 YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 177
CHAPTER XLI.
BALTIC CURRENT 14 BRITISH ISLES 13 WALES 2 203
CONTENTS. Vll
CHAPTER XLII.
PAGE
BALTIC CURRENT 15 BRITISH ISLES 14 ENGLAND (SOUTH) . -'-v' 215
CHATTER XLIII.
BELLEISLE CURRENT AMERICA '--.' '''-. <: : . - '-'.-' ' v 235
CHAPTER XLIV.
GLACIAL PERIODS . . . . . . ... 249
CHAPTER XLV.
DEPOSITION NATURAL SCIENCE FORCE ENGINES TOOLS MARKS 262
CHAPTER XLVI.
DEPOSITION 2 TIME 2 TEMPERATURE LIGHT AIR WATER
WINDS WAVES FORM . -";- ''- . & : '-V' . r.- 268
CHAPTER XLVII.
DEPOSITION 3 WINDS 2 WAVES 2 WAVE-MARKS . . . 275
CHAPTER XLVIII.
DEPOSITION 4 WINDS 3 WAVES 3 BEACHES \ ' . . 285
CHAPTER XLIX.
DEPOSITION 5 WINDS 4 WAVES 4 STREAM-MARKS . . 294
CHAPTER L.
DEPOSITION 6 BEDDING RAIN-MARKS . .303
CHAPTER LI.
DEPOSITION 7 FOSSILS ALTERED ROCKS . . 319
yiii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER LII.
PAGE
UPHEAVAL DYKES VEINS SUBLIMATION . . . 339
CHAPTEE LIII.
UPHEAVAL 2 RAYS AND WEIGHT 2 FUSION AND FREEZING METAL
AND SLAG ........ 354
CHAPTER LIV.
SPARKS VOLCANIC BOMBS METEORITES . . . 367
CHAPTER LV.
TUBES AND SPRINGS . . . . . . .387
CHAPTER LVI.
SPRINGS, CHAMBERS, TUBES, CRATERS, AND CONES . . .410
CHAPTER LVII.
RAYS ......... 438
CHAPTER LVIII.
FORCB, MOVEMENT, WORK, FORM 461
7 Jointed Tors, Connemara. ^
I Drawn from nature on the
ILLUSTEATIONS TO VOL. II.
Chiefly selected to illustrate forms which result from the action of
certain forces, and from movements caused by them. Marks of
Denudation, Deposition, and Upheaval: Gravitation, Radiation,
and Rotation : Forces : and Will.
Pig. Page
FRONTISPIECE Map, showing the present position of a
marine glacial period.
65 6 A small example of " roche moutonnee," Wales. Ice and
its marks. 1863.
66
67 10 Perched block, Connemara. ?
\ wood. 1863.
68 10 Dropped block, Connemara.-'
69 1 7 Forest of Gairloch. Ice-marks on a hill-shoulder ^-^ of gray
quartz, at about 1350 feet above the sea ; level with the
opposite edge of the glen '. Method of mapping striae.
70 19 Cloch Corril and the twelve pins of Connemara. Drawn
from nature on the wood, 1863. (Reversed.)
71 25 Train of blocks near Furness Lake ; and Moyculleen Hills.
Ditto.
72 2 8 Perched block on rounded tor, Cnoc Ourid, 1200 feet. Ditto.
73 29 Perched block, Cnoc Mordan, 1100 feet. Ditto.
74 64 Achill Head. A water-mark |_. Sea-margin : cliff. 1863.
75 85 Tors and perched blocks at 1600 feet. Top of Beinn Bhreac.
Drawn from nature on the wood. 1863.
76 92 Westport curve. An ice-mark in Scotland. Striae upon a
rock in Loch Fyne, about three miles south-west of Inver-
ary. From a photograph. 1863. ^~\
X ILLUSTRATIONS.
Fig. Page
77 106 A water-mark in Iceland. Merkiar Foss near Hecla. 5th
August 1861.
78 117 Granite veins in shattered beds of altered slate. Kailway
cutting at Dalwhinny. Drawn from nature on the block.
(Reversed.) A fire-mark under ice-marks and water-
marks. 1863.
79 150 Ancient sea-margin. Terraces about 700 feet above the
sea. Loch Eoisg. Eocks worn by ice. 1863.
80 158 West coast of Sutherland. Denudation on a large scale,
and ice-marks. 25th Sept. 1848.
81 167 Bounded granite boulder in a wood behind Tulloch, rest-
ing on slate, 540 feet above the sea. 1863.
82 184 Wales. Map, showing the general trend of hollows. Do.
83 197 N.E. corner of Wales. General form of, the country ^^. Do.
84 200 Coed Mawr, Wales. Sketch to show the direction of
high striae parallel to the Snowdon range. Do.
85 214 Devil's Bridge. A water-mark (J. Do.
86 221 Blakeston Tor, Dartmoor ^. Do.
87 225 Terraces at Stockbridge. Casting a small fly over heavy
fish. Ancient sea-margins, eddies, and vortices. Do.
88 230 Eddies and whirling floats. Do.
89 234" The Scilly Bishops." Lat. 49 51' N. The last of the
British Isles. From a sketch made 8th July 1859.
90 248 Maggoty Cove and Harbour of St. John's. Ice. June 1863.
Waves and Beaches. Denudation and Deposition.
91 261 A breaking wave. From a photograph. Taken Aug. 1858.
92 272 Diagram. Wave-forms and wave-marks.
93 279 Cross-rollers at Isle de Rhe, near Rochelle. From a sketch
made from the Tour de Balene. November 1859.
94 286 A breaker. Sketched in Cornwall, 1850.
95 288 Bolands Hofvdi, Iceland. Cliff and talus, beach and
breaker. August 16, 1862.
ILLUSTEATIONS. XI
Fig. Page
96 293 A snow- wave in Cheshire. Sketched from nature, after a
strong breeze of wind. January 28, 1865.
97 298 Section of a snow-beach. Copied from a drift in the south
of England.
98 299 Diagram. Damp sand beaches packed by air-waves near
a rivulet in Iceland.
99 306 A working model of a marine formation.
100 311 Diagram. Stratified snow-beds forming.
101 312 Drift-beds on Goat Island, Niagara. 1864.
102 318 Fossils. St. Louis and Mammoth Cave. 1864.
Upheaval.
103 338 An ounce of silver, prepared at Newcastle. Kadiation and
form. Fusion and freezing. December 16, 1863.
104 353 " Sphericity of water." Radiation. A hollow sphere of
fluid. Ditto.
104a 379 Sections of volcanic bombs, from Hraundal in Iceland.
Printed from the stones. Radiation and rotation.
Fusion and freezing. Chambered crust and core. Bent
rays. August 20, 1862.
105 400 Vertical section through a frozen stream of wrinkled slag.
Printed from the stone. Radiation and flow. Fusion
and freezing. 1862.
106 409 The Geysers from the horse-track. Tubes, cones, and
craters. 1861 and 1862.
107 414 The Great Geyser boiling over. Eruption, projectiles,
tubes, and cones. Saturday, August 2, 1862.
108 415 Strokr and Geyser. Tubes, section. Ditto.
109 423 Sections through the surface of a frozen lava-stream.
Printed from the stones. Radiation and flow. Fusion
and freezing. August 23, 1862.
110 450 Diagram. Centrifugal force.
111 453 Diagram. Radiation and rotation.
xii ILLUSTRATIONS.
Pig. Pago
112 480 Wood-engraving by rays. The sun's path in the sky.
1863.
113 481 Ditto. The sun's path on two cloudy days. 1862,1863.
114 481 Ditto. Solar scale. 1865.
115 484 Ditto. The sun's burning power at about twelve degrees
above the horizon for about three months. Horizontal
section of a dial. 1859.
116 487 Ditto. The sun's burning power at noon for about three
months. Vertical section on the meridian of a dial.
1859.
117 501 From a photograph of the sun, March 1859, supposed to
be a picture of forms in the solar atmosphere which
result from gravitation, radiation, and rotation. Watch
and dial.
CHAPTEE XXVIII.
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
WHEN facts have been gathered, sorted, and piled, the mound
is an observatory. When a train of machinery has been
explored, from the dial-plate even to the axis of one small
wheel, the dial may be read though the entire engine may
still be incomprehensible. When an engine has been seen to
work, the tool-marks may be used as records of work done.
When a creature has been seen to make tracks the old spoor
may be followed. In the preceding pages an arctic current
has been followed ; a pile of facts gathered ; part of an engine
explored ; tool-marks studied ; a spoor learned ; a theory has
been built on a pile of ice ; it will fall to the ground if ill
founded. The way to test it is to work up stream, from delta
to source, from circumference to centre, from the spoor to the
deer, from old ice-marks to melted ice, from tool-marks back
to the wheels which carved out hills and hollows. Old marks
in the British Isles will serve to test the theory of an old
Baltic Current ; and the following pages give the result of an
attempt to read and translate the record.
It has been shown that a current probably flowed from
the polar basin through the Gulf of Bothnia, over Southern
Scandinavia and Denmark, and parts of England, if ever
central Europe was under water ; and if so its tracks should
remain in the British Isles.
If men wish to know from what quarter the wind is
VOL. II. B
2 BALTIC CURRENT.
blowing they look up to the nearest chimney for a stream of
smoke ; to a steeple for a weathercock ; to mist on a hill ; or
to clouds moving freely in air. They do not watch eddies
near the ground which whirl round corners and posts in
streets, or past rocks and glens in hilly countries ; and which
pack sand and whirling autumn leaves in curved ridges and
furrows in every sheltered nook.
The weather-wise look up to some high point in the
general air-current, where the wind is not altered by impedi-
ments. If we wish to know the direction in which the wind
commonly blows, we look for a tree growing in some exposed
place, and note the bend in the trunk and branches (vol. i. pp.
31, 59). It is vain to look at sheltered trees, or at trees in
o-lens where the wind eddies and whirls in all directions, while
&
the main stream blows steadily on above. If we want to find
out the course of an old arctic current which brought glacial
drift to grind British rocks, we must in like manner look up.
It is vain to search sheltered glens for marks of a general
system of glacial denudation, and for tracks of polar ice moved
by ocean-currents. If such marks exist they can only be
found at exposed places ; on wide plains ; on hill-tops ; on
high ridges, where trees and plants are bent by the wind.
To find out whence British glacial drift came, British hill-
tops near the coast, and far inland, must be searched for
marks, and the marks followed from hill to hill. Marks of
old local glaciers, and old local glacial systems, must be
sought in hollows, for glaciers like rivers flow in hollows
down-hill. But marks of ocean-currents and ice-floats must
be sought along some ancient sea-level, for ocean-currents
move on the curves of the globe.
Hunting is healthy pastime, and hunting for ice-marks
upon hill-tops may be combined with other sport. The spoor
BRITISH ISLES. 3
leads to the haunts of grouse, deer, and ptarmigan ; to grand
scenery and to regions of fresh air.
In the following pages an attempt is made to show the
result of a search for high ice-marks along some of the curves
on the maps at pages 232 and 496, vol. i.
The spoor. Before starting on any pursuit, be it the spoor
of an animal or an arctic current, the marks must be learned.
A Highland deer-stalker, an Indian tracker, a Bushman, or
any practised hunter, will follow a deer where a stranger sees
no track ; and so it is with ice-marks, they must be studied
before they can be followed. An attempt has been made to
show how some ice-marks are now made ; the old marks
relied on are shortly these
1. Polishing. Upon certain hard rocks which will take
a fine surface, and over which ice is passing, or has lately
passed ; beneath glaciers, or near them, or near moving sea-
ice ; the stone surface shines when wet, feels perfectly smooth,
and is neither "joint" nor "cleavage plane," nor " bedding."
It is worn, ground, and polished by the continual passage of
hard heavy ice, clay, and fine sand. As no other natural
engine now produces like work, and ice always does, a
polished surface "in situ" proves the passage of ice, even
over a hill-top.
2. Strice. According to the direction in which ice moves,
so is the direction of the mark made. The polished surface
is usually varied by grooves. On the surface of the rock
parallel straight lines of various dimensions are often ruled,
and these lines point out the direction in which the polishing
engine moves. It may not be easy to recognise these marks
at first, and there seems always a lurking wish to show that
they were made by something familiar. It is told that a
number of geologists once met at a quarry, to hold solemn
4 BALTIC CUERENT.
conclave over certain marks on the stone. Much breath and
some brain-work were expended, and no solution of the mys-
tery found. At the end of the meeting a workman, who was
going home, appeared above, and slid down the rock with
hob-nailed boots. The denuding engine was seen to make
tracks, and there was an end of this question. When glaciers
have been seen at work, their tracks are as easily known as
the print of a shoe. Strise are only skin deep ; they do not,
in any way, correspond to the structure of the rock, or if they
do at one place, they do not elsewhere. They sometimes
cross each other at small angles ; but so far as each line
extends, it follows a straight course, up one end of a rising
ground, over it, and down the other, or along the sides of a
mound or hollow. These grooves are part of the polished sur-
face, and follow the track of ice. Where they are found they
mark out the path like a spoor, and they are of many kinds.
3. " Sand-lines." These are fine as a hair, and are like
the marks of the finest sandpaper ; they extend a few inches
only, and are very easily overlooked.
4. " Scores." These are deeper, and are sometimes made
by hard gravel, or by points in larger blocks, fixed in moving
ice. Stones have been found under glaciers, fixed in ice, and
placed in the end of a new groove. Scores are like a firm line,
cut with a small gouge, or a grooving plane with a round
iron. They often contain sand-lines, and a pencil will rest in
them. They fade gradually away, but many are two or three
feet long. They are often attributed to ploughs and harrows.
5. Grooves. These are deeper, a walking-stick will rest
in them, and some are eight or ten feet long ; some are dinted,
as if a stone had started and rolled while making the groove.
Cart-wheels get the credit of these sometimes ; they often
contain scores and sand-lines.
BRITISH ISLES. 5
6. Deep grooves. These are long rounded hollows ^^
which would fit a man's body. When freshly made or well
preserved, they are fluted, and often contain grooves, scores,
and sand-lines. They generally occur where great pressure
has been exerted ; on the weather-side of a point ; in the bed
of a river-glacier ; on the weather-side of an island, which has
become a hill ; at a sharp turn in a glen at the dot S. when
moving ice has been forced to curve, and has run full tilt
against the bank, as in Justedal (vol. i p. 197) and Eomsdal.
Ice can be squeezed into a mould ; so ice under pressure is
forced into hollows ; and stones, sand, and clay, frozen in and
fixed in ice, deepen the groove, and flute the hollow sides.
7. Hollovis N '. These are but larger grooves, and often
contain all the others, though the smaller marks may be
buried in bogs, or drowned in lakes.
8. Glens ^-^. These are marked on good maps, and many
of them seem to be large ice-grooves worn in rock by glaciers,
local systems, and ocean-currents, as shown above. Many
glens may have been hollows produced by contortions and
disturbances of the earth's crust at first; but many are
hollows worn by some engine, and these generally retain all
the marks above described, though they may also contain beds
of drift, alluvial plains and rivers, lakes and arms of the sea.
If glens are ruts in which ice moved, for the reasons above
given, their direction in a wide tract of country must be con-
sidered in spooring.
Hollows in Southern Scandinavia (chap, xviii.) and in Ice-
land (chap, xxv.) have been attributed above to the passage of
arctic currents, like the stream which has been followed from
Spitzbergen to Newfoundland. All these are but grooves of
various sizes N ^, which large engines might cut.
9. Roches Moutonnees. When any ground surface covers
G BALTIC CURRENT.
a large area, it is pretty sure to take in rocks of various hard-
ness, which wear unequally. If a bit of wood is rubbed with
fine sandpaper and a soft pad the grain rises. If a bit of
slate is rubbed, the beds wear unequally. An ice-ground rock-
surface wears unequally, and the rock takes the "mammil-
lated " form which suggested the Swiss name of " muttoned
rocks." They look like bosses, domes, waves, rounded tables,
saddle-backs, hog-backs. In Devonshire, rocks of this shape
go by the name of " tors." The word is good ancient British
for " mound ;" so it is used as shorter than the usual glacial
slang terms, " roches moutonnees," and " mammillated sur-
faces." An example on the large scale is drawn on the margin
of the map ; the A shape of hills in Gairloch, 4000 feet high,
is there contrasted with the curved shape ^-^, which only
reaches to about 2000 feet. Examples symbolized by a convex
curve are given in woodcuts in the preceding pages. This
mark may be used to determine the point on the horizon from
which the grinding force moved. As a rule, the longest slope
is up-stream or up-hill, and the steepest end down-hill or
FIG. 65. A SMALL EXAMPLE OF " ROCHE MOUTONNEE," WALES.
down-stream. The woodcut was made as an illustration of
this fact. It shows the form of a small slate " tor " in Wales.
The arrow shows the direction in which ice slid down-hill,
the lines show cleavage, the direction in which the rock breaks \
the case was selected because the ice-plane had worked against
the grain of the stone, and had made fine work nevertheless.
10. Broken tors. If the smooth surface ends abruptly, the
BRITISH ISLES. 7
broken end generally faces the shelter. Joints and bedding
generally weaken the stone vertically, and a force acting hori-
zontally tends to push, drag, or tear away the end of a worn
ridge, where the resistance is least. After a time the upper
edge of the fracture is worn and rounded off by a force which
works both vertically and horizontally, as heavy sliding ice
does. Another shove breaks off another slice ; and so a rock is
worn and broken, and the fragments pushed and rolled down-
hill or down-stream.
11. Jointed tors. The weather-end of a ridge is some-
Fio. 66. JOINTED TORS, CONNEMAEA.
times displaced as if the rock had been broken and shaken
loose by a thrust or heavy blow.
The woodcut is from a sketch made near Inver in Con-
nemara.
The rest of the marks in the neighbourhood seem to prove
that ice generally moved from A towards B, and so wore
the granite into long ridges, all pointing one way. In this
case the ends next A have been carried off; several ridges
are jointed and shaken loose ready to be moved, but the
sheltered end of the ridge next B is still solid.
BALTIC CURKENT.
o
If such a fracture came to be worn, the steep end would
be on the weather-side at first.
So far these marks are all fixtures ; they are in situ :-
place where the form was hewn out of the solid rock. They
are tool-marks of glacial denudation, and show the direction
in which the graving-tools worked. Even large hills and
whole countries seem to be hewn into these two forms-
Besides these fixed marks others are used.
12. Quarried Hocks. Large stones are sometimes partly
hewn and ground, and partly broken out of the solid rock,
and pushed a few inches or yards from their beds, so that
each block might again be fitted into its place.
The direction in which the stone has been moved is that
in which some force pushed or dragged it, and many of these
blocks are so large that no common stream of water could
well move them.
13. Wandering Uocks. These are similar stones of all
sorts and sizes, more or less worn or fractured, of the pattern
above described, but moved further from the quarry. As an
example, granite blocks have been moved some hundred
yards from the granite hills of Arran, and are left upon slate
hills 1200 feet high. They are so placed that they could not
possibly roll to the spots where they are poised ; but they
have been moved so far, that the hole from which the stone
was taken can no longer be identified. Kane gives examples
of similar transport and deposition by arctic ice in Greenland,
and numerous examples of transport by ice are mentioned
above. The highest wandering boulders yet found at home,
by the writer, are above Loch Ericht, as shown on the margin
of the map (vol. i. p. 496), and on the shoulder of Ben Wyvis.
The last is a large mass of mica-schist dropped nearly 3000
BRITISH ISLES. 9
feet above the sea, and wholly cut off from any hill of the
same material. Antrim flints have been somehow carried to
the south of Ireland ; zircon syenite, which is found in Nor-
way, has been carried to Galloway ; and rocks supposed to be
of Scandinavian origin have been carried to Poland and
London. If the kind of stone thus transported can be iden-
tified with the parent rock, the direction of movement is
thereby shown. But the mark taken alone is uncertain.
Granite may have come from the polar basin, or from
lands which have disappeared. The test is good for land-
glaciers which must flow one way, but bad for ice-floats.
If a similar test were used to discover the prevailing
direction of the wind, it would fail, even though the wind may
have a prevailing direction. Winds in the British Isles drive
thistle-down, and thistles grow where the seed lights. Some
thistles are cultivated, so the direction in which a new variety
spreads from field or garden marks the spoor of the wind. If
there were a constant wind, thistles would spread from the
garden down-stream, but thistle-down, which moves every
way, like a British weathercock, would never mark out the
prevailing south-west wind which bends British trees. Marks
in the solid rock are fixed, and, like the trees, show the pre-
vailing current ; wandering blocks, like flying seeds, may show
eddies and occasional currents, and stray ones may drift
wherever a gale can blow an ice-float.
14. Perched bloclcs are wandering blocks, placed upon hill-
tops or hill-shoulders, or balanced one upon the other, or on
" tors" and ridges, on points where they must have been
gently placed by something strong enough to lift them,
and carry and lay them down. Ice floating over a hill
might drop a stone on the top, or land-ice, grounding at high-
water, might place a stone, and break away when the tide
10
BALTIC CURRENT.
ebbed The woodcut was drawn on the block, and represents
a stone perched near Inver in Connemara. There are many
FIG. 67. PERCHED BLOCK, CONNEMARA.
other examples in the neighbourhood, but this one is remark-
able, for it looks like a work of art.
FIG. C8. DROPPED BLOCK, CONNEMARA.
15. Dropped blocks. These seem to have fallen so far as
to break where they fell. The cut was drawn on the wood,
and represents a large mass of granite near the police station
at Inver. It is mentioned again below. "
BRITISH ISLES. 11
15. Trains. These are rows of large stones, some per-
ched, some dropped and broken, which probably fell from
drifting ice. If so, the lines point out the course of the
moving rafts, and the run of the stream which moved them, but
this test is uncertain. If a bit of a glacier, with a medial
moraine, were launched, and then stranded and melted, the
row of big stones might cross the stream. A slice of ice-foot
might swing any way, and drop its wandering beach so as to
leave a ridge with any bearings (vol. i. p. 404).
16. Drift. This word applies to confused heaps of stones,
of many kinds, shapes, and sizes ; some larger than hay-
cocks, others as big as casks, kegs, turnips, apples, nuts, and
peas, generally imbedded in sand or clay.
17. Old moraines are land-ice chips, piled in conical
mounds at the mouths of glens, and composed of stones
which are found in situ in higher grounds.
18. A terminal moraine marks the end of an old glacier
(vol. i. p. 181.)
19. A medial moraine is similar stuff in the middle of a
rock-groove, generally near the rivulet.
20. A lateral moraine is similar stuff on one or both sides
of a glen. Stones on the right come from hills on the right,
stones on the left from the left.
21. A moraine formed in water must differ in shape
from all these, and samples of all kinds abound in the Alps,
Scandinavia, Iceland, and the British Isles. True moraines
indicate land-glaciers, and are sure marks, which can easily
be compared with moraines on existing glaciers. Sea-
moraines, formed under water, cannot be compared with
existing sea-glaciers, but their shape may be inferred from
models, and from the movements of land-ice in Spitzbergen,
Greenland, etc. (chaps, xxiii to xxvi.)
12 BALTIC CURRENT.
These are all specimens of "drift," but the term is generally
used to express piles of loose rubbish, widely spread over a
whole country or continent, in glens and on plains and hill-sides.
The formation has lately been divided into stratified and un-
stratified, and in America it has been subdivided largely. The
lowest beds are " unstratified," contain scratched boulders, and
rest upon grooved rocks. The upper series are stratified, that
is to say, packed in layers. The deposition of these geological
formations has still to be explained. According to one theory,
the unstratified drift is the debris of land-ice, and the stratified
glacial drift was dropped by floating ice, and packed by
streams of water in a deep sea. It has been argued above
that the drift is the moraine- work of large floating glaciers
like the Arctic Current, with its icebergs and sea-ice.
22. JBoulders which belong to these formations are known
by their forms. Those which belong to the lower boulder
clay, which rests upon grooved rocks, are often washed out by
the sea, or by rivers, or picked out by men. They are found
on beaches, in walls, in houses, in fields newly reclaimed.
One side is generally flatter than the rest ; and, when freshly
moved, the polish on the surface is nearly as fine as the ma-
terial is capable of taking. Striae of all sizes run every way,
but most commonly along the longest axis of the flattest sur-
face. It seems as if the drift were the polishing powder with
which the rocks were ground, left in the tool-marks of the
polishing engine. The drift seems to consist of stones of all
sizes, partially rubbed and ground to clay, frozen into a con
glomerate and pushed onwards, till climate changed and the
ice melted. The worn stones bear marks of each other and of
the rock ; the rock bears marks of the drift, and these mark
the direction in which the drift was last moved. If most of
the stones in any patch of drift belong to any known forma-
BRITISH ISLES. 13
tion, the line of movement is shown by the nature and posi-
tion of the stones moved. For example, the majority of the
stones in a hill of drift near the sea, at Galway, are bits of
scratched mountain limestone, and that kind of stone is found
in situ to the north-east. The direction in which this hill
of drift moved was from N.E. to S.W., because striae and loose
stones point to the same conclusion. But the hill also con-
tains specimens of many other rocks ; so it may have belonged
to ice which had sailed far, like that which is drifting along
the coast of Labrador, loaded both with foreign and native drift.
23. Weathering. As all kinds of rock wear when exposed
to the atmosphere, ice-marks on rocks and boulders wear out
when the dressed surface is bare.
First, the fine polished skin gets rough and pitted, as rain
and air and lichens decompose parts of the stone. Then
" striae " wear out in the order of their depth. Then deep
grooves become shallow, from the weathering of their sides
and edges. Then larger grooves, and hollows, and tors, and
ridges between them, assume new shapes. Beds and joints
weather and widen, till an old tor looks like a pile of stones.
Then valleys and hills change their form. Rivers dig smooth
pits and jagged angular ruts in hill-sides, and these split, and
crumble, and fall, and join, leaving weathered glens, peaks,
and needles at last. This spoiling process may be watched,
and the work may be seen in all stages, in the mountains of
Northern Europe. But still the last bit of an ice-ground
surface may sometimes be found left at the very top of a hill,
whose sides have crumbled and fallen away to make heaps of
talus, cliffs, and cairns of stone.
The ridge , s or the peak A is least worn by falling
water, so it lasts longest.
24. Shape, Because of weathering, old ice-marks are not to
14 BALTIC CURRENT.
be found without search. But so long as any part of the out-
line of an ice-ground hill retains its shape, a practised eye can
detect ice-work; and a careful search at likely spots will
generally unearth some one or all of the marks above de-
scribed. Two or three will suffice to determine the direction
in which ice moved, and a few well-chosen spots will serve
to map out a large district.
25. Mocks. Different rocks weather in different ways and
at different rates.
It is hopeless to search for any but large marks upon
coarse materials like sandstone. Limestones, unless protected
from rain-water by clay, lose the marks readily. Granites
protected from the air retain even sand-lines, and the finest
polish ; when exposed they become rough, and some kinds
crumble. On some granite-hills in Arran even deep grooves
are obliterated, though slate-hills close to them retain a fine
polish and the whole series of ice-marks.
Where quartz rock has not split up, it retains the finest
marks ; but quartz rock is very liable to break and fall away.
So marks on quartz are rare.
Trap, whin, and greenstone, etc., last well, retain striae, and
lose the polish, but some kinds of trap weather easily and
crumble to dust.
Hard blue clay-slate appears to resist the weather best of
all Ice-marks still exist on bare slate-rocks in Wales, Scot-
land, and Ireland, which could hardly be distinguished from
marks on rocks beneath existing glaciers.
It follows that the best material for inscribed monuments
is the slate which still retains fine sand-lines, made when
British hills were 2000 feet deeper in the sea, or up to their
shoulders in land-ice.
26. Searching. In searching a country for old ice-marks,
BRITISH ISLES. 15
it is best to look out for a hill of slate, quartz, or trap, which
has a rounded outline -- v.
Try the hill-top first for old marks, then beat the sides
about burns, new-made turf-dykes, quarries, and other such
places where the rock has been laid bare. If no marks of a
general movement can be found at the upper levels, try the
glens for the spoor of glaciers, and such small game.
There are few parts of Northern Europe where an old
scratch may not be found by careful searching.
27. Copying. Bock-surfaces and ice-grooves cannot be
carried away, and specimens are bulky, heavy, and hard to
carry when quarried. Drawings take a long time to make,
photographic apparatus are grievous impediments, but rock-
surfaces may be quickly and accurately copied thus :
Lay a sheet of foolscap on the rock with the longest
edges in the meridian, as nearly as a compass or the sun
will show. Hold the paper fast and rub it with a pencil, a
bullet, a coin, a burnt stick, a bit of black coal, or a bit of
heel-ball. The pattern below will be copied : raised points
dark ; hollows light. The experiment may be tried on the
cover of this book, which is copied from a rubbing made
from a striated rock beside the " Queen's Drive," on Arthur's
Seat, at Edinburgh. The copy and the original may be com-
pared, so as to test the method ; and then other copies, and
descriptions of marks, will have more value if the paper, the
book, and the rock, are found to correspond when compared.
When the copy is made mark the north, and from the
centre of a circle draw arrows pointing at any hill or hollow
which might influence the movements of glaciers ; or currents
of water moving from the horizon to the spot, at the level.
Small outline sketches may be drawn at the ends of the
arrows if there is time.
Note the name of the place ; the names of conspicuous
16 BALTIC CURRENT.
points on the horizon ; their bearings are given by the arrows.
Note the height of the spot by aneroid barometer ; the dis-
tance by pedometer from the last place of observation in a
day's walk ; the kind of rock ; the dip and strike by clino-
meter and compass ; the slope of trees, and anything else
worthy of note ; and do all this as much as possible without
moving the paper from the rock.
The finished sheet is a portable, accurate, pictorial record
of a set of observations at one spot, which may be transferred
to a map, or otherwise combined at leisure. Eanged in order
with dates, each record becomes a page in a journal. The
woodcut below is a reduced copy of a sheet which was thus
prepared, on a rock-surface, on the hill-shoulder which is
represented on the margin of the map at the end of vol. i.
The dark marks within the circle are ridges > s between
striae ^-^ on a very smooth surface of fine-grained hard
quartz rock. The direction in which the engine moved is
shown by the arrow. The loch is Loch Maree in Scotland,
and the sea horizon is open to the W. of K, and to the E. of
S. ; to Greenland, and to Scandinavia. To the west are tall
hills of the A pattern, and higher ice-ground rocks of the
' x pattern ; to the east is a deep ice-ground glen x ' running
parallel to the striae, and beyond it are high hills of the ^ v
pattern, and higher hills of the A shape, and numerous ice-
marks, none of which point at the peaks.
The dip of the rock is towards D, the white marks in the
rubbing are chinks and fractures.
At this spot on the backbone of Scotland, at 1800 feet
above the present sea-level, ice moved past peaks of the
A pattern over hills of the x s pattern, from the direction of
the Baltic towards the Atlantic, horizontally. The spoor is so
fresh that sand-lines need a fine lens to make them out,
while other grooves would hold the mast of a ship ; and the
BRITISH ISLES.
17
hill-side is thus worn, for a height of nearly 2000 feet,
throughout an area of many square miles.
If this plan of copying had been devised twenty years
sooner, observations made would have had more value. With
such a plain spoor as this ice-tracking is easy work.
Sea Horizon, River Ewe. Loch Maree.
A A Peaks of Ben
Ghuis, about tpcafeet.
Weathered quartz.
- Carrie. At 1800
feet marks are perfect,
from S. 30 E. to N. 30
W. on gray quartz
crossing the month of
the carrie.
A Top of Ben Eith
about nooofeet.
Weathered quarts:
and talus.
A Beyond the glen.
Top of Ben Slioch,
about 4000 feet.
Weathered.
Pass. Head of
nn Bianastle,
perfect, N. 60 . ;
gray quartz.
-x Ridge. Top of
Ben Mhonaidh,
2iy>fcet; marks
weathered, N. 60 E.
gneiss. Pass
over the "watershed of
Scotland to Dornoch.
- Hill-shoulder, 1800
feet; bare quartz ; marks
Perfect, S. iff E. to N. 40
W., at right angles to the
high marks on the opposite
side of the glen on Ken
Mhonaidh and Gleann
Bianastle. Nearly parallel
to horizontal grooves all
the -way to the bottom of the
glen, about 1600 feet.
- Pass. Head of Strath
Bran, about 8oo_/i-et.
Terraces at Achnasheen,
aoozit 700 ; watershed of
Scotland. Thence ice-
marks follow the run of
the water north eastwards
to Ben Wyvis and to the
sea at the Conan. Peak (!)
beyond Strath Bran.
FIG. 69. FOREST OF GAIRLOCH. Ice-marks on a hill-shoulder ' - of gray quartz, at about
T350 feet above the sea ; level with the opposite edge of the glen ,
VOL. II. C
CHAPTER XXIX.
BALTIC CURRENT 2 BRITISH ISLES 2 IRELAND 1 CONNEMARA
GALWAV AND WESTPORT CURVES.
IN the map of the northern hemisphere (end of vol. i.), a series
of curves are drawn from the Pole towards the Equator.
The space between two of these corresponds roughly to
the existing Arctic Current between Spitzbergen and New-
foundland ; and to low grounds in North America which are
strewed with glacial drift, and where many large hollows and
small ice-rnarks on shore point south-westwards. The space
between another couple of curves includes Novaya Zemlya,
part of Russia, Scandinavia, Denmark, and the British Isles.
It corresponds to the supposed course of an arctic Baltic
Current, which, according to theory, only ceased to flow south-
west in this tract when the Scandinavian isthmus rose and
turned the stream. In the map (vol. i. p. 232), similar curves
are drawn, and one ends in the sea at Galway.
In a systematic attempt to test the soundness of this theory
founded on marks in Scandinavia, a search should begin as
far to the south-west as possible. A stick laid in an ice-
groove on a hill-top points out the way, and it should be
honestly followed. If it leads to the marks already men-
tioned, and the whole series point one way, the Baltic Current
theory may be launched like a big boulder to find its own
resting-place amongst other rough blocks.
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
10
The west coast of Ireland is at the tail of the fossil
stream ; so the west of Ireland is the place to search for
marks of ice-floats like those which now cumber the Straits
of Belleisle.
London can be got at from any part of the world, and
the western coast of Ireland is very easily reached from
London, between morning and midnight.
Fir.. 70. CLOCH CORRIL ANL> THK TWELVE PINS OF COXXEMARA.
Drawn from nature on the wood, 1863. (Reversed).
Forms characteristic of the action of ice are well seen by
the way. Eunning into Chester by railway, the N.E. corner
of Wales appears in profile, and on leaving the station the hills
are conspicuous. They rise gradually from a plain strewed
with glacial drift and water-worn boulders, and from the sea,
They are green and cultivated ; their bones are hid beneath
a skin of clay and soil, and covered by a rich mantle of green
and yellow ; but rounded rocks appear, as the skeleton does in
a living creature. Where a quarry or railway cutting has
20 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
torn a rent, or cut a gash, the sandstone frame appears broken
and angular ; but the hills are all rounded and smooth.
This is denudation, but not the work of water. There is
not one ravine V between Chester and Rhyll, nor is there a
cliff L, though the line runs over a raised beach between the
sea and an old margin all the way.
At Conway the hills are steeper and higher, but the glens
still are rounded, and in them fresh ice-marks abound, as will
be shown below.
Near the Menai Bridge glens have the peculiar forms of
glaciation. Many quarries and cuttings, faults and fractures
in the slate, show that the rounded outlines of these hills and
dens are not due to fracture and disturbance, but to some
O
wearing action ; and boulders and beds of clay all tell of ice.
The KE. end of the Snowdon range is seen in profile from
Anglesea. It has a sloping outline s-*-. like the north-
eastern corner of Wales ; but the rocks are harder, the slope
is steeper, and some hill-tops are broken and weathered.
Anglesea is all ice-ground. Near Holyhead, amongst
some drifting sand-hills, glaciated rocks rear their heads
amongst the bent. They are smooth and round like the
sand-dunes, and their longest slope, like that of the hills, is
still towards the NE. The waves which roll in from the
S.W., driven by the wind, have their longest slope towards
the S.W. If Wales were a new country, the shape of it would
suggest the glaciation which is proved by a closer search.
From Dublin to Galway the country is boggy, low, and
flat. A depression of 500 feet would sink it beneath the
Atlantic.
The first glance at the country about Galway shows the
action of ice. Large boulders piled and scattered broadcast
everywhere, low rounded hills, beds of clay stuck full of
CONNEMARA GAL WAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 21
rounded stones, walls built of boulders all suggest glacial
denudation on the large scale ; but no high mountains are to
be seen to account for land-glaciers. Close to the town, on
the beach, but above high-water mark, numerous ground rocks
show smaller ice-marks distinctly. The scores and grooves
point from N.E. to S.W., or thereby. At Blackrock, the
favourite bathing-place, these guides point out into Galway
Bay, where the track is lost in the Atlantic.
About three miles to the west of the town the sea has
undermined a long round-backed hill. It is broken short ofl'
at the end, leaving a perpendicular cliff about 50 feet high,
with a beach of boulders under it. The hill is called Cnoc-a-
Bhldka or Blake's Hill, and the point Cnoc-na-Carrig or the
Hill of the Stones.
The sea-cliff is a section of the boulder-clay, and ice-work
of the most striking character. A matrix of hard, compact,
bluish-yellow gray clay is stuck full of rounded " subangular "
blocks ; some are three or four feet long, others as big as a
man's head, others small, like apples, nuts, and peas ; and the
beach is made of them. They stand out from the clay where
the rain has washed it down, like plums in an iced pudding.
Every stone is scratched, grooved, and scored ; and the marks
are as plain as if they had just been made with rasps, files,
and sandpaper. Many surfaces are polished so brightly that
they shine in the sunlight. New-fallen stones, stones in situ,
and stones picked out of this cliff, all are polished, ground,
scored, and scratched in many directions, and on all sides.
There are specimens of red and yellow, coarse and fine granite,
fossiliferous dark blue limestone, and other rocks. The hill is
a museum of transported stones, gathered long ago by wander-
ing ice, and pushed into Galway Bay.
Near the place, specimens of the same stones, weathered
1-1
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
and water-worn, may be compared with these boulders. In
the dykes, where mountain limestone has been weathered,
fossils stand out in relief, showing the minutest detail. In
the cliff where the ground surface has been preserved from
weather by hard clay, fossils can only be distinguished by
their colour. On the beach away from the cliff, rolled pebbles
are rounder and dinted; the scratches have disappeared.
Where these sea-rolled stones have been weathered, they
retain the finished oval shape which sea-waves gave them,
after ice had blocked them out. The waterworn and the
weathered surfaces are wholly different from the old ice-
mark. Here then, at the most western coast- line of
northern Europe, are the works of ice ; and here too the
prevailing S.W. direction of the wind is pointed out by grow-
ing trees.
If the direction of the wind is pointed out by a weather-
cock, and its prevailing direction by a bent tree on a hill, it is
equally well shown on a plain by sand-drifts or grass tufts.
If the direction in which a large ice-system moved is well
shown by grooves upon hill-tops, it is equally well shown
by grooves on a wide plain, where there are no high hills to
interfere with the general movement. So at Galway the stria?
tell of a general system of glacial action, not of local glaciers.
On the tops of low hills, by road-sides, in fields, and generally
in the neighbourhood, whatever the kind of rock laid bare
may be, grooves have a general KE. and S.W. direction.
One end of a long stick laid in a groove points N.N.E. or
N. K, and the other end aims a little to the outside of Black
Head, past the end of the Clare mountains.
This direction agrees neither with the slope of the country
nor with the flow of rivers, nor with the present run of the
tides ; it only agrees with a system of large hollows which
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 23
cross Ireland, and are marked as valleys and sea-lochs on the
best Irish map.
The movement was not a result of sliding, for there are
no hills to the N.E. of Galway from which ice could slide.
This is no part of a local glacier system, but there are clear
traces of the general movement, which also left its marks on
Scotland, Yorkshire, Wales, and Devonshire, as will be shown
below.
A good map of Ireland shows the large grooves which
correspond to the curves on the map. The northern and
southern end of the country is crossed by diagonal valleys,
whose general direction agrees with that of the Menai Strait,
the Caledonian Canal, the Forth and Clyde Canal, and other
Scotch and English hollows. The ice-stream certainly floated
over the low grounds of Ireland, and part of it poured out
between the mountains of Clare and Connemara, through
Galway Bay.
Curves drawn from Galway in the direction pointed out by
ice-grooves upon hill-tops near the town, cross Ireland by way
of Camck-on-Shannon, the end of Lough Conn, and north of
Belfast Lough. They pass between the Mull of Ceantire and
Portpatrick, into the Firth of Clyde. In Ireland they pass
over a low flat country, in the neighbourhood of lakes, canals,
and lines of railway. In Scotland they join a system of large
wide glens, which traverse that country. Let this be called
the Galway curve, and traced back as far as it will lead.
Travelling northwards, other curves should be crossed if
this were a general movement. From Galway to Ouglitcmrd,
the road skirts the north-eastern side of a low range of hills
in Moyculleen, and coasts Lough Comb. The hills on this
side are all rounded and strewed with large wrecked boulders,
hut on the other side they are steeper, and the rock is bare.
24 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
The low country beyond the lake, the shores of the lake,
and the lake itself, all are strewed with enormous stones and
patches of clay. Low down, boulders and gravel are every-
where, but the hill-sides are generally rock with a thin cover-
ing of soil or peat, or bare.
Where limestone is the foundation of the country, the
general outline of glacial denudation alone remains. The
rock is furrowed and drilled into the most fantastic shapes,
apparently by water and weather.
When granite is the rock, the general form is nearly the
same, and the surface is still weathered. Crystals stand
up separately, veins stand out and run over the backs of
rounded tors and ridges. The veins are sharp and angular, but
the rocks are all round like Devonshire tors, and the hills to
the very top retain shapes into which ice ground them x * .
Beyond Oughterard a road leads over a low col down into
a wild tract of country where the rocks are bare or smothered
in bogs.
The surface is generally weathered, so that strire and
grooves are hard to find, but when the morning sun is shin-
ing across the grooves, the marks come out clearly, as blue
lines of shadow on long ridges of warm gray granite, which
raise their backs in the dark moor.
Low down, at the sea-level, and on hills about 400 feet
high, the direction is from N.N.E. or N.E. to the opposite
points.
At furness Lake, which lies close beneath the Moyculleen
Hills, grooves, ridges of granite, and trains of large stones,
point the same way.
The cut was sketched from nature. It shows part of the
Moyculleen Hills, on which ice-marks are plain, and part of
the low country, which is strewed with drift and trains of
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
25
blocks. The district is one of the best samples of an ice-
ground country that is to be found in Western Europe.
These grooves do not aim at the hills ; they run along the
hill-foot, and aim at a large groove ^-^. A pass about 500
feet high.
At Sgrwb Bridge the direction is still the same ; at Inver
Lodge, at Luggecn Lough, at Lough Corrib, the low grooves
Fio. 71. TRAIN OF BLOCKS NEAR FURNESS LAKE AND MOVCULLEEN HILLS.
Drawn from nature on the wood, 18C3. (Reversed.)
all point nearly one way. They do not aim at mountains
which surround the low bogs of Connemara and the sea-
lochs, but point at glens which lead to the low country beyond
the hills, and to great lakes. One of these mountains stands
alone. It goes by the name of Cnoc Ourid, and is about 1300
feet high. It is about two miles from SJian Folayh, which is
N.N.E. of it, 2000 feet high, and the end of the Mam Turk
range. A valley more than 1000 feet deep separates Cnoc
Ourid from the higher range, and Shan Folagh is joined to
26 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
Mam Turk by a coL To the S.S.W. is a third isolated hill
called Cnoc Mordan, and about 1100 feet high. It is separated
from Cnoc Ourid by a boggy plain more than four miles wide,
and but little above the sea-level. To the S.E. is a range
of low hills in Moyculleen, which makes one side of a block of
high land, and is separated from Shan Folagli by the glen of
Oughterard.
These four high points are well situated for ascertaining
the direction of the general movement, which has so ground
and altered the whole face of this country.
Cnoc Ourid. In mounting Cnoc Ourid from the north
side from Eusheen Lake, the rock is seen to be upheaved and
strangely contorted. It contains fragments of other rocks,
broken and rounded, and is folded about the fragments in
waving lines. Ice polished the rock across the edge of the
beds, and the surface has been weathered so as to leave the
structure of the rock in low relief. Upon ridges and domes
of this gray moss-grown gneiss large boulders are perched.
At the foot of the hill deep grooves are well preserved,
and they point at Mam Turk and Shan Folagh, past the
shoulder of Cnoc Ourid. Here then are the works of cold and
heat contorted gneiss, upheaved and altered by fluid granite,
ground down by ice, and weathered afterwards. Five hundred
feet up the hill the rocks are all of the same pattern as those
in the plain below, and on them rest large angular blocks of
gneiss, and smaller boulders of various hard rocks quartz,
greenstone, etc. These last must have travelled far. Eight
hundred feet up is a large block of gray trap freshly broken,
and near it is a block unbroken, and perched upon a rounded
saddle of gneiss. Eleven hundred and sixty feet up, on the top
of the northern shoulder, strire and grooves are well preserved
on gneiss. They point N.N.E. at the end of the higher range
CONNEMARA GAL WAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 27
beyond the valley, and S.S.W. out of Camus Bay at the
Atlantic. These marks are unlike those which are made by
river-glaciers ; they are like writing made by a shaking hand,
for they waver and vary slightly in direction, so as to cross
each other at a small angle.
Thirteen hundred feet up, by aneroid barometer, on the top,
the view is wild and desolate. Lakes appear to lie in every pos-
sible direction, in a wilderness of water, stone, and bog, which
fades away into a shallow sea, full of low islands, stones, and
rocks, scattered broadcast in bays and sea-lochs. Galway
Bay is seen over Moyculleen ; Lough Comb and Lougli
Mask, and a wide stretch of low land, are seen past the
shoulder of Shan Folagh. There is no hill far or near to
account for glaciation by land-ice at this spot and in this
direction, and yet ice-marks are there, and well preserved. A
stick laid in a groove points S.W. by S. at the shoulder of
Cnoc Mordan, out of Camus Bay, at the sea-horizon, and N.E.
by N. through a notch in the hills, at a sea of lakes and bogs
bounded by a land-horizon as flat as the sea The notch is
the col which joins Shan Folagh to the Mam Turk range, and
the nearest hill-top of equal height is beneath the horizon, if
not beyond the sea. Descending the hill on its eastern side,
a block is perched at 1200 feet ; and near it, where the wood-
cut was sketched, a solitary goat had perched himself upon a
saddleback of gneiss. His family and friends were scattered
about picking up a scanty supper amongst the bare rocks.
They kept peering at the stranger, bleating, stretching their
long necks, wagging their gray beards, and flourishing their
horns over the sky line. The click-click of a sparring-match
between two old bucks was the only sound besides the sough
of the evening wind, and the red light of sunset made the old
gray rocks and their gray inhabitants glow like fire.
28
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
It was a different scene when the block was dropped by
ice 1200 feet above the present sea-level, and when ice floated
over the top of Cnoc Ourid. This hill is joined by a low col
about 500 feet high to a range of low granite and gneiss hiUs,
on the S.E. At the top of this col the grooves point N.E.
by K over a wide flat moor, which leads to Lough Comb
and Lough Mask. There is no high hill in that direction for
many miles. A line drawn on the map passes north of Bel-
fast. Patches of hard yellow clay are deposited in sheltered
hollows on this col, and these contain small boulders of black
FIG. 72. PERCHED BLOCK ox ROUNDED TOK, CNOC OCRID, T200 feet.
limestone, mica schist, very hard trap, quartz rock, gray
porphyry, and other rocks which are foreign to this hill, but
which may be found in the direction of the grooves. The
limestone in particular is like rocks near Oughterard on the
low shores of Lough Corrib, and the trap is like Antrim
trap. The north-eastern slope of the hill and of the col is less
steep than the south-western.
Cnoc Mordan, the second hill, is even more isolated. It
makes the north-western horn of Camus Bay, and no hill of
the same height is near it.
At the sea-level the stria- are well seen ; they point N.E.
by N., S.W. by S. Large granite boulders are scattered about
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTP011T CURVES.
29
iii the moor. One shaped like a chipped pebble, near Inver-
more Lake, measures 18 x 12 x 9 feet, and many are still
larger. Ascending the north-eastern slope, the angle is less
steep than the south-western side of Cnoc Ourid. There are
rounded surfaces and perched blocks to the very top. At
600 feet the grooves are N.W. by N. ; at 700 a groove points
N. and S.
Moycullttn.
FIG. "3. PERCHED BLOCK, CNOC MORDAN, 1100 feet. (Reversed.)
At 1100 feet above the sea a great angular mass of granite
is stranded upon a shelf, like a boat ready for launching. It
goes by the name of Cloch mor Binnen na gawr the big
stone of the goat's peak. A lot of bare-footed Celts, two pretty
girls, two men and a small boy, were clustered about when
the sketch was made ; while a party of fishermen out for a
walk took shelter from a S.W. breeze, and smoked under
the lee of a rock. Behind the stone, Cnoc Ourid and Shan
Folagh rose up to the N.E. beyond the lakes of Inver and the
endless bogs of Connemara.
30 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
The top of the hill is flat, boggy, and strewed with small
boulders, and every rock-surface is ground. Grooves are well
marked everywhere, though weathered, and their general
direction is N.N.E., S.S.W. The hill is very like a small
Dartmoor. Granite tops, which rise out of the moss, are
miniature tors, with joints beginning to open and weather.
The work is the same though it is further advanced in Devon-
shire.
A great change has come over Great Britain since these
rocks were thus ground at a height of 1300 feet, and yet the
marks are so fresh that the change must have happened
recently. Granite weathers and crumbles, but these mountain-
tops upon which tempests beat, and where rain falls in torrents;
mountain-sides, where torrents gather and pour down after every
shower ; river-beds, lake-basins, and sea-margins all retain
the marks of ice moving diagonally on meridians in a general
south-western direction over this corner of Ireland.
Shan Folayh (the Hill of Flesh) is the third hill in this row.
It is 2000 feet high by the Ordnance map, and by aneroid
barometer. The top is about ten miles from Inver Lodge by
pedometer. It is the eastern end of Mam Turk (the Range of
the Boar), and the top is isolated.
At 800 feet on the south-western side the rock is stratified
gneiss, dipping at a high angle, and the whole outline of the hill
is rounded ; but the surface on this side is much split and
weathered. The hill is very steep. At the head of the glen,
near the col, the angle is 45. Few boulders are to be seen,
and few grooves ; but those which do remain at this height
point N.N.E over the shoulder of the hill at the col which
joins it to the range, and S.S.W. out to sea past Cnoc Ourid
and Cnoc Mordan.
They are parallel to the deep glen below them, and to
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. - 31
several chains of lakes which are seen in the plain, and they
correspond to marks on the hill-tops at which they point.
From this height it is easy to understand how brittle plates
of ice of great thickness, like those which drift about off
Labrador, might float and slide over low hills of granite in
the hollow between Mam Turk and Moyculleen ; for the wide
valley six or seven miles across seems almost a plain. In
particular, it is easy to see how ice-floes might split and
ground upon the tops of Cnoc Ourid and Cnoc Mordan ; score
them, break them, stick to them, pick up fragments, and drop
them in the lee.
Supposing these hill-tops to be awash in a frozen sea
moving south-westward, the stream and the ice which it
carried would curl round the hill-tops, as a stream curls round
a big stone, and it would spread out when it had passed the
Straits of Oughterard.
At 1450 feet the tops of Cnoc Ourid and Cnoc Mordan
sink below the sea-horizon of Shan Folagh, and at that level a
groove upon a rounded table of gneiss points S.S.W. over the
top of Cnoc Ourid down Camus Bay at the sea-horizon.
At 2000 feet, on the very top of Shan Folagh, the rock
is gray quartz traversed by white veins. The beds are nearly
vertical ; the surface rounded and polished wherever it has
not broken and split from weathering.
On the north-eastern side of the top, the rocks are polished
and scored in the most remarkable manner, and from their
hardness the surface is exceedingly well preserved. Great
flat tables, sloping towards the N.N.E. at an angle of 54 or
thereby, are ground perfectly smooth, and rounded off at the
upper edge. Grooves run upwards in various directions, from
N., N.N.E., and N.E. by N., and they are peculiar. Some marks
are rounded dints, as if the polished rock had been struck and
32 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
ground at one spot by something which was afterwards pushed
over the hill-top. Bits of this polished surface are easily
picked out, for joints in the stone make it a sort of smooth
mosaic work.
Looking towards places at which these grooves point, there
is no higher land to account for this manifest glaciation. The
grooves point 2000 feet over Lough Mask, or 800 feet over
Slieve Patry, or level at hills twenty miles off, over glens, and
through deep glens, and over the end of Killary Harbour,
which shines like a glass amongst the dark hills.
These certainly are grooves made by floating ice, which
grounded upon this hill-top, 2000 feet above the present sea-
level, when the whole land was under water.
The whole aspect of the hills seen from this high station
is that of something ground at about this level. Moyculleen
seems to be a rolling plateau of rounded tops, like those which
exist in the valley. Slieve Patiy is a block of high land
deeply furrowed by glens, but the top is a smooth even rounded
slope. Beyond it lie Castlebar, Lough Conn, Balliua, and
Sligo. In one direction only, to the northward, higher
mountains seem peaked ; but the northern line, when drawn
on a map from the top of Shan Folagh, passes through a deep
glen forty miles off, beyond Clew Bay. Standing upon glaci-
ated rocks 2000 feet above the sea, and looking at a horizon
54 miles away, it seems almost certain that these ice-ground
Irish hills rose in the midst of an arctic current whicli
flowed amongst them and altered their forms. So here the
first impression suggested by the shape of the country is
amply confirmed by closer examination of details.
Glaciers. A marine glacial period ending in a rise of land
should have produced land-glaciers, and local systems of
marks ; and these marks do in fact remain.
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 33
The col and corrie between Shan Folagh and Mam Turk
certainly contained a small glacier, for the marks are there.
The top of the col is bare ice-ground rock, and the glen has
the rounded shape of a glacier valley. There is hardly any
talus, though the rocks split easily. Looking downwards
from the steep slope at the head, the glen seems to fade away
into the boggy plain. There are few large stones in it, and
these seem to have rolled down from broken rocks above them.
Cnoc Ourid seems nearly to fill the mouth of the glen, and
Cnoc Mordan is seen to the right, over the shoulder of Mam
Turk. Between them are Camus Bay and the sea-horizon
nearly level with the distant hill-tops.
The col was a sea-strait when Cnoc Ourid was awash,
and the glen ought to be full of wrecked drift dropped in the
shelter. It seems to have been swept clean. The hill-sides
are ground from top to bottom, for the glen is a trench dug
transversely through nearly vertical strata.
But when the mouth of the glen is reached, the small
river is found to have cut through a bed of boulders and clay
nearly fifty feet thick. A green hillock is found to be part of
a moraine, and most of the stones contained in the clay seem
to be derived from hills which make the sides of the glen.
Lower down, ice-ground rocks peer up through the brown
moss, and the river washes a grooved rock-surface, which it has
failed to spoil But this moraine has been washed out of shape.
Shan Folagh was a sunken rock ; then awash ; then a low
island at the end of a point ; then a peninsula with small
glaciers at the isthmus ; then a hill in a plain : and then the
glacier seems to have come to a sudden end, for the moraine
stops short in the jaws of the glen. The glacial period pro-
bably ended when the land had risen to a certain point.
At the moraine-level, about 200 feet above the sea, the
VOL. II. D
34 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
low hills between Mam Turk and Moyculleen, and those upon
the borders of Lough Corrib, and near Galway, Ballina, and
Sligo, would be like rocks which now fill the sea-loughs ; and
ice might still drift and carry boulders through straits which
are now county Galway, and the glen in which the road has
been made to Inver Lodge.
At the present level of sea and land, the Arctic Current
is shut out by Ireland, Great Britain, Denmark, Scandinavia,
and Lapland, and the Gulf Stream flows up in the lee. If the
sea were 2000 feet higher on this region of the earth's northern
surface generally, the Arctic Current would overflow the dam
which separates the Gulf of Bothnia from the White Sea.
Then the Equatorial Current might be driven elsewhere, and
then the climate would be changed.
When Celts named the " hill of flesh," and the " range of
boars," the " lake of stags," and similar places, they found other
creatures in Connemara than snipes and hares. When they
composed the long poems which Connemara peasants still
repeat, the pastime of their lives and the burden of their
songs were love, war, and hunting ; but before there were ele-
phants, elks, and men, to be hunted and smothered in Irish
bogs ; the wide Atlantic covered the whole land ; and marks
an eighth of an inch deep, made by floating ice on the highest
top of Shan Folagh, have not been worn out by all the rain
which has fallen there since the day of Finn MacCool,
MacArt, MacTreunmor, and since Shan Folagh peered above
the waves.
Leaca Donna. Shan Folagh, Cnoc Ourid, and Cnoc Mor-
dan, being on one side of a strait, the other side is a gneiss
hill, called Leaca Donna, or brown slabs. It makes the
western corner of the block of high land in Moyculleen,
the highest point of which is about 1200 feet above
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 35
the sea. The western face of this block is rounded, and
almost bare of soil and vegetation. From the road at Sgriob
Lake to the top is about three and a half miles.
At the head of Sgriob, Shan Folagh is seen to the north-
east as a rounded, conical, isolated hill. Slieve Patry is seen
past the eastern shoulder as a block of hills with a smooth
sloping top ; and to the westward, in the Moyculleen range, a
wide rounded valley runs half a mile eastwards into the
hills.
About the lake in the low grounds loose blocks of granite
are scattered in every direction, and the rocks are all ground
and scored. The grooves at high-water mark at this spot run
north and south.
At the same level, a mile and a half eastwards, grooves are
well seen ; they point N.E., S.W., and cross the mouth of the
small glen, which seems made to be the habitation of a glacier.
If these grooves were made by land-ice they would point due
west out of the glen.
Half a mile nearer to the hills the ground is strewed with
the debris of a small moraine, which makes a curved sweep
across the mouth of the glen. It marks the spot where a
small glacier ended, at about the same level as the Shan Folagh
glacier. This moraine is washed out of shape.
In this sheltered nook a village built of boulders, fields
fenced with rounded stones, green corn, blighted potatoes, and
worm-eaten cabbages, show a better soil than bare granite
and wet peat, which make the plain.
The base of the hill on the right of this glen, up to 350
feet, is thickly strewed with large loose blocks. Above that
level which would join Lough Corrib to the sea, make Moy-
culleen an island, and Ireland an archipelago the ice-
ground hill is swept bare ; but every here and there perched
36 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
blocks riding on granite saddles hang on the steep hill-side,
where a good push would send them rolling to the bottom.
The rock generally is rough and weathered, but every here
and there a vein of hard quartz stands up half an inch from
the gneiss. The quartz surface is smooth, polished, shining,
and marked by sand-lines and scores. The edges of the ribs
are still angular. Elsewhere hard patches preserve their
smooth surface for a couple of square yards. At 700 feet
the grooves and finer sand-marks point N.N.E. and S.S.W.
along the face of the hill, past Slieve Patry, over Lough Mask,
at the Firth of Clyde in one direction, and out to sea in the
other.
At 1000 feet a well-marked groove on the top of a shoulder
points N.E. by N., S.W. by S., near Arran in Scotland, and at
the Irish Arran Islands.
At 1130 feet by barometer the hill-top is a boggy rolling
plateau, with low rocky saddlebacks peering up through
black moss. Sea and bog ; hills, islands, lakes and moun-
tains ; Galway Bay, Lough Corrib, and the low grounds of
central Ireland are spread out like a map, and there is not
a hill in sight to account for this glaciation by land-ice.
In the foreground of this wild landscape a wild group of
figures completed the picture. In a dark wet hollow, where
a stream oozed out of a bog, a thin blue smoke curled up into
the sunlight. Two bare-footed, black-haired girls, dressed in
patched red garments, shaded their eyes from the sun, and
peered doubtfully at the intruder. Three men and a boy,
picturesque and wild, unkempt, bare-footed, ragged, and polite,
paddled about in the black peat. Barrels, casks, noggins,
baskets, creels, peats, malt, a copper still, sweet worts, the
worm in its tub, a pile of potatoes for supper, and the black
holes from which the whole gear had been dug, showed a
CONN EM AHA GAL WAY AND WESTPOKT CURVES. 37
poteen distillery iii full work. The Ougliterard gauger bad
luck to him found it out.
From the ice-period to the period of poteen in Connemara
is a long time, but the weathering of gneiss during that time
has been less than half an inch ; for it can be measured from
the polished surface of a rib of quartz to the rough surface
above which it rises. Space could be turned into time if the
rate of weathering were known. Surely works of human art,
obelisks, pyramids, or sculptured stones, might give the rate
of weathering, and so fix the date of the glacial period in Ire-
land.
Thus, on four isolated hill-tops within sight of each other,
but far apart, at a height of 2000 feet and at the sea-level, the
Galway curve is repeated in well-marked ice-grooves upon
fixed rocks in Connemara.
The boulders which ice carried are very remarkable in
this district. They seem to spread like a fan from the pass.
Close to the road-side, near the police barracks at Inver, lies
a great block of granite (p. 10). It measures 36 x 12 x 10
feet, and it rests upon rounded granite, where it fell.
It is broken into seven pieces, which retain their positions.
The upper side is ground like other neighbouring surfaces ;
one end, the rest of the sides, and the fractures, are angular
and unground. It is evident that this great stone was a bit
of the granite surface of the country ; that it was lifted bodily,
carried some distance, and dropped where it lies broken.
Perhaps it broke when it fell ; perhaps it split afterwards.
It lies in the jaws of a glen, which was a strait at the foot
of a rounded granite hill, Shan na Clerich (the Clerk's Hill),
which is about 400 feet high. The hill is scored and ground
all over. Perched blocks are scattered over it ; but all about
it, and chiefly on S.W., or lee-side, enormous blocks of granite
38 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
are thickly strewn. A great many of these are broken, and
most of them are rounded on one side or another. Some few
are rounded on all sides, and chipped at the lower edge, as if
they broke them when they fell down. Sometimes they are
ranged in rows, which point N.E. by N. over the shoulder of
the hill towards the low pass, through which the road leads
from Oughterard.
Nearly all these blocks rest upon bare rock, but here and
there the rock is covered by compact hard beds of gravel and
reddish clay. The gravel is chiefly granite, but the clay
encloses small boulders of greenstone, and quartz rock of
various kinds and colours. These are foreigners, for there are
no rocks of the kind within ten miles at least. Where the
clay has been moved to make roads, the granite-surface beneath
is perfectly preserved in many places. Crystals of quartz and
felspar no longer stand out in relief to give a firm hold to
hob-nailed boots, but crystals and strings of harder rock are all
smoothed to a fine polished surface ; upon this grooves which
a pencil fills and finer marks remain. Hob-nails make almost
as clear a mark when they slide upon the rock. The polish
on the pillars of the Colosseum is not better preserved, and
the marble of the Parthenon is far more weathered than this
ice-ground Connemara granite where protected by the clay,
which helped to smooth it. All these grooves, great and small,
high and low, point nearly N.E. by N.
There can be no doubt that ice scraped along, carrying
boulders and grinding rocks, and the rocks show whence some
of these boulders came ; others may have come from Antrim.
Amongst the large blocks, and trains of blocks, ridges of
granite of the same kind rise up in the moor. They have
strange weird shapes, and suggest gray monsters crawling
eastwards out of the moss. They are the sides ^^ of rock-
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 39
grooves ^-^, in which peat-moss gathers and grows, and the
dragons and giant caterpillars and maggots are tors and
ridges, ready to be jointed, quarried, and carried away to
make granite boulders, for the stone is already split.
Some, as in the woodcut (p. 7), are actually moved, and
left loose in the place where they were first ground into
shape, and then quarried and pushed out by ice. These are
chiefly to be found at the north-eastern end of ridges, where
they were struck and shaken.
At other places the angular nest, from which a stone has
been pushed, lifted, or dragged, remains, but the stone has
disappeared. At some places the granite has been worn so
near to a joint that it can be split off in thin layers. Else-
where it is solid, and the fracture is never round like the
worn surface.
All over the moors and bogs, chiefly on the lee-side of
isolated hills, these blocks are scattered and ranged in rows.
Many are of enormous size. One, near Iiiver Lake, measures
14 x 11 x 12 feet, and must weigh about 130 tons.
Cloch Corril (p. 19) is still larger ; it stands on the bank
of Lough dbrril, and it probably came from Shan Folagh,
ten miles off. The circumference is 66 feet, and the height
about 24. The upper side is rounded, the under hollowed
and smoothed. The sides are angular, and coincide with the
natural fracture of the stone, for it is splitting up and falling
in large masses, which lie about it, and the rain drips through
it into the hollow beneath. It stands upon a rounded table of
granite, on which straw is laid ; it is smoked, for fires are
burned beneath it ; and it is rumoured that malt dries there.
The lake is a rock-basin full of big stones, and the striae upon
its islands point the usual way, towards Cnoc Mordan and
Mam Turk. It is a beautiful spot to look at, and " a fine
40 BALTIC CURRENT BKITISH ISLES IRELAND.
place for brewing poteen," as a native remarked. It has a
bad name, so it is seldom visited. It is haunted by " each
uisge," the water-horse, and other dangerous beings so few
people go there except to fish or brew spirits ; heather, blae-
berries, ivy, yew, holly, birch, and oak scrub, flourish upon
the islands ; white goats caper about amongst the stones, and
nibble the bark of the trees ; it is a green spot in the midst
of a wilderness of brown boggy moor, surrounded by the dis-
tant blue hills of the "Joyces' country," and the Twelve Pins
of Connemara. The chief feature in the landscape is the old
gray boulder, which is very like one upon the Unteraar
glacier (vol. i. p. 153). That stone has given shelter to many
a tourist to Saussure, Forbes, and to masters and students
of glacial action. The Swiss stone rests on ice which is grind-
ing rocks ; the Irish stone upon rocks which are ice-ground.
Ice is carrying one, and ice certainly carried the other.
Such a stone must have a legend, and thus the biggest
boulder in Connemara has one of its own. It was the play-
thing of a Celtic hero, Corril, who crushed his finger and left
the mark in the hollow stone, when he threw it from Mam
Turk at Mordan, the father of Goll MacMorna, who stood on
his own hill about ten miles off.
There can be no doubt that this tract was ground for a
depth of 2000 feet by ice moving from N.E. or N.N.E. to the
opposite points. All marks, from general forms of hill and
dale, down to minute sand-lines, tell one story. If this be
glacier-work, the snowshed was beyond Scotland. If it be
the work of a current with floats, similar work is going on in
O O
corresponding latitudes within ten days' sail.
Surely it was sea-ice which carried Cloch Corril (p. 19),
and set it gently down on its base. Surely it was a fiisible
raft which planted a block upon end liko a pillar on a big
CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 41
stone pedestal at the foot of Cnoc Ourid, on a rock in the
midst of a bog. When the sketch was made on the wood,
two gray horses stood beside the stone, lazily switching their
tails to keep away a host of flies. When it was gently placed
upright on its base, sea-horses, seals, and bears, may have
played about the hill-sides, where goats now browse. There
are " seal-meadows" further south on the opposite coast.
These sea-monsters, and the end of the Irish glacial
period, may have been seen by the ancestors of the men who
are now migrating westward after the glacial period. Celts
owned the land at the earliest historical date, the ice-marks
are as fresh as Roman and Egyptian sculpture, and all Celtic
tribes in the British Isles, from Cornwall to Sutherland,
people their lakes and seas with water-horses, water-bulls,
dragons, and sea-monsters. Their popular tales speak of ice-
mountains, of hills of glass, of islands with fire about them,
rising from the sea ; of wicked cities and plains sinking
beneath the waves.
According to a Connemara man, Finn and his warriors
once chased a deer till they lost their way, " and all but two
were frozen and starved, so that they died of cold and
starvation." The survivors did many marvellous feats. If
these myths be of native growth, they must surely be tracks
which a recent glacial period has left on human minds. The
belief in mythical sea-monsters, large deer and birds, is fresh
and vivid, plain and clearly marked, amongst all ancient
Britons, as are the ice-marks upon these Irish hills and
plains in Connemara.
CHAPTEE XXX.
BALTIC CUKRENT 3 BRITISH ISLES 3 IRELAND 2 CONNE-
MARA 2 NORTH-WESTERN, AND NORTH-EASTERN COASTS
GALWAY, WESTPOET, AND DERRY VEAGH CURVES.
THE broad trail of the Galway curve is well marked.
The fact of glaciation in a certain south-westerly direction
for a height or depth of 2000 feet, and a breadth of thirty
miles, being established at one point on the western coast of
Ireland, the next step is to look to the configuration of the
country. Books on geology The Antiquity of Man by Lyell,
Jukes' Manual of Geology, and other works of authority show
that the sea-level has varied greatly on Irish hills. Shells
are found high up, and peat, which grows on shore, is found
below low-water mark ; and for numerous reasons it is taken
to be an established fact that most of Ireland was under
water after its hills had assumed their present general form.
If the contour Line of 500 feet is traced, and assumed to be
an ancient sea-level, Ireland becomes an archipelago. Fifteen
groups of islands are disposed about a central strait, which
ends at Galway and Oughterard. If the level of 2000 feet,
the top of Shan Folagh, is taken to be the sea-level, very little
of Ireland remains. (See map, Antiquity of Man, p. 276.)
The western coast at the present sea-level is indented by
a series of bays running northwards and eastwards Donegal
Bay, Clew Bay, Galway, Shannon, Dingle, Kenmare, Bantry,
etc. Most of the high mountains to the west are on promon-
GALWAY CURVE. 43
tories which separate these bays. If these western mountains
were groups of islands stretching along the lines of movement
already indicated, it is easy to understand how a north-eastern
current ran amongst them, and to know where to look for
conspicuous ice-marks upon Irish plains and hill-tops.
The north-eastern corner of each block of high land ought
to bear the strongest marks of ice drifting south-westwards ;
and curves drawn through glens which were sounds and straits
ought to bear reference to main lines drawn by greater streams
in the widest openings.
The course of a rivulet passing through a row of stepping-
stones ; the run of larger streams which split and join in pass-
ing a salmon weir; the run of the ebb in a sea-loch studded
with rocks and islands ; the curves in the tail of the Gulf
Stream where it passes northwards and eastwards amongst
islands off Hammerfest and the north of Norway ; the Medi-
terranean Current off Gibraltar ; the Baltic Current off the south
of Sweden, and the windings of the Arctic Current off Green-
land and North America, all are illustrations of the move-
ments of an old Arctic Current striking upon Irish hills.
The theory is simple ; but a theory, however formed, is worth
little till it has been well tried. If it stands examination, it
rises in value by every new test.
North-western coast. A curve drawn below the 500 level
from Galway to Newport joins Clew Bay to Galway Bay, and
cuts off a large block of high land which would be a group of
islands if the sea were less than 500 feet above its present level.
The Twelve Pins of Connemara form part of the group.
Roads wind about amongst the mountains in this district
and follow the lowest levels, towns are built near the coast ;
so ice-marks which occur near roads and towns must either
be marks of glaciers sliding from the hills, or of streams flow-
44 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
in<r in shallow sounds. If a main stream flowed in from the
O
N.E., about Belfast and Londonderry, it must have found its
way out by glens, into bays, which open to the Atlantic at
Galway, Westport, and Donegal. Ice-marks do follow curves
which agree with this supposed movement of an arctic current
amongst islands.
In travelling from Ougliterard to Clifton, the road leads
along the foot of Mam Turk and the Twelve Pins of Connemara.
If ice-grooves were made by land-glaciers, they would cross
the road ; if they were made by floating ice and an arctic
current this was a place for an eddy in the stream, and the
grooves should run along the foot of the hills.
At the foot of Mam Turk, in the lee, there are thick beds
of glacial drift ; the large boulders are buried in moss, and the
rocks are hidden, but the hill-sides are ground to the very top.
On nearing Ballynahinch, after passing a deep glen, the rocks
appear, and grooves point back at Shan Folagh, the promontory
round which a north-eastern stream 500 feet deep must have
turned to reach this spot. The marks run nearly E. and "W.
At Ballynahinch Lake, near Canal Bridge, the rock is slate,
and much contorted. The ground surface is well preserved
near the road, and the grooves point E. N. E. along the foot of
the Twelve Pins at the shoulder of Mam Turk. In the other
direction, they point out to sea over the lake, wherein fisher-
men disport themselves and salmon plunge.
At Clifton, a glen, a hill-side, and well-marked grooves,
point E. and W. out of a deep gorge in the mountains at the
sea.
Further on, in a wide boggy plain, a rounded boss of whin-
stone has grooves which point K\V. and S.E. at the end of
the Twelve Pins. Thus, in passing along the foot of the hills
on the lee-side, the grooves turn gradually, till at the point
GALWAY CURVE. 45
they cross the main current at right angles, as eddy-streams
do behind a stone. (See voL i p. 127, and map, p. 496.)
From this place the road bends back, and passes up-stream
into a deep gorge at Letter/rack. Here large mounds of boul-
ders are piled below steep mountains, which are swept bare
higher up. A few large boulders are strewed about the foot
of the hills which border Kylemore, and woods of birch and
other trees fringe the lakes, and explain the name of Great-
wood. At the mouth of this pass the drift is arranged in
terraces, and these look like sea-work.
The valley divides the Twelve Pins from Ben Coona, and
after passing a low col the road descends about 300 feet to
the Killaries.
Here a very small depression would join the sea to Lough
Mask, and make the hills a group of long islands separated
by narrow sounds.
Up to 700 feet these hill-sides are certainly ice-ground,
and they seem to be ground to the top in the direction of the
valleys. Low down, the rocks are strewed with boulders ;
high up, they are swept clean.
At Leenan the road comes to the end of a long sea-loch,
and runs up-stream in a deep glen in the direction of Castle-
bar and the Ox Mountains, X.E. by N. At the head of the
sea-loch is a mass of drift packed in level terracea
From Leenan the road follows a deep gorge, with steep
hills on both sides. On the right, cross-glens run far up.
A few moraines cross the mouths of these glens. The rock
is silurian, a series of beds of conglomerate ; mica-slate and
clay- slate much upheaved. Where the road passes out of
the glen, at heights of about 600 and 700 feet, ice-grooves are
exceedingly well preserved on blue slate. The bottom of the
glen elsewhere is full of drift. Here, near the col, the rock is
46 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
bare or covered only by peat. Torrents have cut a few shallow
angular trenches in the steep hill-sides, but here, at the top
of the pass, is evidence of a current 700 feet deeper than the
present sea flowing in from the low centre of Ireland. The
grooves are clear as well-preserved sculpture on a slate
tombstone a year old, and in ascending the hill they turn
gradually round till they get clear of obstructions, and point the
same way as the high Shan Folagh grooves already described.
At the bridge they point E.N.E. over the shoulders of a
hill at the head of the pass.
At 300 feet, a little further on, N.E. at a notch. At the
head of the glen, 700 feet, they point N.E. by N. over every-
thing at the Ox Mountains twenty -five miles away and
beyond a glen.
A glance at the map shows that in this district minor
valleys all agree with these marks. From large and small
grooves it seems that the stream, which ran out by Galway
and Oughterard, split upon the hard block of land which is
now the Twelve Pins of Connemara, and glanced off north-
westwards through the Killaries and Kylemore.
Looking back over Slieve Patry, which makes the north-
eastern corner of this block, the outline is smooth and the
slope small, though the outline is along the strike of strata
which dip away from the ridge on both sides. It seems clear
that little weathering or river-work has been done amongst
these hills since they were last ground by floating ice.
On leaving this glen the road passes across the supposed
stream, and over a plateau varied by ridges of low hills,
strewed with large blocks.
Near Westport these become very numerous. The whole
country is covered with big stones, and wherever the peat
has been cut away the drift appears.
WESTPORT CURVE. 47
Many stones are scored and grooved, walls are museums
of transported stones. Eed sandstone, gray and blue and
black limestone, white quartz, coarse conglomerates, whin-
stones, grits, and granite, are piled up in houses and fences ;
and no ice-groove in the neighbourhood points at the holy
Croagh Patrick, which towers up 2510 feet on the left. It
must have been a tall island when the rest of Ireland was
nearly all drowned.
At Westport the head of Clew Bay is reached. A curve
drawn N.E., or thereby, 500 feet above the sea-level, passes
up a valley to Castlebar, through a gap in the hills at the end
of Lough Conn, past Ballina, over a flat country to Sligo, and
so through Donegal Bay to Lough Foyle. (See vol. i. p. 232.)
It cuts off two blocks of high land ; one which ends in
Achill Head, and a second to the north of Donegal Bay,
which ends about Letterkenny and Eossan Point. Let this
be called the " Westport curve," and followed wherever it will
lead.
Westpwt curve. If a stream ran in by Lough Foyle, out
by Donegal Bay, branched off through the gap at Lough
Conn, between the Ox Mountains and Croagmoyle, and struck
upon Croagh Patrick, the northern shore of Clew Bay would
be in the lee, and the rush would be at the narrows at the
end of Lough Conn ; at Westport ; and at the end of Donegal
Bay. The western mountains Achill, and those near that
island would all be sheltered by hills to the east. The road
to Achill is in the supposed lee, and the country supports
theory.
The whole of the northern shore of Clew Bay is thickly
covered by drift, and the hills are clothed to the top with
heather, so that the rock is hidden. The bay is a wide arm
of the sea studded with islands. These seem all to be of one
48 BALTIC CUKKENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
pattern. They have rounded slopes towards the head of the
bay, and many- are broken short off to seaward. The drift
upon the mainland is piled up in great heaps, mounds, and
beds. Many of the stones are a very coarse conglomerate of
white quartz pebbles, as large as pigeons' eggs. Where these
have been long exposed the cement weathers out, leaving
surfaces which resemble a modern sea-beach. But many sur-
faces have been ground, so that one front of a bed of pebbles
is flat and smooth, while the sides are round. Amongst these
are specimens of gray mica schist, red sandstone, and other
rocks, imbedded in hard yellowish clay.
Achill Island, the Isle of the Cell, is separated from the
mainland by a narrow shallow sound. The low grounds are
covered by very deep peat-mosses, in which bog-pine and bog-
oak abound. Beneath the peat are thick beds of boulders
and clay. Several large hills occupy the rest of the space,
and these end in steep slopes or perpendicular sea-cliffs.
These hills have the usual long north-eastern slope and
rounded forms, and piles of drift-like moraines fill up the
ends of mountain hollows. Where rocks do appear they have
the shape of ice-ground rocks, and some few have grooves,
but bare rocks are hard to find in Achill. Cruachan, 2222
feet high according to the survey, and 2200 and odd by
observation, is the highest point.
On the eastern shoulder, at 600 feet, a rock-surface, very
much weathered, is exposed, and a deep groove, which can
still be traced there, points east and west. A few blocks are
perched upon rounded rocks at this spot, and higher up at
800 feet. These are clear ice-marks. At 1000 feet the
ground is covered with large loose stones, laid flat and closely
packed. They are of many kinds. At 1500 feet stones still
cover the ground, but they are smaller, and some patches of
WESTPORT CURVE. 49
yellow clay peep out. At the top the ground is still thickly
covered with large loose rounded stones, and the rock-surface
is hidden.
To the eastwards a small glen has been .hollowed out of
the slope of the hill, and swept bare. A small lake has
formed behind a mound, which seems to be the moraine of a
small glacier which once nestled here and swept a trench in
the drift. To the north the hill has been broken. It has
a steep scarped face more than 2000 feet high, along which
men and sheep can barely scramble, and at many places the
slopes end in sheer cliffs.
The end of Achill is a ridge which projects westward into
the Atlantic. Sheep and shepherds scramble along the face of
the cliffs by paths on which even natives hesitate to venture.
Perched on the verge of this cliff, 830 feet above the Atlantic,
when the wind is high, the whole rock seems to shake and
cpaiver. It is a grand specimen of ocean-work, and a striking-
contrast to the ice-marks in Connemara. There everything is
round ; here all is angular, the hills are ground from above, but
the cliffs are undermined and broken from below by the sea.
Even where black rocks peer through broken white water off the
extreme point ; where the run of the tide is the strongest, and
Atlantic waves are of the largest size ; even there rock-forms are
sharp and angular. Water- work and ice-work are very different.
On a fine morning after a westerly gale has blown itself
out, great rolling masses of cloud gather and ground upon
these high western points-. They seem to anchor themselves
upon the peaks and stretch slowly away to leeward, 1000
feet above the sea, dropping showers as they drift. Their
tall white heads roll upwards and shine like snow in the
sun, while the ribs and keels of these air-ships, dyed blue
and purple, cast deep indigo shadows on the heather. As
VOL. 11. E
50 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
these clouds now drift steadily and ground upon the hill-
tops, so ice once drifted and grounded ; and here, on the lee-
side of a group of hills, boulders which ice carried and dropped
are strewed, 2000 feet above the sea, at the edge of cliffs
which the sea is now breaking down.
Here, too, is evidence of the persistence of ocean-move-
ments which result from the earth's rotation, and from heat and
cold. Where ice-grooves of an arctic current point seawards
towards America, the Equatorial Current now brings tropical
seeds to land. The people constantly pick up "nuts," and
they are the "horse-eyes" and "brown purses" which are
the playthings of English children in Jamaica, "fairy eggs"
in the Hebrides, and " Ljusne sten" in Iceland.
In Achill, according to theory, there ought to be drift in
the lee, and there is so much of it that rock-surfaces are
almost wholly concealed. At Westport and Lough Conn, at
the north-eastern end of this high ground, the rock ought to
be swept bare.
On leaving Westport the road passes up-stream over a
low hill about 400 feet high. It separates the bay from the
inland plain, and it stands in the way of a current flowing in
from the N.E. It is swept bare of drift, and the rock is much
ground. Trees point from W.N.W. and show the usual run
of currents of air ; rock-ridges point W.S.W. out into the bay,
and E.N.E. up a wide valley at the low lands of central
Ireland. From this hill the road descends into a rich, well-
cultivated plain, which seems to be made of drift, for rocks
and large boulders are hidden.
At Castlebar rock-surfaces begin to appear, and they seem
to be ground from the N.E.
Thence to Cullen Lake the road passes over a tract of low
country, where numerous boulders, large blocks, beds of boulder-
WESTPORT CURVE. 51
clay in hollows, and glaciated rocks and ridges abound. The
country is flat and boggy, but the block of high land of which
Achill Island forms part is close to the plain. The plain is
about 300 feet above the sea-level. The hills are about 2000.
Ice-furrows run along the road-side, gradually sweeping round
the foot of the hill till they point at the narrows between
Lough Conn and Lough Cullen. Here, according to theory,
rocks at a north-eastern corner, on a weather-side, and in a
low pass, ought to be much ground, and swept clear of drift ;
and here in fact rocks are as bare as hill-tops in Scandinavia,
or the straits at Oughterard.
It is a beautiful spot. The road winds along the shore,
and passes between the two lochs, beneath gray rocks, amongst
which berries, heather, fern, and graceful birch-trees find
shelter and room to grow. Distant blue hills are mirrored
in the calm water, and beaches of yellow sand and mica glow
and glitter in the sun like gold and diamonds. High up, on
large bosses, ridges, and tors, great rounded boulders and
rocking-stones hang poised where legends tell that Finn and
his giants cast them, and a pretty salmon river curls under a
bridge and joins the lakes. It is a bit of Sweden planted in
the midst of Ireland, and the same agent has done similar
work in both countries. More conspicuous ice-work could
scarcely be found, and yet there is no indication of land-ice.
Large ridges, and grooves upon them, all point at low lands
along the course which was chosen to make a level road
through the pass which was a strait at the 500 feet level.
The lines come in from N. N. E. near the river, pass S. S.W.
through the strait, and turn gradually westward as they pass
round the foot of the hill, past Castlebar and over the plain to
the bare hill behind Westport. There the tall cone and saddle-
back of Croagh Patrick blocks the way, and turns the course
52 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
of currents of air ; it seems to have thrown the water-stream
westwards into Clew Bay, to join another branch which came
in from Lough Conn to Newport ; and these two probably
dropped their burdens of drift in the lee of the hills.
From Ballina to Sligo the road passes up-stream over a low
flat country which is generally well cultivated. Large blocks
of stone and smaller boulders are scattered about, and stand
up like monuments in the green fields. Wherever the soil is
broken glacial drift appears, and where rivulets have cleared
their beds, the rock-surface below the drift is ground. For
many miles the cone of Croagh Patrick may still be seen past
the shoulder of a hill of the same A pattern, which rises west
of Lough Conn, and divides the glens which lead to Newport
and Westport.
So two groups of hills in Galway and Mayo appear to
record that they were groups of islands in a frozen sea which
moved south-westward.
To the right is a block of high land which reaches to
Enniskillen ; to the left are the mountains of Donegal beyond
the bay ; and in front is the deep groove which crosses Ireland,
and holds Donegal Bay and Lough Foyle.
According to theory, a N.E. current entered between Innish-
owen and Ballycastle, and split upon hills about Enniskillen.
The Westport branch ran down past Ballyshannon and Sligo,
through Donegal Bay, and branched off into Cle\v Bay at Lough
Conn; the other joined a stream which came in by Belfast,
and ran out by way of Lough Mask, Lough Corrib, Oughterard,
and Galway. Both came from Scotland. The Derry and Done-
gal stream came along the north side of Ceantire ; the Belfast
and Galway stream came from the Firth of Clyde, and they were
kept separate by the mountains of Antrim and by Ceantire.
In travelling from Ballysliannon to Enniskillen these
WESTPORT CURVE. 53
two streams are crossed. The south-western bank of
Lough Erne is the block of high land which stretches to
Lough Conn ; the north-eastern bank is low and undulating.
A depression of a few hundred feet would sink the plain, and
make these hills islands. They are beds of grit and limestone
nearly horizontal, and from Sligo to Enniskillen the hill-faces
resemble broken sea-cliffs. At Enniskillen the eastern side
has the same form, but the low grounds about the foot of the
hills, and the hill-tops, are rounded. The lake itself seems to
be a rock-basin filled with mud, boulders, and water. If an
ice-laden current beat upon the edge of a stratum of limestone
it would tend to make sea-cliffs.
From Enniskillen to Lough Foyle the stream is crossed
again by a railway. The country is low and flat, thickly
covered with deep soil and beds of clay and boulders, and no
rocks are to be seen by a passing traveller. At Ballyshannon,
where a salmon stream worthy of Norway is cutting a drain
for Lough Erne through limestone, fossils are weathered out,
and the rock-surface is pitted like that of weathered lime-
stone elsewhere. In the plain the rocks are hid, striae can-
not be seen, but the general shape of the country remains,
and it tells of ice. Hollows and low ridges have one general
direction, and point from or towards the bays which here
approach each other and make Donegal a peninsula.
From Strabane to Letterkenny the sea of rolling hills and
glens is crossed at the isthmus. Every here and there a
great round stone in a corn-field, a dam built of boulders,
a gravel-pit, or a bed of clay in a burn, appears to give
evidence in favour of ice-floats. So from the end of Lough
Foyle to Achill Head and Galway the evidence agrees so far.
At the highest point on the road between Letterkenny
and Strabane, 400 feet or thereabouts, the boulders include
54 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
"ranites of various sorts, gray and white quartz rock, and
O
traps of various colours. Many of these must have travelled
f ar : some perhaps from the Giant's Causeway. The lines
point at Aberdeen, and the granites resemble Aberdeen
granites ; according to theory they may have come thence, but
there is granite close at hand in Donegal
From Letterkcnny to Gwcedor a coast-road makes nearly
half a turn round the north-eastern corner of the Donegal
mountains, or the weather-side of a group of islands.
On leaving Lctterkcnny glaciated rocks appear at about
400 feet above the sea-level Eidges run N.E. and S.W., but
the rock is too much weathered for small marks. Further
on, at the turn, the rocks are swept bare and much ground,
but it is very difficult to determine the direction. Thence all
the way to Gweedor the rocks near the sea are glaciated, but
broken into low cliffs. A range of lofty hills Muckish, big
and little Ach, and Aracul stand out from the Deny Veagh
range ; and on the top of the most northern mountain, about
2000 feet high, a bed of fine white sand is worked for glass-
making. It is hard to understand how it got there, or why it
has not been washed away. The road bends south-westwards
along the base of these mountains, which are separated from
each other by deep glens.
If these hills were islands in a north-eastern current, and
exposed to the Atlantic, the inn at Gweedor would be at the
end of a sea-strait, and in the lee of the stream. The weather-
side has been swept clean ; in the supposed lee a large deposit
of glacial drift is piled at the end of the strait. The heap
crosses the glen below the lake, and rises more than 500 feet
on the hill-flanks. Small rivulets have made sections, which
show these low hills to consist of sand, gravel, large and
small boulders, all mixed confusedly and resting upon sand-
DKKKY VEAGH CURVE. 55
stone. The river which drains the lake cuts through the
mound in a wide gap which looks as if a glacier had ploughed
it out after the land rose. Many of the larger stones in these
mounds are scored. The sweep of the Atlantic and the
prevailing wind is from the S.W. If sea-waves driven by
S.W. winds piled such heaps, these would be in the lee at
the north-eastern end of the range, which in fact is swept
clean, so the evidence tells for movement from the N.E.
Aracul is the highest mountain in this tract. After
leaving the inn, glaciated rocks begin to appear close to the
foot of the hill at about 400 feet. The ascent from this side
is very steep. After passing over a series of cairns of
angular quartz blocks which seem to have fallen from the
hill, a steep slope of talus, angle 35, leads up to the foot of a
large whin dyke. This stands out from the loose stones like
a great cyclopean wall. No better specimen of the works of
fire is to be found in Iceland. It runs south through the
hilL In that direction a quarry has been opened which
yields excellent crystalline white marble. It is fine and
white as that of Pentelicus.
At about 2200 feet these cliffs are passed, and a steep
slope of stones, with patches of heather, grass, and moss like
green velvet, leads to the top. From this point, on a showery
day, with a S.W. wind, the march of clouds over the Atlantic
is seen in perfection. When a shower is coming, a low ragged
i'ringe blots out the horizon to windward, and advances
steadily upon the mountain, seeming to eat up the coast-line,
the low country, and the lakes. Then a puff of mist like a
wreath of gray smoke sweeps up the hill-side, and then the
whole cloud sweeps round the top and a sudden darkness
wraps everything as in a thick veil. The lower world
disappears ; the rain patters down and splashes against the
56 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
stones, and the wind sweeps past with a rushing noise like
the sound of the sea. There is nothing for it but to crouch
under a stone, and smoke the pipe of resignation. In ten
minutes the cloud passes on its way ; light dawns as suddenly
as it disappeared ; coast-line, plain, corn-land, hill and moor,
seem to grow out of the gray sea of mist. The sun wades
out into the blue sky, the tail of the cloud creeps over the
highest peak of the hill, the sough of the wind dies away,
and the shower and the cloud are gone.
If the cloud were ice, the wind an arctic current, and the
rain boulders, it is easy to comprehend how rocks would be
marked, and drift scattered.
On the sides of this particular hill there is no vestige of
ice-work, for it is a broken ruin. Looking down from the
peak, loose stones, which rains have freshly washed from the
crumbling sides, radiate in yellow winding streams, like the
floods which carried them to lower grounds. This hill is
weathered. But lower down, rocks on cols have the familiar
ice-shape, and nearly all the lower hills to the south are mani-
festly ice-ground. On the very top of the highest peak of
Aracul one only patch of the original surface seems to be
preserved. It is a hard gray quartz rock about three square;
yards in area, and smoothed across the joints. The surface
appears to be scored N.E. by N., S.W. by S. ; the height is
2450 feet above the sea.
This mark is uncertain, but about 1000 feet lower down ice-
marks are plain. On a col about 1500 feet above the sea-level,
on a knob of hard gray quartz, grooves cross the col from S.E. to
N.W., in the direction which a stream would take if it flowed
through Glewveagh and branched off seawards upon the cone
of Aracul. In the glen at which these grooves point are heaps
of broken stones piled confusedly, as if swept there by streams
DERRY VEAGH CURVE. 57
or a glacier. On the col are several large rounded boulders
of granite, which contrast strangely with the angular gray
quartz of the broken mountains. One great granite pebble is
nine feet long by six broad. At a height of about 900 feet, in
the pass by the road-side, the rocks are hidden beneath a mass
of boulders and clay, and the great bulk of the stones are
foreign to the rocks upon which they rest. At the top of the
pass of Gleuveagh, about 1100 feet on the side of Benduich,
are many well-preserved granite surfaces, upon which grooves
point E.N.E. over the shoulder of a hill, at the mouth of the
Caledonian Canal, in Scotland. Many perched blocks of large
size are balanced upon these bare granite rocks. Burns and
gravel-pits by the road-side show the whole of the low grounds
in this pass to be paved with drift beneath a carpet of peat-
moss, but the col is swept bare, and high up on the sky-line,
to the south, great stones are poised in ranks, as if the in-
habitants had ranged them there to hurl upon offending
Saxons.
The quartz hills to the north have none of these conspicu-
ous ice-marks ; they are weathered quartz peaks, but granite
has withstood the weather, and the hills to the south are
manifestly ice-ground. On one side are talus, soil, and
vegetation ; on the other, bare rock and perched boulders.
Lower down on the weather-side there is little drift and much
glaciation ; jointed tors and long ridges abound, and the hills
are rounded to the very top. At Lough Veagh another great
pass runs S.W. through the hills, and here a patch of drift or
a moraine makes a dam and a beautiful lake. At the weather-
end of the next ridge a series of grooves point N. and S., at
an elevation of about 500 feet. Soon after this the north-eastern
end of the Donegal peninsula is passed, and the direction of ice-
grooves changes. They pointed across the stream at the end
58 BALTIC CURKENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
of the ridge, where the streams split ; when the end is passed
they point along the side of the ridge, and into glens which
converge about the head of Donegal Bay. The spoor seems
to record movements like those which are roughly shown on
the margin of the map (vol. i. p. 496).
Here, too, the rock changes granite is left, flags are
reached, and heather and bog give place to grass and corn-
fields. But still the old rocks, with their old-world inscrip-
tions, peer out all the way down to the sea at Lough
Swilly.
At the holy rock of Tobar-an-doon, where sick pilgrims
resort from all parts of Ireland, from Scotland, and even from
America ; where a garden of planted crutches and walking-
sticks bears flowers and a foliage of bows and rags, the votive
offerings of those who believe that the holy well beside the
rock cured, or will cure, their ailments ; the old rock upon
which Irish kings were crowned in the olden time is an
ice-ground tor ; and here in the low grounds the direction is
once more N.E. and S.W.
So the trail is clearly marked for a height equal to that of
the highest hills in the north and west of Ireland, all the way
from Galway to Gweedor, and the lines all aim diagonally
across meridians, northwards and eastwards, except at places
where a current would split or eddy behind an island, as the
wind now eddies behind the Irish hills.
Three curves are thus started from Galway, Westport, and
Deny Veagh.
North-eastern coast. The western coast gives a broad clear
trail, and it points to the X.E. coast of Ireland. It was
crossed from Galway to Gweedor northwards ; the next cast,
like a steady pointer's range, should be southwards, the
other way.
WESTPORT CURVE. 59
The north-eastern corner of Ireland is about the Giant's
Caiiseway. From Deny a line of rail leads over a flat, up-
stream to Coleraine, and the first high hill is at Ballycastle.
Looking N. E. from the Causeway, on a fine day, the land-
scape fades in the Sound of Jura. A north-eastern line
passes near Loch Awe in Scotland, and clears the land of
Ceantire ; a S.W. line passes over low lands towards Ennis-
killen and Galway. The rocks of the district are basalt or
chalk, and the boulder clay seems chiefly to contain blocks of
basalt. But on the beach and elsewhere, specimens of various
kinds of granite, of a dark limestone, of sandstone, and of
gray quartz, are found.
Near the top of the cliff ice-striae are well marked upon
whinstone, near a wall They point N.E. by E. along the
north shore of Ceantire, and S.W. by W. along the shore of
Lough Foyle. In a field near this spot is a large wandering
block of trap, and near it are several boulders of sandstone,
greenstone, and granite, some of which are grooved. This
direction agrees with the run of the flood-tide, which splits
off the Giant's Causeway. One branch pours up Lough
Foyle in the old groove, the other passes outside of Innish-
owen, and so north in an eddy. A depression of 500 feet
would let the flood pour through Donegal Bay. Parallel to
the sea-cliffs, at some distance from the shore, is a line of
submarine cliffs, well known to fishermen, who get fish in
the deep water.
If heavy ice were now floating in the Irish Channel, and
grounding upon the top of this lower shelf, some 200 feet
below the sea, ice-floats would make parallel marks similar to
those which now exist on the top of the upper shelf, about
300 feet above the sea. If the upper cliff were under water
half Ireland would be submerged. If it were 2000 feet under
60 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
water, and the sea over Shan Folagh, large bergs, like those
which now pass Cape Farewell, might ground at the Giant's
Causeway. If the depression was general in Europe, the sea-
way would be open to the polar basin. (See map, voL i. p. 232.)
There can be no doubt as to these marks ; they are ice-
grooves crossing each other at a small angle. They are pre-
cisely the same in kind as grooves which are found on the
top of basaltic cliffs, within sight of glaciers, near the edge of
the Arctic Current, at the foot of Snsefell at Stapi in Iceland
(chap, xxv.) There the grooves point at glaciers, basalt, and
lava, and at the top of a volcano ; here they point at low
lands and sounds, where the tide still moves in curves parallel
to the old ice-grooves. And here the works of fire are as
manifest as they are at Staffa and Stapi.
From Ballycastle to Cuskendal the road passes over a spur
of the Antrim hills, and reaches as high as 800 feet. The
higher it goes the more drift there is, and at the highest point
the rocks are ground but weathered. To the N. E. is the Mull
of Ceantire, so this part of the coast was in the lee of the
Scottish Land's End, between two streams or tides which
passed through Lough Foyle to Donegal Bay, and through
Belfast Lough to Galway Bay.
From Cushendal to Glenarm the road coasts along the
sea-margin beneath cliffs of chalk capped with whin. The
contrast of white and brown, with all possible shades of green
and blue and purple, on land and sea, and in the distance,
make these cliffs very beautiful. The beach is composed of
boulders, chiefly whinstone, but pink granite is to be seen
here and there.
When rocks whose colours are so conspicuous are thus
placed, transported fragments are like thistle-down which a
deer-stalker throws up to find out the direction of a breeze
GALWAY CURVE. 61
A bit of " Irish limestone " used to form part of a child's
museum, on the opposite coast ; a flint is a rare stone beyond
the Giant's Causeway. There are none on the opposite coasts
of Scotland flints were buried with their owners in Ross-
shire and in Arran. Boulders on the opposite Scotch coasts
are chiefly gray quartz, like hills to the north and east of the
Hebrides. But if the south-western line is followed, Irish
drift is full of chalk and trap. Professor Jukes says (Manual
of Geology, p. 675) "Chalk flints and pieces of hard Antrim
chalk are found in the drift in the counties of Dublin and
Wicklow, up to heights of one or two hundred feet, and along
the whole eastern and southern coast of Ireland, at least as
far as Ballycotton Bay, on the coast of Cork."
The tides run both ways, but this drift went S.W., which
again supports a theory of a Baltic current.
Opposite to the Antrim hills at Clandeboyc, in County
Down, an isolated hill of slaty quartz rises upon the southern
point of Belfast Lough. The hill is ice-ground, and the striae
at about 600 feet point N.E. by N. at Arran, and S.W. by S.
at the shoulder of the Mourne Mountains, in the direction of
Galway. From " Helen's Tower," on the top of this hill, a
magnificent panorama includes the Isle of Man, and the
opposite coasts from the Mull of Ceantire to Cumberland.
Belfast stands at the head of a long lough, in a hollow
which stretches far inland. The hollow is bounded on the
N.W. by a range of hills, extending south-westward from
Lame. These are of trap or chalk, and where they are not
broken away in cliffs they are rounded. At 600 feet a large
wandering block of whin stands in a green field, where it
must have been carried. At 1450 feet, on the top of one of
these hills, another large block is planted. It has been split
by gunpowder, but the rounded forms of the fragments con-
62 BALTIC CURRENT BEITISH ISLES IRELAND.
trast with the fracture, and betray the origin of the stone.
From this point the ground slopes in all directions, and long
heather slopes stretch inland towards Lough Neagh. A long
search on these hill-tops failed to discover a rock-surface.
Some snipes, a grouse, a collie-dog, and a keeper were found,
and the latter, on being questioned, exclaimed, " What, in
heaven's name, do you want with rocks ? " Quarries in the
hill-side show that the rounded forms of these hills are due
to denudation, and the glen gives the same direction as the
grooves at Helen's Tower. The form remains, but the exposed
surface and all small marks have crumbled away.
Another hill of about the same height gave a similar re-
sult. On the side of Cave Hill a large quarry facing Belfast
gives a fine section of the chalk, with its dykes and cover of
trap. A thin bed of red and yellow baked flints divides the
two. The dykes appear to have cooled, and set at the sides
of the fissures through which the melted stone rose, and the
chalk in the walls of the vein of trap is hard and brittle as if
it had been heated.
Above the trap is a layer of loose brown earth, containing
numerous rounded stones, chiefly trap. The chalk from this
quarry is used for ballast, and ballast when done with is
thrown overboard ; ships from Belfast sail far, so a lump of
Antrim chalk on a beach must not be taken as evidence of
natural movement in the sea. About 1000 feet up this hill
is a large rounded stone, different from the rock beneath it.
At the top, 1300 feet, are more loose stones, but the rock is
hidden. The sea-face is a cliff. The chalk has been under-
mined, and the trap has split off and sunk down like the
Undercliff in the Isle of Wight. Looking towards central
Ireland from this hill-top, there is no high land to stop the
movement which marked the hill at Clandeboye. The Mourne
GALWAY CURVE. 63
Mountains are there, but they fade away inland. At 600 feet
the whole land from Belfast to the Mourne hills would be a
wide strait. It is now the line of various canals and railways,
works which follow level ground and avoid mountains. Far
as the eye can reach is a level horizon or an undulating
plain.
When all the lines thus found ruled upon a few Irish hills
are laid down on a map, and carried at the proper level from
hill to hill ; over plain, glen, and sea ; they are found to have
a common general direction. Galway lines point towards
Antrim hills. Lines at Clandeboye point along the south side
of Ceantire at Arran in Scotland. Lines near Westport point
at Lough Conn, and there lines point at Lough Foyle. At the
Giant's Causeway, at the mouth of Lough Foyle, lines point
along the north shore of Ceantire towards Inverary and Oban.
At Glen Veagh lines point towards Mull and the Caledonian
Canal. The lines seem to agree with hollows laid down on
good maps. Either the lines of movement were governed by
the form of the land, or the form of the land was altered by
the movement. But it is admitted that the form of the
rock-surface is a result of denudation, and where ice is work-
ing in earnest now, as it is off Labrador, rocks seem to
crumble like mole-hills before the mighty force. Looking to
the geology of Ireland, harder rocks are in the hills, and softer
generally in hollows. Looking to the ice-marks, it is clear
that ice has worked in Ireland up to a height of 2000 feet.
Taking the whole evidence, it seems that denudation, and
transport of a great mass of debris, have resulted in northern
Ireland from a general south-westerly movement in a current
laden with heavy ice, which continued to flow till land rose
and stopped the movement.
The people of Antrim and the N.E. of Ireland hail from
64
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND.
Scotland, as they say. The lines drawn by ice on Irish rocks
aim back at Scotland ; so the next cast must be taken beyond
the sea, and this time northwards.
Fio. 74. Acmr.i, UK/
CHAPTER XXXI.
BALTIC CURRENT 4 BRITISH ISLES 4 SCOTLAND
GALWAY CURVE ARRAN.
THE ice-lines on the east coast of Northern Ireland seemed to
converge on Arran, Ceantire, and Loch Linne ; so the Irish
spoor must be followed past the Mull of Ceantire by the
Galway and Westport curves.
Galway curve, Firthof Clyde, C umbrae. Steamboats follow
the Galway curve up-stream from Belfast to Ardrossan. On
that coast no observations are recorded, and none were made
on this journey ; but ice-marks abound in Ayrshire.
On the Cumbraes, an arrow on Mr. Geikie's map * points
nearly south, out of the Firth. It is a low-level mark corre-
sponding to the run of the ebb.
Arran. On Arran no arrows are marked by Geikie. The
hills are well seen from the Ayrshire coast, and to them the
high grooves in Connemara and Antrim point.
The high ground forms a block which is still surrounded
with water. The granite mountains differ in shape from the
granite hills of Connemara ; they are higher, and down to
a certain level, about 2000 feet, Goatfell and his giant
brethren are broken weathered peaks A. They are like
jagged mountains which tower above ice in Spitzbergen and
in the Alps. But in Arran, and elsewhere about the Clyde,
hills below 2000 feet are rounded like ice-ground hills
everywhere '* ^ . Above Lamlash, a long glen and a steep
* On the Phenomena of the Glacial Drift of Scotland, by A. Geikie ; 1863.
VOL. II. F
66 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
road lead over to the south end of Arran. At 800 feet, close
to the road-side, ice-grooves are well marked on sandstone ;
they point N.E. by N. and N.E. at the shoulder of the Holy Isle,
and S.W. over the col at Ireland. At this level the stream
would not be influenced by the low Ayrshire coast, for 800
feet of water would sink most of the low lands. To the south
of the road is a hill-top 1350 feet high. Here, on a rock
which has the form of glaciation, a deep groove points N.E.
by N. over the Cumbraes at Ben Lomond. In the other
directions a stick nearly clears the Mull of Ceantire, and
points at Antrim. At this level a stream would be free to
move over Scotland and Ireland.
These marks were not made by land-glaciers, for they do
not point at the high mountains beside them. They seem to
belong to the hollow which crosses the south end of Arran
diagonally, and to a stream which flowed through it.
In the deep glen which runs south-westward, enormous
masses of drift are piled ; but the drift is not arranged in
conical heaps like a moraine. In the glen which runs N.E. there
is less drift. Trees show the prevailing direction of the wind
to be S.W., for the branches point up-stream in one glen, and
down-stream in the other.
Arran, western coast. A road coasts northwards along
the back of the island. At a point called Leaca Bhreaca
(Speckled Slabs) certain igneous rocks are much weathered,
but ice-ground to a great height. At 200 feet or thereabout,
grooves are distinct ; they run horizontally along the hill
which faces Ceantire ; at this spot these contour-lines run
N., S. Perched blocks and jointed tors are numerous up to
the sky-line. In the lee of this point to the south are great
beds of drift which contain stones of many kinds, but one
pattern. After a long search no flints or Antrim chalk were
GALWAY CURVE ARRAN. 67
found. North of this promontory, another deep glen leads to
Brodick over a pass, and the coast-land is a wide Hat moor.
Over this a path leads to the King's Caves. Close to the
sea is a fine mass of columnar basalt.
At Machuri the drift is arranged in ten-aces, which look
like ancient sea-margins, but these are chiefly composed of
glacial drift.
The actual sea-beach, where no ice now forms, is a good
specimen of its class. It is a hollow curved slope of large
stones, with ripples of coarse gravel about high-water mark,
and a calm of sand below it ; but every here and there a
great ice-boulder is planted in the midst of these stone-waves
like a beacon amongst breakers. About Dubhgarrie walls
are a curious study. They are made of big stones found
about the sea-margin ; they were washed out of the drift-
terraces by the sea, and they have been broken by men so as
to show their internal structure. Some blocks are conglomer-
ates, which contain rounded water-worn quartz boulders as big
as turnips, bits of water-worn granite, gray and red sandstone,
and other stones all cemented with a coarse hard reddish
cement. Others are blocks of old red sandstone, which con-
tain large pebbles of water-worn quartz with the sand packed
round them, as sand is packed about pebbles on the sea-beach.
Others are blocks of granite veiy like those which are found
on the beach near the Giant's Causeway, and along the Antrim
coast. There are many chips broken from Arran hills, but
amongst them are no bits of Antrim flint or chalk.
At the house of Dubhgarrie, at the end of the longest and
deepest glen in Arran, a river is crossed. It rises amongst
the highest hills, 2874 feet. Here is a washed moraine with
conical hillocks and terraces. A little beyond the house the
road passes under a steep bank of brushwood growing on
68 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
glacial drift. A few streamlets have cut scars in this face,
which is about 100 feet high. The bank contains scratched
and polished stones of aU sizes imbedded in fine gray clay,
very unlike the common drift-clay.
This then appears to be a record of the local glacier-
system of Arran, a museum of Arran stones brought down to
the sea, and partially arranged by the sea.
At lomachar the north-western corner of the island is
reached. There a sea-cliff about 150 feet high rises above a
beach of rolled stones and broken crags. This is modern sea-
work, but the rock-surface on the top of the cliff is ice-
ground. It is so weathered and worn, that it is impossible
to tell the direction with certainty. The rock is contorted
slate, and on it rounded blocks of compact granite are perched
at this level.
At a little more than 1000 feet, on the shoulder of a hill
which makes the base of Ben Bhanriyh (the Queen's HOI),
ice-scores are very well preserved on a smooth patch of slate,
which appears from under the peat-moss. The direction at
this promontory is again N. and S. A stick aims nearly at
Skipness Point, and at the Mull of Ceantire, along the run of
the coast. A little lower down, and further from the hill,
scores upon similar rocks point N.N.E.
At WTvitefarlane, close to the road-side, at less than 100
feet above the sea, stria? on slate are very clear. They point
N.E. by N., and so do bent trees beside them. Grooves are
tool-marks of ice and water-streams ; trees are shaped by
streams of air ; the equinoctial gale followed the run of the
Arctic Current, and both were driven by the same forces past
this spot in opposite directions.
The Galway curve is carried over Arran at Lamlash at
1300 feet, and past the west and north-west corners of Arran
GALWAY CURVE ARRAN. 69
at more than 1000. To account for these marks by land-ice
alone, a glacier must be imagined reaching from 1350 feet to
the sea-bottom, and from Ceantire to the nearest hills of equal
height on the mainland of Scotland. To account for the
marks by floating ice, like that which is working off Labrador
in the same latitude, a change of climate and of sea-level
must be assumed.
The run of the tide in the Sound corresponds to the ice-
lines on the hill ; the wind follows the ice-grooves along the
hill 1000 feet higher. A south-westerly breeze, which soon
became an equinoctial gale, and whose path along the sea
was marked by blue squalls and crisp waves, swept the fringe
of a low cloud of sea-mist northwards along the hill at the
high level. Further up the Sound the same south-west wind
curled round the hills and blew from the south-west ; further
up it blew from the west. In the lee of the mountain the sea-
mist hung and boiled and rolled over and over. A stream of
water of equal depth moving the other way would move
solid floats as the wind moved clouds ; surely the stream did
flow here, and the floating solids have recorded the fact.
In the night, when the breeze became a storm, it was a
Dutchman's hurricane, straight up and down, in the glens. It
surged over the hills like great rollers on a beach, and plunged
down upon the house-tops, as if to crush them ; and ocean-
streams must roll over sunken hills in the same way.
At Cath-mihic-Dhuil, which strangers have baptized Cati-
kill, and at Loch Ranza, are two long glens which held glaciers, -
for terraced moraines are near the sea. A lofty ridge divides
the glens, and the hill-top was a good point for high grooves.
Loch Ranza. Up to 1300 feet, rocks on this ridge arc
ice-ground, but so weathered that the direction is hard to
make out. On a shoulder at this level many large boulders
70 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
of granite (some six feet long) are poised 011 slate saddles.
The smoothest side of these slate knolls points N.N.E., the
broken side S.S.W. The dip has nothing to do with the
shape and fracture. These forms give the direction given
by grooves at 1000 feet, and the wind which followed the
o-rooves below blew against the fractured side of the rock here.
O O
At 1400 feet, a deep groove in granite again pointed down
wind N.E., over everything in Arran and Bute, up the Firth
of Clyde, at hille about Ben Lomond.
So the Galway curve is here carried over Arran at 1400 feet.
At the top of the ridge, 1800 feet or thereabouts, several
large stones had been moved a few yards from their beds
towards the S.W., but here the granite is weathering fast,
and has weathered so far as to obliterate all small marks.
Gravel as large as peas, scudding before a gale, was form-
ing tiny beaches in front of every heather-bush and peat-bank ;
and rain-drops pattered, and splashed, and rattled against
the hill, driven by the gale. It was bad weather for spooring
on high grounds.
Low Marks. In the bottom of the glen near Loch Kauza,
about 200 feet above the sea, is a fine section of an ancient
water-washed moraine. It is chiefly composed of granite
gravel swept from the hills, and of very large granite boulders,
which something stronger than wind and water must have
piled there ; but this is not a perfect moraine, the surface had
been worn down. Lower down, stones, sand, and gravel are
ranged in terraces, and packed upon a different principle. The
stones are sorted in sizes, and laid in sloping beds, where the
rivers shot them out during floods and low waters. These are
the washings of moraines arranged by burns in the sea. At the
mouth of the loch in the sea is a ridge of stones washed into
another shape, and arranged on a different plan, by the ebb
GALWAY CURVE ARRAN. 71
and flow of the tide, and by sea-waves. An old castle stands
on the sea-bar to mark a date, and amongst the gravel at the
point a large block of granite stands firm in the station which
it took up before the castle was built. From Loch Eanza
to the south end of Arran, and along the eastern coast of the
island, similar large granite boulders are planted on the beach ;
and more boulders of the same kind are perched on the top of
the Holy Isle, according to a work on the geology of Arran.*
Thus granite blocks and ice-marks, in situ, can be traced
from the central high hills to the south end of Arran, but
there are traces of two kinds of glaciation. In the glens are
marks of a large local system, but high up on watersheds are
marks of something larger. According to theory these high
marks record the passage of the same arctic current whose
traces were found at Belfast, and in Connemara ; because ice-
grooves point from the E. of N. to the W. of S. in this district.
Having earned the Galway curve thus far, the Westport
curve must be carried a stage if possible. Having beat round
Arran, and found the spoor as high as 1400 feet, and all
round the coast, the next cast is northwards across the stream
to Ceantire.
* Geology in Clydesdale and Arran, embracing the Marine Zoology and the
Flora of Arran, etc. By James Bryce, M.A., LL.D., F.G.S.
This author says, at p. 15, that he had failed to discover any decided
cases of glacier moraines in Arran. He mentions piles of drift at the mouth
of Glen lorsa, and at "Cataeol," which are mentioned above, as moraines
washed out of shape. Mr. Bryce attributes them to currents of water sweep-
ing these glens when the area was rising from beneath the sea. At pp. 86 and
87, and elsewhere, terminal and lateral moraines are mentioned and described
at higher levels in these Arran glens ; and at p. 89, the combined action of
local glaciers and ice-floats is suggested to account for the dispersion and
placing of blocks of native granite, which are perched on distant high points
in Arran, such as the Holy Isle at which high grooves above Lamlash point
(see p. 66). The author has failed to notice these and other high marks which
would have helped his argument. This seems to be the work of an able geolo-
gist who changed his first opinion after careful examination and due com-
parison with other parts of the country, so his evidence is the more valuable.
CHAPTER XXXII.
BALTIC CURRENT 5 BRITISH ISLES 5 SCOTLAND 2 WESTPORT
CURVE CEANTIRE.
BETWEEN the Galway and Westport curves is Ceantire, at which
place grooves at the Giant's Causeway pointed. A steamer
runs from Loch Ranza to Campbelton, and thence a road leads
to the lighthouse at the Scotch Land's End. The east coast is
broken and weather-beaten all the way, but the highest hills
are rounded. At Camqjbelton the hills are very unlike ice-work.
Not a symptom of glacial action could be traced up to the top
of a hill 1100 feet high which rises south of the town. But if
the sea were 1000 feet deeper, the town and the country between
the two seas would be about 990 feet under water. This
district has been swept and the surface destroyed by the sea.
There is no trace of old ice in the low grounds further
west. A few suspicious boulders at the end of glens may
possibly be remnants of moraines or drift, but these are few
and far between. Within four miles of ilie lighthouse, rocks
on high grounds begin to assume the familiar shape, and at
a height of 700 feet, a large block is perched upon a rounded
hill-shoulder to the right of the road. At 900 feet, some
blocks of rounded granite peer through the moss by the road-
side, and beside them are lumps of the crumpled contorted
slate of the country. Fifty yards further, on the north side
of the road, is a well-preserved surface. It is a miniature tor,
and a deep groove on the top of it points nearly E. and W.,
at the notch through which the road passes.
WESTPORT CURVE CEANTIRE. 73
Over the brow to the south of the road, hills rise to a
height of 1260 feet, according to a barometer which passing
gales made an uncertain guide for the time. All these tops
have glaciated surfaces, broken short off on the Irish side ;
and the run of hollows and hill-sides, and of ridges of rock,
nearly agrees with the opposite hollow in which Belfast Lough
now ebbs and flows. But all fine lines seemed worn out of
the contorted broken mica-slate. One hill-top after another
was drawn blank. After a long search some very remarkable
grooves were found below the brow, at the very end of the
Mull. They are on a point of hard rock at 1080 feet or there-
abouts. Two smooth regular deep grooves, about six feet long,
run parallel to each other, so as to cut out a narrow ridge
upon which a man could ride. One groove is a foot deep,
and two feet wide, the other about the same size. Part of
this rock has split off and fallen, and large blocks of it lie
below the solid point. The fragments are deeply grooved,
and these marks ran parallel to the others, before they split off.
One of these fallen grooves ends suddenly, so that the
hollow would fit a man's head like a stone helmet. The
grooves cut through the edge of beds in the stone, and the
whole rock is rounded. In profile it has the form of a great
gray leech, and Fair Head in Ireland is seen over the rounded
back. A stick laid in one of the grooves points W.N.W. just
outside the Rhinns of Islay, along the run of the tide, which
hurries past heaving and boiling 1000 feet below. Here then
a stream bearing ice once curled round the Mull, and ran, as
streams now run, from Loch Fyne and the Kyles of Bute,
round Skipness Point, along the Sound of Kilbrannan, and
past the great Scotch rendezvous for modern storms and tides.
These smooth grooves are all the more remarkable from
the shattered rocks which surround them on all sides. It
74 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
remained to be seen if waves and streams make similar marks
at the shore, without the help of ice, and after a close search
no o-rooves were found. The coast-line is made up of angular
forms, land-slips, rifts, riven cliffs ready to slip, and vast piles
of broken fallen cliffs, amongst which a wild sea raged and
roared, while the wind drove spray, cutting showers of rain,
and hail scudding over land and sea. About the aiguilles
of Mont Blanc (chap, xii.) similar piles of ruin are strewn ;
here all the power of the Atlantic has failed to obliterate high
ice-marks on the brow of the Mull of Ceantire.
From Campbelton to Glenbar the road coasts the Atlantic
for twelve miles along the north shore. The rocks about this
level are all shattered and riven, and the power of ocean-
waves is displayed in the grand tumbling surf which rolls in
upon the sand at Machariehanish Bay. On the land side are
piles of drift, which seem at first to be hills of blown sand,
but the sand covers heaps of large stones. At Glenbar the
mouth of a glen running north-eastwards towards Arran is
passed, and there numbers of large polished and grooved
blocks of hard stone, foreign to the district, had been freshly
dragged from a field, and were piled along the road-side for
building fences. The ice-marks on these were quite fresh.
The Giant's Causeway bears 8.W. by W. from this spot, and
is clearly seen on a fine day. Ice-marks at the Giant's Cause-
way pointed N. E. by E. into Glenbar, and along the shore of
Ceantire. There is no Antrim chalk at Glenbar, but there is
granite in Antrim. From this glen to the mouth of West
Loch Tarbert the coast gradually loses the shattered form of
ocean denudation, and smooth ice-work is better preserved
as the shelter is reached. Rocks are less and less broken as
the mainland is approached, and as one island break water
after another shuts out the waves. As the western surf
WESTPORT CURVE CEANTIRE. 75
decreases hi power, and waves get smaller, rifts and geos
become hollows ; cliffs change to ridges and tors ; patches of
drift with stones appear on hill-sides, more large boulders are
seen on the shore, and every rock-form points into Loch
Tarbert, and the wide hollow in which it lies, as the direction
from which some grinding force moved. At Fronichean, upon
the top of an isolated hill about 200 feet high, a weathered
surface is preserved, so that the direction can be deter-
mined by deep grooves and other sure marks. At this spot
ice moved from N.E. towards the island of Cara.
At about 100 feet above the clachan the marks are fresh.
The rock is smooth and rounded, and straight grooves on it,
from one and a half to three inches wide, from half an inch to
an inch deep, and some more than six feet long, prove that ice
moved from E.N.E. at this spot. At 300 feet on the same
hill the general form alone is preserved. The same rock has
weathered, so that waving ribs the edges of beds of crumpled
slate rise an inch or more above the surface. At first sight
the fresh grooves would seem to be the work of a small modern
glacier, which slid down a north-eastern hollow from low hills
in Ceantire. The moraine seems just below the village, but
the shape of the hills, deep glens, and the direction of the
grooves, make a modern land-glacier impossible. One surface
has been preserved at one spot by clay, and lately exposed, so
it remains entire beside a bare surface spoiled by weather.
The highest hill on the road-side is opposite to Ardpatrick,
and is 400 feet high. The surface is bare rock, ground and
weathered. Deep marks here point E.N.E. up-stream, at the
mouth of a pass which leads over Ceantire to Skipness, and
W.S.W. past Ardpatrick at the southern point of Islay. A
number of loose stones are scattered on this hill, one of which
is a large block of white quartz.
76 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
At the end of West Loch Tarbert, Ceantire is joined to
the mainland by an isthmus about half a mile wide and
some thirty feet high. West Loch Tarbert lies in a deep
hollow about ten miles long, which nearly corresponds to the
strike of rock-beds. On either side of this large groove are
hills from 1500 to 2000 feet high. Those to the south-east
make the north-eastern end of Ceantire ; the other side of the
groove is a block of high land which ends in another large
groove at the Crinan Canal, and the highest point in the dis-
trict is Sliamh Gaoil (the Hill of Love), about which many
songs and legends are repeated. Above the town of Tarbert,
in the middle of the trench, is a long ridge about 600 feet
high. On the top of this ridge are perched blocks, and,
though much weathered, ice-marks abound on the hill. At
one place a long narrow ridge like the back of an animal ends
abruptly where it was broken off ; at another a patch of hard
stone ground smooth lias resisted the weather, and marks are
plain. The ridge itself gives the direction. A stick pointed
at Dunskeg in West Loch Tarbert, points down-stream over the
island of Cara at Lough Foyle in Ireland, and up-stream N.E. by
E., over Cowal, past the northern shoulder of high hills near
Ardkinglas ; and every rock-form in the neighbourhood points
the same way. With the sea at this level Ceantire would be
three islands, with sounds near Skipness and at Campbelton.
A stream flowing as the ebb does in Loch Fyne, would split
on hills east of Tarbert. One branch would join a stream
coming from the Firth of Clyde, as the ebb does at Skipness
Point, and follow the direction of ice-grooves on the Arran
hills ; another would flow past Tarbert through two narrow
sounds, and join the other streams about Clachan, where ice-
grooves point at the hollow which crosses Ceantire. At
higher levels similar streams woidd still follow these deep
WESTPORT CURVE CEANTIRE. 77
trenches, and flow round islands which are hills now. In
walking north-westwards from Tarbert, long parallel ridges
and deep troughs are passed as the hill is mounted. From
Tarbert to the top of the first ridge is about 550 or 600 feet.
Then comes a steep descent of about 500 feet into the next
groove. Then a steep hill rises to 650 feet, and a point is
reached which opens the narrow end of Loch Fyne. Ben
Cruachan is seen to the north, the Ardkinglas hills to the
south, and a wide hollow with hills and glens between these
high points. Eidge follows ridge up to the top of Sliamh
Gaoil, and the whole district seems ice-ground.
All the low hills are of one pattern. At 700 feet are
perched blocks, and more can be seen higher up ; rolled stones
are at the bottom of the glen, and many are foreign to the
rocks on which they rest. Every bare rock in this district,
even rocks below high-water mark, and under water, are
grooved and rounded in the same general direction.
So, after a check at the Mull of Ceautire, the spoor which
was taken up at Westport, at Clew Bay, in Ireland, is fresh
on the mainland of Scotland. It lies in a wide hollow between
the Jura and Arran hills ; between Cruachan and Ben Lo-
mond further inland ; and central Scotland is right ahead.
The track will be taken up there again.
On Mr. Geikie's map arrows point from N.E. to S.W. over
these Argyllshire hills, and the marks are attributed to glaciers
of very large dimensions sliding off Scotland. According to
the marks now described, ice moved south-westwards as far
as Galway and Westport, in Ireland ; if it was a glacier, it
was 2000 feet thick at Shan Folagh ; it was at least sixty miles
wide on this part of the Scotch coast, and it moved over the
tops of hills, between 1500 and 2000 feet high, in Arran and
Ceantire.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
BALTIC CURRENT 6 GA.LWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES
ARGYLL, ETC.
Galway Curves. THE spoor taken up at Galway, and found at
Belfast and in Arran, is fresh in Bute ; but at the low level
of Bute the lines, according to Mr. Geikie's map, follow the
run of the ebb tide, and curve back to the E. of S.
At Greenock a glaciated rock peers out from under a
garden-wall in a footpath near the town.
So three lines taken up in Ireland are landed in three
grooves which cross Scotland.
The Deny Veagh line points to the Caledonian Canal ;
the Westport, Deny, and Tarbert line to Glenorchy ; the Gal-
way, Belfast, and Arran line to the Firth of Clyde : and these
must be followed.
At or near the present sea-level it is easy to trace the
path which ice followed in all the lochs of western Argyll.
In crossing from Greenock to Inverary, from the Galway
to the Westport curve, a series of hollows are traversed. It
is plain that land-ice or sea-ice, moving at low levels, could
only slide down, or float up or down, these deep grooves.
Loch Long (the Ship Loch) runs up N.E., and rocks on its
shores are ground from the N.E. as far as Tarlert, where Ben
Lomond stands sentry. A low neck of land divides Loch
Long from Loch Lomond. At the level of sea-shells found
about Paisley, Greenock, etc., the sea would reach Glenfallocli,
ARGYLL, ETC. 79
and surround a large block of high land in Dumbartonshire.
At Tarbert the ice-marks do not point at Ben Lomond, but
turn round and point at the shoulder, and at the end of the
loch, where engineers chose Glenfalloch as the lowest pass to
reach Loch Tay. Ben Lomond was not the source of the ice.
A great stream was moved down from Glenfalloch, leaving
great stones, to which legends are attached. One is the "Stone
of the Bulls." It was capsized and rolled down from the moun-
tains during a mythical fight between two mythical bulls, and
it has been used as a pulpit in later days. High up on the
sky-line, on the shoulder of Ben Lomond, at least 2000 feet
up, more boulders are perched, where they could not have
rolled. They must surely have floated. If these be marks of
ice-floats, the Glenfalloch stream split at Tarbert ; one branch
went S.W. down Loch Long, the other round by Dumbarton
to Greenock. The proof must be sought at the head of Glen-
falloch, at the watershed, and that station has not yet been
made good.
At Rowardennan, on Loch Lomond, where steamers call, a
point of rock at the water-level has deep conspicuous grooves
which clearly indicate very heavy ice passing towards the
Clyde, and grounding or sliding here. The only doubt is
whether the ice was aground in a sea, or high and dry.
Glencrodh. The Loch Long stream was joined by several
others. A large branch can be traced from Ben lonima to
the col at ' Eest-and-be-Thankful." There the level is about
800 feet, and the question is, What was the sea-level when
the last glacier reached it ? The marks can be followed from
the col two ways ; down Glencrodh (the Fold Glen) to the
sea at Loch Long, and down to Ardkinglas. The question to
be answered is
Did the ice slide all the way, or did it slide part of the
80 BALTIC CURRENT GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
way, to be launched at 2000,. or 800, or any sea-level other
than the present ?
Loch Goil. Loch Goil branches off from Loch Long lower
down, and heavy ice came down that pass from the north.
The rocks are all ground, and the weather-side is towards
the pass.
At the mouth of Loch Goil, Clach-an-Turaman (the Stone
of Staggering) is perched upon the sky-line about 100 feet
above the level of the sea. The loch is about 250 feet deep,
and the shape of the bottom is known to herring-fishers, who
say that " it is all in pits and ridges." It is therefore like the
shore. If this be the work of land-glaciers, the ice was at least
600 feet thick.
At the head of Loch Goil two glens branch one to the
" Rest," 800 ; the other to Glen Ifrinn, where the col is 630.
A coach and a character convey travellers to Loch Fyne. At
200 feet, and on the top of this pass, are piles of glacial
drift, and at the sea-level on both sides are conspicuous ice-
marks.
But the difficulty is to account for the high drift at V30
feet. No land-glaciers met there, for there are no glens to
hold them.
Loch Eck. Lower down, a third low pass joins Loch Fyne
to the Firth of Clyde, at the Holy Loch and Dunoon.
The shores of Loch Eck are strewed with large boulders,
and grooved. The col is about 100 feet high, and according
to Mr. Geikie's map, the ice moved towards the Clyde from
Loch Fyne.
The question to be solved is the sea-level. At 100 feet
there would be a strait at the Holy Loch ; at 730, a second
strait at Glen Ifrinn ; at 800, Loch Fyne would join Loch
Long in a rock-basin called Loch Restal, and it would meet
ARGYLL, ETC. 81
Loch Lomond at the head of Glen Chonaglas, and at the head
of Glen Fyiie. If the sea ever was at that level, there must
be evidence of the fact somewhere, and ice-grooves on water-
sheds may be examined as silent witnesses.
Loch Fyiie. Loch Fyne runs nearly N.E. towards Loch
Tay. Strife are laid down on Geikie's map ; and they are
very conspicuous at low levels. Everywhere along the shores
from end to end, ice-marks are fresh upon rocks near the sea
and awash. The direction of movement was along the run of
the ebb, S.W.
The woodcut on p. 92 is copied from a photograph made
by an able artist. It is a good example of the form of such
rocks.
Tnverary. North of Loch Fyne, two glens Glen Aoradh
and Glen Siorrath run northwards and eastwards towards
Loch Awe. In these are piles of drift, and iii branch glens
which run into them are similar collections of rubbish at
similar elevations, generally from 600 to 800 feet.
At a place in Glen Aoradh, called Tidlich (mounds), are
great conical heaps of scratched stones, and other glacial
debris, arranged like moraines described above (chap, xxviii.)
On one of these mounds courts were held in the olden time.
The drift extends to the top of the col, which is about 800
feet high, level with "Best-and-be-Thankful." There is nothing
in the shape of the country to suggest a glacier ending at the
head of Glen Aoradh. Ben Cruachan is beyond Loch Awe,
and the drift did not come from that direction. But if the sea
were 1000 feet higher, Loch Awe, Loch Fyne, and Loch Lomond
would all be joined, the sea would reach the foot of the hills
of central Scotland, and all these passes would be straits.*
Lorn, Cowal, and Ceantire would be ten islands added to
* For the shape of rubbish-heaps dropped from melting ice, see vol. i. p. 380.
VOL. II. G
82 BALTIC CURRENT GALWAY AND WESTFORT CURVES.
the Hebrides, and the mainland of Scotland would be an
archipelago at this sea-level
The river Aoradh has cut sections in the drift, and it
seems to have come round a hill-shoulder from hills and glens
about the upper end of Loch Awe. Above a certain level,
about 900 or 1000 feet, the hill-tops are bare rock, and striae
on them point in that direction.
Loch Awe. Loch Awe runs N.E. and S.W., like the prin-
cipal glens in this district. It points up to Loch Lyddich
and Loch Ericht in central Scotland ; and rocks along the
shores of Loch Awe are ground from that direction.
The general features of the country, then, suggest the
action of some powerful engine which has ground the whole
district, so as to furrow it from N.E. to S.W., and cross-cut it
from N.W. to S.E., leaving a few high points unground,
A ^ ^
Above a certain level, about 2000 feet, the tops are riven,
weathered, shattered, bare rocks, as Beinn Copach (" the
Jagged Hill," which Saxons call the Cobbler, and Celts
Arthur's Seat) ; the Gray Head, and others. Lower hills are
smooth rounded ridges, with the worn strata peeping through
the turf to show that the glens are grooves hollowed out.
They are tool-marks of some graving engine, not fractures
in the earth's crust.
The shattered peaks prove that the glens are not weather-
marks. River-beds prove that the glens are not simply
water-marks.
Eight down these smooth hill-sides small streams are saw-
ing rough splintery trenches. They are cutting across the
grain into the rounded sides of smooth grooves gouged out
with some other tool.
The sea-coast proves that the glens are not the marks of
ARGYLL, ETC. 83
ocean-currents. Sea-waves chop like an axe at the root of a
tree, or like a pickaxe at the foundation of a wall ; and the
west coast is a wall of cliffs, wherever the sea has its full
swing.
These west country glens seem to be large ice-grooves ;
the problem is, How came the climate to change, and when
did the change take place? If there were a measure for
river-work, the Highland burns would give one answer. A
stranger, wandering along a smooth hill-side, may see a nar-
row belt of brushwood meandering through the heather. On
coming to the place, he will find an impassable gorge, hidden
amongst the trees. Unless he knows the fords, he may wan-
der for miles, stopped by the work of a rivulet.
Legends tell how Bob Eoy took up his abode at a river-
fork of this kind, and called the place his castle. The house
is there still ; and, without the modern bridge, a stranger could
hardly get to it, though the fords are easy, when found.
Further back, it is told that a forfeited earl and a faithful
guide escaped from hostile Athole men, " who had made a
stable for horses of the Castle of MacCailain." The foes got
near enough to speak, but the strangers could not cross a
burn whose very existence a stranger would hardly suspect.
I The river-bed is a fact, if the story be too picturesque for
sober history. It is a deep gash, with vertical sides, cut in
the smooth rounded hollow, which was made before the rivers
began to saw ; and the rivers are sawing through ice-grooves,
which are as fresh as if they had just been made in the low
grounds of Argyll
Wcstport Curve high marks, In order to find out the
course of a general movement in ice and water, sufficient to
account for denudation on this scale, it is necessary to get. out
of this network of deep narrow glens. The top of the steeple
84 BALTIC CURRENT GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
is tlie place for the weather-cock, and hill-tops must be sought
for the spoor of the Baltic Current.
Dun Chorre Bhile. On the north side of Loch Fyne, near
Inyerary, is a lull which generally goes by the name of Dun
Horrible ; but the name means the hill of the steep brink. It
is about 950 feet high. The top is isolated, and at the end of a
ridge which separates Glen Aoradh from Glen Siorrath ;
Ben Cruachan is to the north, and the cols are lower than
this hill-top. Loch Fyne, and hills and glens about it ; the
Ceantire hills, and many other distant points, are seen from
this spot. With the sea at 800 feet, it was a rock far from
shore. Near the top are loose blocks which must have floated
there, unless they were carried by glaciers or men. The hill it-
self, and rock-surfaces laid bare, have the usual rounded form.
At about 750 feet, weathered rock-tables are bare in the
moor below the top. Any marks which can be found on them
seem to point at Glen Siorrath and the shoulder of Beinn
Buidhe, beyond which lies Loch Tay. A block of hard stone,
beautifully smoothed and grooved on two sides, lies here ;
and fences are made of boulders gathered on the hill. At this
level, and above it, rocks to the north are ice-ground all the
way to the head of Glen Aoradh, and marks there turn round
the hill-shoulder into the Loch Awe groove.
These marks lead to central Scotland. But there are
higher marks.
Beinn Bhrcac. The highest point on the ridge which
divides Loch Awe from Loch Fyne is Beinii Bhreac (the
Speckled Hill). In ascending to it from Inverary, signs of
glacial action appear everywhere. Large grooved stones, enor-
mous wandering blocks, patches of drift, contorted beds of
sand, and other marks, appear in the woods, and amongst the
heather. At 1200 feet, at the N.E. end of one of the mime-
ARGYLL, ETC.
85
rous ridges of which the top is composed, a well-marked deep
groove points N.E. by E., into a hollow to the north of Beinn
Buidhe.
Up to 1350 feet, the whole ridge is ice-ground, and every
rock-form points at a sea of hills in central Scotland. A
spirit-level and a map show that the passes in the distance are
lower than this point.
hAw. ^
Fio. 75. TORS AND PERCHED BLOCKS AT 1600 FECT. Top OF BEINX BHREAC. 1863.
At 1550 feet, at the end of the next ridge, weathered
grooves, six feet long, run horizontally along the sides of long
weathered tors, which rival those of Connemara ; and these
marks all point one way at central Scotland.
From this point to the top, 1650 feet, according to a dis-
turbed barometer, excellent specimens of roches moutonnees,
with perched blocks, abound The cut was sketched on the
wood : it is reversed ; but the form was carefully copied, and
it is characteristic of ice.
If the sea were at 1650 feet, there would be a clear course
over Scotland by Strathspey to Scandinavia, Dalwhinny, at
the end of Loch Ericht, is 1169 ; Loch Garry, 1330 ; and the
highest point on the Perth and Inverness Railway is 1480 feet.
86 BALTIC CURRENT GAL WAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
And it is to these places that horizontal marks on Beinn
Bhreac point.
Looking S. W. along the supposed line of movement, there is
a clear horizon between Jura and Arran along the north shore
of Ceantire ; and beyond the horizon is a clear way to Loch
Foyle, and thence to Westport, as shown above (chap, xxx.)
Looking N.E. there is a broken horizon between the
vertebree of Scotland between Ben Lomond and Ben
Craachan ; but the way is clear at this level, all the way
to the Bergen glaciers which have been described above
(chaps, xiv. and xv.)
From Beinn Bhreac a magnificent panorama is seen : a
wide stretch of moor and lake, with hills, islands, sounds, and
the wide ocean ; Arran and Ceantire are seen ; Tarbert and
Sliamh Ghoil ; the distant smoke of Greenock beyond Cowal
and Eoseneath, all the Argyllshire glens and cols above men-
tioned ; and central Scotland right ahead. From this point
the evidence seems complete. These ice-marks were surely
made by sea-ice, of the dimensions described by Lamont,
Dufferin, Scoresby, and others ; moving at this level as sea-
ice moves off Labrador.*
If the other theory be taken it will not fit the facts. To
arrive at the top of Beinn Bhreac from central Scotland,
land-ice would have to climb for six miles along the back of
a steep ridge, out of Glen Aoradh for about 800 feet, if it
stuck to the col ; for 1500 feet, if it came straight from Loch
Awe ; and there is no hill to the N.E. high enough to give the
necessary pressure. The hill-top is higher than the water-
shed of central Scotland in passes out of which the ice must
* These high marks were first noticed by the present Duke of Argyll, who, in
1857, wrote a paper on the subject, and attributed the marks to sea-ice. Edin.
New Phil. Journal, new series, vol. vi., p. 153.
ARGYLL, ETC. 87
have come according to the marks which it made. Glaciers
might slide down to the sea by Loch Awe and Loch Fyne ;
but they never climb if they can slide past a hill.
Supposing a solid mass 2000 feet thick to travel along
parallel glens in Scotland, like a sledge in ruts. Let one
runner be in the Caledonian Canal, another in Loch Awe, a
third in Loch Fyne, and a fourth in the Clyde. Let the ice-
tract be as large as the largest known, still even that strong
supposition will not carry the ice over the top of Shan Folagh,
2000 feet up, and hundreds of miles away. Nor is there any
apparent reason why such ice should move from N.E. to S.W.
or thereby, from the watershed of Scotland to the west coast
of Ireland.
But if ice floated at the level of the highest marks, ice in
Greenland and off Newfoundland explains the puzzle.
It is easy to understand how a prevailing current may
have left marks, as a prevailing wind bends trees. It is easy
to watch clouds floating past those hill-tops at a well-marked
level, and turn them into ice-floes and icebergs, glaciers and
snow, from pictures copied by memory from books and
nature.
The average annual rain-fall in this district is about six
feet. If the rain were snow, as " it is whiles," and the climate
a trifle colder, forty or fifty years would build a snow-heap
more than 2000 feet deep, and glaciers and icebergs might
resume their unfinished work in Argyll. The climate has
changed, and may change again ; a reason for the change is
surely worth seeking. One has been sought in a rise of
Lapland and a Baltic current, and so far the British spoor
looks well, for it points the right way.
Tides. If high ice-marks are attributed to ice-floats, and
low marks to local glaciers and fjord ice, part of the ice-
88 BALTIC CURRENT GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
problem is solved. The powers which move these floats on
the opposite coast of Labrador are ocean-currents and local
tides, and their movements regulate the movements of the
ice, as a stream determines the path of froth. Ever since
there was fluid to be moved on the earth's surface, there
must have been tides, if the laws of nature are permanent
laws ; so existing tides on the Scotch coast throw light upon
marks made by old Scotch ice.
In the tidal chart of the British Isles, given in Keith
Johnston's Physical Atlas, plate 15, the local wave of flood
is shown travelling north-eastwards across the Atlantic from
America towards the Baltic, when it runs foul of Ireland.
There the wave is stopped and divided. It is high water on
the south-western coast of Ireland, and the ebb begins to flow
back. But the wave of flood sweeps on, and curls round till
flood meets flood behind Ireland in the lee, near the Isle of
Man. It is high-water in that channel, and the ebb begins
there, but the wave of flood sweeps on past Cape Wrath and
the Land's End, and the waves meet a second time in the lee,
as waves do behind a stone in a pond. It is high-water on
the eastern coast, and a third ebb begins behind Great Britain.
Finally, big waves which travel westwards in pursuit of the
sun and moon, and which are reflected from the shores of
America back to Europe, pass eastwards to Christiania,
Tronclhjem, and Gotheborg, where the Baltic Current flowing
out meets the wave of flood and stops it in the narrow sound.
The general principle of this tidal movement is simple
and easily understood, but the details are very intricate.
On the western Scotch coast it takes a lifetime to learn
the tides in a small district. At one point it is said by the
fishermen that seven tides meet. At another, a current swift
as a mill-race pours through a small sound in one direction
ARGYLL, ETC. 89
for about eleven hours, and after a pause, runs back- for one
hour. At another place Corrie Bhreacan whirls round, and
can only be approached at slack water. The famous gulf is
but a whirlpool like those which whirl behind stones and
posts, and the piers of bridges. It is the offspring of a strong
tide whirling about steep islands, and there are scores of small
whirlpools in every Scotch and Scandinavian strait.
It is difficult to unravel the maze of the tides at the sea-
level where sea and land are clearly defined, but it is im-
possible to map out all the movements of water beneath the
surface. It is hopeless to attempt to follow extinct tides
which flowed through passes amongst archipelagoes of hills,
and at various levels from 3000 feet downwards.
Still, general movements of fossil tides may be inferred,
and some high ice-marks may be referred to them.
At the level of 2000 feet, which would be shown by
contour lines on a Scotch map, if one existed, the flood-tide
which comes in from the S.W. would pass over low lands in
Ireland, and through straits at Loch Laggan, Loch Ericht, Loch
Garry, Loch Tay, etc., in central Scotland, and so on over
Sweden, into the Baltic ; and the ebb would return by the
same direct route.
At the level of 1000 feet, Loch Garry and Loch Ericht
would be closed, but Loch Laggan and Loch Tay would be
open, and the tide might still pass that way.
At the level of 500 feet, the Caledonian Canal and the
Forth and Clyde Canal, and Scottish Central Railway line,
would still be straits, though central Scotland had become a
single island.
So long as there was a direct passage the waves of flood
would sweep through it as they now sweep through the
Pent-land Firth and the Straits of Dover.
90 BALTIC CURRENT GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
So long as there was an ice-float to be moved by tides, the
flood-tide would move it towards Scandinavia, and the ebb
would drive it back towards America, as tides are supposed
to move ice in sounds which cross Greenland (vol. i. p. 395.)
If, when the sea-level was at 3000, 2000, 1000, or 500
feet, there was an arctic current moving south-westward out of
the Baltic, it would help the ebb to drive the floats and breed
glaciers on any Scotch or Irish hills that remained above water.
Now that Lapland is 1400 feet above the sea, there is no
such Baltic current and no British ice.
Inverary nearly corresponds in latitude to Nukasusutok
in Labrador.
Great floes, big icebergs, and fields fifty miles wide, are
moving along the Labrador coast south-eastwards, driven by
the reflected current which cannot escape south-westwards
from the arctic basin, because the north-west passage is too
narrow. The Labrador ice is moved by tides and rocked by
Atlantic rollers ; it whirls round islands and points and
rocks, but there is a general direction of movement, and there
must be a general direction of ice-marks on rocks under water.
So old Scotch floats may have recorded a general move-
ment from N.E. to S.W., though every group of islands and
every change in the level of sea and land would alter the
run of local tides, change the drift of ice, and so vary the
direction of low marks.
The highest marks are, therefore, best for getting at general
movements. The Scilly Bishops off Scilly, the Dubh lartach
off Mull, the Mealsack off Beykjanses in Iceland, and similar
rocks in the ocean, are washed by tides, but they do not
change the course of a tidal wave as Ireland does.
On Shan Folagh in Connemara, at 2000 feet ; on Beinn
Bhreac in Argyllshire, at 1600 feet ; and on other isolated
ARGYLL, ETC. 91
tops which were solitary rocks if the sea-level ever was so
high, ice-marks do agree with the assumed direction of tides
and currents. The actual path of Labrador ice coincides when
copied and transferred to Britain in the map (vol. i. p. 232).
At lower levels in glens and amongst mountains, in places
where hills made an archipelago, and the glens a network
of sounds and firths, the marks become an intricate problem,
which would cost an army of observers years to solve. To
these low-level marks the attention of Scotch observers seems
to have been chiefly directed hitherto ; if they will leave the
beaten path and try the hill, they may work out the whole
problem in time.
This at least is plain : If land rose or sea fell from 2000
feet or any high level so far as to dry glens in central Scotland,
and Beinn Bhreac in Argyll, even then glaciers might flow
down straths into sea-lochs in Glenfalloch, Glencroe, and Loch
Long ; in Glen Fyne, Glen Siorrath, Glen Chonaglas, and Glen
Aoradh ; in Glen Orchay and Loch Awe ; in Loch Etive and
Glencoe ; in Loch Nevish, and in similar grooves ; while tides
and currents still flowed directly past Edinburgh and Inver-
ness, over low lands in the British Isles.
If there were glaciers on the Argyll Bowling-Green when
a cold stream was in the Clyde valley, that branch of the
stream might carry ice grown in Lanarkshire, Dum-
barton, and Argyll, to Connemara ; while the Lochy branch
carried an ice-fleet built about Ben Nevis to be wrecked on
Donegal.
If this really happened, there should be ice-marks to
correspond about Edinburgh and Glasgow, about Inverary
and Dalwhinny, about Fort-William and Fort- Augustus, and
on hills and watersheds in central Scotland ; and of these
six points one is made good by Beinn Bhreac at Inverary.
92
I5ALTIC CURRENT GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES.
At " Rest-and-be-Thankful," a weary pilgrim once sat him
down and sang
" king ! Peter and Paul !
There's many a stride from Rome to Lochawe. "
Above this wild spot, from which a distant lowland horizon
can be seen through a gap in the hills, a tall mountain rises ;
and on its steep ice-ground sides, fresh moraines hang where
ice left them 1000 feet and more above the present sea.
Where the old pilgrim sat, tides surely met since the hills
took their present shape ; and if they did, their way was clear
along this route from Galway to Aberdeen, and to places
further from Lochawe than Rome.
So now to the spoor once more with a cast southwards.
N.E.
Gleiifyne and
Cetitrai
Scotland.
Fio. 76. Westport Ci(i~ve. AN ICE-MARK IN SCOTLAND.
Striae upon a rock in Loch Fyne, about three miles south-west of Inverary.
From a photograph. 1863.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
BALTIC CURRENT 7 BRITISH ISLES 6 SCOTLAND 3 GALWAY
CURVE LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC.
THE last cast was uorthwards, the next is southwards into
the low lands which were seen from " Rest-and-be-Thaukful ;"
and the next point high on the Galway curve is near Glasgow.
Dechmont. About eight miles from the town, on the south
bank of the Clyde, is an isolated hill of blue whinstone, called
Dechmont. It is an igneous island in a sandstone sea an
upthrow in the coal formation. Looking at this hill from the
N.E., near a bridge over the Clyde, it seems to have been
worn down from the eastward, at right angles to the line of
sight. It is broken down to the westward. It has a rounded
top ; and cliffs on the west and north. In shape it resembles
other hills of the same kind ; for example, Stirling and Salis-
bury Crags in the same glen, and Bren Tor and other tors in
Devonshire.
At the Clyde level, rocks are sandstones covered with
beds of sand, clay, and glacial drift. Amongst stones taken
from the fields are boulders of hard rock, foreign to the dis-
trict, polished and grooved. Many of these are set up along
the road-side, and marks are so clear on them that they can
be seen from a passing carriage.
Mud in the Clyde, which is washed from this district, is
of the same colour as the drift-clay to the south-west, along
94 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
the Galway curve ; and Lanarkshire boulders are like Irish
boulders.
On the eastern shoulder of Dechmont, a large pile of
stones had been newly dragged from a field by an improving
farmer, in September 1863, and amongst them were large
blocks of crumpled mica-slate, quartz rock, sandstone, and
various kinds of whinstone. Thus glacial drift extends far
up the side of this valley. On the hill-top, at 550 feet, the
blue whinstone is barely covered with soil and turf. There is
no drift, so this hill-top has been swept bare. Close to the
keeper's house, the turf was moved in 1862, to make room
for a garden, and in 1863 the rock was still exposed. Ice-
marks on it are perfect ; so Dechmont was ice-ground, and
has not lost an eighth of an inch by weathering.
There are deep scores with finer sand-marks in them, and all
these point S.E. and E.S.E., at hills on the line of the Caledo-
nian Eailway near Lanark. North-westward, the grooves
aim over Glasgow, down the Clyde. Wherever the turf has
been moved on this hill, marks are fresh, and point in the
same direction. The hill was ground by ice moving over it
from the S.E.
Bent trees on Dechmont point the old way, N.E., at
right angles to these grooves. Water, according to theoiy,
ought to have followed the track of air. But here, when the
shape of the land is studied, when the mist of the coal-fields
of Lanarkshire opens for a moment to show distant hills, a
reason appears for a change in direction at this level.
If Dechmont were awash in a current flowing at the 550
feet level, it would be a hard rock off hard hilly islands,
amongst which the Clyde now rises, and off a round-backed
island on which the Kirk of Shotts now stands. If the stream
came by the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, over Dun-
OALWAY CURVE LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC. 95
dee, Perth, aiid Stirling ; North Berwick, Edinburgh, Carstairs,
Lanark, etc. ; the block of hard high land about Tinto would
turn the stream northwards along the valley of the Clyde, as
far as the next bank, where Cowal now bends the Clyde at
Dunoon. Cowal sends Clydesdale water S.W., to follow the
ebb N.W. round the Mull of Ceantire. On the large scale, it
was the case shown at vol. i. pp. 127, 130, and illustrated by
every stream of moving water and ice..
If the Dechmont marks were made by laud-ice, the glacier
was more than 600 feet thick ; a branch slid down Clydes-
dale, and one side of the glacier was beyond the Edinburgh
and Glasgow Railway.
The low lands of Lanarkshire now drive a busy iron trade.
Coals and iron are dug from below ; furnaces, coke-heaps,
and engine-fires darken the air with smoke. Night and day
ringing hammers, machines, and roaring blasts make a cease-
less din ; and at night the very clouds glow in the light of
panting fires, which flare and fade like groups of small vol-
canoes in full work.
Close to the most active centre of artificial igneous action,
at Airdrie, arctic sea-shells have been found in drift at a higher
level than the top of Dechmont. But when the sea-shells lived
at Airdrie, Lanarkshire, with all its hidden treasures, was
under water in a wide sea-strait, which crossed Scotland
where the Edinburgh and Glasgow and Caledonian Railways
now cross, and ocean-currents swung from hill-side to hill-
side, as the Thames, Clyde, and Forth do from their banks.
The Airdrie bed of arctic shells makes one more link in a
chain of evidence. The marks on Dechmont were made by
floating sea-ice, which was moving in a fjord ; or towards
Galway in Ireland, in a stream which curled round islands,
of which the high land about the Kirk of Shotts was one.
96 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
In mining for coal and iron the internal structure of this
country is learned, and from that internal structure one
original surface-form may be guessed.
It is common to find that a rounded hill consists of a pile
of flat beds of rock, laid one upon the other like a heap of
roofing slates. But the shape of the surface has nothing to
do with the structure of the rock. If, in mining, any one of
these beds is followed far enough, a fault or dyke is reached
where a whole series of flat beds has been broken, and the
bits displaced. One side of the fracture or the other is gene-
rally lifted or dropped many feet. In a series of 10 beds No.
1 may be opposite to No 10 ; but if No. 10 has been lifted a
hundred feet up to the place of No. 1, then the side of the
broken dislocated fragment ought to be a cliff a hundred feet
high, with nine beds shown in section. If the broken surface
of Lanarkshire were preserved entire, it would be a land of
flat slopes and sandstone cliffs, like an ill-laid pavement, for
the whole of this coal-basin is shattered by faults. The beds
dip all manner of ways. But this broken surface has not been
preserved.
Lanarkshire is a land of swelling hills and ridges. The
only cliffs in the county are hard trap-cliffs like Dechmont,
and river-banks where running water has done the usual work
of sawing and undermining. The surface has been worn
smooth, and the cliffs ground off. The edges of nine beds, to
correspond to the nine which are found on one side of a vertical
fault, are found by searching along the hill-top where the beds
crop out. Cliffs have been denuded.
Here is another link in the chain. The whole of Lanark-
shire has been ground down. The sea was up to the level of
the Airdrie shells ; ice moved over the top of Dechmont, and
ground the trap ; so the great valley was finished by sea-ice,
GALWAY CURVE LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC. 97
though subterranean fire blocked it out, and so prepared a
groove for ice and water to move in.
That seems to be the rough translation of part of the out-
line of the story ; the details have filled many volumes, and
will probably fill many more.
Following the direction of the marks on Dechmont, the
550 feet level leads to the highest hills in the country, which
are nearly 2000 feet above the sea-level about the head of
Clydesdale.
Seven miles in a straight line from Dechmont, at Dalzell
on the Clyde, a sandstone rock close to the river, 80 feet above
the sea by the Ordnance Survey, is polished and striated.
The direction is S. 55 E.
The Clyde here winds about in level haughs, in plains of
clay, earth, and gravel ; but where this alluvial deposit was
moved to make a walk in 1863, the old ice-surface was found
perfectly fresh upon the hard sandstone within three feet of
the surface. A line ruled on the Ordnance map points up a
deep wide rock-groove which the Clyde did not make, because
the marks of ice are there ; preserved from the water by the
alluvial beds.
Leaving the Clyde groove at Dalzell, the country to the
north and east rises with a gentle swell. At Wishaw the rise
is about 350 feet, and a river has dug a V 90 feet deep.
The sandstone cliffs are fractured, and the river-bottom is an
unbroken ripple-marked bed of sandstone. In fields near
Coltness are scratched boulders of quartz, porphyry, limestone,
and other hard rocks. At the road-side are large blocks of
hard igneous rock taken from the drift, some with grooves
more than half an inch deep.
At Camnethan the rise is 480 feet ; so the level of Dech-
mont is passed at a distance of about 10 miles.
VOL. II. H
98 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
Further east, at Carstairs and Clegliorn, the height is 752
by the survey, 765 by barometer. Here the drift is disposed
in conical and rounded mounds, like those which result from
the melting of frozen sand and gravel in water (see vol. i.
p. 380.) The highest point is 918 feet by barometer, and the
form of the surface on this high level is much the same. If
this were first a shoal, then an isthmus, drifting ice would be
apt to ground on it, and this is the place at which the Dech-
mont grooves point.
The Pentlands are about 1600 feet high. The rock is
much weathered, and ice-marks are obliterated. A rolled
quartz pebble was picked up on the highest hill in the range,
and a scratched boulder was found in a wall at 1200 feet.
The range is chiefly composed of volcanic rocks, and the
hill-tops are strangely like volcanic shapes in Iceland. Part
of the Pentland range may, perhaps, be of later date than the
Scotch glacial period ; but on many of these hills ice-marks
are abundant.
Maclaren mentions other signs of glacial action on this
range : A block of mica-schist, weighing eight or ten tons,
is at the east end of Hune Hill, the nearest rocks of the kind
being fifty miles off, about Loch Vennachar or Loch Earn ;
Ceantire, eighty miles westward ; or Forfarshire, seventy miles
northward. But as all the ice-grooves point eastward, the
block probably sailed from some land beyond the seas, together
with the hills of drift which are piled up near this track.
At 800 or 900 feet, at a place called Westivater of Dun-
syne, " dressings" were found by Maclaren.*
The direction was E. and W.
So at 1000 feet (the level of marks on the Arran hills)
the Gahvay curve is carried over Scotland by the Caledonian
* Maclaren's Gcnfnyy, p. 215.
GALWAY CURVE LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC. 99
Railway ; the hills of Connemara and the Pentlands are joined
by a curve on the map (voL i. p. 232), and high ice-grooves
correspond tolerably well all the way.
At lower levels this gap in Scotland was blocked by the high
land about the Kirk of Shotts. But the way was open along
the Edinburgh and Glasgow line, and ice followed that curve.
Edinburgh and Glasgow line. Two rivers, a canal, many
roads and railways, all follow the path which an ocean-current
may have followed from sea to sea at and above the level of
1000 feet,
To the north of the Edinburgh and Glasgow line, as far as
Castlecary, the north bank of this large groove is a range of
hard hills. These have smooth tops and sides, and they are
scarcely varied by glen or watercourse. The low grounds
belong to the coal formation ; and the surface of the low
country, which was at the bottom of the sea-strait, is fur-
rowed by ridges and hollows parallel to the roads, canals,
and railways, and to the range of hills.
Ice did not slide from the hills into the plain. If it had,
furrows would point at the hills ; but ice made the grooves
in passing along the base of the hills, and it seems as if some
grinding machine had passed over the hill-tops also, for the
range is but a large copy of smaller ridges in the plain below
it. All the outlines are curves ^-^. All the grooves point
I from sea to sea.
All the hill-tops in this valley are ice-ground, according
to the observations of Maclaren, his predecessors and suc-
cessors. At Binny Craig, near Liiilithgow, grooves and
ridges point E. and W. CraiglocJchart Hill, three miles S.W.
from Edinburgh, is a tor pointing E. and \V. It is quoted
as a specimen of crag-and-tail, but the tail points E., as the
tails of ice-tors do when ice comes from the E.
100 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
When a street in a populous town is paved with flags
which contain hard nodules, passing feet wear the surface un-
equally. Bipple-marks go first, and at last an old paving
stone is hollowed out and worn down, till knots of harder
stuff rise like miniature hills in a rolling plain, on which
puddles gather when it rains. The knots are worn and
scratched by sand and hobnails, and they retain marks best,
because they are hardest. The softest bits are "rock-basins."
Eenfrew, Lanark, Ayr, Linlithgow, Edinburgh, and Had-
dington, are like the flagstones. They are worn, though not
by the feet of men, and the hard knots are hills of igneous rock
in softer strata, which have been ground by ice.
The low country is strewed with glacial debris every-
where, and lakes and rivers are like puddles of rain-water
resting in hollows in streets. Dechmont is like a knot in the
stone. At Edinburgh, Corstorphine Hill and Arthur's Seat
are hard ice-ground knobs which also retain marks.
On Cwstorphinc Hill conspicuous marks are to be seen
over a space of more than a square mile. Some grooves are
fifteen yards long and a foot deep. Where the rock has been
newly laid bare in fields, small grooves may still be copied
by rubbing. The direction is E. by K, at a height of about
400 feet. Great weathered rock-tables are to be seen on all
parts of this hill-top. They were noticed by Sir James Hall
many years ago, as mentioned p. 214 of Maclaren's Geology,
1839. The direction of these grooves is confirmed by obser-
vation ; but the cause formerly assigned a deluge of water
driving stones towards the east must be abandoned. No
stream of water now makes similar marks without the aid
of ice. There is no sea-beach in the Western Isles, where
Atlantic waves and currents have made marks which could
be taken for ice-marks.
GALWAY CURVE LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC. 101
Oil the Calton Hill are grooves almost obliterated by human
feet. The direction is E. and W. at about 300 feet.
On Arthur's Seat are three sets of marks at least.
One is about 400 feet above the sea, at the side of a steep
path which leads to the hill-top from the Queen's Drive.
Here grooves dive north-eastward into the hill, at an angle
of 22. If this be an old weathered ice-surface, it has been
covered by the newer igneous rock which makes the top of
the hill. It may be a weathered slickenside.
A second series is lower down on a rock which was laid
bare in making the Queen's Drive. At this spot the fine
surface is almost perfect, and the grooves are very plain. The
movement was from E. by S., S. 78 E., past the hill-side
towards the castle-rock through a gap at the back of " Samson's
Eibs."
Close to these ice-marks, a slickenside has been pre-
served. These grooves dive into the hill, and bits of crystal
deposited on them still adhere to the worn surface.
A third set is at the edge of the western cliff of Salisbury
Crags, at a level which would join the two seas by the Edin-
burgh and Glasgow line. Here two sets of cross marks are
well preserved ; but the surface is beginning to split off and
weather. The chief direction was from N. 65 E., or roughly
N.E. by E. These grooves run to the broken edge of the cliff,
where a good push would break off more of the columnar
greenstone. They point over Edinburgh, along the line of the
Caledonian Eailway and the base of the Pentland Hills, at a
low conical mound in the glen S.W. by S. The shape of
the Crags alone would suggest movement in this direction ;
but the marks are sure guides.
The greenstone, together with beds of sandstone which
rest upon it, was at some time lifted up like the lid of a box,
102 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
but since then nearly the whole of the upper sandstone layers
have been rubbed off. At this spot the hard greenstone has
been reached, and marked by ice passing westwards. The
cross markings point from W.X.W. to E.S.E., from the low
lands of Fife to the Pentlands. If this hill rose up in a
current flowing from the eastward, these and the grooves in
the Queen's Drive point out the junction of streams which
split upon Arthur's Seat, and joined in the lee, or these are
marks of heavy ice drifting backwards and forwards in the
local tides.
In any case, they cannot be marks of land-ice., for they
avoid high ranges, and aim over low grounds.
Here seems a fit place to quote authority in support of
theory, and the authority in this case carries weight.
In his later years, Hugh Miller, that type of a Scotch
peasant the man of vigorous intellect, sturdy limbs, and strong-
faith used to wander from morn till evening on the shores of
the Firth of Forth, seeking to extract the secrets of the boulder-
clays and brick-earths, and to unravel the old coast-lines.
The result of his labours in this direction was published in
1 864 by his widow. No attempt was made to account for the
ice-period, or the direction in which ice moved ; but Hugh
Miller, as usual, saw a picture of the old ice-world of Scotland
through its marks, and showed his vision to others painted in
coloured words.
At page 35* is a woodcut which is not a picture, but repre-
sents a fact. It is a rough plan of a "boulder pavement ;" a
patch of boulder-clay washed clean by the waves of the Firth ;
an old ice-pressed sea-bottom of stones squeezed into clay and
ground in their bed.
* Edinburgh and its Nei(jlil><wr1ioo<J, etc., l>y Hugh Miller. Adam and
Charles Black, 1864.
GAL WAY CURVE LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC. 103
The geologist says
"The agent was evidently the same as that which grooved and
polished the rocks beneath. It was the ocean-borne ieebergal cars of
winter that rutted these strange subterranean pavements, compared
with which, those of the buried cities of Vesuvius are as yesterday.
All of them I have seen have their direction and striation east-north-
east the general direction in the district of lines and grooves of the
rock below."
From ice-marks, old shells, the position of shell-beds, the
shape of contour coast-lines, and other evidence, Hugh Miller
concluded that a glacial period the life of arctic sea-shells,
sea-ice, and rock-grinding coincided with a sea-level at least
1000 feet higher on Scotch hills than the present beach. From
the levels of old sea-margins, from the depth of the double line
of sea-caves at the Sutors of Cromarty, and such evidence, he
attempted to deduce a few limits of time, and a rate of change.
Of the reality of the ice-period, and the direction in which
sea-ice moved, he was satisfied, and his direction corresponds
to the observations above detailed.
Nwth Berunck. Marks on Arthur's Seat point towards
North Berwick.
The Law is an isolated conical hill of igneous rock 61*7
feet above the sea, and at the end of this Scotch part of the
Galway curve. The low country is chiefly composed of sand-
stones and beds of whin, and the soil is a mixture of glacial
drift and volcanic debris.
The top of North Berwick Law is much w r eathered, but
grooves are still visible on the highest point of the hill.
Looking downwards, all the small rocky islands in the
Firth seem to be ice-polished from the direction of the ebb-
tide, but the high grooves were probably made from the
north-east. A stick laid in one of the high grooves points
104 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
like a weathercock on a steeple at places from which ice
caine and to which it went. One end points out to sea at
Scandinavia, the other towards Ireland along the ice-track
which has thus been followed from Shan Folagh to North
Berwick Law. The bearings in Ireland were N.E. by N,
here they are E.N.E.
Because of the shape of the rock-surface there can be no
doubt that ice made these high grooves, and if it was land-ice
the source of the glacier may have been in Scandinavia ; it
cannot have been in Scotland, because of the high marks.
Near the top of North Berwick Law is a strange old thorn
which shows the force of the prevailing S. W. wind. Branches
and trunk stream far away from the root, bowing towards
the N.E., and every exposed tree in the neighbourhood
points the same way. The equatorial current of wind sweeps
over the land from Galway to North Berwick, and winds
amongst the hills like any other stream. An arctic current
of water surely flowed along the same curves in the opposite
direction from North Berwick to Galway. Grooves and trees
tell one consistent story all the way.
If the excellent Ordnance map of the Firth of Forth is set
up where the general shape of the country can be seen, a
curve drawn from Bergen to North Berwick passes between
the Pentlands and the Lammermuir Hills. Looking down
from the Pentlands this country is seen like a map, and it
would be a sea-bottom at the level of ice-grooves on North
Berwick Law. If a current flowed from N.E. over Scotland
at the 1000 feet level, it would curve round the Fife hills,
as the flood-tide now curves round the East Neuk of Fife on
its way up towards Stirling. The high ice-grooves coincide
with ridges and hollows laid down on the Ordnance map
between the Lammermuir and Ochil Hills. If the map were
GALWAY CURVE LANARKSHIRE, EAST LOTHIAN, ETC. 105
laid according to its bearings on the top of North Berwick
Law, the great glen of Scotland would coincide with the groove
which ice made at one end of it. It seems fair to conclude
that floating ice and ocean-currents the tools which made
the small groove also made the big groove which contains
so many ice-marks of so many sorts and sizes.
When the Ordnance map is studied, or when any tract in
this district is seen from a high hill, the form of the wearing
or denudation is seen to differ at different levels on both sides
of the Firth. Down to a certain level (about 800 feet) hill-
glens branch and radiate from high points and ridges. Streams
which flow into the Tweed are like twigs on a branch which
springs from the sea at the English border ; glens in like
manner radiate from the Ochils. But below a certain level,
in the big hollow, all ridges and hollows run in sweeping
curves like mud-banks in the Firth, which follow the run of
tides which wear them. These shapes tell of water-work ;
the sea-shells at Airdrie prove the case, the ice-marks speak
for themselves.
Streams of rain-water, which flow into the big glen from
hills which make the sides, are now cutting small cross
furrows to the sea, like those which older streams of water
and ice cut out at the upper level The Scotch map then
seems to show two distinct forms of denudation one due to
radiating local systems, the other to a general system of move-
ment from N.E. to S.W. The Irish map shows similar forms.
So here is another link in the chain. From Galway to
North Berwick rocks have been worn and grooves made by
ice ; floating in an ocean-current, south-westward ; but high
hills have also been worn, and grooves made in their sides
by land-glaciers sliding in every possible direction, down-
wards, into the sea, from watersheds. The sea-level was a
100
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND..
high one when the horizontal marks were made, for they
rise high.
The broad track taken up at Galway seems to be carried
over one part of Scotland. If followed from North Berwick
the spoor should be found about Stavanger, where it was left
in chap. xvii. The next cast is northwards to seek the New-
port curve which was left on the top of Beinn Bhreac in
chap, xxxiii.
Fio. 77. A WATER-MARK IN ICELAND. MERKIAR Foss NEAR HEKI..
5th August 18(51.
CHAPTER XXXV.
BALTIC CURRENT 8 BRITISH ISLES 7 SCOTLAND 4
GALWAY CURVE NORTH-EAST COAST.
Scotland Galway Curve. IF one great glen in Scotland was
partly hollowed out by ice, and has been so little altered by
water and weather as to retain ice-marks half an inch deep,
in many spots ; it is probable that other Scotch glens are but
ice-grooves on a large scale, and that many of them are parts
of curves which record the movements of a general glacial
system whose centre is the North Pole, and whose path, like
that of the present Greenland Current, was like the curve of
the letter P, part of the figure 8 drawn on a meridian.
A glance at a map will show that the Galway curve coin-
cides in general direction with many of the glens which
cross Scotland, with rivers, firths, sounds, and main coast-
lines ; denudation in Scotland as in Ireland has manifest
reference to curves which cross meridians from north-east to
south-west or thereby. The Galway curve was run out at
North Berwick ; it can also be followed along the north-
eastern coast. The tract to be searched for the Westport
line found on Beinn Bhreac in Argyllshire is somewhere in
central Scotland, about Loch Ericht or Loch Garry ; so the
way is north.
At the level of marks found on Dechmont and North
Berwick Law, the Ochil Hills would be a steep island cut off
108 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
from central Scotland by a strait through which the Scottish
Central Eailway now passes to Perth.
Stirling, or Windy Gap as it is called in Gaelic, is at one
end of the strait where it joins the valley which now holds the
river Forth ; and here a railway crosses to Loch Lomond,
following the low level. On the castle-rock, Maclaren
found marks of a movement from the N.W. Sir James Hall
found dressings which pointed the same way ; but if a
current came from the E., it would bend round the foot of the
Ochils.
The Carse of Stirling is an alluvial plain of rich flat land,
with sweeping mounds of stratified gravel and sand rising every
here and there. The stones are small and look water-worn,
and the shape of the country is the shape of a dry river-bed.
Canoes, the skeleton of a whale, shells, and other such marks,
confirm the evidence of form. The battle of Bannockburn
was fought upon an old sea-bottom.
The rock on which Stirling Castle is built, the Abbey
Craig on which a monument is slowly rising to the memory
of Wallace, and other hills in this tract, are of the same
pattern as Salisbury Crags and Dechmont. They are broken
knobs of hard rock, and they seem to be tors worn from the
Scandinavian side, for they are broken to the westward.
The Scottish Central line passes northwards in the lee of
the Ochils, and at the Bridge of Allan it leaves the plain.
The cuttings are through masses of glacial drift fifty feet thick
at least. The beds are not stratified ; the stones are not sized
and sorted ; but big and little stones of many kinds are con-
fusedly mixed with fine soil. The materials are glacial, but
the surface-form is aqueous.
At Dunblane, 150 feet up ; about Greenloaning, 300 ; and
thence to the watershed, 350, where the Allan is left and water
GALWAY CURVE NORTH-EAST COAST. 109
flows towards the Firth of Tay, the shape of the country is
like the shape of the Carse of Stirling and the neighbourhood
of Falkirk. It is a large copy of a broad west country sound
when the tide ebbs. Flat fields suddenly end in hillocks,
steep points, and ridges, whose slope is the slope of loose
rubbish. There are piles of drift in the supposed strait
which joined the Firths of Clyde and Tay, and the shape is
that of the model (vol. i. p. 380). Above this drift the hills
are barely covered with turf. They are rocks, but rounded
to the veiy top.
Seen from Falkirk the Ochils slope down to Fife, but fall
suddenly towards Stirling. Seen against an evening sky from
hills above Dundee, the Scandinavian side of the Ochil hills has
the same general outline ; but the low shoulder is like a great
rolling stormy sea, driven westward by a north-easter, for the
larger form is repeated in miniature as ripples copy larger
waves ; all the low ridges slope towards the sea and are steep
to the land. On the weather-side, near Fife and about Perth,
there is less drift, and it is more evenly and thinly spread
over the rocks. So the shape of the Ochils is like that of
smaller tors on which ice-marks remain.
At Auchterarder, 200 feet up, the hills of central Scotland
are seen. When the first snow of winter has whitened the
hill-tops, and a bright sun shines through a clear frosty air,
every mountain form is clearly shown by colour, light, and
shade. The hills are seen to be rounded weathered masses of
stratified rock, with sides furrowed by glens radiating from
the watershed down to a certain level. Below that, ridges
and furrows sweep along the hills. There are visible marks
of vertical and of horizontal denudation on the mountains be-
yond Strathearn.
Weathered edges of the strata, when picked out with snow-
110 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
drifts, make the great hills like coloured \voodeu models.
They owe their convex rounded shoulders and hollow glens
to carving, as models do ; and their structure, like the grain in
wood, has nothing to do with their surface-forms.
Amongst these distant hills are well-known well-remembered
river-marks. Steep picturesque gorges, where birches wave,
and heather blooms over gray crags ; where mountain-streams
brawl and thunder down into black boiling pools, from which
they leap foaming, till they reach some quiet lake and rest.
There, the broad Tay winds past Taymouth, and the Isla glides
past " the Bonnie House o' Airlie ;" silver threads in a carpet
of green. But these are not the tools which carved these
mountains, glittering like silver in the crisp frosty air. Rivers
might work for millions of years, biit they never could do
such work. As well might an artist sculpture a bust with a
hand-saw.
This work was done with other tools.
Looking north-east from Auchterarder the horizon is clear
of hills, and the plain of Strathmore fades in the distance.
But on either side of this level strait of rich flat land rise
steep islands of rock. The Sidlaw Hills are to the right be-
hind Perth, and the Forfarshire hills, on the left, stretch to
the blue horizon. On such a day, when a wide tract is seen
like a model, it is easy to fancy the horizontal snow-line to
be a sea-margin, and to follow the coast along the dark line
where the snow is melted.
The dark lines on a railway map show low grounds ; and
here railways surround two blocks of high land ; they mark
out the base of the Ochils and Sidlaw Hills. There is a tract
of low land all the way from Aberdeen to Greenock ; and if
the sea were at the snow-line, tides might ebb and flow along
the east coast of central Scotland and round the coasts of the
GALWAY CURVE NORTH-EAST COAST. Ill
islands of Ochil and Sidlaw. If the ebb did in fact pass west-
ward, bearing vast graving-tools, and grinding hills with them,
their marks should be found on the north-eastern islands, and
in particular on the Sidlaw range.
Sidlaiv Hills. The next large north-eastern island, at the
500 feet level, would be the Sidlaw range, which stretches from
Perth almost to Forfar about N. 30 E. The steepest ends of
the hills and broken cliffs face the south and south-west, and
the longest slopes are towards Forfar and Strathmore.
StratJimore, the big glen, runs parallel to the Firth of Tay,
and cuts the Sidlaw range from central Scotland. A railway
follows tliis old strait over flat land from Perth to Aberdeen
now ; but at the 500 feet level, Strathmore would be a strait.
A stream, which rises behind Dundee at a low level, flows
into Strathmore, past the northern end of the Sidlaw Hills,
round by Perth, and so down the Firth of Tay past Dundee,
and back to within a few miles of its source. The hills which
are thus isolated are about 1000 to 1300 feet high. They are
chiefly composed of sandstone and bedded trap.
The Carse of Gowrie to the south is a low plain of rich
clay-land highly cultivated. It is very little above the pre-
sent sea-level ; and many marks show that it was under water
at a late period. Keeds force their way up amongst the corn
from bogs which are now buried. Eveiy now and then a
rude boat, an anchor, an iron ring, or some other mark, turns
up a long way from the present shore.
The air above the Carse is often heavy with water, and,
as the natives say, " In rimy weather, when the frost takes
the air, when ye look doon frae the hills, it's just like a
pond." Looking down from a height of 700 feet, on a still
frosty morning, the whole Carse is hidden by a level sea of
mist, above whose distant horizon peer dark islands, in Fife
112 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
and Kinross. The Ochil Hills and the Fife Lomonds are the
islands in this misty sea. From its depths rise sounds of busy
life barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, the low of kine,
the cawing of rooks, the rattle of carts, the buzzing of
steam-ploughs, the distant roar of the train, and the near
voices of men ; but for all that appears to the eye, the Carse
and the low lands of Scotland might be a sea-bottom a
hundred fathoms down. The Carse was a sea-bottom, and
deeper down, since the Sidlaw Hills took their present shape.
Behind Rossie are two wide straths, which at 800 feet
would join Strathmore to the sea. These glens, seen from the
col, seem to run N.E., but below 800 feet they are shel-
tered from the N.E. by hills. The glens make a kind of
bay in the range. At 900 feet, at the head of these glens, and
at 450 feet, at the back of the first range, are collections of
drift. When a field is newly taken in, thousands of large
stones are taken from the red soil. Amongst them are speci-
mens of gray granite, white quartz, contorted gritty stone, blue
limestone with white veins, whinstone, brown trap, hard gray
and white quartz rock, mica-schist, porphyry, greenstone, and
other hard rocks. Many of these are smoothed and grooved.
Similar stones are built into walls, bridges, and houses, and
they are broken up in thousands. This then was a cross
sound amongst the Sidlaw Hills at 800 feet; and at 700 a
sheltered corner in which drift gathered. When the col dried
at 800 feet the glens were sea-lochs, dotted with islands, which
are now steep hills.
The hills are all sandstone and trap. The beds dip various
ways, but the dip and fracture do not accord with the shape
of the hills and glens. It is plain that they were carved out ;
the question is By what means?
From one col (800 feet) a steep pull leads to the foot of a
GALWAY CURVE NORTH-EAST COAST. 113
cliff of igneous rock, which seems, by its structure, to have
boiled. The old igneous surface on the upper side of one
layer may be seen by moving the next plate. The rock is
like Icelandic lava, a hardened brown crumpled froth. The
tops of " the Giant's Hill" above the cliff 1350 feet, overlook
Strathmore, and they are rounded knolls. The rock-surface
generally is too much weathered for strife, but some remain.
They point K 58 E.
The King's Seat is the highest point in the range, 1400
feet. The shoulder is manifestly ice-ground, but too much
weathered for marks. The top is an artificial barrow of loose
stones, on which the sappers and miners have built their
cairn. At the foot of these hills, which were marked at 1350
feet by ice moving from the N.E., are the piles of drift above
mentioned. On the hills above 1000 feet there is not a boul-
der to be found. But the sea of mist floated up, and settled
upon the King's Seat, and then nothing was visible but a gray
cloud as thick as Icelandic thoka.
At 800 feet, and some miles nearer to Forfar, a hill-top, at
the head of this basin, called Bala Hill, was drawn blank for
ice-grooves, but a polished grooved block of porphyry was
found in a field near the top.
Further north, at about 900 feet above the sea, at the foot
of a trap-cliff above the Loch of Lundy, is a long deep narrow
strath which crosses the range diagonally. Through this
groove distant hills about Glenartney are seen in one direc-
tion, and in the other the coast is clear to Scandinavia. At
this level it would be clear to Galway also. At this spot is
a bare rock-surface about 20 yards square, much weathered
but deeply furrowed in the direction of the glen, N.E. by E.
A steep slope of grass-grown talus 32 and 40 leads to the
top of the cliff, 1150 feet, and from this point the hills of
VOL. II. I
114 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
central Scotland are well seen on a clear day. Ben Ledi,
Ben Vorlich, Ben Mor, Ben Lawers, Schiehalion, the Cairn-
gorm range, and the Braes of Angus, are all seen beyond
Strathmore, with its winding rivers and rich corn-land. The
Fife Lomonds and the Ochils are seen beyond the Firth of
Tay. On the top of Lundy Hill, near the edge of the cliff,
the rocks are manifestly ice-ground but weathered. Near a
new wire-fence, a surface newly laid bare is better preserved,
and grooves on it point S. 75 E. out to sea at Denmark and
Sweden. Other weathered marks seem to point E. and W.
and others N.E. ; but without a spade to remove the turf,
fresh surfaces are hard to find. None of these high marks
point directly across Strathmore at central Scotland, but they
point along the Sidlaw range, and the glens in it, and join in
with the line marked out by railways. Looking towards
central Scotland, it is seen to be a rounded block ^ x, with
conical mountains A rising above it. It is well named Driom
Albain, the back of Scotland.
At about 900 feet, on an isolated top near a keeper's house,
at a place called Wart Well, about four miles south of Lundy
Hill, strife on a trap surface freshly bared by the fall of a tree
point N. 60 E. out to sea. These marks are nearly parallel
to the general run of the tides in the Firth of Tay.
Thus, from about 1300 feet down to about 900, high grooves
coincide generally with the probable run of the tides, if the
sea were at these levels. At 1300 feet the Sidlaw Hills would
be rocks awash, like the Bell Rock ; at 900 feet they would be
a straggling group of trap islands, some with caps of sand-
stone. At 800 feet the islands would be joined by narrow
ridges. At 800 feet Denmark would be under water, and
Sweden awash at places to which some grooves point.
The drift is generally below the 900 feet level. It is
GALWAY CURVE NORTH-EAST COAST. 115
foreign to the Sidlaw range, and glacial. It did not cross
Strathmore, and come from central Scotland, because high
ice-grooves do not point that way.
The question is : Whence did it come ? and the grooves all
point eastwards to Scandinavia, as similar grooves did in East
Lotliian. At lower levels on the Hill of Dron, at four stations
about 850, 700, 650, and 650 feet high, and three miles apart,
well-marked grooves on trap point up into glens which at 800
feet would be bays. These point K 67 W., N. 78 W., N. 65
W., N. 65 W., round the hill-shoulder into the shelter ; they
point eastwards out to sea over the Firth of Tay, at Sweden
and the Baltic. The flood-tide now makes a similar curve
round a point close above Dundee, and the ebb returns by
the same path.
It seems then that ice drifted over the Sidlaw Hills when
their tops were, like the Bell Eock, awash, and that it came
from the eastwards and northwards, passing along the
Forfarshire hills, and grounding on Lundy Hill and the Giant's
Hill at 1100 and 1300 feet.
2d, That the stream split on the Sidlaw range when the
land rose, flowed down Strathmore to the Clyde, and wound
about in straits amongst the Sidlaw islands, grounding floats
on the Hill of Dron, at 900 feet.
3d, When that hill-top rose the stream curled round it
in the lee, beside the keeper's house, and flowed up into the
glens, as the tide now does at a lower level after passing
Dundee.
ktli, Whatever the stream did after that, there seem to
have been no land-glaciers strong enough to remove the
glacial drift which is piled in the glens as high as 900 feet.
5th, When ice had done its work it vanished, and streams
of water sorted the upper part of the rubbish. Eossie
11G BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
means promontory, and Bossie church stands on a promontory
of drift, at about 200 feet above the sea. The sides have the
slope of rubbish-heaps sorted in water, and the materials are
water-washed glacial drift. The stones were gathered at
home and abroad, and piled in the mouth of the glen on
whose sides are the ice-marks above mentioned.
When the cold period ended the bay in the hills probably
sent a rapid ebb-tide through the glen beneath the Hill of
Dron, where the burn is now cutting into the point of drift.
On the point stands a cross so old that even the race who
carved the sandstone are forgotten ; yet the ice-sculptures on
the hill-side are fresher than the quaint figures on the cross.
The rich clay-land of the Carse of Gowrie seems to be
fine glacial drift and soil washed out of coarser drift by rivers
and tides, and evenly spread over rough piles of coarser drift,
gravel, and big stones, which are hidden under clay and
mould. The sand is washed further down about Buttonness
and St. Andrews. The rock marked by ice is under the drift,
and shows wherever the covering is moved.
So when the Carse of Gowrie looks " like a pond," and the
Sidlaw Hills are islands in a sea of mist, this part of Scotland
puts on an old winter dress for the time. When the sun
shines on it a fairer landscape would be hard to find than the
plains and hills which lie " atween St. Johnstone's and Bonnie
Dundee."
Ice-marks then here give evidence of a rise in the land
equal to 1300 feet, sufficient to account for great changes in
climate, and in the course of ocean-currents.
At 500 feet a stream might flow where railways now
point out the lowest ground, south-westward from Aberdeen
through Strathmore, past Perth and Dunblane, to Greenock
on the Filth of Clyde ; thence over Bute, past Arran, where
GALWAY CURVE NORTH-EAST COAST.
117
ice-marks at 1000 and less than 500 feet point along Ceautire;
thence to Belfast Lough, Galway, and Connemara.
The ice-track then has been followed from Galway to
North Berwick, and to the Sidlaw Hills, and it points thence
to Scandinavia, where the curves are carried into the Baltic
by ice-marks, at levels higher and lower than the Hill of
Lundy and the Hill of Droii, 1150 and 650 feet. At higher
levels the curves must be sought on higher Scotch hills.
A fire-mark uiulfr ivitler-tnarki aitd ue-marits in S<offati<f.
FIG. 78. GRANITE VEINS IN SHATTERED BEDS OF ALTERED SLATK.
RAILWAY CUTTING AT DALWHINNY (j>. 121).
Drawn from nature on the block. Reversed.
CHAPTEE XXXVI.
BALTIC CURRENT 9 BRITISH ISLES 8 SCOTLAND 5 NEWPORT
LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND.
THE next cast is northwards to seek the Newport curve on
the ridge of central Scotland.
Central Highlands. A new mountain railway leads from
Perth through the central Highlands along the line of the old
Highland road. It follows and crosses a number of theoretical
curves of movement shown on the map (vol. i. p. 232).
It first runs up the valley of the Tay, leaving Strathmore
at Logierait.
Here a groove leads from Aberdeen along the foot of the
Forfarshire hills to the west coast by way of Loch Tay, south
of Schiehalion, through Glendochart to Loch Fyne.
The bottom of this groove is filled with lakes and flat
alluvial plains, through which noble rivers wind. The sides
are ice-ground hills, with terraces of drift along their flanks,
and piles of drift opposite to each cross glen which joins the
main line.
Before Scotland lifted her back, at the sea-level indicated
by high grooves on Beinn Bhreac, near Inverary, and on the
Sidlaw Hills, this was a strait ; and according to the marks
above described, ice then moved in this groove south-westwards
to Tarbert in Ceantire, and the Giant's Causeway in Ireland.
Main roads follow low grounds across Scotland, and
coaches and streams of tourists have succeeded ocean-currents,
NEWPORT LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND. 119
icebergs, and boulders; but before the flood of travellers poured
into these glens, a tribe of land-glaciers perched upon the
Highland hills, and slid down from the high mountains into
long sea-lochs. At some sea-level this ice thoroughfare was
barred by a col about the braes of Balquhidder, and thence-
forth ice must have moved north-east along the course now
followed by the Tay and its feeders.
But Scotch ice, grown in Balquhidder, and launched about
Dundee, might still sail to Ireland through the deeper channel
of the Galway curve, and join a Glenfalloch iceberg launched at
Dumbarton, off Arran in the Firth of Clyde.
The railway follows a branch of the Tay to the Pass of
Killiecrankie, and there, at the GOO feet level, was a sea-loch.
Many of the railway cuttings are through drift, many em-
bankments are piles of drift. In the autumn of 1863 great
boulders, freshly dug from the hill-side, were scattered along
the whole line. Low down, where rock-surfaces were newly
uncovered, they retained their polish. High up on the sky-
line the hill-tops are rounded, and smooth wet rocks shine
like convex mirrors amongst the grass and heather.
At Killiecrankie a second series of glens leads south-
westward to the west coast, passing north of Schiehalion, by
way of Eannoch and the Forest of Glenorchy to Loch Awe,
where marks at 1650 feet point at these glens.
At Struan, north of Blair-Athol, the railway has passed
the 600 feet level, and here is a conspicuous moraine of which
a cutting gives a section.
From this point the way rises over a col to the end of
Loch Garry, 1330 feet. The rocks there are ice-ground and
the soil is glacial drift. Here a third set of glens lead from
DriomUachdar,the upper ridge of Scotland, and the Cairngorm
range, south-westward by way of Loch Lyddoch to Loch Awe
120 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
and Beinn Bhreac, where ice-marks at 1650 feet pointed N.E.
by K With the sea at perched blocks on Benin Bhreac stones
might sail upon ice from Loch Garry to Argyllshire hills. So
the perched blocks on Beinn Bhreac may have come from
Cairngorm, or the hill of the black pig, which Saxons call
Ben Macdui.
At 1480 feet (1620 by barometer), the watershed is passed,
and the level of perched blocks on Beinn Bhreac is 1650, or
170 feet to spare.
Water now runs north-eastward to Speymouth, and as
soon as this col dried, laud-ice must have slid the same way
that water flows.
At this high level in central Scotland hill-tops are
rounded and rocks ice-ground. Here are large piles of
glacial drift, apparently the moraines of glaciers which slid
down small glens on the western side of the railway. The
hillocks are 200 feet high at least, and their shape contrasts
with that of drift hills near Dunblane.
They consist of large boulders, gravel, and sand, and
amongst the boulders are many of a fine hard gray granite.
These are in such abundance that they have been used to
build bridges and other railway works. There are also
specimens of a very heavy tough compact red porphyry, and
blocks of quartz, gneiss, and altered flags of various colours.
The hills are of the latter rock, which is much shattered and
veined with pink granite. No gray granite is found in situ
on this hill.
In a railway cutting opposite to one of these piles of drift,
a quartz rock surface has been laid bare. It is ground very
smooth, and grooves on it point N. 38 E. down into Glen
Traim, and S. 38 W. up into the glen. This spot is about
1480 feet above the sea.
NEWPORT LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND. 121
A little further on a second smaller glen on the same side
has a smaller pile of rubbish in the opening. This glen is
about six miles long and clear of drift high up.
At Dalwhinny, at about 1169 feet, a fourth groove is
crossed. It contains Strathspey to the north-east, Loch
Ericht and Loch Awe, and the Sound of Jura, to the south-
west. With ice floating at 1650 feet, central Scotland would
be an archipelago intersected by narrow sounds, and this was
a strait 500 feet deep.
So here is the tract in which the line marked on Beinn
Bhreac is to be sought. With Monadh Liath (the hoary
mountain) on one side, Monadh Euagh (the russet range) and
Cairngorm (the blue cairn) on the other ; an arctic current
might pick up Scotch icebergs and Scotch granite boulders
and carry them along the Loch Ericht trench to Inverary, Ben
Bhreac, Ben Cruachan, the Jura hills, or Deny Veagh in
Ireland.
At the 600 feet level all these passes would be stopped ;
Strathspey would be a sea-loch ending at Grantown, and
boulders would have to slide down Strathspey and sail round
by Inverness and the Caledonian Canal. If there were no
ice-rafts, when the land rose to any particular level, the
voyages of boulders ended for the time.
A particular kind of boulder, carried to a certain height,
in a particular direction, marks sea-level, movement, and a
cold climate, for it is a float which ice alone can carry.
On the soutli side of Loch Ericht is a high ridge of gritty
flags and slates traversed by veins of pink granite ; it is a
spur of Driom Uaclidar.
In a rock-cutting at Dalwhinuy the rock is bare ; on the
hill-top it crops out, and it is seen in burns at other spots,
many miles apart, high and low. The hill would be an island
122 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
at 1650 feet. At Dalwhinny, boulders of gray granite abound.
They are foreigners who travelled on ice from some other
district, and to get to the end of Loch Ericht they must have
moved up hill if they travelled on land-ice. If they travelled
on sea-ice they mark old sea-levels, and here they mark about
1350 feet at the end of the loch.
They mark higher levels on the spur of Driom Uachdar,
which divides Loch Ericht from Loch Garry.
At 2000 feet is a round block of granite.
At 2200 is another, and from this stone the sea-horizon
towards Bergen is open north-eastwards beyond Speymouth.
A pass lies open to Loch Leven on the west coast. At the top
of the ridge was a shallow pool made by a turf washed in
between two small hillocks. At the bottom of the pool was
a plain of fine soft black peat mud, and fine sand washed in
by rain-water. A thrust with a stick demolished the dam
and drained the pool, and changed the bottom into a working
model of Glen Truim and Strathspey. Knobs of peat were
the hills, peat-mud the drift ; tufts of grass and gray moss
were the forests ; the river was a tiny rill of black water. But
the water set off for Speymouth, and the forms of the alluvial
plains were alike. There were terraces of stratified drift ;
there the river-windings, the Ys and S, the banks of small
stones, high patches, long points, and steep banks of drift
sweeping round steeper and harder slopes. There were glens
of denudation circling round hard islands which became hills
as the water drained away. All these shapes formed in the
moss-hole in a few minutes, and they were all formed long
ago in the big glen below. The model a few yards off, and
the glen stretching to the horizon, filled the same space in the
eye, and seemed alike even in size. Eunning water has done
great work amongst the glacial drifts of Strathspey, according
NEWPORT LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND. 123
to the shape of the country, and the lesson taught by the
model
At 2650 feet this hill-top at the head of Strathspey,
and about 1000 feet higher than the col at the western end
of Loch Ericht, is strewed with big stones of gneiss and pink
granite. The flat is rippled by the S.W. wind. Stones are in
the trough, heather in the lee, gray moss on the weather-side
of these waves ; and far down below, waves driven along the
surface of Loch Ericht had the same shape. Even winds
leave a spoor where they pass.
This is one great thoroughfare for currents in the lower
atmosphere, and a whole wood of fir-trees at the inn lean
down towards Strathspey, as if driven by a strong S.W. gale.
The prevailing wind is then an equatorial current moving N.E.
At 2580 feet, within sight of the Cairngorm Hills, are
three large boulders one of gray granite, one of a very coarse
mica-schist with large weathered veins and nodules of white
quartz, and the third is a coarse sandstone grit. The litho-
graph on the margin of the map (vol. i. p. 496) is rouglily
done from a hasty sketch made here.
At the same height six miles from the inn and close
above Loch Ericht is another boulder of gray granite beside
a rock of gritty flag, traversed by pink granite and white
quartz.
At 2740 feet is another round stone of the gray granite ; at
2800 another three feet long ; at 2850 three more about the
same size ; and all these contrast strangely with flat stones
amongst which they He.
At 3150 feet is a cairn on the top of the ridge, and at
this spot is a wide view over central Scotland. Strathspey
is open to the sea. Then come Cairngorm and Beinn-na-Muic-
Duibhe, then a hill shoulder ; and beyond the opening Beinn-
124 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
y-Gloe. Then comes a wide tract of lower ground open to Fife
and Stirling ; then the shoulder of Ben Lawers and a lot of
near hills, which shut out the distance. Then a notch through
which hills near Loch Tarbert in Ceantire are seen. Then a
near hill ; then a wide opening at the end of Loch Ericht, with
Ben Cruachan rising to the clouds. Then comes the mass
of Ben Alder, with patches of last year's snow, and Ben
Nevis peering over it. A glen leading down to the sea,
and a col of 800 feet, divide Fort-William from Strathspey
in this direction. To the north, the hills about the Caledonian
Canal are overlooked, and something in a cloud seemed to be
Wyvis. If boulders mark a sea-level, it is here carried to
3000 feet at least.
The hills of central Scotland, up to this level and a little
higher, are all rounded tops and hog-backed ridges, above
which a few conical tops rise. At this level gray granite
boulders mark floating ice, which might wander amongst
those peaks in any direction. A man may travel on ridges
^ ^ or in hollows < from N.E. to S.W. without much
climbing ; if he travels in any other direction, he must mount
and descend from glen to glen.
A puff of cold wjnd and a wreath of mist blotted out the
whole of this wide landscape, and Scotland disappeared be-
hind a few drops of water, as it hid under the sea when the
boulder was dropped on the top of Driom Uachdar.
Fifty feet down from the cairn are more round blocks of
gray granite, and they occur all the way down the burn-side
to the railway, three miles south of Dalwhinny Inn.
Now 1480 feet, the summit-level of this line, would make
Loch Ericht a sea-strait ; and 3100, the highest granite
boulder, would make the strait about 1600 feet deep at the
shallowest part. So the railway bridge is built of granite
NEWPORT LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND. 125
quarried somewhere, and earned by ice which floated where
clouds now settle, where grouse crow, and golden plover
whistle and wheel in flocks. Where dun deer and mountain
hares, ptarmigan, sportsmen, keepers, and wanderers now pass
to and fro, amongst green moss and gray stones, ice surely
floated. The railway train passes along the bottom of a strait
which crossed Scotland at Dalwhinny, because transported
gray granite abounds on hill-tops to the S.W. at a far higher
level than the top of the pass.
Gray granite is found in situ to the N.E. at higher levels.
Opposite to the end of Loch Ericht the drift seems to be
arranged by water. A small proportion of the large stones
retain scratches. They generally have water-worn or weathered
surfaces. From hill-sides to the north these rubbish-heaps
are seen to be terraced layers resting upon the solid rock, and
sweeping down into the wide strath in points and knolls
rising one above the other, like drift-terraces in Norway and
Sweden, though on a smaller scale. They are the contour-
lines of the country following the hollowed surface on which
they rest, up to a certain line, beyond which are solitary
boulders on bare rock or in heather.
It is very hard to represent these forms truly with a pencil.
For that reason no woodcut is given of sketches done on the
spot. The place is easy to get at and the forms are distinct.
In nature they are marked out by colour, light, and shade,
rather than form; and on a dull day they are lost in the
distance ; but when the sun shines they come out clearly.
Any one who knows the Highlands knows the aspect of these
dry heathery gravel hills, on which grouse delight to strut and
shout their defiant chorus of " Go back, Go back, Go back,
Cock Cur-r-r-r ! They are "the parallel roads" of a great many
Highland glens besides Glen Eoy. They are the " ancient sea-
126 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
margins" of Chambers, and here they rise to nearly 1400 feet.
In the middle of Loch Ericht (see map, voL i p. 496) are two
bars, similar in shape to bars which cross tideways in narrow
straits ; as at Eoseneath, near Greenock ; in Alten Fjord, in
Norway ; at Portland, in the south of England, etc. etc.
The ridge north of Loch Ericht would be an island at
1400 feet, cut off from another lower ridge about 2000 feet
high by a deep glen. In the glen was a glacier. A rock-
surface has been laid bare by a torrent which has washed
away part of a terrace of drift ; enough of gray granite to
make a railway bridge is strewed below. The rock is a
hard fine dark quartz with beds dipping W.KW. 26. Grooves
on their edges are horizontal, and point east into Glen
Truim. The terrace of drift is 100 feet thick at least,
On the opposite side of the glen, the burn has dug into the
rock, exposing a set of nearly vertical strata. This, then, is a
fault ; a rift which ice found and smoothed and filled with
glacial drift. Lower down the hummocks of a moraine are
piled in rows opposite to the glen ; but 600 feet higher up, on
the bare hill-top, are perched blocks of gray granite, keeping
watch over Strathspey and Loch Laggan. At their level, and
600 feet lower, the high ridge north of Loch Ericht would
be another long island.
At Kingusie, another groove with a col only 800 feet high,
according to late measurements, runs S.W. to Fort-William,
down Glen Spean. The N.E. corner of the island beyond
the fault, and opposite to Laggan Inn, is a gray granite, but
not the granite of the boulders. The tops are bare and
weathered, have the usual rounded form, but retain no small
marks. There are many perched blocks of compact gray
granite on the highest points, about 2000 feet above the sea.
According to these marks the famous " parallel roads " were
NEWPORT LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND. 127
under water and rose, and if so they do but resemble terraces
elsewhere. (See chaps, xxii-xxvii., etc.)
While basking in the sun in the lee of one of these stones,
far away from any visible sign of man, how strange it is to
hear the yell of a steam-engine, and then to watch a streak
skimming like a silver eel, or the mythical white dragon,
through this wide strath, where an icy sea has ebbed and
flowed. It is no wonder that natives stare agape, and
that sheep scamper for their lives, when this fiery steam-
dragon comes yelling and roaring through deer-forests where
lurking stalkers used to speak in whispers.
Strathspey has seen many changes since it was hollowed
out of the rock.
And this is the popular account of the matter got from a
countryman of Hugh Miller, who was also a fellow craftsman
of the Scotch geologist :
"Where do you get that granite?"
" Oo, they fand a wheen o' t lyin' i' the grund, eneuch to
build a hail toon."
" Is there a quarry ?"
" Na, there's nae quarry onyway here, jeest muckle stanes."
" What kind of rock is there here ?"
" Jeest a bastard kind o' a stane."
" Well, but where did the granite stones come from ?"
" Hoots, they just grew whar they lie."
Chip, chip, chip, and a look of puzzlement.
With a rising land and a rising temperature, with glaciers
shrinking and melting in these Highland glens, moraine after
moraine would be dropped in Strathspey, for the river, the
road and the railway engineer to dig through. The last stone
would be stranded high up on some lofty hill-side. In fact,
the Spey winds through a flat plain of rounded stones, and the
128 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
railway cuts through piles which seem to be lateral moraines
re-arranged by water, while perched blocks are stranded high
up on hill-sides which bound this large groove.
When this district was the birthplace of glaciers, it gave
rise to those which flowed from Driom Uachdar into Glen
Truim, and to six which flowed from Cairngorm and Beinn-
na-Muic-Duibhe, along the valleys of the Dee, Don, Doveran,
Avon, Spey, and Tummel ; and each of these must have left
tracks, because in Glen Truim and Strathspey they are con-
spicuous.*
Frothy spots of blood on heather, water oozing into the
footprints of a deer, do not point out the track of a wounded
stag more surely, than moraines in Strathspey map out the
backward course of melting glaciers. But the low moraines
are all washed out of shape.
At Boat of Insh station, 765 feet, the fresh wound of a
new railway cutting bares the flesh of the country and its
worn bones.
At the fork of two glens, glacial rubbish, sand, gravel, and
great boulders, are piled as moraines are piled in beds and
layers, which dip and curve all ways, and rest upon each
other where they were washed off the glacier or iceberg.
Beneath these rubbish-heaps are ground rocks, and behind
the old moraine a shallow loch nestles in a hollow.
At Avicmore, 692 feet (700 by observation), the drift is
flat and terraced, as it is elsewhere, at this level. When the
moraine was whole there was a larger lake behind the dam,
in the flat country which fills the glen higher up.
The grand hills whence this drift may have come tower up-
* Glacial phenomena about Balmoral have been described by an able local
geologist. They seem to prove the existence of land-glaciers on the side of
Strathmore, etc.
NEWPORT LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND. 129
wards to the mist, with sun and shower, light and shade, and
glorious colours of purple and gold, playing on their furrowed
sides. The works of ice in the plain are now arrayed in
forests of yellow birch and dark-green pine ; but whoever
has seen ice at work must know these tool-marks and these
chips. On an autumn day, a single snow-patch gleaming
through a cloud is enough to call up a vision of the Alps,
the Folge Fond, or the great ice-floods which hem in Sprengi-
sandr in Iceland. But the sea-level of the mental landscape
rises on the hill flanks.
At Grantown, 731 feet (800 feet up on the hill-side, by
observation), the new line leaves Strathspey and crosses a
ridge 1000 feet high to the Moray Firth.
It cuts. through hills of glacial drift which rest on con-
torted ice-ground slates, and other rocks. Woods glowing
with rich autumnal tints; purple heather, yellow corn, and
blue hills, far away beyond the rich strath ; the warm rosy
colours of a Scotch moor lit up by the sun contrast, strangely
with the cold gray desolation of the picture which ice-marks
recal so vividly. And yet these Scotch landscapes were like
the hills of Iceland, and the weather and the river Spey have
done little to alter the land since ice and sea left it bare for
plants to clothe.
In descending from the ridge to the sea-level, the whole
character of this country changes. Glens and wide straths,
moraines, and other marks of river-glaciers, are left in the
Spey-groove.
The train approaches a north-eastern corner, and it is like
others in the British Isles. Seen from Wyvis, it has a regular
slope "* V If land-ice grew here, it slid north-west into
the Moray Firth, in a wide sheet like that which covers parts
of Iceland at Ball Jdkull, Lang Jokull, etc. (chap, xxv.) The
VOL. II. K
130 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
whole of the Morayshire side of the Firth is one ridge
from 1000 feet to the sea-level, from the Spey to Inverness.
Above that level, a few A hills such as the Knock of Brae-
Moray rise, but they are exceptions. The soil is still drift ;
but the coating of loose debris is more evenly and thinly
spread, and more regularly packed. Layers of sand and
gravel are sorted, sized, and generally laid flat one upon the
other above the sandstone rock. The Findhorn, and other
rivers, have cut deep gashes in this rock. If land-ice had
moved in the same direction, it. would surely have dug
grooves - < .
At Rafford station, 169 feet above the sea, drift is
arranged in knolls and mounds, and layers dip many ways.
Most of the stones look washed and rolled, and large boulders
are rare. At Forres, the flat plains of Morayshire are only
26 feet above the sea ; and thence to Inverness the whole
of the low country bears marks of water-work. But it
was not water-work done by shallow unfrozen seas, for the
beach at Inverness and the shores of Scotland are not arranged
like the hummocky drift-hills and points which rise up in this
low tract. Drift-ice might do work of the kind ; and plenty of
glaciers to make icebergs grew between Perth and Inverness
in central Scotland, and on the opposite coast in Norway.
The evidence in this tract seems to prove that central
Scotland was crossed by narrow sounds, through which ice-
floats drifted, as they now do through the straits of Belleisle ;
that the land rose gradually ; and that glaciers on shore have
not been lower than the two moraines near Dalwhinny, since
the sea packed terraces about the end of these moraines.
If after the land had risen to this level (about 1400 feet),
central Scotland was an island with a sound passing west-
ward at Stirling, another sound passed westward at Inverness,
NEWPORT LINE CENTRAL SCOTLAND.
131
and ice-grooves at 1100 feet near Deny Veagh in Ireland
pointed in this direction, as shown above (p. 57).
The Galway and Westport curves have both been carried
over Scotland ; the spooring must go northwards again, if the
Glenveajjh marks are to be found on the Scotch mainland.
INVERNESS AND PERTH JUNCTION RAILWAY.
LIST of STATIONS, showing their respective Heights above the Sea-level,
High-water Mark, ordinary Spring-tides (rising 14 feet at Inver-
ness.)
Forres
Rafford .
Dunphail
Foot of Knock of Brae Moray,
about .
Grantown
Broomhill
Boat of Garten
Aviemore
Boat of Insh
Kinnissie
The heights estimated by the pocket aneroid barometer
agreed pretty well with these heights, which were kindly fur-
nished by a director of this railway.
Feet.
Feet.
26
Newtonmore
764
169
614
Dalwhinny
Summit of Drumochter
1169
1480
Loch Garry
1330
000
Struan
615
731
Blair Athole
421
656
706
Pitlochry
Ballinluig
334
202
692
765
740
Guay
Dalguise
Dunkeld . 212 ft.
186
179
4 in.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
BALTIC CURRENT 10 BRITISH ISLES 9 SCOTLAND 6 DERRY
VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL AND NORTHERN SCOTLAND.
INVERNESS stands at the north-eastern end of a large groove
which crosses Scotland. At 100 feet level the glen which now
holds the Caledonian Canal would be a sea-strait ; at the
500 feet level it would be a deep narrow strait through which
a rapid tide would flow, like that which now boils and seethes
through Kyle Akin, between Skye and the mainland. North
of Inverness the rocks are a coarse coDglomerate. Up to 400
feet great banks of sand, shingle, and large stones, are con-
fusedly piled on the hill-side. This drift contains stones of
many soils and sizes, granites of various colours, and hard
igneous rocks, mica-schists, and various kinds of quartz.
They have the shape of stones in glacial drift, but the surface
of waterworn stones. They look like stones on the beach
near Galway, which have been rolled by sea-waves after
falling out of the clay bank, in which similar stones retain
their grooved surface (p. 20). This seems to be water-worn
glacial drift at the end of the old strait. The plain below is
of like materials, spread out and laid flat, and a conical pile
of loose stones is left in the middle like the mounds which
workmen leave in a cutting to mark the original level of the
surface from which they have dug. At the head of many a
Scotch glen, at about 600 or 700 feet, a like plain of rolled
drift remains. If rapid tides ebbed and flowed over Inver-
DERRY VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 133
ness, they would dig away Tom-na-Shirich, and the rest of the
drift ; but a watershed 100 feet high stops the tide, and the
Ness can do little in such heavy ground. Wherever they
came from, these mounds of large stones were carried, and
they are piled upon ice-ground rocks. The hills have the
usual shape, and enormous fragments of conglomerate have
been moved and dropped where they stand, amongst heather
and trees, 800 feet up, clear of the terraces of rolled drift.
In Geikie's map, lines are marked about the watershed of
this groove. The whole country is glaciated ; and it is mani-
fest that ice can only have moved N.E. or S.W. along this deep
groove, whether it was land-ice or sea-ice.
The next great groove which crosses Scotland from N.E.
to S.W., runs from the Dornoch Firth to Loch Carron.
The intervening district is a large block of high land,
deeply furrowed by glens. On the eastern side, the northern
shore of the Moray Firth is low land in the Black Isle of
Cromarty, and this district is thickly strewed with drift. It
seems to be glacial and waterworn.
Beyond the Black Isle is the Firth of Cromarty, which
ends at Dingwall, below Beinn Uaish or Wyvis, which is a
great block of high ground, with a rolling plateau on the top.
Beyond the Cromarty Firth is a long low tract of drift,
which ends eastward at Tarbert Ness, and beyond that is the
Firth of Dornoch.
Lines of existing and projected railways mark the divi-
sion between hill and plain from Inverness to Dornoch.
From the Firth of Forth to Duncansby Head, the map of
the eastern coast is like the teeth of a blunted saw. The
lines run alternately westward and south-westward, and hills
inland correspond to the coast-line. Railway lines, in like
manner, run westward and south-westward in pursuit of low
134 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
levels. Eoads which follow low levels cross this district in
similar directions. Beyond Dornoch, the low coast-land be-
comes a narrow strip in Sutherland, which conies to an end
at the Ord of Caithness, where the sea washes a line of
eastern cliffs.
The hills now trend northward to Thurso, and westward to
Cape Wrath ; and Caithness is flat land, with a soil of drift.
If the north-eastern corners of Caithness and Berwickshire
were not blunted teeth, St. Abb's Head, Kinnaird's Head, and
Duncansby Head, would be points of land of the same pattern
as Tarbert Ness and Fife Ness. The whole east coast is a repeti-
tion of the same pattern on different scales, and it is repeated
in miniature in every firth where the tides are wearing the
coast. It seems fair to conclude that the shape of the Scotcli
coast results from the wearing action of water-streams, which
flow on a fixed principle, and in certain directions. Here
the points aim N.E. and the bays S.W.
In the northern division there are glens to correspond to
notches in the coast-line, and glens which are prolongations
of bays. Deep grooves run up westward at Glengarry, Glen-
moriston, Strathaffaric, Lovat's Forest, and Strath Conan ; and,
after passing the watershed, glens run westward down to the
coast about the Sound of Sleat, in Knoydart, Glenelg, Loch
Alsh, Kintail, etc.
Further north glens in Sutherland turn north-westwards,
and on the eastern coast they curve north. ^No map of
Scotland gives the true shape of these hills and glens. Black's
road and railway map gives some of the main features, and it
shows that the main hollows and passes which cross Scotland
all converge upon the N*es of Norway and the Skagerrak.
Any geological map will show that these forms of denudation
bear no reference to the geology of Scotland. The grooves
DERRY VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 135
have nothing to do with dip, or strike, or subterranean dis-
turbance. Most of these Scotch glens are tool-marks of some
denuding engine, and the study of their shape is a part of
" superficial geology." Conspicuous ice-marks are in all these
glens, and in all their branches, so far as they are known to
the writer. They all seem to have held river-glaciers of large
size, which followed the present run of water from the water-
shed to the low land.
With the sea at the 1000 feet level, this tract would be
crossed by sounds, and the main coast-lines would generally
trend N.E., E. byN., or thereby, as coasts and sounds do in
the Hebrides, at the present level of sea and land.
At 1500 feet there would be ample room for the tide to
flow over the low land of Sleat, through Loch Can-on and
Strath Bran north of Wyvis, and so along the Sutherland
coast to the Ord of Caithness. The ebb and a north-eastern
arctic current might flow the other way along the same path
as the flood-tide and the Gulf Stream now flow together out-
side of the Hebrides northwards, and the marks should remain.
The most likely place for sea-marks is on the watershed
in passes. Drift accumulates in shallow sounds ; and low
tracts in the Scotch and Scandinavian islands, which join
high hills, are generally composed of terraced drift with recent
shells. If the backbone of Scotland rose from the sea, the
watershed of each glen would be first a skajlow sound, and
then a " tarbert," with raised sea-margins. But if the rise
were gradual and general in Scotland, passes would dry in
their order of height ; so the highest terrace is the oldest.
The col at Dalwhinny is at 1480 feet ; so, on this sup-
position, it was dry when the Forest of Gairloch was an island,
and Strath Bran a strait 850 feet deep about Achnasheen.
There the barometer marks 630 feet at an ancient sea-margin.
136 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
When there was a tarbert at the head of Glen Dochart, where
the barometer marks 800, there was still a strait 680 feet
deep at Glengarry on the Caledonian Canal, and there was
deep water above Lanarkshire, where sea-shells have been
found in drift at Airdrie. When the sea was at " Drumoch-
ter," the Parallel Roads of Glenroy, about which so much has
been written, were sunk 324 feet ; for the highest of that
series is only 1156 feet above the sea,*
The ancient sea-margins of the British Isles have been
examined and described by Robert Chambers, and they lead to
the conclusion that the last rise was general, for ten-aces of
shingle are found at corresponding levels at many distant
points in Britain. A terrace of stratified gravel is a sea-mark
which could not resist a land-glacier ; it would be swept
away by the force which sweeps moraines before it, and grinds
solid rocks ; it is therefore a kind of thermometer, and it is
easily distinguished from glacial drift.
Where a terrace is found resting on glacial drift, beneath
which rocks are marked by ice, there is a series of records.
1. Ice ground the solid rocks and made the marks.
2. Ice dropped the great stones which floated on it, and
which now rest upon the marked rock.
3. Water packed loose gravel in horizontal layers upon
the moraines or drift.
4. Streams cut through the terraces, washed the gravel,
and arranged the mud in hollows lower down.
These records, then, give relative dates for the last glacial
period, and elevation of land.
There has been no land-glacier at the place where a ter-
race of stratified gravel remains, since the terrace was arranged
o
by water upon glacial drift. There has been no glacier since
* Antiquity of Man, p. 253.
DERRY VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 137
the moraine was stranded in the gleii. So the highest terrace
of sea-gravel marks a sea-level at which the land stood after
glaciers had disappeared, and the highest Scotch terraces of
washed drift known to the writer are at Dal whinny, 1169
feet, in Loch Ericht (?), and near the summit level of the new
railway, which is at 1480 feet.
Assuming that this argument is well founded, the record
in Strath Bran proves that the water-level has been at 700
feet since the Scotch hills were clear of ice, and that there
have been no large glaciers since that time in Strath Bran.
For the same reason, because the rubbish at Dalwhinny
is terraced, there has been 110 land-glacier in Glen Truim
since the water-level was at 1400 feet ; but there were land-
glaciers as low as 1600 feet near Dalwhinny, and their
moraines have not been washed out of shape.
But if so, and if the rise of land was general in Western
Europe, then the end of the glacial period coincided in level
with the rise of the low isthmus which now joins Scandinavia
to Russia, 1400 feet, and the last cold period in Scotland
coincided with the level which allowed the Arctic Current to
flow down the Gulf of Bothnia (see map, vol. i. p. 232).
Horizontal ice-marks on hill-sides and tops, and on water-
sheds in passes above 1400 feet, were probably made by
floating ice, at a time when only the highest Scotch hills
were above the sea and smothered in ice.
The nature and direction of ice-marks at high levels is the
foundation on which this theory rests ; and the shape of hills
of drift is another stone on the cairn.
One of the most beautiful of all the Scotch lochs is Loch
Maree in Wester Eoss. It lies in a deep trench which runs
north-west along the foot of a block of high land, which
makes the Forest of Gairloch. To the north are lofty hills
138 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
Slioch, Beiun-araidh-cliar, and others which rise to nearly
4000 feet. In the loch are rocky islands on which natural
woods of Scotch fir still survive ; and in deep glens and
corries which furrow the hill-sides, gaunt trees toss their
twisted arms, like the last giants of a departed race. On a
still morning when the eastern sun peeps over the hills and
under the mist, it sends a flood of yellow light and heat
streaming westwards, into the level glen at the head of Loch
Maree. Blue peat-reek, which before sunrise followed the
run of the stream down every hollow, turns to a golden haze,
and it eddies and curls upwards as the air answers the sun-
power and rises. East and west, north and south, the
smoke of scattered farms sweeps towards the spot where the
light falls and warms the ground, and the chill breath of the
hills comes down the hill-sides like a stream of cold water.
Heat and cold stir the air, and the smoke and the sunlight
show the currents which a ray of sunlight sets in motion. On
such a morning the hills are like great cones of lapis
lazzuli set in glens of gold and lakes of quicksilver. As
the day wears on the mists rise up and creep slowly round
the highest peaks, till they rise upwards and float away in
shining clouds. Then the blue cones change ; bare white
quartz glitters in the sun like snow, and Ben Eith looks as
if it were " ice" in truth.
To a height of about 2000 feet these hills are ice-ground.
It needs but a glance to know the shape, but here all marks
are clear and distinct.
At the bottom of the glen, at Kinloch Ewe, at 200 feet,
ice-grooves run towards Loch Maree, N. 30 W. These might
be marks of a local glacier.
Thence, for 700 feet up the western side, the rock is broken.
At 900 feet glaciation begins. At 1100 feet, at the edge of
DERRY VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 139
the glen on the west side, a large hollow groove three feet
wide, and as smooth as polished marble, contains striae of all
sizes, down to fine sand-marks. They point a little more to the
west, N. 40 W. At a higher level than the watershed of the
glen, which is also the watershed of Scotland, and 800 feet
high at Glen Dochart, a tract begins which is not easily
matched. The rock is a very hard stratified quartz gray
yellow, white, and pale pink and for several square miles the
rock is bare. It is weathered in some places, and there fossils
rise up half an inch from the surface. The stone looks like a
sugared cake, with chips of almonds stuck into it. Other
beds are weathered into a pattern of round flat lumps, like
small ivory shirt-buttons laid close ; others have larger shapes ;
concentric rings an inch across, which wear away, leaving
concentric ridges and hollows. But the greater part of this
rock is either freshly broken, or ground perfectly smooth. At
1350 feet, on the top of a ridge high enough to clear most of
the cols which join Scotch hills, and close to the foot of Beinn-
a-Ghuis, the marks are perfect. They point N. 20 W.
In that direction they aim over lower hills about the river
Ewe, twenty miles away, and over the sea outside of the Butt
of Lewes ; in the other direction they aim over the head of Glen
Dochart (800 feet), over Strath Bran at a big hill supposed to
be Sgur-a-Mhuliu, but found to be further south. There is no
apparent source for land-ice within reach of this spot, except
the high peaks beside it, and the grooves aim past these
hills, which are some of the highest in Scotland.
They were not made by land-ice.
At the same level, 1350 feet, a mile nearer to the foot of
these hills, and opposite to a glen which seems made to be
the home of a glacier, the grooves point N. 56 W., and here
is a tiny moraine, still perfect in shape. It is bare and looks
140 BALTIC CURKENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
like piles of broken white sugar poured out across the glen.
Here, near the level of moraines near Dalwhinny, a similar
form tells the same tale. The sea has not been here since the
glaciers melted. At 1800 feet, close to the foot of Beinn-a-
Ghuis, the marks point N. 25 W. The sea must have been
here when the marks were made. So the glacial period seems
to have ended when the sea was at the terminal moraines
on the side of Beiun-a-Ghuis at about 1400 feet, and on the
side of Driom Uachdar at about 1400 feet also.
At still greater heights the rocks have the same ground
shape (see cut, p. 17, and map, vol. i. p. 496), but time would
not admit of a closer examination.
It seems to be proved by marks on hills on one side of
Loch Maree, that ice crossed Scotland from the east to the
west at a level of more than 2000 feet. Above that line the
Gairloch hills seem to be conical piles of broken quartz talus
leaning against jagged cliffs and peaks. The shape is ' - up
to one level, A above it.
If a stream came from the eastward and split on these
high hills it would sweep off north-westwards, as ice did
according to these marks.
There can be no doubt of the direction. For 100 yards
in length, and 20 in breadth, one great waving sheet of white
quartz is smoothed and grooved on one side, and fractured
on the other, and for several miles rock-surfaces of the same
kind abound. A few blocks of dark trap are scattered about
at this level, but on this exposed shoulder there are few
perched blocks. Looking inland from the Gairloch Forest, an
open gap in the hills about Loch Fannich bears E. by N., and
there is nothing in that direction to stop ice floating at 1800
feet.
Looking through that gap the first land of equal height is
DERBY VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. HI
in Scandinavia ; so this path, too, is clear, for in Scandinavia
there are grooves on the watershed which point N.E. at about
2000 feet above the sea near Trondhjem (see vol. i. pp. 103,
234).
The next point on this line is on the opposite side of the
glen, where a ridge 2100 feet high is cut off from all neigh-
bouring hills by deep glens. It is cut off from Slioch by
Glen Bianastle ; from the Forest by Kinloch Ewe ; and a
wide deep strath divides it from Ben Dearg to the north-
east. It is called Beinn Mhonaidh.
If a stream at this level came from the east by way of
Fannich it would split on the side of Slioch, which is about
4000 feet high, and run foul of the place last described.
In the bottom of the glen at Kinloch Ewe drift is arranged
in flat terraces up to the 300 feet level. The river is digging
into these banks, and it is building a new set in the loch
three miles down. This is stratified water-work done since
the ice disappeared. But the gravel banks rest in an ice-
groove, for the marks show as soon as the drift is cleared.
At the 1000 feet level the hill-top is above the level of the
col at Glen Dochart, which would make Strath Bran and
Loch Fanuich sea-straits.
At 1200 feet the groove which holds Loch Maree is seen
to be a short transverse rut, for the big groove which runs
from sea to sea E. by N. is open between Beinn More and
Fin Beinn. A few large perched blocks of gneiss are scat-
tered on the tops at this level, and the wide hollow and the
shape of hills and knolls in it, all indicate movement from
the east towards the high hills beyond Loch Maree.
At 1200 feet some weathered grooves on gneiss point
E. by K The rocks are much weathered, but their shape is
clear. At 1620 feet is a perched block 9x9x9 feet, and
142 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
many smaller angular blocks of veined gneiss and granite
are balanced upon rounded knobs of gneiss near a small
tarn.
At 2150, on the top of the ridge, are perched blocks and
grooves pointing N. 65 E. These are almost obliterated, but
they can be made out.
From this point the opposite quartz hills are well seen.
Unless central Scotland was one vast snow-dome, there is
no possible source from which land-ice could reach this spot.
Deep glens surround Beinn Mhonaidh, and the shortest way
to sea from the hills at which the grooves point is behind
Slioch, three or four miles away, and 1500 feet lower down,
where the water runs. At the same level, and a little higher,
the very same kind of rock-surface, and the very same
pattern of smooth hills, are seen in every direction ; but a
little above this 2000 feet level, hill-tops are jagged, conical,
weathered, fantastic peaks, fit rivals to the Lofoten hills, which
have been likened to the teeth of a shark.
On an autumn day when the air is clear, a grander scene
is not to be found in all Scotland.
When yellow lights, purple shadows, and showers are
chasing each other from hill to hill, rainbows and windgalls,
bright clouds and blue sky, make this wild tract a scene of
wondrous beauty. It is a picture to look at and remember.
But it is easy to map out the glaciers from other pictures
stored in the same memory. Through a gap in the hills is
the way to Bergen. There stand peaks of the pattern of
Bodals Kaabe and Areskutan ; below is a long rounded swell
like the Norwegian Fjeld. Deep down from the rift of Glen
Bianastle comes the distant hushing sound of a mountain-
torrent. It is in the path which ice must have followed if
it came from Scandinavia through Glen Fannich, and ran
DERRY VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 143
foul of Sliock It is easy to fill in the whites in this picture,
and it is easy to test its truth when finished.
At the head of Glen Bianastle, at 1450 feet, the rock is
the same quartz which makes the opposite hill-tops in the
forest. The beds dip the same way, and some are weathered
and some polished. At the very edge of the cliff a set of
perfect grooves point from N. 65 E. to S. 65 W. over Locli
Maree.
At the same level, thirty yards off, similar grooves on gray
quartz point N. 60 E.
In the glen below the cliff at 1200 feet the marks are
quite perfect. Long white ridges and grooves are " for all
the world like a marble chimney-piece," as an astonished
native of Dingwall remarked. Strife point from N. 50 E.
From this point down to Loch Maree are similar marks
wherever the bed of quartz is the surface.
But at the bottom of the glen a bed of sandstone is
smoothed by water in the burns, and on the side of Slioch,
where strata nearly vertical meet the edge of the sandstone
beds, the hill-side is deeply furrowed by rain. These nits
aim at the peak, the others run horizontally past the hill.
The bum has cut a rock-trench twenty or thirty feet deep,
but though all this weathering has taken place, many quartz
surfaces have not lost the thickness of a sheet of paper since
ice left them bare.
At 700 feet is a bed of fiat drift apparently arranged by
water amongst old moraine stuff.
At *700 feet the rock is bare, and marks point at right
angles to the shore of the lake. Here a quartz cliff about
1000 feet high is ice-ground to the top, and the opposite hills,
ground to the level of 2000 feet, tower up beyond the lake.
At 150 feet the shore of Loch Maree is a river-delta forming
144 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
on a moraine, which has lost the characteristic shape, and
the lake as usual is said to have no bottom. It is very deep
and a true rock-basin, for the Ewe escapes through a channel
of rock.
So, looking on these great hills as stones in a stream, ice-
marks at the high level indicate a current flowing through
sounds, and splitting upon blocks of high land as streams do
on posts ; the floats must have been ice of large dimensions,
but not necessarily larger than drift-ice, in the same latitude.
The plan laid down at the beginning was to follow ice-
marks wherever they might lead. Marks on the top of Beinn
Mhonaidh pointed at quartz hills on the opposite side of Loch
Maree, and they were followed. Marks at the head of Glen
Bianastle led down to the shore of Loch Maree, marks at the
bottom of the glen pointed down the stream ; on the shoulder
of Ben-a-Ghuis, opposite to Beinn Mhonaidh, at about 1800
feet, the arrow (see cut, p. 17), carried 55 miles, to the
visible horizon of the highest spot, aimed about Stornoway in
Lewes. The ice-lines were found to wind about the hills, and
finally aim over two blocks of isolated hills 15 or 20 miles off.
This spoor has been followed, and it is very plain on these
distant hills.
The Hill of Groban, over which the arrow passes in the
woodcut, is between the post-road to Gairloch and the shore
of Loch Maree. The highest knob of the central eminence in
the midst of this group of small hills is about 1200 feet high.
It is all ice-ground, but weathered. On the S.W. shoulder, at
800 feet, is a shelving rock of great extent ; from which rub-
bings were taken, first by a gamekeeper and afterwards by a
gentleman who was kind enough to follow the instructions
given at page 15. Allowing 20 for magnetic variation, the
direction is from S. 83 E. at a height of 800 feet.
DERRY VEACrll CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 145
Thus, after a flight of nearly 15 miles, the arrow curves
westward 48 (A). At a point about 350 feet above the sea,
behind Flowerdale, and near the post-road, marks have the
same direction. These are in the bottom of a hollow, and
cross it diagonally from S. 43 E. (B).
On the other side of the hollow, in the bottom of a wide
shallow valley, which runs nearly north and south, the marks
point from S. 40 E. (F). They do not aim at the hills.
These three spots, A B F, are in the middle, and to one side of
the large glen, which is split by the Hill of Groban, 20 miles
from the watershed at Glen Dochart. At the northern ex-
tremity of the block, beside the road which leads from Gair-
loch to Pool Ewe, the marks point at the sea from S. 60 E.
(C), which is the direction of the watershed.
Further north, and further from the hills, and out of the
jaws of the glen, another set of marks, perfectly preserved,
give two cross directions from S. 85 E., and from S.
35 E.
Still further north, and quite beyond the glen, is Meall
Mor, a hill 600 or 700 feet high, on the north point of
Gairloch, isolated ; and near the western coast-line of this
part of Scotland, a rock on the N.E. shoulder is clearly
marked, and the rubbing shows two distinct movements
from S. 85 K, and from N. 35 E. (allowing 20 for varia-
tion) (D).
Thus the arrow is carried over the watershed of Scotland,
at about 2000 feet, with the direction N. 65 E., which might
bring it from Scandinavia along the coast of Sutherland. It
is turned aside on the shoulder of Beinn-a-Ghuis, at the same
level ; and is made to glance northwards from S. 25 E., down
a wide and deep groove. Followed for more than 20 miles,
it is found bending gradually southwards, and left aiming
VOL. II. L
146 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
from east to west and from N. 35 E. to S. 35 W. near a
coast where currents flow various ways, according to the
state of the tide. Tides close at hand do in fact flow in
directions which correspond to marks upon this last isolated
hill.
All this seems to point at floating glaciers, grown in sea-
lochs, and amongst small islands, moving in currents and
tides.
For a perpendicular height of nearly 2000 feet, for a
length of about 25 miles, and a breadth of five or six at
least, rocks are marked on one plan. Perpendicular cliffs,
the bottoms of grooves, the tops of ridges, the tops of hills, all
are marked alike : all the smooth sides are towards the water-
shed, all the broken faces towards the sea. All the grooves
have a manifest relation to each other till they get clear of the
glen. It seems plain that this big groove was full of heavy
ice. But there is no great extent of higher ground at the
watershed, and there horizontal grooves 1200 feet higher than
the watershed aim past the higher peaks from which alone
glaciers could slide.
If the other direction is taken, and the grooves followed,
the same thing appears. From the watershed stria? lead
down to the eastern coast, winding seawards in the grooves,
and they are found on hill-sides far above the bottom of the
glen. But at the watershed there is no possible source for a
land-glacier, and no apparent reason why land-ice of any
dimensions should move horizontally over Scotland at 1200
feet above the watershed of glens which isolate the hill. It
must be remembered that similar marks pass over Scandinavia
at about the same level, and in a similar direction, and that
similar marks are found upon American hills. If these be
marks of land-ice it was unlike any which now exists. If
PEKRY VKAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 147
they be marks of sea-ice, the Arctic Current explains the
puzzle.*
The head of Glen Dochart is four miles from Kinloch
* While this sheet was passing through the press a new work on this
subject appeared The, Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain, etc.,
by A. 0. Ramsay, F.R.S. : London, Stanford, June 1864. The opinions of the
author are well known, and have been adopted by several eminent geologists ;
in particular by the authors of the Geology of Canada, 1863 ; and by Mr.
Geikie, author of an excellent pamphlet on the Phenomena of the Glacial
Drift of Scotland. The theory assumes a period of intense cold, which pre-
vailed throughout all high latitudes, and in all elevated regions of the earth,
simultaneously ; and which caused an enormous growth of ice during one or
more geological periods. But no attempt is made to account for this cold
period. The theory which this volume is intended to illustrate is that the
present time is the "glacial period ;" and that an explanation of ice-marks is
to be found in the present condition of other parts of the globe. The marks
in Scandinavia suggest glaciers on the scale of glaciers in Greenland ; the
marks in Great Britain suggest sea-ice on the scale of Labrador ice ; the
change of climate at one place is accounted for by a change in the course of an
ocean-current, caused by a change in the level of sea and of land. All are
agreed as to the facts ; the questions left for argument are the cause of the
change which has surely taken place, the nature of the ice which made the
spoor, and the amount of work which this engine has done.
Mr. Ramsay attributes many rock-basins and their laks to glaciation, and
few agree with him ; these volumes go further, and attribute these and many
of the main lines of denudation in Northern Europe and elsewhere to glacia-
tion, combined with ocean-currents. Mr. Geikie and other observers attribute
marks in Ross-shire to land-ice. Their difficulty is how to get their glaciers
over watersheds, and account for the cold of the exceptional glacial period.
Mr. Ramsay appears to have proved that glaciation coincided with the deposi-
tion of certain breccias of Permian age in Britain. The stones are glaciated
stones, that is certain ; their position rests on good authority. If the glacial
period began soon after the coal formation, and has endured till now, the
acknowledged work of denudation gains the aid of an engine which works
faster than streams and waves do. If arctic currents are now to be added
to the list, they are bigger and stronger tools than land-glaciers, and may
have helped to do the work, which has certainly been done somehow.
148 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
Ewe and 800 feet above the sea. Here the rocks are brittle
and broken, and there are no marks.
Loch Roisg is 630 feet np, and from the head of it to the
8.W. the Applecross hills are seen at the end of a wide strath.
Here is a high col, and here at the head of Loch Koisg are
heaps of drift.
Five miles off, at the lower end of the lake, near Aclina-
sheen, are flat terraces of stratified water-worn gravel and
sand, resting on a large lateral moraine, and the moraine is
on grooved rock. Beyond the glen towers Sgur-a-Mhulin,
and a range of high hills. The grooves point along Strath
Bran at Ben Wyvis and Loch Carron, so ice did not come
from the high hills.
The terraces stretch far up along the road which leads to
Torridon, and they are very large.
Tides surely flowed through this strait at about 700 feet,
for no small streams could do such heavy work.
The glacier-work was finished, and the drift left, before
the gravel was packed over it. And the river is now winding
along a plain of fine sand and mud which it washes out of
older water-work, and packs away in lakes in Strath Bran.
The lateral moraine or the glacial sea-margin, which
begins about Loch Eoisg, is followed by the road for about
twenty-five miles to Garve from 630 to 350 feet. Here the
road descends from the high glen and turns away from Ben
Wyvis into the valley of the Blackwater.
The grooves are well marked on rocks all the way from
Achnasheen to the lower end of Loch Garve.
At 630 feet near Achnasheen grooves on gneiss point N.
65 E.
At 530 feet, at the junction of two glens near Loch Liochart,
DERRY VEAGH CURVE CALEDONIAN CANAL, ETC. 149
and the junction of the river which drains Loch Fannich,
grooves on gneiss point N. 85 E.
Lower down, at Lock Liochart, at about the same level,
550 feet, weathered grooves on gneiss point N. 82 E.
About this level the high glen ends suddenly in a trans-
verse glen. The drift in the upper groove is arranged in
layers which slope down-hill towards the W.S.W. at an angle
of about 35. This is like the packing of silt by the ebb (vol.
i. p. 339).
Above the inn at Garve, at about 600 feet, grooves on a
rib of white quartz turn with the glen. They do not point
at Wyvis or up into Strath Bran. They coast round a hill-
side, carefully avoiding the high hills, as rivers do at the lower
level. They point S. 45 E.
At the end of Loch Garve, beside the road, grooves on
contorted gneiss take another turn with the glen. At about
150 feet above the sea, the marks point N. 70 E., and aim at
the shoulder of Wyvis, which bars the way. On this hill-
side are piles of drift, and it seems as though a glacier had
ploughed down to the sea-level through the bed of the Black-
water. Near Contin inn the rocks disappear under plains of
rolled drift.
Now, if these marks were made by a land-glacier, it was
twenty-five miles long at least, and it must have had a large
moraine. That mark ought to be found somewhere about the
foot of Wyvis, or about Brahan, or Conan. But there is no
large moraine with conical hills. There is glacial drift in
profusion, but the moraine shape is not there.
If Strath Bran held a glacier which flowed north and east
towards Ben Wyvis, stones left by it ought to be blocks of
white and gray quartz and gneiss, fragments of rocks in Strath
Bran, and near it. But there is no such collection of native
150
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
drift here. If ever there were true land-glaciers in this dis-
trict, they were launched at a high level, in a sea like that
which is now passing Cape Farewell, near the same latitude,
and which now carries "heavy drift ice" and " northern drift"
southwards and westwards in sweeping curves.
A - - Weathered hill, ground hill, and fiat drift. Terraces of -water-worn gravel and sand at the
foot of Loch Roisg, near Achnasheen, at about 650 or 700 feet above the sea. Sgiir-a-Mhi<lin, beyond
Strath Bran. Ice-marks run north-eastward to the left along Strath Rran to Ben lYyvis.
Fio. 79.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
BALTIC CURRENT 11 BRITISH ISLES 10 SCOTLAND 7 STRATH
BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC.
Beinn Uaish. IN travelling down Strath Bran, the end of the
groove seems barred by the great mountain mass of Wyvis
or Beinn Uaish. The highest point of the hill is nearly 4000
feet above the sea, and the base covers a very wide tract.
Seen from Morayshire, and from the new railway near Inver-
ness, it is a great block ' v with a rolling plateau on the top,
and on this high base lofty clouds rest when neighbouring
hills are clear.
From the bridge over the Conan, the movements of floats
of white froth may be studied in the black peat water. The
floats move as the water moves, past the piers of the bridge ;
and such curves described by froth are roughly drawn at page
127 and at the end of vol. i. On Conan Bridge, as on any
sloping road, marks made by streams of water flowing past a
stone may be seen. The forms agree with the movement of
floats. In walking up Wyvis from the south-east, the course
of a supposed north-eastern current, which came down the
western shore of Scandinavia, is crossed. These large forms
should resemble the miniature glens on the bridge, if they are
in any way the work of ocean-currents. The shape of the
land about Wyvis corresponds to hollows made by rain on
sand, and to the curves drawn by froth on the Conan; and
the floats in the Arctic Current in this latitude are large floes
and deep icebergs loaded with boulders. Here boulders, like
152 BALTIC CUKKENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
the hill-forms, seem to record the passage of ice-floats south
westward at a high level.
Above Dingwall, in the woods behind Tulloch, are
numerous boulders of a peculiar kind of pink granite. They
are not common angular blocks, but large rounded blocks,
like those which abound on the northern shores of the Baltic
(see vol. i. pp. 297, 322).
At 540 feet is one 27 feet round and 8 feet high ; it is
rounded on all sides, and a big tree beside it has bent round
it in struggling to grow upright. Near it are others of the
same kind, and these rest upon a foundation of brittle slaty
sandstone (p. 167).
At 600 feet (the level of Achnasheen) is a flat block of
gneiss of the same colour and composition as the granite ;
and this block is scored on the upper surface. It is 9 feet
long by 6 broad.
At 800 feet (the level of the col at Glen Dochart) are three
large rounded masses of the same granite.
At 950 feet is another, and at this level the top of Brahan
Hill and Torachilty are overlooked.
At 1100 feet, on the top of this hill, are more large granite
boulders on a wide heathery moor ; and from this spot a deep
v - groove is seen crossing the ridge of Scotland W. by S.
It is Strath Bran. If these boulders mark a sea-level, then
the seaway was open over the watershed of Scotland.
A corresponding groove runs N.E. along the foot of Wyvis.
At the same height, four miles inland, is another granite
boulder at the head of Strath Peffer, opposite a notch in the
shoulder of Wyvis, which opens Strath Conan above Contin
inn, and Strath Bran behind Torachilty. The water in the
glen behind Tulloch runs into the Cromarty Firth ; but at
this level the tides would flow in from the Firth of Dornoch.
STRATH BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 153
At 750 feet, the burn has cut through a pile of terraced
drift level with terraces at Achnasheen. The bank is a cliff
of gray clay, which contains numerous scratched stones,
chiefly gray slaty blocks of various sizes, amongst which are
specimens of granite. In the bed of the stream, where the
largest stones are washed clear of rubbish, many large boulders
of granite are mixed with slaty blocks. But there is no
granite hereabouts in situ.
At 1000 feet, up the side of Wyvis, the rock is laid bare
in a small burn. It is a soft slate dipping 10 south, or there-
abouts.
Thus the shape of Wyvis ^ v has nothing to do with the
structure of the rock, but is due to denudation, and ice has
done part of the work so far. There are blocks of granite on
the hill, and a moraine in the glen. Great part of the moraine
seems to have come from the flanks of Wyvis ; and the corrie
in which the glacier moved is seen on the hill-side - - . But
granite is foreign.
At 1650 feet is a conical hill called Cioch Mor. It is a
lump of hard coarse conglomerate left standing in the groove.
The sides are scored ; the greatest length corresponds to the
run of the groove ; the steepest end is down-stream towards
the west ; it is a large tor. In the supposed lee are large
blocks of mica-schist, bits of gray quartz rock, and a big
boulder of gneiss.
At 2600 feet, the sea-horizon is open through a groove to
the north-east.
At 3000 feet, the ground on a shoulder of Wyvis is smooth,
flat, and covered with a velvet carpet of yellow-green moss,
over which mountain-hares have traced a pattern of footpaths.
The rock shows in the edge of the deep corrie which was seen
from below. It is a coarse gritty sandstone which splits into
154 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
thin flags ; it dips about S.W. On this high shoulder are
blocks of gneiss, weathering and splitting to bits.
The view over the central district of Scotland is very fine.
All the low hills are seen to have one even slope to a certain
height ' % and above that the tops are of a different pattern
A. The Knock of Brae-Moray is a cone planted upon this
upper level, as Cioch is on the shoulder of Wyvis. The high
hills about the head of Strathspey are steep conical hills, and
the way over the Toridon hills is open. It is a groove v / ;
and, as shown above, it is ice-ground and terraced.
At 2600 feet, on the shoulder, is a rounded boulder of the
Dovre Fjeld and Finmark pattern, ten feet long, and made of
gneiss. It is visible from Dingwall ; and it must have floated
to the shoulder of Wyvis, unless it flew, or slid upon ice all
the way from the parent rock.
The seaway to Scandinavia along the coast of Sutherland
is clear from this point at this level. Not so the top of Wyvis,
which was hidden in mist.
At 2100 feet rock-surfaces are bare on this side facing the
south. They are rounded but much weathered.
At 2000 feet and lower down glaciated surfaces abound, but
they are all weathered. At this level the steep side of the
hill ends, and the base has a longer slope to the head of
Strath Peffer.
At 1100 feet are many granite boulders. And on the top
of a sandstone quarry by the road-side near Dingwall, at the
end of the Cromarty Firth, is a cap of glacial drift which
contains large smoothed scored blocks of granite, and many
other hard igneous rocks.
In the low grounds the whole country is covered by
masses of similar stones washed and rolled. It is hard to
find one with ice-marks amongst those which have been
STRATH BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 155
moved in railway-making and other works. This seems to
be the case of the Galway drift repeated. The boulder-clay
has been disturbed and repacked by water, without the help
of sea-ice, below a certain level, and the scratched boulders
are water-worn in the plain.
From Beinn Slioch to Wyvis the way to Norway is open,
and floats are stranded at 3000 feet. There are no small
ice-grooves left on Wyvis to point out the way, but glens and
hills are but larger grooves and tors, and here they all point
up the coast of Sutherland towards Molde and Trondhjem,
where the coast-line takes a sweep and curves northwards as
far as the Lofoten Islands beyond the Arctic Circle.
Still following the marks on Wyvis, the Sutherland coast
trends N. 48 E., and there are no Scotch hills from which the
Wyvis boulders could have floated at 3000 feet.
At the mound near Dunrobin Castle is a high bluff of
coarse conglomerate, on which small ice-marks cannot be seen,
but there larger grooves are remarkably distinct. The whole
hill-face has been scored horizontally from top to bottom.
The grinding force appears to have come along the coast from
the N.E. as the flood does now. But it may also have come
from the opposite direction with the flood, if tides ebbed and
flowed over this part of Scotland, as they are supposed to do
now over part of Greenland.
The woods of Dunrobin, as far as the river Brora, grow
on vast terraced piles of boulders which do not seem
to be moraines. They rest upon the sides of ice-ground hills
above the sea, as if they belonged to a system far larger than
any land-glaciers which now exist even in Iceland. They
may be marks of the " ice-foot."
These terraced heaps are like the terraces of Northern
Scandinavia, and they are probably effects of the same
156 BALTIC CUKEENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
cause. The stones are of the Scandinavian pattern, and some,
at least, may be of Scandinavian origin. To decide that point
special knowledge is required. If Scotland held together and
sunk and rose as Scotchmen are said to do, in a mass, this
coast was under water when Wyvis and the Gairloch hills
were islands, and Caithness at the bottom of the sea. The
terraces appear to be horizontal.
Leaving Scotland and following the curve of the Scotch
coast up to Scandinavia, the same forms recur all the way
to the North Cape. If summer lost the aid of the Gulf Stream,
winter and his fleets of ice would reign in spite of the mid-
night sun of Scandinavia. But if there were Greenland weather
in Norway, there would be a wintry crop in Northern Scot-
land, and Sutherland might grow icebergs instead of wheat
and dun deer.
Thus starting at Beinn Eith and Beinn Mhonaidh, on the
western coast of Scotland, ice-marks at a level of 2000 feet
lead across Scotland to Wyvis. There boulders mark a sea-
level of 2600 or 3000 feet, and the shape of the country and of
the east coast, existing tides, and other marks, all point one
way. When the line is run out at the North Cape, it coin-
cides with an equatorial current, which is continually flowing
into the arctic basin, along the north-western coast of
Norway. If an arctic current flowed out here, and the Gulf
Stream passed westwards by Panama, the climates of these
northern regions would change.
This curve passes very near Trondhjem where a road crosses
to Sweden. Chambers estimated the height of the col at or
below 2000 feet. He found ice-grooves perfectly preserved
on this watershed, and they pointed N.E. and S.W.*
North-east from this spot there is no land of equal height
* Edinburgh Journal, vol. xii. p. 75.
STRATH BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 1$7
now, unless it be in Novaya Zemlya, or about the North
Pole. So the boulder on Wyvis may have sailed over Norway.
If it came on land-ice, the neve* must have been some-
where beyond Scandinavia, the terminal moraine somewhere
beyond Galway ; and a glacier moved in the same direction,
in similar latitudes, in North America, up the valley of the
St. Lawrence, according to marks there. A Baltic current is
easier to swallow, though it is a large draught.
Central Sutherland is a wide rolling plateau, with a few
tall conical hills rising above the moor.
On the west coast the hills are higher, and they are quoted
by the most eminent geologists as proofs of enormous de-
nudation. On all the bare hills ice-marks are conspicuous.
The sketch copied in the woodcut was made from a yacht
25th September 1848, on a clear calm day with a transparent
atmosphere, and the outlines are tolerably accurate, though
each hill was sketched from a different point, as the yacht
came opposite to it. The shape of the surface in the central
districts of Sutherland is like that of the upper plateau which
divides the Gulf of Bothnia from the arctic basin ^ x . The
shapes of the hills on the west coast are like those of hills
which now rise through glaciers in Iceland A.
The sharp angular peaks in Sutherland are like weathered
hills elsewhere. Talus-heaps rest below the cliffs from which
stones fall in every frost, and after every fall of rain rivers
and mountain-streams add to the heaps, and carry part of
them a stage down-hill. But the low grounds in Sutherland,
Scandinavia, and Iceland, are not weathered but ground, and
they all have one characteristic shape.
In Iceland there is a tract of ice nearly as large as Suther-
land, in which neve and ice cover the whole land like a white
pall, but the fringe is a black scolloped border of hills, and
158
BAT/TIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
some of these are like the hills of
Western Sutherland.
The ice flows into the central
hollow of Iceland, but it melts before
two broad streams meet. For a
distance equal to that which the
woodcut includes, two great banks
of ice hem in Sprengisandr, and the
outline of one is like that of the dark
shadow in the sky of the woodcut.
The ice-banks are advancing towards
the sand, as if towards the sea-coast
of Sutherland. But where a bit of
harder rock has pierced the ice-crust,
it stands up as a long ridge, a steep
rock-spur in the round white ice-
mountain ' N . It is a tor ^ s .
One of these hills in Iceland has
the shape of Suil Bheinn, in the
woodcut of Sutherland. The ice-
stream is splitting at the col, flowing
along the sides, and meeting again
in the lee. One glance is enough to
show the movement, and the hill
retains ice-marks high above the
present ice-level. This hill is a
great ice-tor, which the Arnefells
Jb'kull has hewed and is still hewing
out of bedded igneous rock. Suil
Bheinn is another of the same size
and pattern, and the same marks are
on both, though one is igneous, and
the other sedimentary rock.
STRATH BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 159
They are long ridges pointing up-stream, tors on a large
scale, mounds left in a rock-cutting, by which to measure the
work done ; and the tool-marks are those of ice.
In the woodcut, Suil Bheinn is seen end on, and it looks
like a pillar.* When the hill is seen from the side, it is a
long steep ridge which ends in a knife-edge, and there are not
many places where it can be scaled. The strata of which it
is made are nearly horizontal, and the same beds recur in hills
to the right, beyond the gaps which are valleys of denudation.
According to Geikie and other geologists, who have explored
this district in more detail, the direction of high ice-grooves
coincides with that of passes and main glens, which run from
south-east to north-west, north of Loch Maree (see woodcut,
p. 17).
About the same latitude, on the opposite side of the
Atlantic, the Arctic Current, after flowing south-west along
the coast of Greenland, eddies round Cape Farewell, and flows
north-west, with all its train of ice-floats. It whirls round
again further north, and flows down to Newfoundland, along
the curve transferred to the map (vol. i. p. 232). A very slight
modification of that curve would make it fit the glens of
Sutherland and Caithness, and ice-marks on high passes in
this district. The curve would then represent an eddy in the
North Sea, and such an eddy might well result from a rise of
land in the path of a Baltic current sweeping round the point
of Norway, as the Arctic Current now sweeps round Cape
Farewell. It is easy to test this theory, by building clay
maps of this part of Europe in any shallow pool with a run-
ning stream.
When the land rose, land-glaciers w r ould follow the present
river-courses, till they melted and became rivers. And this
* Snlar, Icelandic for pillar.
1GO BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
seems to have been the order of change all the way from Gal-
way to North Berwick, from Malm Head to Cape Wrath and
John o' Groat's House.
First, cold ocean-currents working .denudation on a large
scale ; then local denudation worked by minor causes acting
from watersheds downwards.
From the sea the north coast of Sutherland appears to be
ice-ground, but the sea has dug into the rock, and wild L
cliffs overhang a wild sea.
All down the west coast forms of glaciation recur below a
certain level, above which are forms of weathering, and the
sea-cliff is forming at the sea-leveL
In the islands it is still the same. In the low island of
Lewes ; in the low lands of Harris ; near the high mountains
of the south end of Harris ; in North Uist, Benbecula (Beinn-
e-Mhaoil), South Uist, Barra, Skye, Mull, Tyree, Jura, Islay,
and in scores of smaller islands, similar forms recur in rocks
of eVery description.
In the Long Island, for instance, looking from the north
end of South Uist, the low grounds of Benbecula and North
Uist are spread out like a map. There is a wide plain of
peat and sand, salt and fresh water, through which low
hummocks of gray rock and piles of boulders appear. In the
midst of this half-drowned land rise two hills of the same
pattern. They slope to the eastward, and are steep to the west-
ward, and they are ground and rounded from top to bottom.
Memory and rough sketches are enough to show that these
hills are but large tors, of the pattern of Bren Tor in Devonshire,
and hills in Lapland, with the same bearings. A small de-
pression would make them islands, like those which are
scattered broadcast along the Scotch and Norwegian coasts.
If there be strife on these hills, they will point towards
STRATH BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 161
the Lofoten Islands, which they resemble ; but they were
not examined for high grooves.
Outside of Harris grooves point N.E. and S.W. along the
western coast near the shore beside a road.
In Skye, at Loch Corrie Uisge, marks of ice can be traced
to a great height, and down to the sea, as clearly as in Korns-
dal or Justedal, or in a Swiss or Icelandic glen, where ice is
working. This district has been described by Forbes ; it was
first seen by the writer in 1845, while the impression left by
the Alps was fresh, and the work was then attributed to
land-ice.
In Rona, near the lighthouse at the north-eastern end,
the hills seem ground from the north-east, and thence a sea-
way is open to the North Atlantic.
In Eaasay, according to Geikie, all the hills are ice-
ground, as he supposes from the south-west by ice sliding
from Skye.
If the grinding resulted from the alternate movements of
tides, the opposite ends of these two long islands may well
show opposite movements. The uttermost rock of Scotland,
the I>ubh lartach, has a long reef to the south-west.
In Coll and Tyree are perched blocks. In Mull, Colonsay,
Oronsay, Jura, and in Islay, are all the marks attributed to ice ;
and drift-terraces abound.
The Scaur of Eig, that strangest of all the Western
Islands, is a great wall of trap, with notched sides built
upon a pyramidal base of stratified rocks, and one layer in
this masonry contains fossil wood, immediately under the
trap-wall. The island is another case of denudation ; it is a
tor in the sea ; and it points up into the Sound of Sleat
X.E. at Strath Bran and the coast of Sutherland. South-
west of it are Muck, Coll, Tyrce, and the Sgcirc Mhor reef ;
VOL. n. M
162 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
and breakers are beyond. This is a long ridge partly sunk,
and aiming S.W. outside of Islay and Ireland.
The whole of these islands all the small ones, and the
main ranges of hills and glens in the large ones have one
general N.E. and S.W. trend.
Any good map shows the form of the coast. There is no
good map of the hills, but w r hen the Ordnance map appears,
it will show that all these island-forms bear reference to
grooves crossing meridians diagonally south-westwards, like
the chief passes on the mainland, which no map shows.
Further north, the low Shetlands seem all to be ice-
ground rocks.
In Orkney, farmers find their land full of great loose
stones, and the general shape of the low rocks towards the
north is rounded. At the southern end, the coast-lines are
chiefly cliffs of great height, which the sea is undermining.
So the general shape of this country on a map ; the general
shape of the hills as seen from a distance, minute details on
shore ; the general shape of Western Europe, and of the whole
northern hemisphere, all seem to point to symmetrical denu-
dation, and to the action of ice on shore and afloat.
Taking the curves of the Arctic Current from Spitzbergen
to Cape Farewell as a natural curve of motion which might
be repeated elsewhere, and is extended south of Newfound-
land, the curve can be applied to the British Isles, as shown
roughly in the map (vol. i. p. 232).
A S.W. curve, which comes out of West Fjord in Norway,
passes between the Shetlands and the Faro Islands to Rockall.
Curves which start about the watershed of Lapland, near
Kautokeino, etc., skirt the Norwegian coast, pass over the
Shetlands and Hebrides, and coincide with ice-grooves on the
outside of the Island of Harris.
STRATH BRAN, BE1NN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 1G3
South-west curves drawn from south-west ice-grooves on
the watershed of Scandinavia beyond Trondhjem, skirt the
Norwegian coast, and the Scotch coast from the Ord of Caith-
ness, to ice-grooves on hills at Dunrobin in Sutherland ; thence
Strath Bran and small ice-grooves carry the curves over Scot-
land, into the Sound of Sleat. The curve passes Coll and
Tyree and the Sgeire Mhor, into the Atlantic, and even under
water sunken hills and hollows stretch further in the same
direction.
The same curve, begun about boulders on the Dovre Fjeld,
passes seaward with ice-grooves out of Romsdal, and enters
the Moray Firth. The Caledonian Canal, the Muckle Glen and
ice-grooves in it, carry the line over Scotland into Loch Linne,
and it passes Colonsay and Oronsay, which are ice-ground.
There, again, sunken rocks extend in long broken ridges
south-westward into the Atlantic. Strong tides and wild seas
work in the hollows, which hold sounds, amongst these islands.
If the sea were cumbered with heavy ice, as it is off Labrador,
there is water-power enough and to spare in this region, to
work the floating ice-engine which, according to Kane, " rubs
rocks."
Curves begun at the head of the Sogne Fjord, at the foot
of the highest hills in Norway, follow ice-grooves to the sea,
and pass by several local glacier-systems near Bergen. They
fall into a series of deep grooves which cross central Scotland,
and in these the curves coincide with ice-marks which cross
the watershed, and touch hill-tops in Argyle ; they recur in
Glen Veagh, Donegal, etc., in Ireland.
Curves drawn from boulders on the Fille Fjeld in Norway
fall in with boulders about Aberdeen, skirt the Sidlaw Hills,
where they coincide with marks on the rock ; pass Perth and
Stirling and Glasgow ; Argyll, Arran, and Ceantire ; the Giant's
164 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
Causeway, Sligo, and Westport ; and there are ice-marks all
the way which seem to correspond to a general movement in
that direction, at a high leveL
Curves begun about the Hardanger glaciers run with ice-
marks for a hundred miles in Scandinavia ; join an ice-mark
on North Berwick Law, and wind their way across Scotland
and Ireland to Connemara and Galway, where the spoor is
lost in the sea. It is there as perfect as if made yesterday,
on limestone rocks laid bare in making a railway near the
coast, and on the top of a quartz hill 2000 feet high.
All these several lines have not been followed expressly
to study ice-marks ; but some have, and the rest are pretty
well known to one who has wandered amongst the hills
whenever he could. There is scarcely a Scotch hill or glen,
in island or in mainland, which does not bear some conspicu-
ous mark of glacial denudation. The low marks seem gene-
rally to bear reference to local glacier systems. The high
marks, from 3000 and 2000 feet down to the sea-level in low
passes, appear to bear reference to a general system of hori-
zontal movement in water and floating ice, like that which is
now going on further west.
These theories, founded upon observation of glacial action
in Switzerland, Scandinavia, and Iceland, and of ice-marks on
rocks at home and abroad, during twenty-two years, are thus
far supported by facts gathered from books and stated above.
They are also propped up by facts observed and gathered by
the latest writers on this cold subject.
They gain strength from facts stated by geologists in the
Geological Sumey of Canada, 1863 ; by Sir Charles Lyell in
his great work on the Antiquity of Man, 1863 ; by Professor
Ramsay in numerous papers ; by Mr. Geikie in his work on
the Glacial Drift of Scotland, 1863, which is perhaps the
STRATH BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 165
best book of its class which has yet appeared. All these
authorities, and a host of witnesses whom they quote, are
agreed that the British Isles are ice-ground, and that the
land has been submerged to a height which would only leave
a few hill-tops above water. The facts are beyond cavil ;
they seem to lead to the following conclusions :
1st, Because raised terraces and sea-margins are nearly
parallel to the plane of the sea, it is probable that the last
rise of land in Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia, was a
general swelling movement, which included a very large
area of upheaval.
2d, That the last cold period in this area, and in parti-
cular in Ireland and Scotland, coincided with a sea-level at
least as high as the highest erratics yet found in Scotland
(on Wyvis and Driom Uachdar at 3000 feet) ; and with the
highest horizontal ice-grooves, which are at about 2000 feet
on Shan Folagh in Ireland, and 2000 feet on hills about
Loch Maree. They may yet be found higher.
3d, That the cold period also coincided with the sea-
level, which is marked by the highest Scotch terrace of
glacial drift. The highest known to the writer is near Dai-
whinny, at about 1400 feet.
4:th, That ice-marks may have been made in deep water
by ice-floats grounding in 1800 feet, while an " ice-foot "
packed drift in terraces at the sea-level ; because these opera-
tions are now going on further west in similar latitudes.
5th, That the last Scotch glaciers which reached the sea
passed away after the land had risen to the level of the
lowest perfect terminal moraine. The lowest of these yet
found by the writer are opposite to glens north and south of
Loch Ericht near Dalwhinny, at about 1400 feet. All lower
moraines seem to be washed out of shape.
166 BALTIC CURRENT-^BRITISH ISLES SCOTLAND.
6th, That this level of 1400 feet, and all other levels
marked above that plane, coincided with a general movement
of cold water from the arctic basin south-westwards, which
was varied by tides and impediments, so as to make eddies
like those drawn on the map, vol. i. p. 496.
7th, That this general movement, varied by local tides
and eddies, continued while there was a strait left open in
Britain ; now continues in the Straits of Dover and in the
Pentland Firth ; and in the Arctic Current and Gulf Stream,
which alter climate in similar latitudes on opposite coasts.
8th, That the end of the last cold period in Scotland
nearly coincided with the sea-level of 1400 feet, which is
marked by a moraine of conical mounds at Dalwhinny, and
by a terrace of glacial drift, partially water-worn, beside the
moraine.
9th, That this change also coincided with the closing of
a strait by the rise of land in Lapland, which is now 1500
feet above the sea, according to Von Buch's measurement.
Wth, That a gradual subsidence in the same tract would
let in the current by opening the strait, and would bring
back the period of cold to Scotland when land had sunk
about 1500 feet to the north of the Baltic.
IWi, That many similar changes of equal amount, pro-
duced by the same causes, may have taken place ; and that
the present shape of Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia chiefly
results from denudation by currents of air and water, which
still circulate. These are driven by mechanical powers which
still work the engine, and guided by laws which produce
regular movements.
12th, Because these laws seem to govern all known quan-
tities and dimensions, small quantities of earth and water,
and streams which men can see and guide, serve to help
STRATH BRAN, BEINN UAISH, SUTHERLAND, ETC. 167
them to comprehend movements which they cannot control
or see ; or even comprehend without hard thinking.
13th, Because Scotch and Irish rocks, exposed to the
weather at 2000 feet above the sea, and at the sea-level, still
retain sand-marks which are perfectly fresh, and less weathered
than Egyptian sculpture 4000 years old, the time which has
elapsed since the end of the last British glacial period must
be short. The occupation of the British Isles by the ances-
tors of races who still dwell there may have coincided with
the existence of glaciers on Scotch hills, and traditions may
be dim recollections of these geological facts.
In the course of this journey from Galway to Dingwall,
from Malin Head to Cape Wrath, the Baltic Current theory
has gained strength. Another cast southwards will try the
hobby ; if he is sound after that run, he may be trotted out
and started, to try his chance with other hobbies.
Fio. 81. BOUNDED GRANITE BOULDER, IN A WOOD BEHIND TULLOOH, RESTINO ON SLATE,
540 feet above the sea (p. 152).
CHAPTER XXXIX.
BALTIC CURRENT 12 BRITISH ISLES 11 ISLE OF MAN.
A KNOWING old pointer quarters his ground on system, and
his system is worthy of imitation by all who search.
Turned loose on the brown moor on a fine breezy morning,
he capers soberly, and shakes his velvet ears, and licks his
slobbering lips, to express his intense enjoyment of freedom
and fresh air ; and then, with quivering nose breast high, and
wavering tail in full play, he settles steadily to his work. He
takes his line and tacks steadily to windward, crossing and
recrossing the straight line which the human sportsman draws
in the wind's eye. When one beat is finished, a wave of the
keeper's hand conveys the order, and the eloquent tail and
ears tell that their owner knows what to do. Up goes the
head, off goes the pointer down wind at score, that he may
beat to windward again. Having beat the northern half of
the ground on the pointer's zigzag plan, let the middle of the
moor have a turn. The S.W. curve drawn from high grounds
at the head of Ssetarsdal, past Stavanger, runs over an ice-
ground country in Norway, passes Berwick, the Solway Firth,
the Cumberland hills, the Isle of Man, Drogheda, and Dublin,
and passes out by the Shannon. If one leg of a pair of com-
passes be placed on the Isle of Man, a large circle, described
about that point, nearly touches Duncansby Head, Cape
Wrath, the Butt of Lewes, Cape Clear, the Scilly Isles, the
mouth of the Thames, and Kinnaird Head. The lighthouse
ISLE OF MAN. 1G9
on the Calf of Man is near the centre of the British Isles,
and the island may be taken as a miniature of the whole
group.
The Isle of Man is about thirty miles long and twelve
broad ; and the highest point is about 2000 feet above the
sea. The long axis bears about N.E. by N.
The north-eastern end of the hill country is rounded ; the
south-western is broken. To the north-east a long low tract
stretches about eight miles from the hills to the point of Ayre.
At the other end the sea has so undermined the hills, that
cliffs are 350 feet high at Brada Head and elsewhere. Ex-
posed trees point about N.E., so the prevailing wind is from
the S.W. The flood-tide comes from the same direction. Drift
timber, like that which the Gidf Stream lands elsewhere on the
British Isles, is sometimes stranded about the Calf of Man.
So the Mull hills, Brada Head, and the south-western coasts
of the Isle of Man, are exposed to wind, and tide, and ocean-
currents, and to large Atlantic waves, which roll up channel.
The point of Ayre, on the contrary, is sheltered.
Denudation and deposition are still going on ; air and
water are at work ; and the form of the work is conspicuous.
Speaking generally, the coast-line is a shelf quarried out of
contorted silurian and other strata, most of which dip at a
high angle. A vertical cliff, and a shattered plain below it,
form an L notch between high and low water mark. On this
shelf the sea packs chips which it digs from the cliff.
At the sheltered north-eastern end the beach is made of
gravel, fine sand, and clay, and it shelves gradually. The out-
line of the coast is smooth, like that of a mud-bank in a mill-
stream. At the battered end the coast-line is jagged, and
beaches are steep and narrow, and generally made of large
egg-shaped boulders, some as big as a man's head. These are
170 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
tools with which waves quarry cliffs, and they bear marks of
work. The general shape of sea-worn boulders is curved ;
but their smooth surface is dinted and pitted by small
hollows. Forty or fifty go to a square inch, and each pit records
a blow. The water-line at the foot of the cliff is also worn
smooth by the rolling of smooth pebbles at some places ; but
generally the rock is jagged, torn, and broken by the storm of
boulders, with which heavy rollers, driven by strong winds,
pelt the cliffs.
If the island has risen from an open sea, there should be
beach-marks of this kind on the hills.
On a clear fine morning, after a slight fall of snow and a
strong wind, the shape of the ground is picked out in lines of
black and white ; and on such a day hills in the Isle of
Man, seen from Douglas Bay, appear to be ruled horizontally
up to a height of about 1200 feet. Low down at least three
notches can be made out on the hills which make the horns
of the bay. The lighthouse is perched on one of these shelves.
At about 150 feet above the sea, at the road-side, on the hill
to the N.E. of Douglas, a quarry was open in March 1864.
The rock is silurian slate, dipping at a high angle, the same
as the jagged rocks which form the present sea-beach below
the hill. The cap of the quarry is a thick bed of compact
clay, showing signs of deposition in water. It is arranged in
thin beds where it touches the rock, and it contains ice-
ground stones, which may be contrasted with boulders carried
from the beach. The rock-surface is not broken, but shorn
across the edges of the strata, so that the boundary-line
between rock and clay is an even convex curve ^~^. When
this rock-surface is laid bare and washed clean, it is found to
be smoothed, grooved, and striated from E.N.E.
So ice had a share in hewing out these hills and marking
ISLE OF MAN. 171
these beach-lines, and it was not ice sliding from the tops,
but ice moving horizontally along the coast, which made these
marks at Douglas, at 150 feet above the present sea-level.
At about 450 feet above the sea, the road from Douglas
to Laxey passes over the ridge in a groove which runs along
the hills from N.E. to S.W., crossing glens in which the drain-
age of the country now flows.
On the Mull hills, at the south-western end, at least three
shelves can be distinguished on hill-sides and cliff-faces.
These occur at about the same levels wherever they are
visible, on promontories, etc., according to very rough obser-
vations hurriedly made. To get at the full meaning of these
" terraces of erosion," a careful survey should be made.
There are large boulders, at about 450 feet, at the top of
the ridge, between Douglas and Laxey, and also at Brada
Head, at about 450 feet, which seems to be the level of one
of these rock-shelves which surround the whole island.
There is evidence of an ice-laden sea up to this level at
least. At Laxey are two deep glens which run to the water-
shed. They have the shape of glacier-glens, and they contain
large boulders. The marks of a large glacier will probably be
found in these rock-grooves when they are examined.
A depression of 500 feet would make the Isle of Man a
row of small conical islands, stretching from N.E. to S.W.
North Barule, 1842 feet, would be at one angle ; the point of
Ayre would be under water ; Cronck Irey na Lahaa (the hill
of the rise of day, 1445 feet, fifteen miles S.W.) would be at
the other end of an archipelago of twelve islands. At lower
levels, cliffs would still be washed by Atlantic waves, but
Laxey Glen would be a long sea-loch.
The top of Snaefell (2024 feet according to maps, a little
more according to observation) is conical but rounded, like
172 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
all the other hills in the island. It is strewed with large
slabs of broken slate and blocks of white quartz, apparently
native rocks. Except the shape of the hill itself, there is no
indication of glacial action at the surface near the top, unless
the large quartz blocks are foreign. The hill is joined to
Mullagh Oure (Dun Top) by a col which is about 1400 feet
above the sea, and near about the level of a contour-line,
which is seen from Douglas Bay. In March 1864, a gravel-
pit made for a new road gave a section of the surface-beds.
They consist of blue clay with broken angular slate and
grooved stones, covered by a bed of peat and some washings
from, the hill. The rock foundation was hidden. The grooved
stones prove that ice moved at this level on this col. The
new road winds along the hill-sides for several miles, keeping
near the watershed where streams part. The cutting along
the road-way, and numerous gravel-pits, show that the cap
consists chiefly of angular stones broken out of the hills, but
these are mingled with numerous blocks carried from some
distant place. Large angular weathered blocks of granular
quartz rock are the most numerous ; specimens of yellow and
red sandstone and of schorl were found in a day's walk, and
some of the boulders were finely polished and grooved.
At the height of about 1100 feet, on a shelf which is
visible from Douglas Harbour, large rounded boulders are
common in fields, in cottage walls, and elsewhere. Though
the surface has been destroyed by weathering and frosts, there
is still evidence to show that ice floated over the cols where
sandstone was dropped. If the sea were now to rise fifty
feet, it would cut off the Mull hills at Port Erin. If it rose
500 feet, it would sink half the island and make a strait at
Douglas. If it were to rise to 1400 feet, where a foreign
boulder now marks an ancient sea-level, little of the island
ISLE OF MAN. 173
would remain above water except eleven hill-tops and two
long ridges. If the rise were general in the British Isles,
nearly the whole of England would be sunk, and the nearest
sandstone island left above water would be in Cumberland.
At the south-western end of the hill country, granite and
other boulders are strewed on the hills from Peel up to the
verge of the cliff at Brada Head. There are various kinds,
and as Manx granite appears at the surface in two places
only, some of these must be wandering blocks. They are
found at 400 feet and at higher levels. The people say that
some of these were carried by Phynnodree, or Hairy Breek,
an outcast fairy with shaggy goat's hair and cloven feet, of
whom many curious Manx tales are told. One block, ac-
cording to popular history, was hurled by Goddard Crovan
at his scolding wife. Fin MacCool and his warriors, giants,
and Druids, and other mysterious people, get credit for
moving these mysterious stones.
The country about Castletown is to the south-west of the
hill country, and would be sheltered from a north-eastern
current. It is well described by an able local geologist.*"
It has the outward form of a plain of drift packed in water.
According to Mr. Gumming, it is a bed of drift containing
bits of insular rock, fragments of the coal-measures of Cum-
berland, stones from the south of Scotland, and chalk-flints
which may have travelled from Antrim, but which may also
have come from Denmark.
This bed of glacial drift rests upon limestone, which is
striated from the magnetic E., say E. by S. Trains of boul-
ders and other marks indicate an ice-laden current moving
* TJie Isle of Man, its History, Physical, Ecclesiastical, Civil, and' Legend-
ary. By the Rev. George Cumming. London : John Van Voorst, Pater-
noster Row, 1848.
174 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
from the Solway Firth. To this Mr. Cuniming attributes the
" drift," and the ice-marks in the Isle of Man. He adds, " The
origin of such a current is at present a mere matter of specu-
lation." He suggests that the chief carrying and grinding
agent which worked on these low grounds was floating ice ;
shore-ice, land-ice, and icebergs moved by tides like those
which now pour through the sound of Kitterland. If the low
grounds about Castletown were sunk, and the sea up to the
highest notch on the Mull hills, the same tides which now
flow north and south in the main channel, and east and west
in the small cross sound, would flow east and west over Port
Erin and the limestone district of Castletown. But if the sea
were up to 1400 feet, the Solway Firth would be an open
strait, and a deep sea-way would be open through Ireland
along the curve which leads from Stavanger to Shannon. The
tidal wave which now splits on Ireland would pass directly
to Norway over the British Isles, and ice-floats would move in
the direction of ice-marks, if icebergs moved seaward with the
ebb or south-westward with an ocean-current from the Baltic
past Cumberland and the Hill of Dawn in the Isle of Man.
A cast up-stream leads to the Cumberland hills. Boulders
abound by the way-side, along the railway line which crosses
this tract. The mountains are very much ice-ground, accord-
ing to those who have examined them, and in all probability
a local glacier-system once radiated from the watershed of this
tract.
In the lower grounds, between Carlisle and Berwick, drift
and ice-marks abound. The trough which holds the two
main rivers in this tract follows the S.W. curve, and in
Geikie's map a red arrow points about N.E. When hill-sides
are examined at about 1000 and 1500 feet above the sea, the
arrows will probably point the other way.
ISLE OF MAN. 175
A sweep northwards brings the line to that curious set of
curves which are seen in the low lands south of the I'entlands,
from the top of these hills, and which are well shown upon
the Ordnance map.
A sweep southwards brings the line round to Morpeth.
The clay which covers the rock near Morpeth and Newcastle
is about ten yards thick, and full of scratched boulders. In
making new coal-pits the rock-surface is laid bare, and it is
said to be scored. A promised rubbing has not appeared, but
in all probability the marks at low levels point south on the
east coast. At high levels they ought to point south-west or
thereby, through gaps in the hills, but this point has not been
made good.
On the other side, down-stream, the whole physical geo-
graphy of Ireland is based upon grooves and ridges, rivers,
lakes, points, and sea-lochs, pointing south-westw r ard. Accord-
ing to Jukes (Manual of Geology, p. 680)
" The rocks of many parts of Ireland, especially those of the south-
west corner of it, exhibit in great perfection that rounding and polish-
ing which glaciers communicate to the rocks over which they glide.
So perfectly indeed are all, even the hardest rocks, rounded and
smoothed, that the very universality of the process prevents its strik-
ing an eye not instructed in the nature of the phenomenon." . . .
" The surface of the rocks on the slopes and tops of the hills are
traversed also by glacial strise." . . .
The author shows that Ireland may have been elevated
during the glacial period, so as to be within the climate of
land-glaciers, but that it certainly was submerged during the
glacial period, so as to admit of the passage of ice-floats amongst
a group of Irish islands. " At 2000 feet below the present
level, a few small islets only would be left."
It has been shown above that ice moved in a south-
176 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
westerly direction, over the tops of hills in Connemara, one
of which is 2000 feet high. The map of Ireland, reduced from
the Ordnance Survey, shows that the whole island is grooved
in the same direction, and the shape of it corresponds to the
shape of the Isle of Man.
So a cast round the centre of the British Isles helps to swell
the bag of facts, and feed the Baltic Current with a heavy
feast of hard stones, tough facts, and fossil floods of iced-
water.
CHAPTEK XL.
BALTIC CURRKNT 13 BRITISH ISLES 12 YORKSHIRE
AND WALES, ETC.
A CURVE begun in Novaya Zemlya, and drawn over Lapland,
near the head of the Gulf of Kandalaksha in the White Sea,
passes near Tornea, runs down the Swedish coast to Sunds-
vall, touches Christiania and Christiansand, and lands at
Whitby. It crosses Yorkshire, passes Manchester and Liver-
pool, and passes behind Snowdon into Cardigan Bay, skirt-
ing the coast of Ireland from Wexford to Cape Clear.
Part of the country has been described above (chap. xiv.
to xx.), and there ice-marks point to a current moving
south-westwards. In Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 270,
glacial phenomena in Ireland are described, and the geolo-
gical survey and former writers are quoted.
Signs of glaciation have been traced to elevations of 2500
feet in the Killarney district. Marine shells have rarely
been met with higher than 600 feet above the sea, and that
chiefly in gravel clay and sand in Wicklow and Wexford.
Above 2500 feet, rocks are rough, below that elevation
smooth, and " drift" has been traced as high as 1500 feet on
hills which reach to 3400 feet. Taking the symbols used
above, the form A characteristic of weathering, is characteristic
of Irish hills down to a level of 2500 feet. Below that level the
characteristic form is -- v. At 1500 feet drift is deposited ;
VOL. n. N
178 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
at 600 feet are sea-shells of arctic type in beds of gravel.
Except in a few cases, the transport of erratics is southwards
and westwards, and the prevailing trend of mountain-ranges
is south-westwards. Sir C. Lyell's map, p. 278, is the best of
its kind, and it shows that currents moving through the
British Isles at a level of 600 feet, and governed by the
same laws which affect the present run of tides, might pass
along part of the curves which have been followed thus far.
At 1500 feet, Lapland would be under water, and the way
open from Novaya Zemlya to Wicklow, if the submergence
were general in this tract of Europe. Keith Johnston's map
(plate 10, Physical Atlas} shows that volcanic disturbance has
affected areas of equal size in modern times.
If the climate was cold when the districts above men-
tioned were under water ; if glaciers grew in Scotland, Ire-
land, and the Isle of Man ; then it is probable that climate in
p]ngland was cold at the same time, and English hills ought to
retain ice-marks.
In Yorkshire is a hilly tract where the highest points are
about 2000 feet above the sea.
The country is composed of beds of sandstone, shale, car-
boniferous limestone, and suchlike rocks ; disposed horizon-
tally, but broken and shattered and bent, dislocated and
upheaved in many places. Where a stream of running water
has made a bed in the rocks, it has generally cut a deep trench
with steep or perpendicular sides, or the banks have fallen
so as to leave a slope of talus under a cliff. But the whole
district is furrowed by deep glens whose rounded form bears
no sort of resemblance to the beds of streams and torrents
which flow through them, or fall into them. A section
across one of the Yorkshire dales is like a section of an
Icelandic glen a sweeping curve, not a steep trench and the
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 179
sides are terraced ; each terrace corresponding to a bed of rock.
The dales are deep grooves winding in long sweeping curves,
like dales which now contain glaciers elsewhere ; the hills
are rounded x s, the glens grooves v s ; the terraced sides
are like coasts represented in Parry's Voyages to Baffin's Sea.
These, also, are composed of beds which are nearly horizontal,
and are now undergoing denudation by weathering and ice,
and there glaciers flow through glens with terraced sides.
No small ice-grooves were found in a rapid journey
through the Yorkshire hills, but sandstone and limestone
weather so fast that fine tool-marks speedily wear out. The
dales themselves remain, and they are full of patches of
drift, of ridges, mounds, banks, and hills of foreign boul-
ders, sand, and clay.
In some glens, as in Wharfdale, small terraces like those
which occur at Melar in Iceland sweep along the hill-sides.
They are not horizontal, so they are not beaches or water-
marks ; they are not the edges of strata, like terraces above
them ; they are about the size of vine-terraces, which are
made on hill-sides near the Ehine, and they sweep round
hollows and promontories in green fields, like works of art.
Where a river has cut through them, their section shows
loose gravel, sand, clay, and stones, disposed like broad steps
upon the rocky foundation of the hollowed dale.
If a local system of land-glaciers filled upper glens, and a
general system of currents worked in from the north-east
while tides floated field- ice, land-ice, and icebergs up and
down, pushing gravel along the bottom the forms of these
glens, and of small terraces in them, might be explained by
the known effects of ice elsewhere.
These dales were hollowed out by some wearing process ;
for beds of stone can be followed from glen to glen, and
180 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
from bill to hill, round, and even through the hills in the
mines.
They are not the work of rivers ; for denudation by
running water is very well exemplified at the lead-washing
floors, and the work differs.
In one process lead-ore and vein-stone are crushed to
powder, and washed by a stream through a funnel into the
centre of a shallow pit. A machine revolves in the pit,
sweeping the surface of the fallen mud with a heavy coarse
cloth, so as to give it time to separate according to comparative
weight. Heavy lead-ore sinks first and fastest ; lighter mi-
nerals roll further, and sink slower ; and when the operation
is finished, there remains a stratified convex mound, whose
outline is a regular curve <> s. When water is poured upon
the top of this dome, it cuts miniature glens in the sides of
the hillock of sediment, as rivers do through hills of sand-
stone ; and each glen has its delta. If rivers dug out the
Yorkshire dales, their forms ought to agree with these. The
miniature glens are, in fact, very like the beds of torrents
in the country ; but they are w r holly unlike the dales in which
the torrents flow.
Form asserts the agency of glaciers and ocean-currents,
and denies the agency of rivers in the large denudation of
the Yorkshire dales. The tool-marks are like those of frost
elsewhere. As shown above, a theoretical curve leads near
Christiania, and there the long groove of Gulbrandsdal runs
up to the watershed of Norway at the Dovre Fjeld. The general
shape of the big Norwegian dale is very like that of the
smaller dales of Yorkshire.
Stoke. About Stoke, the English watershed is 370 or
400 feet above the sea. The rocks belong to the coal-for-
mation, but a few granite boulders are strewed about the
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 181
fields. No other ice-marks were found; but the country
is thickly peopled and highly cultivated ; the rock buried
under beds of clay and sand. Minton makes china and
encaustic tiles of glacial chips, while coals and iron are
dug from beds 1200 feet below the sea-level, where the
temperature is 68 in the coal, and the temperature outside
about 49.
This land was above water when the coals were plants
growing in air ; it was under water when sand was poured
over the bed of peat ; it has been up and down while 1500
feet of coal-formation beds were deposited. The whole series
of rocks has been hardened and tilted bodily up and broken ;
and the broken surface has been worn smooth and furrowed.
The worn surface was surely under water when the drift and
clay were dropped there ; and the granite boulder records the
passage of ice at this point on the curve.
The railway gives the line of lowest level, and here Brad-
shaw's Railway Guide and a net of iron roads carry the curve
in any direction ; for there are no hills about Stoke.
Manchester and Liverpool. At a late meeting of the Man-
chester Geological Society, glaciated rocks were described.
These occur on Bidston Hill and elsewhere near Liverpool,
at a level of about 200 feet. The direction was N. and S., E.
and W., N.W. and S.E. Amongst these low hills, currents
might flow in any direction, as tides do amongst the banks off
Liverpool, at various states of the tide.
Cheshire The railway map gives a veiy intricate pattern
in Cheshire. The country is high and varied by round hills.
Hartford station is about 270 feet above London. The low
grounds are covered with water-worn drift, in which sea-shells
are found. Amongst the stones are granite, chalk-flints, green-
stones, and various hard rocks. Large blocks of granite, with
182 BALTIC CUKEENT BRITISH ISLES.
fresh ice-marks on them, are found, and many are broken up
and used.
The village of Eaton stands on a hill of bare rock, which
is new red sandstone disposed in horizontal beds. Several
large blocks of granite and greenstone are placed by the road-
side, near wells, and at corners. On some of them the polish
is well preserved, and grooves are fresh. On the top of the
hill, in a sandy lane, a small boulder of green porphyry was
found. It was about the size of a small turnip, subangular,
and with a perfect surface grooved on three sides. The shape
of the rounded sandstone hills bears no relation to dip, fracture,
or bedding. They are carved out by some engine, and ice
certainly passed over the hills at Eaton. The top of the hill
is 340 feet above Oulton. Hollows seem to run E. and W.
The cap of the quarry consists of broken flags and sand.
Other boulders of granite and gray quartz with perfect sur-
faces were found in a garden ; and this was the owner's
account of them :
" Them is what we call marble stones ; they grow in the
yearth, especially in places where they are bringing in new
ground. You see the yearth produces all sorts of things for
the good of man. The top produces all manner of vegetables,
and underneath there 's all sorts of mines and minerals for the
good of man, and these stones grow in the yearth amongst the
sand."
So spoke the village sage.
The sand seems to tell of cold tides flowing in the Vale of
Chester, for sand-pits show mounds of contorted sand-beds,
whose foldings are hard to unravel, unless they were frozen
and melted like the sand-heap mentioned above (vol. i. p.
380). A fringe of crystal ice hung in a sandstone quarry,
and a brittle crust of thin flat ice on the mill-dam, was all
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 183
that remained of Cheshire ice ; but mental eyes looked over
the water to Hamilton Inlet, and saw the pictures which
other men have drawn.
At Northwich numerous boulders of large size, specimens
of granite, greenstones, and other hard rocks, are set up in the
town. In fields near the town heaps of small boulders occur.
The whole town is sinking from the constant waste of the
brine springs. About a million of tons of salt pay canal
dues every year. In one dry mine the salt is quarried for a
depth of thirteen feet, in an area of twenty-three acres.
The temperature is 51 at all seasons. The heat of the
earth below, and the weight of cold air above, together pro-
duce a constant movement of air. It rises up one shaft and
falls down another. A greater difference of temperature
evaporates water in the salt-pans. Steam rises and water
falls. Steam in the boiler lifts the piston of the steam-
engine which pumps up the brine, and lifts and lowers the
miners and their millions of tons of salt. The same heat-
power, set to lift Cheshire and evaporate the sea ; the same
weight-power, set to condense steam and lower the earth's
crust ; the same natural powers which men chain to their
wheels seem strong enough to work the natural engine which
ground and polished granite boulders, and carried them to
Northwich.
It is plain that ice travelled here, it is equally plain that
low ice-marks will not unravel the ice-problem. The Che-
shire boulders did not come from Wales or Yorkshire. They
may have come out of Cumberland, but it is possible that they
came from Sweden or Lapland, because zircon syenite was
found in Galloway by Jameson, and at Christiania and in
Lapland by Von Buch, and because boulders are on the
watershed of England, about Stoke.
184
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
...,- has been mapped by the
Ordnance, and surveyed by
geologists ; it is the scene
of Sir Roderick Murchi-
son's discoveries, and classic
ground. In the book of
, the Alpine Club* the glacial
phenomena of Wales are
described by Professor Ram-
say, who states his own
S W ^i/ views, which coincided with
Fu , 8 ., those of the best modern
geologists.
It seems to be admitted that sea-ice stranded drift
amongst the Welsh hills at a height of about 2300 feet, that
local land-glaciers ploughed out the drift when the land rose ;
but no attempt seems yet to have been made to account for
the change of climate which destroyed the Welsh glaciers
and turned winter to spring. If England were submerged
2300 feet, then the nearest land to the north-east would be
Scandinavia, and a way open for the curve whose direction is
shown on the woodcut.
The Principality is an oblong block of high land
whose four sides face the cardinal points. The corner next
Liverpool faces the north-east, the point from which an arctic
current now flows in the same latitudes beyond the sea,
The corner near Milford Haven faces the south-west, the
point from which the tides come now ; from which the
equatorial Gulf Stream flows towards our coast, and from
which it is assumed that a prevailing equatorial current of
air has blown ever since there was an atmosphere, and will
* Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers of the High Alps. Longman, 1857.
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 185
continue to blow till the state of the atmosphere and the laws
which govern its movements are changed.
The north-western corner of the block is Anglesea, and the
south-eastern is rounded off by the Severn valley.
If a north-east stream flowed from the Cumberland and
Yorkshire hills, it would cross two corners diagonally as south-
western gales do. If the wearing power moved from the south-
west, then the soft rocks of South Wales ought to bear the
strongest marks of abrasion.
In fact the coal-beds are most ground away at the north-
east side of Wales.
From the western side of the block the hollow of Car-
digan Bay seems at first sight to have been scooped out in a
north-easterly direction by south-west waves. In looking at
a map where land only is marked, we are apt to forget that
the sea is but land covered with water. A sea-coast line is
therefore commonly mentioned as a form resulting from
marine denudation, a curved line produced by sea-waves act-
ing unequally upon rocks of various hardness. It seems to
be assumed that a hollow curve like Cardigan Bay was very
slowly scooped out of the edge of a block of high land by
the great rollers which still sweep in from the south-west.
If Cardigan Bay were simply ocean-work of this kind, the
whole coast-line would retain the tool-marks of waves.
The rocks would be steep, broken, and angular, like the
precipice which overhangs .the sea at Aberystwith. There
would be heaps of fallen debris and beaches of rolled stones
beneath a bold coast-line, for sea-waves can only act between
wind and water.
The sea does wear away this land, but it works as a pond
does, by undermining and breaking down its banks.
The form of Cardigan Bay is not wholly due to the slow
186 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
action of Atlantic waves, for the coast is not generally pre-
cipitous. The coast-line is due to the surface-form of the
land, whose valleys and ridges stretch out under the sea,
and Cardigan Bay is part of a large hollow. The surface of
denudation has been broken through by sea-waves at many
places at the sea-level, and there are many sea-cliffs ; but the
rock-surface has been preserved elsewhere, and the bottom of
Cardigan Bay is but a continuation of the rocks of Wales.
In particular, at the head of Cardigan Bay a series of deep
glens are continued under water ; and if the fifteen-fathom
line were the coast-line, there would still be a long fjord off
Portmadoc, running N.E. and S.W. as the glens do on shore.
Tradition. Modern geologists are rapidly nearing a con-
clusion at which many have arrived. It is held that men, and
certain large animals which no longer exist great hairy
elephants, rhinoceroses, elks, cave-bears, and other such crea-
tures existed together in parts of Great Britain and in France,
at a time when the climate of these countries was at least as
cold as it is now in the same latitudes on the Labrador coast.
The oldest of the races who now inhabit Western France
and the British Isles are admitted to be Lapps, Basques, Celts,
and Cymri. If geologists are right, the ancestors of these
races may possibly have lived in the end of the cold period
where their descendants now live ; or they may have found
older races there, whose ancestors had hunted hairy elephants
and wild bulls amongst glaciers in Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales. The race may have witnessed great changes in sea
and land. Lapps have traditions about giants and big beasts.
About Basque traditions little has been published, and that
little does not bear upon this subject.
There are several collections of Celtic traditions. Sir
Charles Lyell quotes some British stories in his Principles of
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 187
Geology, and another geologist is about to publish a collection
of Cornish tales. In Cornwall Celtic traditions, which seem
to record changes of sea-level, abound. Celtic and Scandina-
vian traditions, as the oldest of western traditions yet col-
lected, may bear upon late geological changes in the west.
Charts which give the depth of the sea, such as Keith
Johnston's (plate 6), show; that a very slight rise or fall of land
or sea would now alter the outline of Wales very materially.
If the land were to sink ninety feet, Aberystwith would be
under water, and the church-steeple awash in the middle of
a fjord ten or twelve miles long. If the sinking were general,
the majority of Welshmen and Welsh towns would share the
same fate ; and if the land has in fact sunk that much, the
evidence has sunk with it.
If the land were now to rise ninety feet, so as to make the
line of fifteen fathoms the coast-line, great part of the land now
under water in Cardigan Bay would become dry land, and
rounded rocky islands and points which now slope away
beneath the water-line would be rocky knolls and ridges,
like those which rise up through drift and peat-moss in
every Welsh glen.
If like changes were now to take place in Brittany, the
coast-line would alter as much or more in that region. When
land has risen from the sea, the evidence remains for those
who will accept it ; and in Wales the evidence shows that
land has risen about 2300 feet since Snowdon was a mountain.
Sea-shells have been found in the loose soil at a height of
1392 feet, according to Professor Eamsay ; and at 1630 feet,
according to Keith Johnston's Atlas ; and, according to Sir
C. Lyell, stratified drift-beds exist still higher. If these great
changes of level took place suddenly, rapidly, or even
gradually, by fits and starts, at a time when there were
188 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
ancient Britons and ancient Gauls, memorable disasters might
result, which tradition may yet vaguely remember.
In Wales and in Brittany there are, in fact, many tradi-
tions which seem to point to such geological changes as a
sinking of land ; to great disasters, and to the existence of
animals which have passed away ; and in all works on geology
evidence is given to support these traditions.
In Wales it is told that Cardigan Bay covers a land which
was thickly peopled by a wicked race who were overwhelmed
by the sea, and sunken forests are at the sea-margin in
Ireland.
In Brittany, according to the popular tale,* the wicked
Princess Dahut, the daughter of King Grallon, and all her
court, were overwhelmed in the city of Keris, near Quimper,
which stood " where now you see the Bay of Douarnenez,"
near Brest. King Grallon was a good man, and he was saved
by a saint, whom he had made a bishop. The author of the
Foyer Breton maintains in a note that the ruins of a town
yet exist under water between the Cap de la Chevre and the
Pointe du Raz.
In Normandy it is told that the tenure by which a certain
abbot held his land was the service of laying a plank for his
superior to walk over from Jersey to the mainland of France.
Mont St. Michel, it is said, was in a great forest when its
owner went to the wars ; when he returned, he found it a
rock in a wide plain of sea-sand. The church on the top
saved the rock from the destruction which overwhelmed the
wicked plain. There appears to be some geological evidence
for the existence of the drowned forest.
In England there is a tradition that merchandise was
carried on horseback from Winchester to Puckaster Cove in
* Foyer Breton, vol. i. p. 232.
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 189
the Isle of Wight. But there is good evidence to prove that
no great change of sea-level has taken place since the Roman
invasion.
In Ireland the good O'Donoghue rises once a year, in May
morning, and rides in procession along the smooth surface of
the Lake of Killarney ; but there is no evidence to support him.
Near the Isle of Man, Fin MacCool and his sunken
country rise once in seven years to the surface, and sink
down again ; but if any one could cast a Bible on the land,
the good old times of Fin and his heroes would return, and
his land would remain above water. Geologists suppose that
the channel was in fact dry when big elks lived in the Isle
of Man, where skeletons have been found entire.
In Scotland there are endless traditions of the same kind.
Tales of castles, towns, and houses sunk beneath the waves,
and visible in calm weather ; of islands which appear upon
the western horizon, and sink down again ; of lands where no
land is, discovered in a thick fog by sailors, who find grand-
looking stalwart men drinking ale from vast cups. They are
the ancient mythical heroes in the " land of youth," and the
"green isle," and the "land under the waves;" and who rise
from time to time to show what men used to be, and what
they still are in " Flathinnis," the abode of heroes.
In Ireland, as in every Celtic country, the same tales of
land rising and sinking abound in endless variety ; and they
prevailed in the days of Queen Elizabeth, for they are recorded
by Giraldus Cambrensis as facts.
In Scandinavia, the wicked city is not droumed, but seven
parishes are smothered under snow and ice, and the church-
bells may still be heard ringing under the glaciers of the
Folge Fond.
Similar traditions of ancient kings Barbarossa, Arthur,
190 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
etc. enchanted, with all their warriors, ready to come forth to
battle when summoned, prevail all over Europe, wherever
popular tales have been collected. These myths seem to
resolve themselves into a belief in a spirit-land ; and many
incidents seem to be borrowed from Holy Writ. But popular
imagination has dressed the model in picturesque drapery,
and the figures are often placed in landscapes painted from
nature at home.
The inhabitants of central Europe, and Teutonic races
who came late to England, place their mythical heroes under
ground in caves, in vaults beneath enchanted castles, or in
mounds which rise up and open, and show their buried inha-
bitants alive and busy about the avocations of earthly men.
They find their heroes where they placed their bodies under
ground.
The Celtic races who came early to the west, and to the
coast-line, place Arthur and Fionn, Merlin and Ossian, and
all their following of bards and warriors, and those who
have inherited their attributes, in islands, in lakes, or in a
land beneath the waves of the sea. Perhaps they find them
where they lost them or placed their bodies.*
In Morayshire, the buried race are supposed to be under
the sandhills, as they are in some parts of Brittany ; and as a
matter of fact, marks of ancient cultivation constantly appear
in the trough of the sand-waves of Moray. Where the
adjuncts of a myth fit the country and the facts in so
many known ways, they probably fit equally well in the
matter of unknown change in a coast-line.
If Wales sunk ninety feet, after men had taken possession
of it, the line of fifteen fathoms marks off a tract of low
* The savage inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego sink their dead in deep water,
according to Admiral Fitzroy.
YOEKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 191
country more than twenty miles wide, which was drowned
in Cardigan Bay, as Welsh tradition relates. If France went
down as much after a town was built at the end of a valley
near Brest, the town was drowned as Aberystwith would be,
and the valley became a bay as the Breton tale describes.
If ocean-currents change places, and climates are transferred
for a time, flourishing valleys and mountain pastures might
become the beds of glaciers and snow-heaps, as the Scandina-
vians tell. The Justedal glaciers have in fact advanced and
retired again a short distance, and Swiss glaciers have done
the same in modern times.
All these mythical disasters may be, and very probably
are, records of real events, witnessed by men, and related by
generation to generation ; though the wickedness of the
people, the miracles, the marvels, and the religious features
of the story as now told, may have been invented or added
when Christianity was first taught to a rude people. If Wales
were to sink ninety feet now, the survivors on the mountains
would be apt to quote the destruction of the u cities of the
plain" as a parallel to the destruction of Welsh watering-
places, where the majority of the inhabitants are strangers
who cannot speak Welsh.
In the case of extinct animals, tradition may be true also.
There is a widely-spread popular tale, common to Ireland
and Scotland, and told with many variations. The gist of it
is, that in the days of Fionn there were deer and birds far
larger than any which now exist.
Ossian, it is said, when old and blind, lived in the house
of his father-in-law, or in the house of St. Patrick, and they
were busily writing down all he had to tell them of the his-
tory of the Feinne. But no one would believe what he said
about the strength of the men, and the size of the deer, the
192 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
birds, the leaves, and the rolls of butter, that there were in
the " Feinne," the country and age of Fionn.
To convince the unbelievers, the last of the old race
prayed that he might have one more day's hunting, and his
prayer was heard. A boy and a dog, the worst of their class,
came to him in the night, and with them he went to some
unknown glen.* There, with many strange incidents, it is told
how they found a whistle and a store of arms, and a great
caldron, and how the blind hero collected deer and birds by
sounding his whistle, or horn, or " dord." Deer came as big
as houses, or birds as big as oxen. Guided by the boy his
hand drew the bow and slew the quarry, and when the chase
was done they dined as heroes used to dine. A hind-quarter
was brought home, and the bone of an ox went round about
in the marrow-hole of the shank of the creature which Ossian
had brought from the " Feinne." With endless variations,
this story is told all over Ireland and Scotland ; and it is
firmly believed by a very large class of her Majesty's
Celtic subjects in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, that there
were giants and monstrous animals in the days of King
Arthur and of Fionn. There is no geological evidence yet for
gigantic men, but peat-bogs, gravel, and caves, are full of the
bones of beasts as big as a small haystack; and the word
used in the tale, " Con," means " Elk" as well as bird.
In beds of superficial drift, in caves, in peat, clay, and
gravel, near Torquay, in Wales, in the Isle of Man, in Ire-
land and in Scotland, bones of big British beasts have been
found. Amongst them are cave-bears larger than any
living species, tigers twice the size of those of Bengal, ele-
phants twice as large as those commonly found in Africa
* The glen is pointed out in Sutherland, near Dnpplin, and at interme-
diate spots.
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 193
and Ceylon, two large species of rhinoceros, hippopotami as
bulky as those of Africa, great cave-hysenas and lions, elk as
tall as horses, gigantic oxen, reindeer of the ordinary size,
and big red-deer with horns like wapiti. Did these or some
or all of them live within the memory of human tradition ?
Tradition seems to remember big beasts and ice-clad
mountains, philosophy finds human bones so placed as to
support tradition. The ruins of a drowned town support
the Breton tale which describes its destruction. Thus legends
rest upon piles of old bones ; tradition and geology support
each other, and point the same way. Two separate and
very different routes lead back to a time when men and
elephants were drowned by changes in the level of sea and
land, in countries now inhabited by Celts and Cymri, and
the last discovery in France brings men who could carve
good pictures of reindeer, and bones of reindeer of large size,
into one place, where bones and works of human art are
enclosed in slabs of stalagmite.
If the block of land which is now Wales has been up and
down, under water, awash and high and dry ; if arctic and
equatorial streams have spent their force upon it, the surface
must bear their marks.
Supposing an arctic current to break upon the north-
eastern corner of Wales, that corner ought to be worn away
to a slope facing the current, and beds of rock should be
broken short off to form precipices on the south-western
side, if heavy ice was driven over the hills towards the S.W.
It is so in the small scale in all valleys where glaciers
have slid downwards. It is so in the valley of Gwynant
near Beddgelert, and similar action would produce like form
on any scale (see cut, p. 6).
Standing upon Little Ormes Head and looking south-east,
VOL. II.
194 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
the north-eastern corner of Wales is seen in profile, and the
general outline of the country has the form of small rocks
worn down by ice which moved from N.E. to S.W.
To a practised eye the Welsh hills seem to tell their
story of movement from the N.E. as clearly as Welsh trees
do of movement from the S.W. (see vol. i. p. 59).
Looking south-west from the same point, the end of the
ridge, of which Snowdon is the highest point, is seen over a
foreground of bare rocks about 700 feet high, and it is mani-
fest that the outline of the distant ridge of high hills seen in
this direction is something wholly different from the fore-
ground, which is like the rounded hills about Mold and
Wrexham. These can be seen by looking S.E.
Looking W. and N.W. the outline of Anglesea is some-
thing different from them all. When that island is crossed
it is like a worn grooved slab of stone. From Ormes Head
it seems to be a low undulating line nearly parallel to the
horizon.
If after seeing hills in profile the observer could fly over
them, he would gain a better notion of their shape.
In the case of Wales the country has been so admirably
mapped by the Ordnance Survey that to look down upon a
map is almost as instructive as to sail over the country in a
balloon. In the Ordnance map of this district, the high
hills and the low country are seen to have a totally different
configuration.
The Snowdon ridge, 3570 feet high, extends N.E. and
S.W., and great valleys and corries seem to have been
gouged out of it in every possible direction. But on both
sides of the ridge the country is furrowed by long grooves,
which run N.E. and S.W. In the deepest of these is the
Menai Strait. Another runs into Cardigan Bay. The
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 195
north-eastern corner of the block has in fact been worn
down by some force acting from the N.E., and the north-
western corner has been furrowed diagonally in the same
direction.
To one used to the look of ice-ground hills, the whole
of North Wales, except the Snowdon range, appears to have
been first ice-ground in one direction, and then further ice-
ground in all possible directions, by local river-glaciers of
great size, which hewed out glens.
The low hills at Little Ormes Head and Llandudno are
much weathered, but they retain their general form. They
are very bare, so that their form can be well seen, but here
and there patches of drift, clay, and boulders, and big perched
blocks, occur near the top of the hills.
The broad low isthmus which joins Great Ormes Head to
the mainland seems to be chiefly composed of rounded boulders
of all sorts and sizes. It is probably an old moraine arranged
by the sea, and it contains specimens of many kinds of rock
which are not found in the immediate neighbourhood.
Looking down from the ruined battlements of Conway
Castle on a fine evening, after a strong northerly breeze has
nearly blown itself out, the forms of the miniature waves on the
river, and of larger solid wave-marks made at high tide upon
the sandbanks, by larger water-waves, may be seen and com-
pared. They are almost identical : one set is moving, the
other is at rest ; but the wave-mark shows how a wave
moved, and copies it. Looking up to the hill-sides where the
trees are exposed, their form tells of a prevailing wind
which bends them towards the north-east. Looking to the
hills themselves, they have the form of wave-marks, caused
by a north-east wind ; for they have been swept by the force
which carried perched blocks, and arranged the boulders
196 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
about Llandudno. There is no known force but ice which
could so grind rocks and carry such stones.
At Chester, Llangollen, Wrexham, Mold, Holy well, Rhyll,
Abergele, high up and low down, the north-eastern corner of
Wales looks like a block worn down from the N.E.
The hills are much weathered, but they all retain a general
form. Patches of sand, clay, and boulders rest in hollows ;
and on hill-tops perched blocks rest at all elevations from the
sea, to about 1000 feet.
About Maes-y-Safn, and this north-eastern corner of Wales
generally, it is hopeless to search for high strise upon the
limestone rocks ; for they are so weathered as to leave delicate
fossils projecting far above the surface. Bain-water seems
to dissolve limestone like salt. It is vain to search for
striae on grits and sandstones, which crumble at a touch ; but
the whole of these hills have their longest slope towards the
N.E. ; in which direction the beds also dip at a higher angle.
The steepest side is generally towards the S.W.
Sometimes the beds are broken, so as to leave precipitous
faces of mountain limestone. Sometimes these edges are
rounded off.
Glens are rounded grooves, and seem to be gouged out of
the rock without reference to bedding ; and every shape in
the country seems to tell of some great mass moving over the
surface of the land, and grinding it down.
There are three stages first, a low alluvial plain, but little
raised above the sea-level, which stretches far up into the
glens ; for example, at Khyll. This seems to consist of trans-
ported materials. The next stage is a rolling rock-plateau,
about 1000 feet above the sea. It is steep towards the K,
and slopes gradually towards the E. and N.E. In the low
grounds to the east, and on this plateau, are beds of drift and
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC.
197
FIG. 83. N. E. CORNER OF WALES.
boulders. The hills at the 1000 feet level are all rounded.
Even though the slope of the low hills and the dip of the
strata are much the
same in direction, NE >
the slope has no-
thing to do with the
dip. Near Rhyll,
the hills slope from
the N.E. at an angle
of about 9, but the
dip is about 45.
Above this upper
level, hill-tops are weathered peaks, and mountain-glens
radiate from them, cutting through the upper plateau from
the watershed to the sea.
In the Snowdon range the rocks are harder, and strise
abound. The valley of the Conway is a great groove, which
runs nearly N. and S., and which certainly contained a large
glacier, or heavy fjord ice. The road to Llanberis follows
its course to the foot of Snowdon. The bottom of the groove
is filled with beds of gravel, sand, clay, and peat, in which
large trees are buried. It is a flat plain, through which
the salmon-stream winds to the estuary, where it meets the
tide ; trees, green fields, and neat houses abound ; a railway
train screams and rattles over the plain, and up the glen ; but
there was a big glacier there nevertheless. The railway
cutting has uncovered a rock about twenty-five feet above
the sea-level, and near a ferry above Conway ; and glacial
striae are as freshly marked upon the slate as if they had just
been made.
Above ground, the rocks are weathered and broken down.
Many forests have sprung up and died since the ice was
198 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
there ; but under the beds of drift the original surface of
glacial denudation is unraistakeably clear. If there was a
glacier at Conway, there may have been others in other Welsh
glens.
Leaving the valley at Llanrwst, a path leads up the
Suowdon side of the valley, past Gwydr House, to Coed Mawr
Pwll mine. There are numerous ice-marks, boulders, and
suchlike, all the way.
To the left of the path rises a hill called Coed Mawr,
from which a wide view is obtained. It is the Ehigi to this
range, a kind of outlier, a flat-topped ridge separated from the
main ridge by a hollow, and cut off from the rest of Wales
by deep valleys. At the height of about 1100 feet above the
sea, and on the top of this outlier, the ground is strewed with
loose boulders.
The rocks are well marked with striae, and their direction
corresponds to no existing feature of the country. They
neither point down-hill, nor from the ridge, nor along the run
of any valley or river near them ; they point north-east over
Rhyll, and south-west over Traeth Bach in Cardigan Bay ; par-
allel to the Menai Strait, to the ridge of Snowdon, and to the
run of the great sound which would cut through Carnarvon-
shire between Moel Siabod (2865 feet high) and Moel Wynn
(2529), and so join Cardigan Bay at the two strands " Traeth
Mawr" and " Traeth Bach," near Portmadoc, if the sea were
at this level of 1100 feet. A glance at the Ordnance map
shows that the ground in this direction has the form of an
estuary of glaciers passing south-west into Cardigan Bay.
This mark joins in with the curve which has been fol-
lowed from Yorkshire, for no land-ice could well move N.E.
or 8.W. at Coed Mawr now, unless the neVe was about the
Pole.
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 199
Two hundred feet lower down, in the valley between
Coed Mawr (1100) and Carned Llewellyn (3482), between
the main range and the isolated hill, at a height of about 900
feet, a small lake, Llijn Pencarreg, has been drained close to
a lead-mine. It was in a rock-basin, for they had to cut
through rock to drain it into the branch of the Conway
which comes from Snowdon. The bottom is filled with peat,
and where the peat has been removed glacial striations are
fresh and perfect. These point E.N.E. and W.S.W., out into
the valley, through the hollow where the drain was cut. If
ice were now sliding from Carned Llewellyn it might be
caught in the trench and split on the watershed. Part of it
might slide northwards into the Conway valley, along the
line of the path to Llanrwst, and the rest would swirl
round and move W.S.W. towards Capel Cureg, where it would
meet the Snowdon stream, turn back to Bettws-y-Coed, and
so flow on to Llanrwst by a circuitous path along the river-
course.
If a Carned Llewellyn glacier were so large as to over-
flow the top of Coed Mawr, it would evidently flow S.E. into
the Conway valley ; but the marks upon Coed Mawr are at
right angles to this direction they point S.W. Moreover
there appear to be a series of shelves higher up which corre-
spond to the stria3, not to the present watershed.
If the Conway glacier, which must have had a source about
Moel Wynn, were large enough to overflow the whole country,
it might possibly move north-east, over Coed Mawr, but it
would have to cross a glen 500 feet deep, at right angles at
Bettws-y-Coed, and then move along a hill-side at a higher
level than the opposite side of the Conway valley, about
Llanrwst, which seems impossible. Making every allowance
for land-ice of enormous thickness, it is still very difficult
200
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
to explain the striae at Coed Mawr without the agency of
floating ice.
But if ice floated above 1100 feet, then the Snow don
range was an archipelago when this mark was made, and
Moel Wynn was an island. But as sea-shells are found 500
feet higher up, and stratified drift 400 feet above the shells,
icebergs may have floated along the Snowdon islands so as to
mark sunken rocks 900 feet below the sea-level. Of 3570
feet of Snowdon there would still remain 1570 above water to
form a base for the land-glaciers which Earn say describes.
When the land rose the Conway glacier might flow down to
the present sea-level ; ice certainly did move in this trench.
Cardigan Bay.
Stria at CoeJ Mawr.
FlO. 84.
On this supposition the striae on Coed Mawr are older
than those which are seen from the train, about 1075 feet
lower down, and those which remain in the lake 200 feet
below the ridge at Coed Mawr. They look far older, and in
this respect resemble others of their class. Looking south-
westward along the line indicated by the striae, there is a groat
YORKSHIRE AND WALES, ETC. 201
hollow between Moel Siabod and Moel Wynn, beyond which
is Cardigan Bay and its great strand Traeth Mawr.
When a great smooth Atlantic roller, moving steadily on,
encounters an isolated rock, some twenty or thirty feet higher
than high-water mark, the glassy surface of the wave breaks,
and a torrent of boiling foam, green water, and glittering white
spray, rushes over the stone with a hoarse roar. If water
then left marks they would be parallel to each other, and to
the direction of movement. If a stone or any other loose
object stands upon the rock, it is driven on by the torrent, and
follows the wave till it sinks. But when the crest of the wave
has passed, the rock seems to rise up like a whale, or some
other black monster of the deep. Then for a time the direc-
tion of movement changes green torrents, streaked with
snowy foam, stream down the black sides of the rock, and
brown sea-weeds flutter and wave in rivulets which radiate
outwards and downwards from the highest point of the rock
in every direction. If these left marks they would radiate as
the streams do. The rivulets would make furrows, and flow
in them while there was any water left to flow. But they
leave no such marks. The Dubh lartach, the outermost rock
off the west of Scotland, has a rough jagged surface, though
it rises twenty feet above the sea where waves are as large
as any in the whole world.
When river-ice drifting down-stream meets a stone, the
ice-surface, like the smooth wave, breaks. It pushes on, up
and over the stone in the direction of the stream which moves
it, but it slides off in many ways. If heavy enough it would
mark the stone.
If ice is moved by a falling tide, a time comes when it no
longer slides over the stone, but splits upon it, and slips past
it, and meets behind it with the stream.
202 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
And then if a shower falls the water streams down the
sides of the stone in every direction, while the stream flows
past as before. If snow falls it caps the stone, and when the
tide has ebbed the bed of the stream retains marks of the
current, while the snow is left to tell its own story.
If the blocks of stone which Welshmen call Plynlimmon,
Y Wyddfa, and Cader Idris, were rising stones in the falling
tide of an ice-laden ocean-current, like that which now over-
runs sunken islands off Labrador, they would retain the marks,
for heavy ice does record its movements upon stone, and stone
preserves the record.
The high Welsh hills do retain ice-marks, and they
seem to record that the hills rose up in an icy sea which
moved ice towards the south-west for untold ages, and that
glaciers streamed from their sides when the cold tide fell,
and continued to flow on, until a long age of winter gradually
passed away, after the bed of the cold stream was crossed by
Lapland.
The hills about the head of Cardigan Bay seem to record
that the stream poured out that way, and that the coast-line is
a result, not of waves acting at the present sea-level from the
south-west, but of ocean-streams pouring towards the south-
west, from the arctic basin into the Atlantic.
The deep trench in the fifteen-fathom line tells the same
story. It seems to carry the south-westerly curve over Eng-
land and Wales, and to launch it in the Irish Channel.
The hobby seems none the worse for this rapid burst.
The story told by Scandinavian and Scotch hills is confirmed
by hills in Yorkshire, by stones at Stoke and in Cheshire, by
geologists and their books, by popular tradition, by the map
of Ireland, and by high ice-marks on Snowdonia.
CHAPTEK XLI.
BALTIC CURRENT 14 BRITISH ISLES 13 WALES 2.
ARCTIC sea-shells found in loose drift at a height of 1392
feet, and boulders, perched blocks, and drift at a height of
2300 feet,* prove that a cold sea has been as high on the flanks
of Snowdon, since rock was ground into something like the
present shape of Wales. High horizontal ice-marks on a hill-
shoulder at 1100 feet seem to prove that the cold sea which
rose so high was cumbered with ice and moved from north-
east to south-west, when the way was last open. If land and
temperature rose together gradually, and the cold period
passed away from Wales when rising land reached a certain
point ; then marks on watersheds at various elevations ought
to record the changes and their order.
Glacial drift, arctic shells, and horizontal ice-grooves,
record the high sea-level and cold weather. Glacial drift
partially waterworn, and packed in forms characteristic of
sea-margins, at lower levels amongst the hills, seems to mark
an ebbing sea and warmer weather, a state of things more like
the present state of the beach at Galway (p. 21). Water-
worn drifts at a lower level, terraces, and sea-shells, speak
for themselves. It seems reasonable to assume that during
a gradual change of climate, dwindling glaciers flowed in
* On the Superficial Accumulations and Surface Markings of North Wales.
By Professor A. C. Ramsay, F.R.S., F.G.S. March 26, 1851.
204 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
rising glens, long after the greatest cold had risen off the
sea.
A series of terminal moraines, entirely made of native
rocks, and laid in hollows, mark the retreat of dwindling
glaciers, shrinking upwards ; while the cold shell of air-tem-
perature and land rose together ; and in Scotland the lowest
perfect moraine seen is at about 1400 feet, the level of the
Welsh shells.
Old strise at Snsefell point up to, and converge upon, the
high point from which smaller glaciers now diverge (vol. i. p.
432) ; and the same series of events appear to have followed
each other in like order in Wales and in Iceland.
Marks made in the bottom of deep glens near the present
sea-level may be marks of comparatively modem glaciers,
which continued to flow into the sea long after hill-shoulders,
with old scars, had risen far beyond the reach of the battle
between sea-water, sea-ice, and Welsh stone, or they may be
marks of fjord ice like that which now works with the tide
in Hamilton Inlet in Labrador.
The old local glacier-system of the Snowdon range has
been well described by abler pens.
Buckland, Darwin, Lyell, Murchison, Ramsay, and a host of
famous men, have piled up a mountain of facts which would be
harder to get over than Y Wyddfa. The former existence of
Welsh glaciers is proved beyond dispute ; and to a practised eye
the record seems patent.
At Capel Cureg ice-ground rocks abound. At the head
of the pass, where the water sheds towards Cardigan Bay, at
a place lower than Coed Mawr, ice-marks rise high, between
Moel Siabod and Snowdon. If ice floated at 1100 feet, this
was a sea-strait, and these may be marks of heavy drift-ice
moving in a groove like the Menai Strait. Two ice-streams
WALES. 205
here split. One reached Con way by the road and railway ;
the other went to Beddgelert and Portmadoc. Whether both
reached the present sea-level remains to be proved. It is
certain that the ice was of large size, and it reached Conway.
At the col at the head of the Pass of Llanberis, about
1300 feet above the sea, a cross strait divided the Snowdon
range when shells and drift were deposited upon the hill-
sides at 1392 and 2300 feet.* According to the ice-marks,
two glaciers met in this trench, and parted, as glaciers part
now at the Col de Geant. One ice-stream probably split
lower down, and went to Conway and Portmadoc ; the other
stream went towards the Menai Strait, for the marks are
plain in this direction for many miles. Above this col,
Eamsay has tracked old moraines, almost to the peak of
Snowdon. One system thus tracked from Conway to the
highest peak of Wales, the map of the country gives the
shape of the local system. It must have been a herring-
bone pattern of ice, for the glens all radiate like ribs from the
backbone of North Wales.
It has been shown above (vol. L p. 157) that rocks upon the
snowshed of the Alps, on the Strahlek, at 11,000. feet, and in
the midst of land-glaciers, are not ground, but riven and
shattered. It is also shown (voL i. p. 167) that rocks on the
snowshed of Mont Blanc, on the Col de Geant, at 11,146 feet,
and at the source of the largest of European glaciers, are
equally shattered ; although the snow-dome of Mont Blanc,
15,744 feet high, rises 4598 feet immediately over this pass.
From the top of Mont Blanc the Glacier de Boissons
flows continuously down 12,300 feet to a level only 3444 feet
above the sea. This glacier descends 3902 feet below the
* According to Professor Ramsay's paper above quoted, the drift overhangs
this pass.
206 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
level of the Grimsel Col, which is 7346 above the sea.
According to De Charpentier and Elie de Beaumont, one, and
the highest known, superior limit of the erratic formation is
at the Grimsel CoL There, at the Furca, and on similar
passes in the Alps, at about this level, rocks are rounded.
The top of the Stelvio (9272 feet) is not shattered but ground
(vol. i. p. 144). The inferior limits of the erratic formation of
the Alps are far beyond the Rhine on one side, and near Turin
and Milan on the other ; and the question is whether these
stones were carried from the watersheds of the Alps all that
distance upon laud-ice, or part of the way on land-ice, and the
rest of it on ice-floats (vol. i. p. 169). If the Snowdon ice-marks
were made by land-glaciers, which grew in consequence of a
great elevation of land (which is one theory suggested to
account for them), they ought all to point up-stream, to and
towards some snowshed ; and the snowshed ought to be
shattered when it is narrow, because the Strahlek and Col de
Ge"ant are shattered. According to this theory the snowshed
at Llanberis, which is very narrow, ought to be shattered.
The top of the col is in fact rounded.
The highest grooves close to the head of the glen are as
deep as grooves made in places where the heaviest glaciers
press hardest, and they seem to be nearly horizontal. If the
ice- work in this district is sea-work a result of a cold period
caused, not by great elevation, but by a small depression of
land the marks agree with the present state of things on the
opposite coast.
If the col at Llanberis was first a deep strait, then
a shallow sound, and then a " tarbert" at the end of a sea-
loch open to the ocean on the west, heavy drift 1000 feet
deep might grind the deep strait ; lighter drift, 250 feet, as at
Belleisle, might pass through the shallow sound ; and heavy
WALES. 207
fjord-ice move horizontally in the sea-loch, as fjord-ice now
does in Hamilton Inlet (chap, xxvi.)
It is certain that this col was a sea-strait 1000 feet deep
when drift was packed in terraces 1000 feet above the pass, and
that it was a sound at least 92 feet deep, when sea-shells were
buried in drift, where Mr. Trimmer found them at 1392 feet.
It may have been a " tarbert" 300 feet high, when shells
were buried where Professor Ramsay found them at 1000 feet
on Snowdonia.
So far no one has yet found shells in drift on the high
Alps ; no one seems to have sought them ; but judging from
form alone, it seems probable that arctic shells may yet be
found in superficial deposits at higher levels than the Stelvio
(9000 feet), but not above the level at which cols and peaks
are all shattered namely, about 11,000 feet.
It seems possible that rounded Alpine passes were sea-
straits when they were rounded, and that land-glaciers may
have been launched from Alpine peaks which were 6672
feet above water when the Stelvio was a " tarbert," and the
Ortles Spitz a tall " stack" in a European ocean whose arctic
current passed Snowdonia.
According to the Baltic Current theoiy, such a current did
pass this way, and did all the work ; according to other theories,
the whole of the northern hemisphere must have been covered
with one vast sheet of ice during the glacial period.
When the gorge of Llanberis is passed westwards, a wide
plateau begins, where the chief product of the country seems
to be glaciated boulders, but rolled and waterworn. Walls
are made of them, roads are broken boulders, streams run
amongst boulders, and the soil is clay. At this level, about
300 feet above the present sea, most of Anglesea would be
under the sea which helped to roll these stones.
208 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
The boulder-land ends in a series of steps and a steep
terrace, which makes one side of the big groove, over which
the tubular bridge has been thrown. These steps and terraces,
and the groove which holds the Menai Strait, cross the course
of the old Llanberis glacier at right angles. If the Snowdon
glaciers reached the sea at the level of 300 or 400 or 500 feet,
the present tides might move icebergs and land-ice N.E. and
S.W. along the coast.
Anglesea. The geological structure of Anglesea includes
igneous rocks and sedimentary beds, from the lower silurian
to the coal-measures. In the mines, these beds are seen to be
fractured, twisted, dislocated, and roasted ; the surface con-
sists of rocks of every degree of hardness, of beds dipping
everyway and at all angles, of minerals which fracture, wear,
and weather into all manner of shapes ; but the whole sur-
face of the country has one prevailing form. The hills and the
rocks, wherever they appear through drift and peat, have the
same form as the hills and rocks of low ice-ground Scandina-
vian islands ; and they too are ice-ground.
Boulders and clay are everywhere. Travelling at ex-
press speed in the railway train, driving or walking, the
marks of ice are manifest. " Tyr Von" is like a slab of
variegated marble roughly ground flat, well scratched, and ill
washed.
The direction of movement was N.E. and S.W., that of the
tide in the strait, which now looks like a big river shrunk in
its bed ; the grinding-rnachines were probably icebergs and
sea-ice worked by tides and the Arctic Current, with boulders
for polishing-powder (see chap, xxvi.)
All the rocks seem to have their longest slopes and
smoothest sides towards the N.E., so the machines worked
most from that direction, and the sea-level was probably
WALES. 209
more than 300 feet higher than now, about the level of the
boulder plain, when the ice vanished.*
Looking south-east, the side of the Snowdon range whose
end is seen from Llaiidudno, appears as a long ridge most
worn at the north-eastern end, and furrowed by deep glens
which cross the ridge at right angles. Generally this north-
western corner with its bent trees must leave the impression
of something now swept by a powerful S.W. wind, ar.d formerly
ground by some force which acted from the N.E.
It repeats the story of the north-eastern corner of Wales,
but in a more legible form. It surely was like the corner of
Iceland (chap, xxv.), or Jan Mayen (chap, xxiv.), or Bear
Island (chap, xxiii.), or islands about Hamilton Inlet over the
way (chap, xxvi.)
From Carnarvon the road to Beddgelert first passes
through a boulder country and over terraces, then up the
course of an old glacier, which left notable marks. At
Beddgelert the course of the Portmadoc and 8nowdon
glacier is crossed, and thence all the way to Tan-y-Bwlch,
the road crosses a series of large furrows running north-east
and south-west,
In some places the surfaces are beautifully preserved low
down. Many ice-streams seem to have converged here.
Traeth Marrr is seen to the westward, and Moel Wynn is to
the eastward, and there seem to have been large glaciers on
both" sides of Moel Wynn which met here. The marshy
plain is probably a heap of drift and glacial debris, a whole
collection of ruined moraines arranged by the sea, like the
plain on which Llandudno stands.
* According to Professor Ramsay, striae in Anglesea \vcre made by floating
ice ; they generally point E. 30 N., and are quite unconnected with those of
glaciers in Caernarvonshire. Paper rend March 26, 1851.
VOL. II. I'
210 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
From Tan-y-Bwlch the road rises into a valley, which is
strewed with large stones at the height of 700 or 800 feet.
The walls are of boulders, many of which are grooved, and
the rocks and low hills are all rounded to the very top.
Above a certain level, the hills are steep and broken, and
furrowed with larger corries. At the level of the Coed
Mawr striae (1100 feet), this glen would be a strait. On the
map this inland country seems to have been swept south-
wards, as if a N.E. current had split on Diprnvys, a range
2050 feet high. The glen may afterwards have been filled by
a Mer de Glace which was fed from both sides, and overflowed
two ways to Tan-y-Bwlch and to Dolgelley.
The deep glens which meet at Dolgelley all have the form
of glacier-glens, and above Dolgelley at the pass of Bwlcli-
Uyn-Dach, about 1000 feet above the sea, ice set off south-
wards, and left a large moraine of crumbled slate, to mark
the spot where it finally expired, below Cader Idris. This
is not a perfect moraine, but is washed or weathered out of
shape. Tradition narrates that a giant called Idris sat on the
Cader, his seat, and strode from side to side of this gap. He
was one of " Hyrm Thyrsar," the frost giants of Norse my-
thology, and he has turned to mist ; for he was ice, and he
has melted away.
Thence all the way to Aberystwith, the hills and glens
have the same general rounded forms, and wherever a quarry
or a broken stone appears, it shows that the form is different
from any which could be produced by weathering or upheaval.
It is neither the form of bedding, jointing, cleavage, nor frac-
ture. It is the form of glacial denudation.
At the DeviFs Bridge, some fourteen miles from Aberyst-
with, a river has made a mark in a slate rock, which proves
that w r ater could never wear slate into the form of Welsh
WALES. 21 1
glens. A stream working at the bottom of a curved hollow
has cut its own breadth straight down for ninety feet, and is
catting backwards for some hundreds more lower down. The
rock is too hard to weather or break easily, and it has not
fallen, so the river-mark is perfectly preserved. Further down,
the valley retains its glaciated form, and higher up, wherever
a valley is left, the upper level of the country is seen to have
one uniform slope from Plyulimmon to the sea x s .
There is the general form of denudation upon the largest
scale in the outline of the country, and in the glens which
run north-east and south-west ; next the form of denuda-
tion by local glaciers, or glacial currents, which scooped out
broad concave glens ; and lastly, a steep straight ditch cut by
running water at the bottom of the old ice-groove.
There is no room for doubt as to the tool which made
this drain ; the marks are seen from the water-level up to the
foot of the bridge, and there is no joint or vein in the rock,
for the rock is smooth and polished, and the slate beds are
unbroken in the bed of the stream. At the bottom of the
trench, which the stream has dug ninety feet through slate,
there is not a chink in the stone.
If the rate of wearing could be got at here, it w r ould be
a chronometer. It is not likely that the river worked thus
under ice ; it certainly did not work below the sea, so it
began to dig after the spot had risen. It is now 750 feet
above the sea. The stream was about its present size when
it began at the ninety feet, for the trench is no wider at the
top than it is below. The question then is, How much slate
does this river wash off in a year ? By anchoring stones in
the river, and weighing them from time to time, this question
might be solved, and then the upheaval of Wales might be
calculated from the river-mark.
212 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
At Bortli is a large beach, which crosses a rock-hollow,
like a sea-darn.
Behind the dam peat and silt-beds have gathered ; in front
of it a bed of yellow sea-sand is smoothed by Atlantic rollers ;
and the mound itself is a blue ridge of slate pebbles and
boulders rolled by the sea. These were probably carried
from their parent rocks by the Plynliminon and Machynlleth
branch glacier from the Plynlimmon and Cemmis junction,
where it joined the Severn valley ice-line, at the watershed.
From Borth near Aberystwith, a railway has been made
across Wales to Shrewsbury, and the cutting has not yet
(1863) been overgrown with turf. Travelling on this line is
Like studying a geological section. The hills and valleys are
all of one pattern outside, but they are composed of beds
which dip in many directions, and at many angles, and which
are of various kinds. The rock is often covered with glacial
debris, beds of clay, generally yellow, enclosing angular and
rounded blocks of stone of many kinds. There are grits,
white quartz, igneous rocks, and slates. Near Carno, about
700 feet above the sea, these are well seen.
At the height of 1100 feet, this would be a sea-strait. It
may afterwards have been the bed of glaciers which came
from Plynlimmon, split on the watershed, and worked their
way to Shrewsbury and Cardigan Bay.
With the well-marked glacial phenomena of the high
mountains of North Wales fresh in the mind, a rapid journey
along this line is like reading the history of a glacier. Bare
rocks get covered ; stones get more rounded as the train de-
scends ; the colour of the clay changes ; confused heaps of
loose rubbish are better sorted where they have been washed
in hollows ; there is more variety in the materials after a
greater number of beds have been passed ; and finally, when
WALES. 213
the low plains are reached, the whole is hidden under allu-
vial soil. The work of ice is covered by the work of water
and air, and a green cloak of vegetation is thrown over all.
Then comes the plain, and the town, and archaeology, and
man's history recorded by his works ; old houses, old glass,
old churches a museum of antiquities. Old English, Nor-
man, Saxon, lioman, Celtic, and unknown remains all records
of a series of events, which began here after the other
ended. And yet the sculptured marks of ice which moved
between Snowdon and Conway, and passed over Coed Mawr
and Anglesea at 1000 feet, and at the sea-level from N.E. to
S.W., are better preserved than Koman sculptures from Uri-
coniurn ; and there are boulders near the Stiper Stones, which
tell their story at least as well as the ruined gable of an old
house.
The geological sections of Wales, which have just been
finished, confirm what has been said above.
On the western side of Cader Idrjs boulder-clay is marked
at 1100 feet ; at 1000 on the western side of Snowdon, and
at 1700 feet at Mauchlyn Mawr.
On the eastern side of the hills drift is not marked, but
drift exists in patches everywhere. If the movement was
south-westwards drift ought to be found to the westward of
the high grounds, under the lee of islands which are now
mountains. Sea-waves woidd tend to wash the drift from the
south-west end, where it abounds most.
The structure of the country shows trap, felspathic ash,
fossiliferous and non-fossiliferous slates, grits, lime, shales, and
coal-fields. There is evidence of fracture, disturbance, and
bending of strata, upon a very large scale, and of volcanic
eruptions. The mines show that the shattered crust has
grated its broken edges to make smooth grooved sides in the
214
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
cracks. Bits as broad as a parish and of unknown thickness
have risen, or fallen, or moved horizontally; and every bit has
moved, for there are slickensides in every mine. The surface
must often have been rough and jagged like that of a broken
flagstone laid upon a soft bed and trodden awry. Some of
the cracks are filled with clay and boulders, so they were
open when ice was here. But some great force has now
ground off' all the corners. The geological section gives the
same lines which can be seen in every Welsh quarry, and in
many quarries the surface of glacial denudation yet remains.
The geological map shows no granite in Wales. Granite
boulders are found in Cheshire to the north-east, and the
nearest English granite hill is further to the north and east
than the Cheshire boulders.
If the assumed curve is followed up-stream it joins Wales,
Cheshire, the Skagerrak, and a Scandinavian .district where
granite abounds, and where ice-marks are conspicuous at high
levels.
So the block of land which we call Wales seems to have
been ground down by an arctic current and by local glaciers,
which gradually disappeared after the laud had risen to a
certain level, and of which the last traces are to be found in
the highest part of the highest glens. Whether any of these
traces coincide with any record of man, is the geological
question of the day.
FIG. X>. DKVII.'R RRIDOE.
CHAPTEE XLII.
BALTIC CURRENT 15 BRITISH ISLES 14 ENGLAND (SOUTH).
A SET of curves, like the rest, drawn from Novaya Zemlya
proper, pass over Russian Lapland and the White Sea ; Fin-
land, the Gulf of Bothnia, and the Baltic ; the low rocks of
Sweden ; the drift of Denmark, Hanover, Holland, Belgium,
and part of France. In England, curves pass from Whitby
to Snowdon ; from the Wash to the Bristol Channel ; from the
Thames to the Isle of Wight ; and from Heligoland past Dover,
down the English Channel, and out to sea.
It has been shown above that there is reason to believe
that ice travelled south-westward over Sweden and Finland
(chaps, xviii xix, xx.) A succinct account of the superficial
geology of Denmark is given by Sir C. Lyell in the second
chapter of his last great work. Means of temperature and
limits of vegetation have been mapped, and a series is pub-
lished in Keith Johnston's Physical Atlas. From facts taken
from these stores, and from personal knowledge, it appears
that the present mean annual temperature in Denmark is
about 46 and 48, and the forests chiefly beech. In the
upper beds of peat the trees which are preserved are chiefly
beech ; and in this layer human remains are associated
with weapons of iron and other metals. In the next layer
the trees are oak, and wwks of human art older and
chiefly bronze. In the next the trees are Scotch fir and
birch, and human implements far ruder, and chiefly stone.
216 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
Beneath all these are layers of glacial drift, clay, and
scratched boulders. These several layers seem to indicate a
gradual change of temperature from cold to warm ; thus
In Bear Island, Greenland, and the north of Labrador, a
mean temperature of 28 now coincides with the deposition of
glacial drift in the sea, and with the polishing of rocks by
land and sea ice.
About the North Cape, Western Iceland, and the south of
Labrador, a mean temperature of 32 now coincides with the
growth of fir-trees and birches on shore, and with the deposi-
tion of glacial drift in the neighbouring seas.
About Stockholm, Christiania, Cape Race, and Nova Scotia,
a mean temperature of 41 now corresponds to the growth of
oaks, pines, and other forest trees, and of heavy winter-ice on
shore and afloat.
Lastly, about Copenhagen an isothermal curve of 44
passes north of Scotland and south of Nova Scotia, where sea-
ice now marks rocks, deposits drift, and moves south-west
about lat. 45 in the Bay of Fundy.
If the climate of Europe were now like that of America
there would be ice-floats on the northern coast of Spain in
winter; the cold of Copenhagen and Halifax would reach
Bordeaux ; while the cold of Labrador, Cape Farewell, and the
North Cape of Norway, would reach Copenhagen.
The glacial drift of Denmark seems to prove that the
present climate of Labrador did in fact exist about Jutland
when that spot was under water, and geologists are agreed
that Jutland was an archipelago at no distant date. The
Danish stone, bronze, and iron periods, with their vegetations,
so far prove a change of climate during the human period,
after the land rose.
According to the Baltic Current theory, the blocking up
ENGLAND (SOUTH). 217
of a northern strait by a rise of land was the first step
in a gradual change which is still in progress, for the last
Norwegian glaciers are now dwindling away.
Eivers of all dimensions have deltas ; ocean-streams, espe-
cially when laden with ice, ought also to build submarine
deltas ; the Banks of Newfoundland, about lat. 50, seem to
represent the "northern glacial drift" of the present day:
if so, Denmark, the Dogger Bank, and the drift districts of
eastern England, may be parts of the submarine delta of the
Baltic Current. The direction of strise, shells, and the nature
of the drift on shore, are the only guides.
The same high authority who states the order of super-
ficial deposits in Denmark also describes the eastern coast of
England (chap, xii., Antiquity of Man}. The " series of docu-
ments " which lie next below T the glacial drift in Norfolk and
Suffolk read thus, according to Sir Charles Lyell's trans-
lation of the rocks :
" The fossil-shells of the deposits in question clearly point to a
gradual refrigeration of climate from a temperature somewhat warmer
than that now prevailing in our latitudes, to one of intense cold."
According to the Baltic Current theory, the opening of a
northern strait, by the sinking of land, let in the cold climate,
which is now transferred to Labrador, by the close of the
strait.
The English documents, as read by Lyell, record many
successive changes in the relative level of sea and land in
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. Forest-land has sunk, for beds
of shells are spread above the upright stumps of fir-trees
identical in species with firs now r growing ; the sea-bottoin
has risen, for trees now grow above the shells, and men spread
shell-marl in the fields, on the top of the English cliffs.
218 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
Thru ugh these old buried English fir- woods, elephants,
rhinoceroses, and other big brutes roamed ; whales, nar-
whals, and sea-horses swam over the same spot when it
sank ; and then came an ice-chapter, which the best of
modern geologists thus translates :
" Erratics of Scandinavian origin occur chiefly in the lower portions
of the till. I came to the conclusion in 1834 that they had really
come from Norway and Sweden, after having in that year traced the
course of a continuous stream of such blocks from those countries to
Denmark, and across the Elbe, through "Westphalia, to the borders of
Holland. It is not surprising that they should then reappear on the
eastern coast between the Tweed and the Thames, regions not half so
remote from parts of Norway as are many Russian erratics from the
sources whence they came." Antiquity of Man, p. 218.
The Baltic Current theory is thus propped up by a strong
buttress of facts, stated by a great authority to prove some-
thing else. The northern strait, which is supposed to be the
source of change in English climate, is at the head of the
Baltic. When land was sunk in England and in Denmark, a
cold sea carried boulders from Scandinavia to England, in the
direction of the curves above shown (voL i. p. 232) ; but when
the land rose higher, the transport of Scandinavian stones was
stopped, and soon after that clause in the ice-chapter was
recorded in the till, the glacial period began gradually to
pass from Europe. It is argued that it went to America.
Sir Charles himself suggests, that the " glacial period "
may be nothing but a transfer of existing climates, by causes
now active, but other causes than a Baltic Current.
One more fact may be taken from this storehouse.
At the end of the glacial period, eastern British drift camej
not from Scandinavia, but apparently from the north of
England.
ENGLAND (SOUTH). 219
Sir C. Lyell says
" Patches of the northern drift, at about 200 feet above the Thames,
occur in the neighbourhood of London, as at Muswell Hill near High-
gate. In this drift, blocks of granite, syenite, greenstone, coal-measure
sandstone with its fossils, and other palaeozoic rocks, and the wreck of
chalk and oolite, occur confusedly mixed together. The same glacial
formation is also found capping some of the Essex hills further to the
east, and extending some way down their southern slopes towards the
valley of the Thames." Antiquity of Man, p. 160.
Many of these fragments are not Scandinavian, and may
be of native growth, and the deposition of this drift is sup-
posed to have taken place at a time when nearly the whole of
the low grounds of England were at least 200 feet under the
sea.
According to theory, Scandinavian drift gave place to
English drift when the stream and the local tides changed
their direction, after the way from the polar basin to Mus-
well Hill was blocked by Lapland, now 1200 feet higher,
which rose and sent the cold westward, to the place where
the glacial period has now perched, to feed on rocks in Green-
land.
Passing S.W. from Norwich, glacial drift is said to be
found near the railway between Gloucester and Bristol, and
that line leads to Devonshire. It is vain for a single hand to
attempt to follow drift through all England, so it is best to get
to the hills once more.
Dartmoor is an upthrow of horse-tooth granite of a peculiar
character, which has upheaved and altered surrounding strati-
lied rocks. The granite and the altered rocks are traversed by
numerous veins and faults, in which mines of iron, lead,
copper, tin, etc., are worked. There are numerous dykes of
greenstone and other igneous rocks, which fill up breaches in
220 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
the earth's crust ; and there are " cross-courses," which are
great cracks filled up with angular fragments of broken rock
and other materials of small value. The crust has been much
broken and shaken at various times, for more "heaves" and
" slides," "faults," " upthrows," and " downthrows," are known
in Devonshire and Cornwall than are to be seen in the cliffs
of Iceland.
There are other evidences of subterranean heat and fire.
There are so-called " hot lodes," where a thermometer marks
90 or 100. The deepest mines in the district are the hottest,
and volcanic products, carbonic acid gas, and such-like, some-
times escape from veins into the mines.
There are hot springs at Bath still. There is evidence of
upheaval by the agency of heat-force in the geology of the
country, and in the temperature under ground. There is evi-
dence of denudation by ice above ground.
The hills are about 2000 feet high.
The upper part of Dartmoor is strewed with large blocks
of granite, many of which differ in structure from the granite
of the rocks on which they rest. They resemble ice-borne
boulders in shape. The soil is peat and decomposed granite,
but on the hill-flanks are beds of sand and water-worn boul-
ders. One bed is to be seen at the roadside high above the
Darfc, near Ashburton. It seems to be water-worn glacial
drift, and the height is about 200 feet above the sea.
The hill-tops are capped by curious granite elevations called
" tors" (heaps or mounds). These, though much weathered,
often retain the characteristic shapes of ice-grouiid rocks.
The grinding force seems to have acted from the north-
east towards the south-west.
Blakcston Tor, on the south-eastern side of the moor, is a
good specimen of the class.
ENGLAND (SOUTH). 221
The cut is from a sketch made on the spot.
Heytor Rocks, about 1100 feet above Bovey Tracey, are
good samples also. From the internal structure of these
NE
Fir,. 8(5.
granite hills as seen in a quarry near Heytor, the tors appear
to be weathered remnants of an upper bed of granite, the rest
of which has been ground and broken and pushed away by
some power, acting chiefly from the north-east. Still lower,
layers of granite have also been worn at the edges, so as to
leave a smooth rounded conical hill, strewed with rounded
blocks, and capped by a rounded tor. The granite breaks
into angular fragments, and weathers into strange shapes.
The worn surfaces are very clearly seen for about 200 feet
below the top, and a few remnants of grooves can there be
traced. These last are very faint, and much weathered. With-
out other indications, and long practice, they would be wholly
insufficient evidence, but taken with the rest, they too point
to ice moving from N.E. to S.W.
If the N.E. is the weather-side, most of the loose stones
ought to be found pushed over into the shelter. In fact,
222 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
most of the loose boulders which are strewed about Dartmoor
are to the westward of the tors, and to the westward of ridges,
and of the range itself. The forms of the hills generally,
when seen from a height, agree with this theory ; they are all
rounded. Whatever their composition may be, whether they
are " granite," or " killas," or " elvan," igneous or sedimentary,
upheaved or not ; they are steep towards the south-west, and
slope towards the north-east, like hills mentioned above.
On the hill above Wistman's Wood (see vol. i. p. 31) is a
great boulder as big as a house, which seems to be a " tor "
pushed bodily from its base towards the point from which
the prevailing wind now blows, as shown by the trees.
From Shetland and Orkney to Devonshire, at certain ele-
vations, there is a recurrence of the same rock-forms which
are held to be old ice-marks in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and
elsewhere.
Brentor, near Tavistock (see map, vol. i. p. 232), is at a
lower level. The shape is like that of hills in the valley of
the Forth, with similar bearings. The rock at the top has the
general shape of ice-ground rocks, but it is so weathered,
worn, and grass-grown, that nothing like a groove was made
out. The general shape of the hill seems to point to a grind-
ing force acting from the direction of Bristol, at a height
of about 700 feet above the present sea-level. Hence this
spoor runs out to sea, unless some of the boulders and loggan-
stones of Cornwall prove to be erratics and perched blocks.
No Cornish ice-grooves are known to the writer. According
to Sir C. Lyell, the southernmost extent of "erratics" in
England is to the north of Dartmoor.*
If ice-floats of former days resembled ice-floats off Labra-
dor now, there may have been an easterly limit, beyond
* Antiquity of Man, p. 280.
ENGLAND (SOUTH). 223
which ice-floats could riot pass. But that limit seems to have
included Kent.
In 1860, a party of fishermen were creeping for what they
might find at the bottom of the sea off Margate. They got
hold of something heavy, and thinking that they had netted
an anchor, or something better, they dragged their prize to
land with much labour. It was a big rounded stone of the
pattern of those which form terraces about the Tornea. It
was something so foreign to the sandbanks, gravel, and chalk-
cliffs of southern England, and to the experience of the fisher-
men who found it, that they hoisted the stone to the end of
the pier, and there it was shown as a curiosity.
From Muswell Hill and the Thames' mouth, the S.W.
curve leads to Southampton Water.
In many of the chalk-glens of southern England, rich
alluvial flats are flooded to irrigate meadows. The bright
clear sparkling wealth of water in the rivers is divided and
made to spread and wind hither and thither. The green grass
and the water-threads of silver and crystal weave themselves
into a pattern of graceful curves, and this waving, moving,
brilliant, wet carpet, is spread on a yellow floor of flint gravel,
peat, and clay, laid in a white chalk-groove. At Stockbridge,
in one of these glens, shoals of trout and greyling are daily
tempted by the best of British flyfishers, armed with the best
of London tackle. From constant practice and long acquaint-
ance, these fish and fishermen have learned so much that great
skill spills little blood ; but as a good fencer is a dangerous
foe, the man who kills two Test trout a day is apt to kill most
elsewhere. A stranger used to wild fish finds highly-educated
trout too cunning for his rough hand ; but if fish will not
take, it is well to take to something else.
The old spoor which was found at the North Cape is here.
224 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
This valley, which ends in Southampton Water, is terraced,
and the terraces are as plain as they are in Scandinavia.
From Stoclcbridge four shelves are very clearly seen on the
western side of the hollow. The alluvial flat in which the
Test winds is about a mile wide, and it rests in a chalk-
groove. The solid chalk crops out where the plain ends.
Close above the plain is the first horizontal shelf, and it is
well marked at several places, and on both sides of the glen.
The second shelf is about 100 feet higher ; and the whole
series may be thus roughly expressed. The only tool used
was a pocket aneroid :
Feet.
200 .... liill-top.
180 .... fifth.
160 . . . . fourth.
150 . . . . third.
100 . . . . second.
10 . . . . first terrace.
.... alluvial plain.
The whole country is cultivated, and there are few hedge-
rows. The colour is uniform green in spring, yellow in autumn,
brown when the fields are bare. When light is favourable,
and attention directed to the terraced shape of these rounded
chalk-downs, the whole landscape seems pervaded by hori-
zontal lines. Though all the chief outlines arc swelling curves
^ ^ x / , a great many of the hills have slight notches
) v
hewn out at corresponding elevations on both sides ; and
from these, horizontal lines of light and blue shadow mark
the terrace of erosion, which surely marks an ancient water-
level. All theories of lakes are vain here.
The chalk is covered with a very thin layer of soil and
ENGLAND (SOUTH).
225
rolled flints. Many of these on the watershed are water-worn
pebbles, like those which are found on sea-beaches ; others
are only partially rolled ; others are like flints newly broken
out of the chalk. These stones look like, water-work, and
here it must be sea-work. A well-preserved set of terraces
Fio. S7. TERRACES AT STOCKBHIDOK.
Casting a small fly over heavy fish.
occurs near the hill-top to the west of Stockbridge, opposite
to the peat-pits. A hedgerow shows the waving outline of
the hill very distinctly. These terraces are about fifty feet
apart, and might easily pass for works of human skill, " pa-
rallel roads" or fortifications. They seem to be very well.pre-
served marine terraces of erosion, and there are ten or a dozen
of various sizes. Lower down the valley they recur. On the
road-side, near a place called Hazlcdown Hill, close to the
watershed of the valley of the Test, three small horizontal
ridges of broken and rolled flints, skinned over with fine turf,
again recur at elevations at which the aneroid barometer
VOL. II. Q
226 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
marks the same level namely, heights somewhere between
200 and 150 feet above the level of Stockbridge.
From Hazeldown Hill the way is clear to the glacial drift
on Muswell Hill ; and these terraces carry the sea-level over
London along the line of this last curve. It passes from the
mouth of the Thames to Southampton Water ; from the last
patch of British glacial drift yet described by good authority,
down to the English Channel with its broken chalk-cliffs.*
To men who " live at home at ease " all this may seem to
be impossible, or mere vague speculation. A man who has
never seen ice upon the sea, and who thinks that rocks were
created in their present form, is apt to suspect a latent joke
in " sea-margins " in corn-fields. A Londoner who had not
tried to construe a stone, would stare agape at the notion of
ice floating over St. Paul's, or the nearest steeple, where the
weathercock has whirled ever since he was born. To such
men all modern geological change seems impossible, and
English ice a myth. But those who will accept a rough
translation of a stone record may rest assured that floes and
bergs passed over the site of London, when Muswell Hill was
capped with glacial drift.
The northern "glacial period" is still within easy reach.
The Times of August 4, 1863, gives the official report of
the loss of the Anglo-Saxon. It narrates that on the 25th of
April 1863, the vessel fell in with ice and foggy weather south
of Newfoundland. The engines were slowed, and as the ice
* It is right to state that a sixteen mile walk to Muswell Hill, without a
guide, and a long search about the foundations of the new building, and else-
where, failed to discover the patch of drift in question. It is there, but it
was found by chance, and it is now buried. If any one should fail to discover
marks described in these pages, he may think of the old saw which says that
" bad seekers are bad finders. "
ENGLAND (SOUTH). 227
became thicker and the fog denser, the engines were stopped.
The vessel drifted till ten on the 26th, when the ice being
7 O
somewhat less compact, she was moved slowly ahead till
two, when clear water was reached. Steam was then set on,
and the vessel went ahead full speed towards Cape Race :
she was about lat. 46 54' N., and soon after she ran aground,
and was wrecked in a cold fog at Clam Cove in Newfound-
land.
If she had been on the European coast, she would have
been in the Bay of Biscay off La Eochelle, south of Brittany
and the drowned land of King Grallon. The ice would have
been north of the Pyrenees (whose name means "ice-peaks"
if it be Celtic) where signs of glaciers abound, she would have
been near the latitude of the place where works of human art
were found associated with remains of reindeer.
If she were sailing over Europe, she might have been
over the lake of Geneva, off the high coast of Switzerland, or
in the Sea of Azov, under the lofty Caucasian coast, and north
of the moraines of the Lebanon.
In the Times of June 17, 1864, another wreck in the same
latitude is thus recorded :
ICE ix THE ATLANTIC. By the arrival of the Allan steamer Peru-
vian we hear of the loss of two vessels belonging to this port the
Philanthropist and Highlander. The former was on a voyage from
Liverpool to Quebec, and was lost in the ice on the banks of New-
foundland on the llth of May. The crew were picked off the wreck
by the bark Wolfville, and taken to Quebec. She was a ship of 805
tons, and was built in St. John, New Brunswick, in 1852. Her pre-
sent owners we have been unable to ascertain, as she very recently
changed hands. The second vessel, the Highlander, was bound from
Quebec to Fleetwood, and was, says the telegram, " lost near St
George's Bay," bnt it is supposed through contact with ice. She was a
perfectly new ship, having only been built this season at Quebec, and
was, when lost, on her first voyage, coming over to England, we believe,
228 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
for sale. Both vessels had valuable cargoes, and were fully covered
by insurances, partially if not wholly effected in London. Liverpool
Courier.
If the Arctic Current came through the English Channel,
the same climate would descend upon the English coast.
Drift, shells, ice-marks, and rounded terraces, record that
a frozen sea, 2000 feet deep, did in fact "pass over the sites of
London, Edinburgh, and Dublin ; over Snowdon ; over Scot-
land, Ireland, and Scandinavia ; and some of the highest
marks left are fresher than the sculptured pillars of the
temple of Serapis, which sank in the Bay of Naples, stayed
under water for a time, and rose again.
The force which lifts and lowers land is still active in
Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Labrador, England, Italy,
Sicily.
The same paper which recorded the evil deeds of Jack
Frost in summer 1863, also recorded abortive efforts to
escape made by the imprisoned cyclops Fire.
Accounts from Messina of Friday last state that the volcano of
Mount Etna is vomiting fire and lava. A new eruption is threatened
in the direction of Bronte. The inhabitants of Catania are terrified at
the formidable noise and the shower of ashes and stones falling in that
direction. The population of the mountain have made preparations to
quit their dwellings. Their horses are saddled, their cattle gathered
together, and all their household furniture packed up to be ready for
immediate removal. Prayers are being offered in the churches, and
the relics of saints are to be exposed to the piety of the faithful.
Terror prevails among the entire population.
The memory of an English earthquake is still fresh.
There was a small volcanic eruption in Iceland in 1862.
We live in a period of active geological change, though few
men think about Frost and Fire.
ENGLAND (SOUTH). 229
The water-meadows at Stockbridge, like the hills, furnish
occupation for unskilled anglers. Every dry watercourse gives
samples of " denudation" and " deposition" by streams. Every
tame stream gives a lesson which may be used to master the
ways of wild streams, which are too deep to be easily seen
through. In the middle of a weir, about ten yards wide,
behind which was a " head" of water three feet deep, a sluice
was lifted so as to make a strong rush through a still pool
in a lower watercourse.
A certain latent mechanical " water-power," expressed by
the broad arrow at E., was stored up behind the dam. The
same force of gravitation makes rain fall, stops a wagging
pendulum, and works a drop and the surface of the ocean-
pool into spherical forms. By raising a sluice at E., a certain
amount of this power was freed, and set to work on water
at rest in the river-pool.
From one direct force, which tends to produce direct
movement downwards towards the earth's centre in all
latitudes and longitudes, and from the movement expressed
above by the form J_, a series of very complicated vertical
and horizontal movements resulted in the stagnant pool
below the weir in the Test.
At the head of the pool, at the spot where the falling
water escaped from under the sluice at E., whirling jets
spouted up. In the strongest downward rush, westward
towards W. waves rose highest, curled round, and broke
eastwards, up-stream towards E. A complicated set of
curves, jostling streams and waves, crossed and recrossed
the line of direct movement from E. to W. Surface-waves
rippled and broke on the shore in every direction. At
the tail of the pool was a shallow, and the whole of the
bottom was overgrown with fine water-plants. Each of these
230
BALTIC CURKENT BRITISH ISLES.
was a tell-tale to point out the course of the stream below,
and floats on the surface showed movements there.
These seemed a movement from every direction.
Because there was a rush from east to west in the middle
of the pool, two eddies whirled opposite ways about the points
N. S. in the diagram. The weeds mapped out the currents.
A stick thrown into the rush at E. turned back where the
weeds turned and whirled round the point N. Two stacks of
dry reeds (expressed by circles and white spots), thrown one
on each side of the rush, revolved in opposite directions about
their centres of revolution N. S. They described ellipses,
and turned on their axes in the directions shown by arrows ;
and so the floats waltzed over the sunken forest of weeds,
which showed like movements at the bottom of the tran-
sparent stream. Not one reed had passed over the shallow
when the evening flies rose out of the water, and trout seemed
ENGLAND (SOUTH.) 231
disposed to dine. The experiment was simple, any child can
see the result, but all the mathematicians that ever lived
might have found occupation for their lives, in striving to
comprehend the curves that resulted from the action of the
direct force of gravitation which stretches a plumb-line.
No special talents or mental tools were used by philoso-
phers, to discover this natural force of " gravitation ; " it is
something patent and manifest to all, though no human mind
can account for it, or explain it, or calculate the effects of it.
From the stagnant pool the river Test leads back to the
watershed, and to the rain-cloud which rose out of the sea.
No special talents or mental tools need be used to discover
the second force which tugs at the cable of a fire balloon,
beside the force which tightens the cords of the car. The
effects of this force are hard to calculate, the mode of action
is wholly unexplained, but the force is manifest as daylight
itself.
The Atlantic is a big pool to cover single-handed ;
arctic currents are heavy streams ; those who venture in are
apt to get out of their depth. From Lapland to Southampton
is a long cast ; but, nevertheless, the small fly has fallen
very near the southern haunts of heavy fish. The last cast
over London and the watershed of the Test may chance to
rouse a shoal of geographers, geologists, and surveyors, better
worth raising and harder to catch than Test trout ; and this
is the point of the first hook dressed to tempt such readers.
As two sets of floats and two small water-systems revolve
and circulate in eddies, in a small pool, and in the largest
pools that can be seen ; so, according to meteorologists and
bent trees ; authority, maps, and observation ; the atmosphere
and local storms, the largest and deepest streams in our
world whirl and move ; turning opposite ways, on opposite
232 BALTIC CUR11ENT BJilTlSH ISLES.
sides of the Equator in the Northern and Southern Hemi-
spheres. The reason seems to be, that two mechanical forces,
which are at rest when evenly balanced, move air opposite
ways when one or the other is in excess.
So also, according to theory founded upon facts, of which
some are stated above, the ocean circulates within narrower
bounds for the same reasons. Because it circulates, and tends
to move north and south upon a surface turning eastwards,
main currents move diagonally ; and the coldest and heaviest
tend westwards. For the same reason floats revolve and
circulate about the Poles, as the stacks of withered reeds did
in the pool, as froth does in every eddy, as clouds do in the
air ; and as the coldest are also the hardest and the heaviest
of floats, those which tend westwards make the deepest
marks.
It is admitted that this double engine, made of air, water,
and ice, has done the work of " denudation " and " deposition,"
which geologists study, survey, and describe. It is argued
that the tool-marks of each part of the natural engine ought
to be known, and that large work done by regular and con-
stant movements in air, and water, and ice, ought to be, and
is in fact, symmetrical
It is easy to build clay-maps in shallow pools, to watch
currents and eddies, study their action, and seek to apply
knowledge, so gained from experiment, to larger things. The
pastime is lazy, healthy, and frivolous, as any idle angler can
desire.
The map (vol. i. p. 496) is intended to show that forms which
are attributed to denudation coincide with general movements
in air and water, some of which correspond to movements in
a river-pool, and which seem to make a pattern of curves upon
the rough moving surface of the globe ; that all the largest
ENGLAND (SOUTH). 233
indentations about the Equator trend westwards, all the chief
coasts on the eastern side of continents, and many mountain-
chains, cross meridians diagonally as currents do. It is
argued that hills and hollows, ruts and ridges, which are less
in proportion than sand-lines on a boulder, may be tool-marks
of a natural graving-engine, worked by fire and frost.
As a mayfly rises from mud, through water into air, and
dies, so the mechanical forces which drive this part of the
engine seem to rise and fall
The world's heat, which is always found when sought
underground, and the sun's heat which is added from without,
evaporate water and expand air ; the power seems to move
water and air to the limit where force radiating from the
earth's centre is expended, or overcome, by force converging
upon the centre, whence rays of heat and force diverged.
In one word, the natural engine seems thus far to be
driven by two opposing forces which bear various names
" gravitation " and " levitation,"
attraction and repulsion,
condensation and evaporation,
contraction and expansion,
crystallization and dispersion,
weight and heat,
water-power and steam-power,
weights and springs,
freezing and boiling,
Frost and Fire. .
The engine seems to be driven by converging and by
radiating mechanical forces, and by the will of Him who
made them, and who said " Let there be light, and there was
light," in the dawn of time.
234
BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES.
And so the pursuit of mechanical force leads round to
the place from which this long journey began, and a further
search requires a fresh departure.
FIG. 89. " THE SCII.LY BISHOPS." Lat. 49 51' N.
The last of the British Isles. From a sketch made 8th July 1859.
The rock above water is higher and longer than the Eddy stone. The building is pro-
bably the most exposed in the world. Spray goes over the top, which is more than 100
feet above the sea-level. The rock, so far as the shape of it could be seen or felt, resembles
a Devonshire tor; e.g., Blakeston Tor, p. 221. For a contrast in climate in a similar
latitude, see below, and p. 248
CHAPTER XLTII.
BELLEISLE CURRENT AMERICA.
IN the summer of 1864 a holiday trip to North America
was so arranged as to test glacial theories above stated. The
Arctic Current and Gulf Stream were twice crossed, and their
climates felt at sea. Icebergs were seen in July about lat.
49 in the Atlantic. Cape Harrison in Labrador, the Straits
of Belleisle ; the coasts of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and of the States, as far south as
Washington, were visited. The curve (see map, voL L p. 496)
which passes through the Straits of Belleisle was followed
through Canada and the Western States to St. Louis on the
Mississippi. Various cross-routes and high points on the
Alleghanies were selected, traversed, visited, and examined for
ice-marks ; the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky was visited for
its own sake ; and the following are some of the results :
Cape Chudleigh, the most northern point in Labrador, is
in lat. 60 54' N. ; Cape Harrison is in 55 ; Belleisle in 52.
The Shetlands correspond to Cape Chudleigh ; Londonderry,
Stranraer, and Newcastle, to places near Cape Harrison ;
Killarney, Cork, Gloucester, and Colchester, to places near
Belleisle. There is no good chart of the Labrador coast. The
interior is unexplored. There are no high mountains and no
glaciers in the country, so far as it is known to trappers,
Indians, fishermen, and settlers along the coast. The coast-
236 BELLEISLE CURRENT.
line is low, rocky, and glaciated. All the hills, rocks, and
islands, are rounded. There are few cliffs, and very few
beaches; but vast numbers of rocks, reefs, and islands, and
many long fjords. Hamilton Inlet, for example, is 150 miles
long. The climate is very severe. In July and August 1864
many of the harbours were frozen, and patches of snow lay
close to the water's edge at places which correspond to
watering-places in North Wales. Heavy pack-ice reached
to the horizon opposite to Hamilton Inlet on the 1st of
August 1864. Between Belleisle and Cape Harrison, islands
of ice were constantly in sight. The largest of these were in
the offing, and resembled isolated rocks, like the Bass or
Ailsa. Some were aground and stationary for a fortnight,
others had moved away when the vessel returned.
It was very difficult to estimate their dimensions, but
many certainly rose 200 feet above the water, and one near
the shore rose 300. Smaller bergs were aground amongst
the islands and in the fjords, and many of these were from 50
to 100 feet high. Smaller fragments, called " growlers," about
the size of ships and boats, were drifting everywhere, and
bits as big as hogsheads and barrels were rolling in the land-
wash. The temperature of the water was generally about
37 and 40. The air at sea was about 40, but on rocks and
islands the temperature of the air was far higher in clear
weather. The whole of this drift-ice was working in shore,
gathering in eddies behind points, and shooting off eastwards
where points jutted out into the Arctic Current. The move-
ments were analogous to those of floats in a river sticks,
leaves, froth, or ice. The coast is now rising between St.
John's in Newfoundland and Cape Harrison in Labrador.
Rocks have been marked, and the marks have risen ; boats
now ground on solid rocks where they floated twenty years
AMERICA. 237
ago ; rocks which were seldom seen now seldom disappear
at high tide ; harbours are shoaling ; beds of common shells
are found high above the sea ; raised beaches are seen on
hill-sides in sheltered corners ; and blocks of foreign rock are
perched upon the summits of islands and on the highest hills
near the coast. The rocks are much weathered, and very
few stria3 were found. Those which were found aimed up-
stream. At Indian Island, lat. 53 30', near the lat. of Hull,
they pointed into Davis Straits, at a height of 400 feet
above the sea ; at Red Bay, in the Straits of Belleisle, they
aimed N. 45 E. at the sea-level. In winter the sea is frozen
near the coast to a thickness of 18 inches or more ; in spring
the northern ice comes down in vast masses. In 1864 this
spring drift was 150 miles wide, and it floated past Cape
Eace. From a careful examination of the water-line at many
spots, it appears that bay-ice grinds rock, but does not pro-
duce striation. The tops of conical rocks have been shorn
off. The shape of the country is a result of denudation.
No matter what the dip and fracture of the stone may be,
the coast is generally worn into the shape known as " roches
moutonnees." It is impossible to get at rocks over which
heavy icebergs now move ; but a mass, 150 miles wide, perhaps
3000 feet thick in some parts, and moving at a rate of a mile
an hour, or more, appears to be an engine amply sufficient
to account for stria? on rising rocks, which were under water
when sea-shells lived above them, and were buried on them.
A cube of ice cut from a stranded berg, and floated in sea-
water, rose one-tenth above the surface. At this rate, a cube
300 feet high is 3000 feet thick, and would ground in 2700
feet of water ; one 30 feet high is 300 feet thick, and will
ground in 270 feet. In winter anchor-ice forms at the bot-
tom ; it must therefore form readily about the base of stranded
238 BELLEISLE CURRENT.
bergs. The mass which was 150 miles wide was therefore
a floating glacier, armed, as glaciers are, with stones, gravel,
sand, and mud, moving along a definite course, from N.W. to
S.E., from Cape Chudleigh to Cape Race, and at a rate which
no glacier equals. Work done by it ought to resemble
glacier-work. At the north end of Newfoundland the stream
parts. One narrow rill flows S.W. through the Straits of
Belleisle, and carries small bergs even to Anticosti in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence ; the main broad stream is shunted
westward, and moves from N.W. to S.E. It was crossed
about lat. 49 on the 16th of July 1864. Numerous large
bergs were seen ; the temperature of air and water fell when
the stream was entered, and rose again when it was left be-
hind. The stream was crossed again in November, and the
same change of climate remarked, but no ice was seen on
this voyage. The tail of the stream reaches lat. 36 10', and
it carries large bergs to these regions, which correspond to
Gibraltar and North Carolina.
If such a current flowed over America, marks left by it
ought to correspond to these movements. Striae ought to run
from N.E. to S.W., where the stream could flow directly ;
from N.W. to S.E., where it was shunted by land placed as
Newfoundland is now placed.
The summers of 1863 and 1864 were remarkable in Great
Britain and Canada for their unusual warmth ; in Labrador
and Newfoundland they were unusually cold, wet, and dark.
Early in March 1864 the sealing-fleet left St. John's in the lati-
tude of Nantes, tried to force a passage through the pack, and,
failing in that perilous attempt, they worked up the coast
inside to Toulinguet, about the latitude of the Scilly Isles. At
this promontory a shift of wind drove the ice inshore, and the
whole fleet was beset for a month. About the end of April
AMERICA. 231)
this mass of northern ice got adrift, and broke up. It carried
the fleet with it, and thirty vessels were utterly destroyed,
smashed, and ground up. One was forced up on a pan of ice,
drifted past St. John's, and was rescued about Cape Eace by a
tug-steamer sent out for the purpose.
From these facts it appears that a warm summer only
increased the intensity of the cold by setting more ice adrift
in the north ; that a glacial period now exists in English
latitudes ; and that the books above quoted accurately de-
scribe the normal condition of these regions of the earth.
If America were now submerged 3000 or even 2000 feet,
the Arctic Current might flow S.W. to St. Louis on the
Mississippi ; but it would be shunted eastwards by high
grounds in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Northern
States. According to theory, striae ought to run generally
from N.E. to S.W. in the central district ; from N.W. to S.E.
on the Atlantic shores of the Alleghanies.
Ice-marks in North America appear to coincide with this
theory, so far as they were observed in 1864. They did not
appear to coincide with the other theory published by Agassiz
in the Atlantic Magazine of the same year, which supposes
the existence of a glacier, which extended from the North
Pole to Georgia ; but on this point it becomes an inexperienced
writer to speak with diffidence.
Newfoundland extends from 51 40' to 46 38' N. lat.
The northern end corresponds to the south of Ireland, the
south of Wales, the country about Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford,
and London, Barnet, Epping, St. Albans, etc. The southern
end corresponds to the north of Switzerland, the Jura
Chalons, and the mouth of the Loire. The island corre-
sponds to the south of England and the centre of France.
Bones of large reindeer discovered in France were found in
240 BELLEISLE CURRENT.
latitudes which now swarm with large reindeer in Newfound-
land. The banks reach lat. 43, the parallel which crosses
Spain near Valencia and Barcelona. In Newfoundland there
are no high mountains and no glaciers ; the land is low, and
furrowed by hollows, which run from N. 30 E., or thereby.
Many of these rock-grooves extend under water, and now
contain large bays and fjords. The dividing ridges form
reefs and headlands, and in many cases the ridges and hol-
lows correspond to the strike. Heavy ices of all kinds- and
dimensions drift along the coasts, and over the banks, at all
seasons. On the 2d of June 1863 St. John's Harbour, in the
latitude of Nantes in France, was filled with heavy drift-ice ;
while the pack extended to the horizon of the signal-station,
which is 540 feet above the sea. A photograph of this
strange scene was taken by a native artist.* If the land
were submerged, the Arctic Current would flow through the
valleys, as part of it now flows through the Straits of Belleisle.
A thousand feet would sink the whole land. Watersheds
between the bays ought to be striated from N. 30 E. to S. 30
W., or thereby, if drift striae were made by ice drifting in the
Arctic Current over Newfoundland. The whole country is
glaciated ; the shape of it has nothing to do with the dip of
the rock, which is folded and bent. At places ice-marks are
well preserved, but generally the rock-surface is weathered.
No ice-marks were found at watersheds, because rocks in the
interior of Avalon are smothered in bogs, and overgrown with
an almost impassable forest ; no rock was seen on the only
isthmus crossed. The striae which were found were near the
coast, and seem to indicate large land-glaciers moving seawards.
At St. John's, the marks run over the Signal-hill, 540 feet,
from W. and N. 85 W. eastwards ; at Harbour Grace, from S.
* See p. 248.
AMERICA. 241
75 W. down the bay north-eastwards ; at the head of Con-
ception Bay they fill a large hollow, overrun hills, and point
from S. 15 W. northwards. Vast terraces of drift stretch
along the base of rounded hills at the head of Conception
Bay, at Harbour Grace, and at Old Purlican, near the end of
the bay, 60 miles off. At the head of the bay, most of this
drift seems to have come from the hills. Opposite to granite
hills are numerous blocks of granite ; opposite to sandstone
and slate hills sandstone and slate boulders abound ; and yet
large islands of ice constantly drift into this bay now, and
some at least bring loads of stone. Three islands, near 100
feet high, were cruising in the bay on the 20th August 1864.
As coast-ice also picks up and drops stones every year, boulders
from Greenland, Labrador, and Newfoundland, are certainly
dropped in Conception Bay ; and probably the banks off the
coast are strewed with similar mixed drift. Bergs ground on
the banks every year, and some have been seen loaded with
stones. Strise and drift on shore in Newfoundland indicate
large land-glaciers. The shape of the country seems due to
some more powerful denuding engine, moving as the Arctic
Current now moves ; but no glacial striae were found at the
only isthmus crossed. The interior is unexplored, and the
whole is very difficult of access. Indians who use bows and
arrows, and large wild animals of northern type have the
land in possession ; the coast is occupied by fishermen, and
by merchants who deal chiefly in fish and seal-oil.
In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick strife seem to indi-
cate the passage of sea-ice. A current passing south-west-
wards from Newfoundland would be turned aside by high
grounds near Halifax. Striae in the town of Halifax point N.
55 W., through a gap which leads to the Bay of Fundy. At
a height of 550 feet above the sea, at the summit-level of the
VOL. II. R
242 BELLEISLE CURRENT.
railway between Halifax and Windsor, strife point N. 35 W.
The current which flows S.W. through the Straits of Belleisle
would contimie its direct S.W. course through the Bay of
Fundy, if the low isthmus were gone. At St. John, New
Brunswick, striae in the town and beside the suspension-
bridge point N. 20 E., N., and N. 25 E. The same current
flowing over the north-eastern end of the province would be
turned westward by high grounds inland. On a hill near
Fredericton, 100 miles inland, and 300 feet above the sea,
strife point N. 35 W., and N. 87 W. There are no high
mountains in the province, and these high grooves aim at a
distant horizon. Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton,
are glaciated throughout, and strewed with mixed drift.
On the Canadian side, striae at Quebec point into the gulf
and up the valley of the St. Lawrence ; the land is terraced,
boulders are perched upon the high grounds, and recent shells
have been found far above the sea. These facts indicate the
passage of sea-ice. The falls of Montmorenci, near Quebec,
have worn a notch in a terrace of rock, above which marine
shells are found. The size of the notch is a measure of the
time which has elapsed since the shell-beds and the terrace of
erosion were raised above the sea ; for the river only began to
work at this point when the land rose. This tool-mark is well
seen from the town of Quebec on a clear day, when the notch
is filled with dark shadow, and the terrace is a line of light.
In Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and
New York ; from latitude 45 to 40 40' ; striae found during
this trip, in the latitudes in which icebergs now abound farther
east, appear to coincide with the probable run of an arctic
current flowing over the land 3000 feet above the present
high-water mark, or less. Such a current would continue its
course from N.E. to S.W r . on the Canadian side, and would
AMERICA. 243
be turned westwards by mountains which now separate the St.
Lawrence basin from the Atlantic slope. The reflected currents
would flow from N.W. to S.E., as they do at the northern
end of Newfoundland and off the Labrador coast. Stria?- at
high levels point towards the Straits of Belleisle, where the
Arctic Current is turned aside. Strife at low levels on the
Atlantic slope converge upon distant mountain-passes, which
would be sea-straits meeting in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, if
the land were sufficiently submerged ; and the Arctic Current
would then flo\v through these passes. Horizontal striae on
the shoulder of the highest peak in this district aim N. 25
E. and N. 20 E., at 1992 and 2307 feet above the sea. If
these marks on Mount Washington, in lat. 44 15', were
made by heavy icebergs floating through a strait like Belle-
isle, the nearest land on the horizon was then far away.
Lines produced in the direction of these marks skirt the
sources of the St. John and Penobscot rivers, which flow
into the Atlantic, and of the Chaudiere, which falls into the
St. Lawrence near Quebec. In this direction the land is far
lower than the shoulder of Mount Washington. Produced in
the other direction, these lines pass over Long Island near
New York. There, glaciation is conspicuous in the latitude
of Madrid, as it is in the park at Stockholm ; but the direction
of movement was different at the low level of New York.
Two hundred miles away from the White Mountains striae
near the top of the Catskill range, at 1935 above the sea, point
N. 40 E. over low grounds, up the valley of the Hudson,
into the wide pass which now contains Lake George and Lake
Champlain, and which lately contained the bones of a whale
buried in drift. In the other direction, this mark aims into a gap.
On the watershed of the gap, at 2115 feet above the sea, a com-
plicated system of cross marks aim N. 77 E., and S. 77 E.
244 BELLEISLE CURRENT.
Ill the opposite direction, all these point into a hollow, which
would be a strait passing through the Catskill range west-
wards if the sea were 2200 feet deeper than it is now. These
sets, the highest marks observed, point N. and E. At lower
levels the marks aim at passes N. and W. For a distance of 12
miles, and up to a height of 1800 feet, horizontal striae on the
Catskill escarpment, and in the low country beneath it, aim at
the lowest ground on the distant horizon, which is between
the Adirondak and Green Mountains, and leads through the
valley of the St. Lawrence back to the gulf. This certainly
was a sea-strait when the whale swam in it.
Fifty-seven miles below Albany, on the Hudson, near
high-water mark at Barry town, opposite to the southern end
of the Catskill range, the striae turn and point N". 8 W. At
New York, in the central park and near Broadway, about lat.
40 40', at six different stations, strice aim N. 21, 30, 36, 37,
39, 45 W. Some of the stones in this central park contain
large plates of mica, and may have come from the White
Mountains, or from the "azoic" regions about the Adirondaks.
Others may have come from Labrador, for they match rocks
in that country. Further north, on the Atlantic coast, a
system of marks seems to converge upon a chain of lakes
in Maine. A line produced N. 55 W. from Eastport strikes
the Pemadumcook Lake. Lines produced N. 14 W., and N.
28 W. from Portland, avoid the White Mountains, which are
visible at a distance of 90 miles, and strike the Mooselook-
maguutic Lake near Saddleback Mountain, about lat. 45.
These converge upon a low watershed. A line produced N.
25 W. from Boston skirts the western side of the White
Mountains, and enters a wide pass which leads to Canada.
If the direction of the highest strife of this series be taken
as the direction of the main arctic stream, N. 25 E. to S. 25
AMERICA. 245
W., it would strike against the White Mountains, Green
Mountains, Adirondaks, and Catskills, and glance westwards to
Eastport, Portland, Boston, Albany, and New York. It would
escape from passes in the main range, as the Arctic Current
now escapes through the Spotted Islands off Labrador, and
through deeps between the sunken banks off Newfoundland.
On the other side of the mountains, marks in the valley
of the St. Lawrence correspond in direction. At Montreal
Mountain, striae point N.E. magnetic ; at Brockville, they
point N. 45 E. true ; at Niagara Falls N. 20 and N. 5 E. ;
at Buffalo N. 20 and N. 13 E. But, while a general south-
westerly direction is thus marked by strong deep lines, other
lines cross in all directions. At Brockville, for instance, a
deep groove three or four feet wide aims N. 45 E., and all
lines in it down to hair-lines aim in the same direction ;
but on a neighbouring rock a cross system of smaller grooves
aims N.W. almost at right angles to the general direction ;
and at Prescott, the only marks found aimed N. 20 W.
The water-lines of the great lakes and rivers are not striated,
though much worn by winter ice. These variations in a
wide plain accord with the erratic movements of icebergs in
summer, the strong markings seem to agree with the general
combined movement of the spring drift.
So far these fixed marks agree with the probable move-
ments of an arctic current. In order to make the marks, a
polar land-glacier would have to climb more than 2000 feet
out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, over the shoulder of Mount
Washington. According to other marks it also climbed over
the watershed of the St. Lawrence into the Mississippi basin,
and reached lat. 39, which seems an impossible feat for land-
ice to accomplish.
Though other observers have found striated rocks south
246 BELLEISLE CURRENT.
of Buffalo, in the central district none were found during
this expedition. All the rock-surfaces found in the Western
States were either weathered or water-worn, though many
were newly uncovered. Fossils project half an inch at many
spots. But glaciated boulders were found near St. Louis, at
Indianapolis, Lafayette, Fort Wayne, Crestline, Upper San-
dusky, and many other places near the watershed of tribu-
taries of the Ohio and St. Lawrence. Many were found
between lat. 39 and 40, in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Not
one south of 39 in these states, or south of 41 in Western
Pennsylvania. At St. Louis, Vinceunes, Louisville, Cincinnati,
and Pittsburg ; along the banks of rivers, and beside railways,
no single specimen could be discovered. At these places, and
in Kentucky, further south, near lat. 3 7, the rocks are covered
by thick beds of pure clay and fine sand. South of a line drawn
from lat. 41, long. 81, diagonally, south and west, to lat. 39,
long. 90, near St. Louis, no glaciated boulders were found. A
short distance north of the line, blocks of Laurentian gneiss
as big as bullocks are scattered broadcast over the flat prairies.
The nearest fixed rocks of the kind are about Lake Superior,
but stones of the very same size, pattern, and material, are on
the top of the Catskill range, on the top of the Green Moun-
tains, on the shoulder of Mount Washington, on the highest
ground near Buffalo, on the high grounds near Niagara, at
Brockville, on Montreal Mountain, at Quebec, on hills be-
side the Straits of Belleisle, on islands near Hamilton Inlet in
Labrador. Similar stones are strewed over Newfoundland,
Cape Breton, and Nova Scotia, at the head of the Bay of
Fundy, and all down the Atlantic coast as far as New York.
None were found at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Harrisburg, or
Washington. Water-worn drift abounds at all these places,
but no striated gneiss boulders were found there. On the banks
AMERICA. 247
of the Potomac and at Washington are large stones in clay,
but none of those found were striated. At Harrisburg is a
similar deposit. Icebergs and rafts of coast-ice are carrying
northern drift stones in the Atlantic, and if America were
submerged the Arctic Current might carry them as far as lat. 39,
long. 90, for Atlantic bergs reach lat. 37 in long. 47 W. If
a polar glacier carried these stones they ought to be found in
great moraine heaps at the end, but nothing like a terminal
moraine exists in the prairies. For hundreds of miles the plains
are almost as flat as the sea, and where the country rolls, sheets
of drift cover 'the rolling plain, as snow covers it in winter.
The stones and clay were surely dropped from melting ice-
rafts, as snow is shed from clouds, and as stones are now sown
in the Atlantic : broadcast. Observations made in America
so far agree with observations made in Europe.
In a series of papers in the Atlantic Monthly for 1864,
Agassiz attributes glacial phenomena to polar glaciers which
reached lat. 36 at least, and were 6000 feet thick in lat. 44.
A theory espoused by Ramsay, Geikie, Sir W. Logan, Agassiz,
and such men, is worthy of careful investigation. The obser-
vations above recorded seem rather to indicate the action of
polar currents, like those which exist, than the existence of
polar glaciers of these dimensions. The facts above stated may
swell the pile on which a just opinion must be founded at last.
The question turns on the denuding power of the Atlantic drift.
The forms into which the land has been ground by some ice-
engine closely resemble glacier-work ; if the Atlantic drift
is too small to account for the work, the polar glacier is the
only resource. After seeing glaciers and sea-icebergs at work,
and hearing the accounts of those who are familiar with the
polar sea-drift, the writer holds to the opinion expressed above,
and takes his stand on the iceberg for the present.
(II
CHAPTER XLIV.
GLACIAL PEKIODS.
ONE general conclusion arrived at is, that the mean tempera-
ture at the earth's surface may now be as cold as it has ever
been, though climate has varied at particular spots.
In Britain, for instance, there has been a recent " glacial
period," whose marks are perfectly fresh ; but according to
theory, partly founded upon these marks, it was a period like
that which now prevails on the banks of Newfoundland and
the coasts of Labrador.
Mr. Hopkins (quoted by Lyell, chap, vii., Principles of
Geology, 9th edition, 1853) calculated in 1852 that the snow-
line and glaciers would reach the sea in Wales and Ireland
1. If the Gulf Stream were diverted.
2. If land in Northern Europe were depressed 500 feet.
3. If a cold current swept over the submerged area simul-
taneously.
The British marks above described seem to prove that a
cold current did sweep south-westwards over Great Britain,
at a time when the land was submerged about 3000 feet ; and
that glaciers did reach the sea in these countries till land
rose to the level of 1400 feet, or thereabouts.
There has also been a recent glacial period in North
America, but, according to theory, it was only the marine
climate, which now exists to the east in corresponding lati-
250 GLACIAL PERIODS.
tudes. Sir C. Lyell has pointed out that the glacial period of
the Southern Hemisphere comes still nearer to the Equator ;
and if similar conditions prevailed in the northern half of
the world, the cold might drift as far there.
In chap, vii., Principles of Geology, it is pointed out that
Captain Cook found snow many fathoms thick extending
down to the brink of sea-cliffs in lat. 59 S., which corresponds
to Northern Scotland ; and that he found the perpetual snow-
line coincident with the sea-level in lat. 54 S., which corre-
sponds to Yorkshire.
In the Illustrated London News of 18th June 1864, is a
woodcut and a description of a collision with an iceberg on
the 4th of April 1864, in latitude 54 40' S. About midway
between Melbourne and Cape Horn, the screw-steamer ' Royal
Standard,' while sailing with a strong breeze, suddenly ran
into a dense fog, and shortly afterwards she ran against a cliff
" six hundred" feet high. After bumping and scraping along
this floating island for more than half a mile, and suffering
great damage, the vessel rounded the end of the cliff and so
escaped. She made her way under jury-masts to Eio de
Janeiro. In the earlier months of the same year, the Himalaya
and other vessels returning from Melbourne found these seas
" beset with icebergs." At the rate of l-9th above water, this
berg was 5400 feet thick, 4800 feet under water, and 600
above. In latitudes corresponding to the Mourne mountains,
the Solway Firth, Cumberland, and Durham, the sea is beset
with hills of ice a great deal thicker than all that is visible of
the British Isles. If the sea were level with the top of Ben
Nevis, a berg of this size might touch the top, scrape the
bottom of Loch Linne, 500 feet b'elow the present sea-level, and
rise 600 feet above water still. Changes of climate, and
glacial denudation, which such fleets might accomplish, are
GLACIAL PERIODS. 251
not easy to calculate. Sailors, familiar with bergs off New-
foundland, affirm that even these are insignificant to bergs
commonly seen off Cape Horn.
There are plenty of glaciers in New Zealand, about Cape
Horn, and in South America ; and very large icebergs, 150,
250, and 300 feet high, and two miles in circumference, have
been seen adrift off the Cape of Good Hope between lat. 36
and 39. These last were in latitudes which correspond to
Gibraltar, parts of Africa, Syria, Cyprus, Candia, Asia Minor,
Persia, Cabool, Japan, and Washington.
Sir Charles Lyell long ago imagined possible distributions
of land and sea which might, as he argues, produce great
general changes of climate over the whole earth.*
Having climbed thus far, some well-established facts
begin to wear a different aspect.
If marks in Scandinavia and Britain do in fact prove that
a cold current changed the climate of Western Europe, then
similar currents may have done as much elsewhere. It is not
necessary to assume a general glacial period in past time,
because marks of ice are found on rocks in countries where
the climate is now excessively hot.
It is proved that glacial action once extended a great way
from the Swiss mountains ; and that fact has been used to
support the argument for a period of intense cold. But if
ever there was a Baltic current east of England, Switzerland
was on the other side of it, and the Alps and Pyrenees must
have shared the influence which chilled Scotland.
The highest Swiss mountains are about 15,000 feet above
the sea ; their perpetual snow-line is at about 8500, and glaciers
* In his address, Sept. 14, 1864, at Bath, he attributes a former extension
of alpine glaciers to the submergence of land, now the Sahara, where marine
shells have been found.
252 GLACIAL PERIODS.
slide to within 3000 feet of the sea-level now. The mean
temperature below is about 55 ; but if Western Europe were
sunk 3000 feet or more, to the level of boulders on Beinn
Wyvis and Driom Uachdar in Scotland, and on the Dovre-
fjeld in Scandinavia, then the Baltic Current, which carried
Scandinavian boulders into Poland, might also wash the base
of the Alps. They are in the latitude of Nova Scotia, where
the mean coast temperature is 41 instead of 55. At this
rate the high Alps would still be 10,000 and 12,000 feet
above the sea-level, in regions where Glaisher found snow
falling above England, in June 1863, when the surface tem-
perature was 66. Alps 12,000 feet high, with a mean tem-
perature of 41 at the base, and a cold sea passing westwards,
might well breed glaciers large enough to be launched as ice-
bergs if Scotland and Scandinavia were chilled and frozen also.
When the land rose, these alpine glaciers would dwindle if
the climate warmed as the sea fell, but they might take a
long time to shrink to their present size.*
Cold is not easily driven from a fortress of which it has
long held possession. It takes a long time to get the winter's
frost "out of the ground." If the tail of the polar glacial
system passed near the Alps, existing glaciers may be rem-
nants of a large local system, like that which once covered
Scandinavia, and is now dwindling away there.
If the Mediterranean were the receptacle of an arctic
current laden with icebergs launched from the Alps, and drift-
ing over France, Italy, Austria, and low lands then under
the sea, there might be a local glacier system in Syria, and
icebergs in latitudes which correspond to seas off the Cape of
Good Hope.
* Hitchcock, an eminent American geologist, found what he considered to
he ancient sea-beaches, at about 3000 feet above the sea, in Switzerland.
GLACIAL PERIODS. 253
Hooker found an ancient moraine beside the cedars of
Lebanon, and photographs of the Holy Land show rock-forms
which strongly resemble ice-work.
Still further south, in Africa, snowy mountains now exist.
If the cold stream ran that way, these may have bred glaciers
at the Equator itself.
As described by Captain Grant in a lecture before the
Ethnological Society, in June 1863, the country about the
source of the Nile has a glaciated form. Some parts of it were
said to consist of " flat-topped hills, with outbursts of granite ;
rounded masses are lying upon each other ; there are saddle-
backed hills whose western faces are steep and broken ; and
large loose stones are scattered about." As snow was in sight,
and moraines are in the Lebanon, as the climate of this
raised African plain is temperate now, a glacial period is
possible even about the sources of the Nile.*
In Central Asia is a large system of local glaciers in the
Himalayas, which are well described by Hooker. According
to that traveller these glaciers are now dwindling away, for
their marks extend far beyond their present limits. Are we
therefore bound to assume that the whole world is getting
warmer ?
The snow-line of the Himalayas is now at 15,000 feet,
and the mean temperature at Delhi is 73. On the coast of
China, in the latitude of Delhi, the mean temperature is 64,
according to Dove's Isotherms. But if Behring's Straits were
wider, the climate on the eastern coast of China would suffer.
There is a cold current there now, it would be colder. Accord-
ing to Kotzebue, there is a striking contrast in the vegeta-
* This guess is left as first printed. It is not founded on any personal
knowledge of the place ; but as the Sahara is now proved to be a recent sea-
bottom, Alpine or Scandinavian boulders may be found there.
254 GLACIAL PERIODS.
tion on opposite coasts in Bearing's Straits, where no wider
than the Straits of Dover ; the western American coast
is well-wooded, but the eastern Asian coast is bare and
barren. A current runs inwards on the American side, and
a miniature arctic current is believed to run out on the Asian
side.
But if Behring's Straits were as wide as the North Atlantic
between Greenland and Scandinavia, so as to spill the Arctic
Current south-westward along the mountains of Chinese
Tartary, and over the low grounds of eastern Asia past the
Himalayas, and over India ; then, even though the glacier-
system of the Himalayas were lowered nearer to the earth's
centre out of the cold and into the heat, the cold would gain
if the sea were chilled, and the mean temperature at the foot
of the hills changed from 73 to 64, or to some lower tem-
perature.
If mountains 28,000 feet high were lowered to 18,000, and
stood in chilled water, with a climate like that of England at
the coast, then the snow-line would be lowered, and Indian
mountains might well breed larger glaciers.
They might even launch icebergs, and send stone-fleets
south-westwards to choke harbours on the African coast, and
do glacial work about the sources of the Nile.
In North America a glacial period reached latitudes
which icebergs now reach in the Atlantic, and it appears
that the continent was submerged about 3000 feet during
some part of the " glacial period." Eminent men hold that it
was a period of intense cold and enormous glaciers. The
writer believes that it was a period very like the present,
during which the Arctic Current has changed its course, and
land has risen and sunk about 3000 feet.
The changes of level required to swamp continents and
GLACIAL PERIODS. 255
change the course of ocean-currents, are not so large as may
be supposed.
500 feet would sink the source of the Volga and drown
the most of Europe.
2850 feet would sink the source of the Danube ; 4500
would sink the Elbe ; 1250 feet would sink the lake of Con-
stance ; 800 feet Basle ; 1400 feet the Clyde ; and boulders
are perched on higher European watersheds, in Scandinavia,
Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and central Europe.
At 4575 feet, on the Dovrefjeld, granite blocks are on
mica slate (Von Buch, etc.)
At 3000 feet, on Beinn Wyvis, mica-schist is upon slate.
At 3000 feet, on Driom Uachdar, gray granite is on slate.
All these are at places where transport by local glaciers is
out of the question. On the Jura mountains, erratics derived
from the Alps are common at about 3600 feet, and they too
may have floated on ice-rafts, according to this theory of a
sunken land now raised in Europe.
In Asia, the Ganges runs out of a glacier at 13,000 feet
above the sea. How much would sink China is not ascer-
tained, but most of India would be drowned by a depression
of 4000 feet.
In America, 630 feet would sink Lake Superior, and the
bottom of Lake Ontario is below the sea-level now. If
ancient fossil-shells of marine origin are sea-marks, most of the
high land in the world has been under the sea at some time.
If terraces be sea-marks, there are terraces on Snowdon, and
on the Alps, according to Hitchcock, at 3000 feet ; high up on
the Himalayas, according to Hooker ; and at about 3000 feet
on the White Mountains in North America. Sea-shells were
found at 3000 feet on Snowdon, by Mr. Baumgarten, in 1847.
There are cold climates, glaciers, and glacial action in
256 GLACIAL PERIODS.
spots all over the world, wherever mountains are high enough
to reach the cold, so as to catch and condense the clouds.
If such hills stand on the western side of an ocean stretching
nearly from pole to pole, and are washed by a cold stream, as
in Greenland, any quantity of glacier-work yet found may
be accounted for, without assuming any great universal
change of climate at the distance from the earth's centre
which is now high-water mark.
Though climate has changed place, it is not proved that
the snow-line has sunk and risen again everywhere.
One of the last writers who have specially studied this
subject, in speaking of Scotland, says :
" In whatever way the change was brought about, there can be little
doubt that when the land began once more to rise the temperature had
likewise risen."
This accords entirely with what has been said above.
But the following passages from the same page do not :
" The submergence of a large tract of land would tend to ameliorate
the climate. . . . The depression seems to have been general over the
north of Europe, though probably varying greatly in extent in different
regions." *
According to the theory now submitted to the merciful
consideration of able judges, any depression of land that lets
an arctic or antarctic current flow past an eastern coast will
not ameliorate but spoil a good climate ; and such depressions
in Europe and elsewhere probably caused the last "glacial
period" in Great Britain and Ireland ; perhaps in the Alps
and Pyrenees, Italy, Greece, Syria, India, America, and it
may be in Nubia also.
There is yet another theory which will account for larger
* On the Phenomena of the Glacial Drift of Scotland, by Archibald Geikie.
Glasgow, John Gray, 99 Hutchison Street. 1863. P. 102.
GLACIAL PERIODS. 257
glaciers if icebergs of the dimensions described are too small
to account for the ice-marks. *
It may seem paradoxical, but if the general temperature
of the earth's upper crust were a little warmer, and solar
radiation the same, there might be more glacial action.
The southern slopes of the Himalayas ought to be warmer
than the northern, and glaciers ought to abound most in the
coldest side, if glaciers resulted from cold alone. It is not so
in fact, because glaciers result from cold and heat. Many
English sportsmen have described these regions. Hooker
gives a reason for the abundance of glaciers on the warmest
side of the hills ; Maury tries to explain like facts, in America
and elsewhere, in his " sailing directions."
There is often a clear hard sky to the north, behind the
ridge, when the southern districts are shrouded in mist, and
deluged with rain, below the snow-line. Warm moist equa-
torial winds which sweep over the hot plains of India come
loaded with transparent vapour. While thus expanded, the
vapour only serves to intensify the heat by refracting the
sun's rays like a lens, but when these hot wet winds meet
the cold air of the high mountains, they are cooled and con-
tract, the vapour is condensed into mist, the lens is spoiled,
and the clouds drop their loads while they screen the snow
from the sun. These big snow-heaps spread an awning of
cloud in the air, to shield them from light.
The winds which pass over the Himalayas have but a
scanty remnant of their store to bestow upon the northern
slopes and high plateaus of central Asia ; they carry little to
the polar regions, to which the cargo was first consigned. To
use Maury's illustration, the wet is squeezed out by cold, as
* For a theory of this kind, see Quarterly Journal of Science, 1864 ; and a
lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, by Dr. Frankland, Jan. 29, 1864.
VOL. II. S
258 GLACIAL PERIODS.
water is wrung from a sponge. There is a clear sky on the
northern side, and the snow which does fall there melts
rapidly, or evaporates, because the sun's rays are but little
impeded by clouds in the lens of air.
If there were more water in the air generally, there would
be more clouds ; and these would form most at the coldest
spots, because, in the Himalayas and elsewhere, that is the
result of evaporation and condensation on the largest scale.
A confirmation of this opinion is given by the weather of
1863, 1864. In Britain and Canada the summers were very
warm and bright ; in Labrador and Newfoundland unusually
cold and very misty. There was more evaporation at one
place, and more condensation elsewhere.
If the whole of the sea were frozen, there could be few
clouds ; but if the whole world were warmer, there would
be more evaporation everywhere, swifter movements, more
condensation about the Poles, and more glacial action at high
levels and latitudes.
The same thing takes place in Scandinavia, apparently
for the same reason.
Warm wet south-westers, loaded with moisture, picked up
from the warm Gulf Stream, fly over the sea and the low
islands off Scotland, but they begin to drip as soon as they
get to high land. The rain-fall at Inverary and Gairloch is
far greater than in the Western Isles and Shetland ; but
when the clouds reach the snowy land about Bergen, they
pour. About the glacier districts there are floods and snow-
storms when there is clear weather close at hand. When the
winds get to the high grounds, about higher watersheds
further to the north and east, they have still a remnant of
snow for Sneehaetten, but there is not enough to make snow-
domes and glaciers. The summer sun clears most of Scan-
GLACIAL PEKIODS. 259
dinavia, because the sky is generally clear to the east of the
hills, and the sky is clear because Bergen and the west coast
glaciers have cleared it. From Bodals Kaabe, glaciers stream
down almost into the sea ; but there is no glacier worthy of
the name at 8000 feet above the sea further east, and still
further inland, at Sneehsetten and Eoraas (chaps, xiv. to xviii.)
The Bergen glaciers catch the Scotch clouds when they
land, and hold them till they are well-nigh drained.
Sntefell, in Iceland, is another case in point. It stands
far to the west, and has a local glacier system ; it often
gathers clouds from a clear sky, and rivulets pour down from
it while neighbouring tops are clear of mist and snow, and
rivers which flow from them are all but dry. It is a cloud-
condenser, distilling glaciers from the air.
Iceland itself is another example. All the large glacier-
systems are on the south, and in the centre of the island ; no
glaciers approach the sea on the northern coast (chap, xxv.)
Every floating iceberg is surrounded by a veil of mist,
which preserves the cold mass by stopping light. The wetter
and warmer the air is, the thicker is the fog which results.
Fogs on the banks of Newfoundland, near the borders of the
hot and cold water, are peculiarly dense (chaps, xxiii. xxiv.
xliii., etc.)
On a bright day after a shower of snow, the shadows of
posts in Hyde Park are often marked out in lines of snow,
when the rest of the ground has been cleared by sunlight.
Of two vessels of water in sunlight and shade, on the opposite
sides of a house, the one on which light falls most loses most
weight by evaporation.
The following is the result of an experiment. 19 } th June
1864. Two glass vessels intended to hold milk in a dairy,
\vere partially filled with garden mould and water, made equal
260 GLACIAL PERIODS.
in weight, and exposed on opposite sides of the same house on
the north side under a verandah, on the south side on a pillar.
22d June. After about forty-eight hours weighed. Weather
fine ; strong S.W. breezes, and bright sun during the day ; clear
sky at night ; no rain.
Shade . . . . . 94 J ounces.
Light 76
Difference . . . . 18|
Sun-light is a force which lifts water, but it is turned aside
by any screen which casts a dark shade.
But if the whole earth were warmer, the sea would be
warmer and would evaporate faster, to form more clouds, to
give more shade to the ice-condensers, which now exist, in
spite of sunlight, even on the tops of volcanoes.
If Himalayan, Scandinavian, and Icelandic glaciers exist
because there is a warm sea and a bright sun at the Equator,
it seems to follow that they would grow larger, and that
polar systems would move faster, and so get further into
warm regions, if more power were applied at the boiler-end
of the caloric engine.
The same result follows if more fuel is burned under a
still, or if colder water is poured on the worm ; in either
case the liquor flows faster. If weight be added in one scale,
or taken from the other, the result is the same on the balance.
Because there are large glacier systems in Iceland, close
above boiling water and molten stone, there may have
been glacial periods on a far warmer globe. But the present
state of things appears sufficient to account for all glacial
phenomena yet observed.
Yet another theory has been started to account for glacial
periods. It is assumed that there are regions in space which
GLACIAL PERIODS.
2G1
are colder than others, and that the solar system passes through
these frigid zones at stated periods. These regions are as yet
beyond the reach of a mere traveller, and the ice-records
which he has endeavoured to translate do not seem to reach
far back or recur at intervals. If anything is to be learned
about fossil climates, patient grubbing in mud and ashes
may do more than soaring at once after astronomers into
infinite space.
The way upwards lies downwards at first. A breaker
falls headlong, but the spray rises, and the force of the fall
builds up the sea-beach. We must wade through water to
dry land, and grope in darkness before we can reach light.
FIG. 91. A BREAKING WAVE. Prom a photograph.
THE END OF PART I. DENUDATION.
CHAPTER XLV.
DEPOSITION I.
NATURAL SCIENCE FORCE ENGINES TOOLS MARKS.
IN the preceding pages an attempt has been made to show
that some branches of geology may be studied experimentally.
Small engines, which are worked by the natural forces
which work natural engines, imitate nature ; and if all me-
chanics are parts of one system, that which is learned from
one engine applies to all. So in studying "dynamical
geology," working-models are useful aids.
Men can neither alter the laws of nature nor oppose them
with success ; they must obey ; but they can work with
nature's powers by obeying nature's laws. An engineer
cannot stir a boat by stuffing a furnace with ice and a con-
denser with embers ; but by using heat and cold in the natural
order of heat below and cold above, pistons are lifted and
lowered, and steamboats are moved horizontally round the
world. We are too short-lived and short-sighted to see with
bodily eyes large geological movements and changes, which,
in long periods of time, take place in air, sea, and land, about
us ; we cannot even hope to see the whole of the outside of
the ball on which we dwell ; we cannot get at the inside of
it at all. The comprehension of any part of this engine is
out of our reach, because we cannot even see the works. But
models may be worked by the aid of natural forces, and when
the models are engines of manageable size, their mode of
NATURAL SCIENCE. 263
action is more easily understood. We may learn something
about the large engine, by watching how small ones work.
There are many things which men know but cannot ex-
plain, many facts which we are incapable of understanding.
We cannot explain why we fall in air, sink or swim in water,
and stand upon earth. We know the facts, but do not ex-
plain them by calling a force " gravitation," and by talking of
"gases, fluids, and solids," and their " specific gravities." But
in striving to reach unattainable knowledge, some has been
reached which is power when applied to small engines ; and
which gives some vague notion of the largest engine of all.
Astronomy is learned from the fall of weights, and the flight
of small projectiles. Geology may, in like manner, be learned
from geological toys. Human minds cannot grasp the ideas of
infinite size or smallness, space, time, or number ; but those
who think are driven by facts to perceive that these incom-
prehensible things must be. If there be a limit anywhere,
what is beyond it ?
Men can never understand the great engine which works
in infinite space, for they cannot even comprehend an atom ;
but that is no reason for ceasing to strive. An old Scotch
saw says, "Aim at a gown of gowd, and ye '11 get the sleeve
o't." In striving to understand how mountains have been
made, we may set natural mechanical forces to build and
demolish molehills ; we can construct and watch our little
engines. In seeking abstract knowledge, things of practical
use shreds of the golden gown are found. By experiment,
designedly or accidentally made, men have learned all that
they know about the engine with which they travel through
space ; and they have used their knowledge to make small
useful engines to carry them round the deck of their spherical
rolling ship.
264 FORGE.
By geological experiment, human minds may gain more
knowledge of the engine, under hatches, and by imitating it
gain more power. Engines are worked only by using natural
powers ; these were found out while searching ; the most
ignorant searcher may chance to find a treasure, even on
board of this our argosy which circles round the sun.
Water and steam power are treasures, but only applica-
tions of natural force to human engines.
It took a long time to " invent" a water-mill, and a clock,
and other engines worked by weights. The hydraulic cranes
which now wave their black iron arms like living giants, and
lift and pour out cauldrons of molten iron as a man lifts a
pail of water, have only appeared in modern times ; but gra-
vitation, which works all these engines, had been pouring rivers
and oceans upon the earth, and steering it amongst other
stars, before there were men or millers to use that natural
mechanical power. Like it, steam is no human invention,
and its application to engines is nothing new. It is told that
one of the many so-called inventors of steam-engines gained
his first knowledge of steam-power from the clattering lid of
his mother's kettle. He was but a young discoverer, an
observant scholar and imitator ; and yet his mind has swayed
other minds and inanimate matter, ever since he applied the
knowledge which descended to him from the first inventor
of kettles, and was left by him as a growing fund to benefit
all engineers. The human inventor did not contrive a force ;
he found one, and so gained power which he used. There is,
in fact, no single mechanical principle in any human con-
trivance, which had not been applied to some natural engine,
long before the principle was "invented" and "patented" by
men.
The first savage who boiled a root unwittingly used steam-
ENGINES. 265
power and burst boilers, in the food which he ate. A human
mind had swayed the movements of matter, and had set a
caloric engine to work when a man had purposely kindled a
fire. But the application of heat-power is far older. What-
ever the antiquity of men, and kettles, and fires kindled by men
to boil kettles, may be, boiling springs, volcanoes, the world,
heat, and light, are older than men and their weak inventions.
The tool-marks of the old engines record part of their history
on rocks.
In striving to understand the records and the engines, the
best course is to seek after the powers employed, and set
them to work when found.
If the minds of men who only discovered a use for weight
and heat still sway the minds of engineers, and through them
and their engines sway the movements of inanimate matter, a
greater Mind can at least do as much with the universe and
the minds of its inhabitants. Earnest striving to solve pro-
blems in natural science leads to this belief. We can neither
see all the face nor reach the works of our own little world, nor
can we hope to understand even that one wheel in the great
engine ; we cannot by searching find out its Maker ; but we
cannot do better than study his works. The more we see of
them, the plainer it must appear that such an engine had a
contriver who governs it.
In making geological toys to imitate parts of the engine
of nature, all natural mechanical forces yet discovered may be
employed upon all materials within reach, and all available
wits set to watch results and turn knowledge to practical use.
Millers have learned to use gravitation with water-weights,
in spite of river-floods ; engineers may learn to use the world's
heat, in spite of volcanic eruptions.
It has been done in Italy. If Icelanders would use hot
26C FORCE.
springs which have worked for centuries, they might have
winter-gardens and hothouses ; they might boil their mutton
for nothing and sell the soup ; they might at least warm their
houses and cow-byres, irrigate their hay-fields, and wash in
the hot water which runs to waste at their doors. If miners
would but direct the natural underground heat-power which
moves air in deep mines, they might save human lives, and
the cost of power expended in ventilation. If we could learn
to store up and use the heat-power which lifts water above
ground, and so works all rivers and water-mills, there is
plenty of spare sun-power to work all the heat-machines on
the earth. Magnetism has been pressed and sent to sea as
pilot ; that giant may, perhaps, be set to harder work. Elec-
tricity is errand-boy and link-man, gilder and doctor, and
strong enough for any place. Light paints portraits, kindles
fires, and tells the shape and composition of distant worlds.
Light, too, may be harnessed and set to work in time.
Towards useful discoveiy the study of natural science
tends ; it can lead to no ill, for the further we go on this path
the nearer we get to truth. Natural science is not taught at
English schools, and so much the worse for those who studied
there. Some school of philosophers taught that the world
stood upon the back of an elephant, and the elephant upon a
tortoise. It was lawful to learn this much, but it was impious
to ask what the tortoise stood upon : no one knew that mys-
tery, and no one ought to seek to know it. Once it was
impious to assert that the earth went round the sun. But
now this reign of authority has ended. According to mo-
dern views, unstable ground may be cut from under the
feet of the tortoise, and the sun does not go round the
world, human authority notwithstanding. We may now
seek truth anywhere and everywhere without offence; but
ENGINES. 267
English scholars must seek it for themselves if they choose
this path.
Natural philosophy is now open to all ; but hitherto it has
been little taught. Any child can and may make experiments.
Every successful effort to find a cause is a fresh gain to all ;
the search for truth can lead to no ill if each step is made
upon solid facts. All paths lead two ways, and study may lead
to error ; but those who travel the wrong way ignore facts or
misunderstand them. He who sets his cart to drag his horse,
mistaking effects for causes, may travel fast ; but he can never
rise. All inorganic forms which have been accounted for, re-
cord movements ; all movements which have been explained,
have causes. Any attempt to decipher these records and
discover movements, forces, and causes, ought to lead up
towards the great First Cause, whose mind and will contrived
and made the natural engine of the universe. Every fact and
finger-post, on every path tried, aims at this central truth, as
the compass aims at the Pole.
An attempt has been made thus far to rise gradually from
small engines and their marks to larger ones, from draughts
in a room to trade winds, from raindrops and gutters to ocean-
currents and geological denudation. A further attempt will
be made to show the use of working-models in learning the
unwritten history of great events ; of things which are too
big to be seen by little men ; of changes which occupy longer
time than human lives. The deposition of sedimentary strata,
and their upheaval, follow after the denudation which made
the chips. The way upwards lies downwards at first, for all
paths yet tried lead inwards, and aim at some underground
central force hidden there.
CHAPTER XLVI.
DEPOSITION 2 TIME 2 TEMPEKATURE LIGHT AIR-
WATER WINDS WAVES FORM.
TIME. In chap. ix. an attempt was made to show that a rate
of denudation proves the ancient date of a recent series of
events in the geology of Iceland. A rate of deposition is
another measure of past time. If the surface of the world
has been ground down and worn away so as to produce
certain sculptured forms, the chips must be somewhere, and
the rubbish-heaps in proportion to the work done, and to the
time spent upon it. We judge of a carpenter by his chips ;
and so we estimate other work. It is manifest that a vast
number of trees have been sawn up at spots in Scandinavia,
because of the heaps of sawdust on shore and below the mills,
in the river and in the river-bed. An old mine is known by
large rubbish-heaps. An old furnace is known by large hills
of cinders. Ancient and long-continued human occupation
of the coast of Denmark, is proved by large heaps of oyster-
shells, gnawed bones, and such contents of " kitchen middens."
The evidence for time is equally good if the carpenter has
struck work, or the saw-mill has stopped, or the mine is
" knocked," or the furnace " blown out," or the men who ate
the oysters are eaten by worms.
So it is with sedimentary rocks. They are chips ; and,
from their thickness, it is plain that a great number of engines,
of some kind, have been hewing rocks for a very long time,
TIME. 269
and shooting the rubbish into the sea, to be carried and
packed. So deposition may equal denudation, but cannot
exceed it.
In most cases, the only attainable measure of denuda-
tion, and the only time-keeper, for past time, is the size
of these beds of rubbish. Eiver denudation in Iceland
is older than Icelandic history ; so is glacial denudation.
The discoverers named the land, and the 'ice' did not grow
there in a day. A rate of glacial action has not been found,
and it certainly varies. The machine is working full speed
in Greenland ; it has struck work in Britain ; and it is work-
ing half speed in Scandinavia. Taking the present rate in
Iceland as something like a medium rate for many ages,
the measure of the work done is the quantity of mud now
carried out of the groove in which ice works.
An old fisherman's test for clear water may be used when
a better guage is wanting. Fish will not take a fly in muddy
water, probably because they cannot see it from their haunts
at the bottom ; and the test for fishable water is : " Wade
ye in to yer knees, and when ye can count yer ten taes she'll
lush." In the sea off the west coast of Scotland, shells are
visible in many fathoms. In glacier-rivers in general, and in
large Icelandic rivers in particular, the fisherman's test shows
water as thick as the muddiest of Scotch rivers in the wildest
spate, or the water in London when Faraday dropped his card
on Father Thames, and found him filthy. Wade into the
Hvita up to the ankles, and the bare feet are wholly hidden
from the eyes by white mud. Most of the Icelandic rivers are
like it, and wont " fush " at all. The Hvita is a broad, deep,
rapid, thick, gray stream, larger than the Thames, and all the
mud is ground by glaciers from igneous rocks. The quantity
of mud in a gallon, and the number of gallons which pass in a
270 FORM.
given time, would give a rough measure of the work of denu-
dation accomplished in this basin. If the beds of sediment
could be found and identified, they would equal the groove
made. Beds of rock-chips cannot be referred to the several
grooves whence they were taken ; but chips do not escape
from the world ; and because all sedimentary rocks are chips,
and denudation at the fastest known rate is slow, all history
must be as nothing to the geological time which is measured
by sedimentary rocks. Modern geology deals chiefly with
rubbish-heaps of this kind, with their transport and packing,
and with the order in which the layers are laid. Except in
the case of glacial drift, no attempt is made to trace stones to
parent rocks in position ; but deposition clearly results from
denudation, from transport of materials, sorting and packing ;
and all these operations occupy time.
FORM results from movement, and movement from Force.
The forms of sedimentary beds record movements, and the
forces which caused them : and they are thermometers also,
for they register temperature.
If the packing of a bed of silt records water-work, it also
records some temperature greater than the freezing-point of
water at the earth's surface. Pebbles and grains of sand,
which retain their shapes though cemented together, record
that a temperature less than the melting-point of the stone
has endured at the spot ever since the bed of silt fell through
unfrozen water. The maximum limit of temperature at a
particular spot is thus recorded for the whole of the time
during which this particular form has lasted.
The Forces which pack silt, by moving air and water, are
the same which work denudation, and the engines and tools
TEMPERATURE ENGINES TOOL-MARKS. 271
are the same. Loose stories are carried, sorted, and packed
by rivers and land-ice, by ocean-currents and winds, by
waves, and by floats which are strong enough to carry such
weights. The fall of the sediment is a result of gravitation,
the rise of the water results from lieat as it appears.
The forms are the tool-marks of these engines, and by
learning the marks, ancient work may be assigned to the
engine which did it, and to the mechanical force which
drives the engine.
In order to learn the marks, the engine may be watched,
or, when any part of it is out of reach, another part may be
watched, and the lesson so learned indirectly. We cannot
get to the surface of the air, but we can watch waves on the
surface of water, and study the barometer ; we cannot get to
the bottom of the sea, but we can watch the air-engine at
work upon snow and sand-drifts on shore, and study the
sea-beach at low tide. We can see the tools at work
Waves. When a fluid is moved by any force, the smooth
surface takes a form which indicates the direction of move-
ment : if solids are moved by the moving fluid, they too are
packed into corresponding shapes, which may endure to
record what happened at a particular time and place. In
order to recognise work done by an old wave, the thing to
study is an existing wave.
Waves on a stream. A stream of water, or of any other
fluid, while flowing over an uneven bed, or in a narrow chan-
nel, curls over and forms waves. The water is dragged down-
wards, but it is also thrown upwards and from side to side by
reflection from impediments, and it moves in curves, which
produce wave-forms above, and wave-marks below.
By knowing these wave-forms anglers know where to seek
fish, and boatmen how to avoid stones. In deeper water
272 WAVES.
similar forms betray reefs and sandbanks ; on dry ground silt-
forms record the passage of currents, and of departed waves,
even waves in the invisible air. In any bed of sedimentary
rock, similar forms record similar movements.
Weight.
Fid. 92. WAVE-FORMS AND WAVE-MARKS.
We are driven to assume that water, and other fluids, con-
sist of particles, and that they jostle and rebound ; that the
shapes of waves upon running streams result from the direc-
tions in which force and resistance act upon these particles.
When fluid and solid particles, dry dust, sand, small shot,
and similar materials, are poured down a slope, wave-forms
and movements resemble each other in all the streams. In
sorting dust-shot, a stream is allowed to escape from under a
sluice, and the shot, in rolling down a board, moves like water
in a " lasher." A single ball or a big stone leaps down-hill in
curves, which agree with wave-curves on water-streams.
Waves which the wind drives along the surface of stagnant
water, also resemble curves described by solids. A ball
played on a billiard-table bounds, and rebounds ; jostles other
balls, and moves on the plane as waves do in a pond, or like
tidal waves reflected from continents. We may assume that
fluids consist of particles which also jostle and rebound.
If a marble is driven against one end of a row of marbles,
the driving force and the motion pass from ball to ball
through the series ; and the last ball moves till the force
which moved it is transferred elsewhere ; or, being changed,
disappears. If water consists of particles, then water and
LIGHT. 273
loose sand make a series, and motion and force pass through
it to the last particle which records the movement when it
stops. Some force sunlight, for example moves air ; and
the wind stirs the sea, which stirs sand ; the last grains of
this series take the form of water-waves, on the sea-beach
and in deep water. The sand-form records movement in
water, air, and light, if light be the force which started this
train.
Water-waves produce waves on sand. Waves in air also
produce like forms in dry dust. Waves of sound are copied
in dry sand spread on a sounding-board, and on water in a
musical glass. Photography and photometry record move-
ments in light, or movements caused by light, and philoso-
phers have come to believe that light is but an effect of sys-
tems of waves moving in some unknown fluid, as sound-
waves move in air. Each of these things water, air, and the
fluid whose waves are light is capable of moving other things.
The moving force which moved the first particles in the
series, of which the last retains the recording form, is the force
which did this work ; if light moves the air, light makes the
ripple-mark on the beach. Are we to stop there ?
In the row of marbles a hand and a human will were in
the series, and the will moved the last marble. In silt-beds
and old stratified rocks, the chain of cause and effect may
seem endless ; but the ultimate cause of the ripple-mark must
be will also, unless there is movement without a cause
somewhere short of the will. Unless there is a will at the
end of the train of machinery, sand, or the sea, or the wind,
or the light of the sun, or some other inanimate thing, moves
without a cause ; which is contrary to experience, and there-
fore cannot be assumed in any train of reasoning. We never
find marbles and billiard-balls, shot and shell, moving with-
VOL. II. T
274 NATURAL SCIENCE.
out a cause, and most of their movements can be traced back
to human will : why should larger or smaller particles,
worlds, or atoms, move without a cause, more than these ?
Forms which result from denudation and from deposition
are as figures, on a dial-plate which record movements ; from
them the moving force may be sought through the works :
the further men can reach the better, if they pause to think
of Him who said, Let there be light, and feel that they are
looking at the works of their Maker, when they study natural
science, and the tool-marks of His engines.
CHAPTER XLVII.
DEPOSITION 3 WINDS 2 WAVES 2 WAVE-MARKS.
BECAUSE the works of nature are too large for human inspec-
tion, working-models of them help comprehension. Imme-
diate causes are learned by watching the rapid growth of
form. The wind is invisible, but smoke and waves are not ;
and through their visible forms and movements, invisible
movements and forms may be seen.
When wind blows along the calm surface of still water it
does not move in straight lines, horizontally ; it strikes down-
wards, and rolls along, driving the water-surface before it.
On a windy day, where a mountaineer has fired a moor, the
white stream of smoke flying over the brown heath rolls as it
flies. It rolls, and breaks, and surges over the plain, as the
wind does. It flows down hill into a valley, and rolls up the
opposite slope ; and where the smoke strikes visibly, the
brown heath bends before the invisible wind. When some
farmer is burning weeds near a hay-field, the waves on the
sea of green fit into the curves of the smoke-cloud, and the
smoke betrays the immediate cause of the movement, though
it is invisible. Air does not flow in flat sheets or straight
streams, but rolls as water does in a river. Because the river
rolls, sand is packed into the shapes of waves, on water, heath,
and grass, which are driven by rolling streams of air.
When a breeze begins to stir the glassy surface of a lake,
floats move slowly along, while tiny waves and floats rise and
2 ( DEPOSITION.
fall, advance and slide back, as they are pushed by the wind,
and pulled down by weight. The surface "ripples," and
moves as far as the force can drive it. The far end of a
canal grows deeper when the wind blows along it. Large
lakes rise to leeward ; high tides coincide with strong gales
at sea. Water is driven by the wind, and the shape of a
wave suggests that it is moving water driven up over water
at rest, and falling back when the force has done all it can to
push it over and make a breaker of a roller.
The force which moved the air is transferred to the water,
and from particle to particle ; and thus a " curl on the water"
grows ; bigger waves grow, and some large ones even move
faster than the wind, and so foretell approaching storms.
The force which is thus transmitted is also reflected, bent
aside, accumulated, dispersed, accelerated, and retarded. So
the forms of waves, and their movements, are complicated
and hard to comprehend.
Horizontal movements. Waves, moving upon the surface,
are not straight continuous ridges, crossing the path of the
wind ; but short curved ridges, moving and spreading in
many directions. Waves on any puddle are like sea-waves
in this respect.
Barnespool at Eton is a sheltered pool, walled round, and
spanned by a bridge. When the wind blows strongly from
the west, curved systems of small waves are driven in under
the bridge ; they strike against the walls, and curl round the
piers, and they rebound from side to side. The force which
moves the wind is transferred to water, transmitted through
a series of water-particles, bent aside in passing the pier,
reflected from the walls, and finally recorded upon a mina-
ture beach. These small systems are very complicated, and
as hard to comprehend as larger wave-systems, but they are
WAVES WAVE-MARKS. 277
better seen, because the whole pool can be seen at once. The
waves can be watched from the bridge, bending, crossing, and
re-crossing ; meeting, passing, rebounding from the walls, and
gradually fading away into a calm at the sheltered end of the
stagnant pool. Barnespool was the sole teacher of this science
at Eton.
It is easy to draw and map out these wave-systems, and
to apply the knowledge to larger systems of waves. It is
easy to see how invisible particles of water move, by watch-
ing the movements of solid floats. There is no general move-
ment in the water, but there is a slow drift on the surface.
Apples, orange-peel, bits of ice, and other things which float
deep, advance slowly towards the calm, but they do not move
steadily, or in straight paths. They move as the water does,
up and down, forwards and backwards, describing curved
paths, like waltzers or tumblers, who whirl and roll while they
advance. The whole of these movements clearly result from
the force which moved the wind, and that is sunlight, according
to modern science. The beach at the end is the tool-mark of
the engine driven by some mechanical force. It is a photo-
graph.
What is true of this puddle is true of larger ponds.
Tlie Serpentine, in London, is a larger sheet of water
spanned by a larger bridge, imder which waves pass. Waves
at the far end cannot be seen from the bridge, but they can
be followed and watched. The systems move fastest in the
middle ; they are retarded by the sides, and so form loops, as
they do under every arch. At the end, the loops beat upon
a concave dam, and the waves are reflected ; they return and
meet at a focus, where the force which drove them is accumu-
lated. The waves leap highest in the focus of the wall, and
there they disperse, and set off again, moving back against
278 DEPOSITION.
the wind which drove them forward. At the sides of the
canal, two systems of breakers cross each other diagonally.
One is the side of the loop which is moving forwards, the
other is the side of the reflected loop which is moving back-
wards. Orange-peel and water-logged apples leap and rock
to and fro, advance arid retire, as water-particles must do ;
and ducks in search of food paddle about under the wall,
and use their experience of reflected force to avoid shipwreck.
Force, from which all these complicated movements result,
is still the same ; and the shape of the gravel beach, and piles
of drifted rubbish upon it, record the movement and the force.
The same thing is to be seen wherever there is a beach.
At Weymoutli, the waves of a large bay dash against a
concave sea-wall, and rebound. Systems of large size may
be seen advancing from the horizon, and retreating from the
wall ; crossing and recrossing, and meeting in the focus, as
truly as invisible waves of sound and light meet in the focus
of a reflector. The waves driven by an accumulation of
force leap up to form cones and pyramids, and jets of spray ;
and the sea boils.
From the top of Portland Island, which makes one horn
of this bay, still larger Atlantic waves are seen moving
rapidly up channel. They are retarded by the ebb, are accele-
rated by the flood ; they are turned aside in passing the Bill
of Portland, curl round into the shelter, and roll into the
bay. They are reflected from the beach; the force is accumu-
lated in the focus, dispersed beyond it ; ships at anchor and
water-logged buoys rock in the sea ; and one side of the Chesil
Bank records these movements, and the amount of deflected
force expended in building this beach behind Portland.
The whole is but an enlarged edition of Barnespool, more
difficult to see and harder to comprehend, because larger. A
WAVES WAVE-MAKKS.
279
whole system is seen from the bridge at Eton ; ten minutes
will carry an observer from one end of the Serpentine to the
other ; but from Weymouth to the Bill of Portland is a day's
march, and the wide Atlantic is beyond.
On Isle de Rlie, near Kochelle, on the coast of France,
stands a tall lighthouse, called Tour de Balene. It stands
upon a sandy point, with well-marked sea-beaches. Outside
the point is a long flat shoal, at the end of which stands a
FIG. 93. CROSS-ROLLERS AT ISLE DE RHE, NEAR ROCHELLE.
From a sketch made from the Tour de Balene.
second lighthouse on a rock which is covered at high tide.
Big waves rolling in from the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic
hit upon the end of this shoal. They are most retarded where
the water is shallowest ; and so the long curved ridges become
loops, bend and curl inwards. They do no more than smaller
waves do on points in Barnespool ; but from their greater
size these cross-rollers are very remarkable, and do very re-
280 DEPOSITION,
markable work. One moving system thus Lent on a shoal
beyond the limits of vision appears to be two systems moving
diagonally upon opposite sides of the shoal, the point, and
the lighthouse upon it. The long rollers break and form a
moving network, whose knots are tall crested " white horses"
advancing directly upon the end of the spit ; while the
meshes are green rollers, crossing each other at right angles,
and breaking heavily on opposite sides of the point.
The bent sea-waves converge and meet at their focus
below the lighthouse, as rays of refracted sunlight converge
and inlet in the focus of the lens above. The form of the
sand-spit records this movement, as the Chesil Bank, and
miniature banks in the Serpentine and in Barnespool,
record the movements of smaller waves there. But in this
case the pool is too large to be seen, and harder to under-
stand for that reason.
Tides are but larger waves harder to comprehend, and
driven by a different variety of force. If ordinary sea-waves
result from the radiating force which moves the winds, these
appear to result from the converging force of gravitation,
which drags water towards centres, outside of the circles which
bound the sea. Tide-waves rise under the sun and moon, and
follow them westward ; but they too rebound, and their vast
and complicated movements have not been fully unravelled.
Where tides have been mapped and so brought within
reach of human vision, the movements of tidal waves appear
to agree with those of common waves, which are impeded in
wandering over the surface of smaller pools.
It is not necessary to study uncontrollable tides or Atlantic
waves ; a knowledge of this part of the engine may be fished
out of every puddle. The advance of the tidal wave in the
Bay of Fundy, where the rise is from 40 to 75 feet, though it
WAVES WAVE-MARKS. 281
is one of the grandest sights in nature, is but a large copy of
the flux and reflux of broken waves in any creek, or on any
sandy beach.
When something of the movement of waves has been
learned, marks made by waves on sand and gravel beaches
are comprehensible ; and similar marks, wherever found, can
be referred to their immediate cause, and their meaning so far
interpreted. Till the movements of waves are studied, their
marks mean nothing, because their language is a foreign speech.
At p. 340, vol. 1, a lesson taught by the ebb-tideis set
down as it was learned on a Highland strand ; it is good for
all strands, new and old, if only they retain the tool-marks of
Deposition by waves.
Old ripple-marks on the millstone grits of Yorkshire, in
quarries near Pately Bridge, are still as perfect as they are on
a strand from which the ebb has just retired. When a new
surface in the quarry is laid bare, ripple-marks are the same
in shape, size, colour, and material, as ripple-marks in the sea.
Tracks of creatures which wriggled, and crawled, and hopped,
and walkew about on the wet sand ages ago, are as fresh upon
the stone as similar tracks made within the hour. It was
recorded upon one slab that water had moved first towards
the north-east, and then towards the south-east, or that two
systems of waves had crossed. The surface so marked by
moving water was left dry, marked by moving creatures, and
dimpled by falling drops of rain or by rising bubbles of some
gas. This surface now is solid rock ; thousands like it lie
over it and under it, like pages in a book ; many thick beds
of sandstone are piled like volumes stacked in the corner of a
room. The system stands low in the series of geological
records, but far above the floor. The beds in these quarries
have been shattered, broken, distorted, disturbed, upheaved,
282 DEPOSITION.
crumpled ; big angular rents, fissures, and fractures, are there
as plainly seen as fractures made with gunpowder and sledge-
hammers. Some of the rifts have been filled, and in some of
these are valuable metals, which are worked. Since the veins
were formed, the sides of the crack have moved, for there are
slickensides in the veins ; they have moved in various direc-
tions, for marks on the smooth surface cross each other where
they have rubbed. Since all these movements took place,
the broken edges of the broken beds have been ground away
and rounded off " denuded" into the shape of the Yorkshire
hills and dales.
But in spite of all these and many other changes, and of
all the time which has elapsed, the tool-mark of a tiny water-
wave, and the spoor of living creatures, record certain facts in
language too plain to be gainsaid or misunderstood.
Low down in the geological pile of stone books, on a spot
iii a crumpled torn page of millstone grit, it is recorded that
long ago there was deposit and packing of silt in fluid water,
which moved as water now moves on the nearest sandbank in
the Humber ; that plants grew, that living creatures crawled,
and that rain fell from the air. There is no human standard
measure for such denudation and deposition, or for such time
as this ; but the form registers the working of the old engine,
which still works.
Tlu climate of Yorkshire is also recorded within certain
limits. The water was not frozen ; it was not steam, nor was
it too hot for animal and vegetable life. The coal vegetation
which succeeded resembles tropical vegetation of the present
day. It is probable that the climate was warm. Sometimes
an inorganic shape is laid bare in the Yorkshire quarries,
which has no counterpart on cold misty northern shores, and
these shapes tell their story more certainly than fossils. It
WAVES WAVE-MARKS. 283
is only probable that a plant like a palm-tree had a similar
nature ; it is not certain. It was probable that an extinct
elephant lived where the climate was hot ; but it has been
proved by the discovery of woolly hair beside mammoth's
bones, and on the skin of a mammoth, which fell out of
frozen ground about Behring's Straits, that the fossil elephants
which lived about the "glacial period" were provided with
natural coverings to resist the cold which prevailed in Eng-
land when English mammoths lived.
The trees of the coal-formation may have flourished in
colder climates, though they are like the tropical vegetation
which now feeds elephants. No experiment can test con-
clusions drawn from the shape of a fossil shell, and from the
habits of living things ; but inorganic forms record facts which
seem never to vary. Frozen mud, mud packed by waves, and
sun-baked mud of the present day, must, so far as we know,
be like mud baked, washed, or frozen, at the time when the
first bed of silt was formed.
Beside, and mingled with ripple-marks, certain inorganic
forms are occasionally laid bare in quarries near Pately Bridge,
which seem to mean baking rather than freezing : a warm
climate in the place where millstone grits are found. One
seemed to be a form moulded in sand, partly by air. Dry-
looking white sand, apparently blown by the wind, is scarcely
bound together, and rests loosely where it fell upon a strange,
brown, rounded form, whose section shows minute bedding.
It seems as if a bank of sand and mud beside a runlet had
been well baked till it cracked, that the edges were rounded
off by tides or floods till a definite form, a tool-mark of
deposition and denudation, was moulded in sand. Then
came a sheet of brown mud or a green coat of vegetation,
now reduced to a colour, and over this the dry white sand
284 DEPOSITION.
appears to have drifted. Then came a deluge of clean gray
sand, which buried the whole, hid it and preserved it till it
was quarried by Yorlcshirernen in search of paving-stones.
The whole document must be read together before the record
is understood.
Eipple-marks are familiar to geologists, but other in-
organic fossil forms have not been much noticed, though they
are equally worthy of attention as records. Ripple-marks
abound in sedimentary rocks of all ages. In the old rocks of
Orkney are ripple-marked slates. In the oldest of Welsh
slates, where no trace of life has yet been found, ripples are
perfect. In these old, unaltered, sedimentary beds, which
have been tilted, shattered, baked, and crumpled, the hard
blue surface of a flag when newly bared is often rippled as
plainly as the nearest mud-bank. But in older Canadian
beds which have been more altered, even these marks are
obliterated.
Where the form exists it tells its own tale ; it tells that
the fusing point of the rock lias not been reached at the place
since the mark was made ; that the freezing point of the
fluid which packed the sand or mud was not reached when
the waves moved. But when the form has been obliterated
at one part of an altered bed, though preserved elsewhere, it
proves that some other force has been at work since the sedi-
ment was packed by waves.
The alphabet of form is to be learned from engines work-
ing on the surface of the globe ; but inscriptions to be read
are stored below, and some of them are harder to read than
ripple-marks, because they were written underground.
CHAPTEE XLVIII.
DEPOSITION 4 WINDS 3 WAVES 3 BEACHES.
THE most characteristic wave-mark is a beach. It is a form
like that of waves which beat upon it, one which can only be
understood by watching waves. A more beautiful thing than
a big wave is not to be found in nature. Many a pleasant
dreamy hour has the writer of these pages spent in watching
Atlantic rollers sweeping on from the blue distance to thun-
der in against the Scottish coast. A green glassy ridge comes
rapidly on, glittering in the sunlight ; heaving, growing, swell-
ing, and mounting up, as it comes nearer and nearer ; growing
steeper and steeper as it reaches shallower water. The top
is ever pushing on over the base ; the base is constantly held
by the sea-bottorn, and pushed back by the undertow. The
steep ridge of water becomes a wall, and the wall a hollow
curve like a sea-shell, and then the moving hill rolls over
its base, and tons of water fall headlong down with a crash.
The broken water rushes on like a rising tide of white foam,
and leaps up in sparkling fountains of spray, and the flood
drives all that will move up hill till the force is spent. The
falling tide of the undertow rushes back with the force of a
mountain-torrent as broad as the shore is long. Every stone
is moved ; the beach is constantly worn by waterfalls equal to
the height and weight of the wave, and by torrents equal to
the depth and breadth of the undertow. Between high and
low water mark the beach takes the form of a solid wave, be-
28G
DEPOSITION.
cause pebbles are packed by water-particles which transfer the
force which moved them to sand and stones. The beach
driven by water has a curve like the back of a wave driven
by the wind, and each ridge of loose stone leans against a
rock, or rests on the back of the ridge before it. The woodcut is
from a portrait of a heavy rolling Cornish wave which came
from the west, curled round the Land's End, and was returning
westwards, rushing furiously to land against a strong wind, in
a narrow bay with a sandy bottom and a pebbly beach. The
curling head was hurrying over the base to reach the English
shore, and a silver plume of spray streamed back like a mer-
maid's hair, or a horseman's crest.
On the far side of the creek the retarded wave was seen
lagging and breaking before its time on a pile of loose angular
stones, the broken chips of a fallen cliff ; and these, as the
WAVES BEACHES. 287
water burst amongst them, and roared over them, stirred and
rolled, and rattled and groaned, and ground themselves to
powder. When the larger tidal wave ebbed, and these
Atlantic waves were driven back, a dry beach remained. It
was the track of the invader who will some day sweep Eng-
land from the face of the earth, unless some underground ally
lifts her cliffs out of reach of the sea.
This beach was a steep bank of boulders and pebbles, with
a broad slope of gravel and fine sand at the base. The
larger stones were below, driven as far as the wave could
O
drive them ; smaller stones were above, tossed up by the recoil
of the blow ; the gravel was at the top of the slope, dragged
there by the undertow ; the sand was lowest and furthest out,
where the force of the downward stream was nearly spent, or
balanced by the advancing wave ; ripple-marks, stream-marks,
and the rest of the smaller tool-marks of deposition by waves,
were on the sand.
A solid wave of sorted stones rested upon the rock where
it broke, and the shape of it was like that of the wave which
was driven by some invisible force. The force which shaped
the beach was that which moved air and water, and the in-
visible wave of force may be like the fluid wave and the beach.
One result of this action is the formation of new land.
The sea builds dams, and rain-water fills up the space behind
them with silt. Behind the Chesil Beach, near Portland, a
lake is formed, and rivers are filling it with mud. Near the
Start Point is a similar lake divided from the sea by a broad
wave of boulders. The lake is below an ancient sea-cliff, and
is rapidly filling with mud and reeds ; it is full of fresh-water
fish. At Borth and Traeth Mawr in Wales, are similar beaches.
At the head of BreidfjorS in Iceland are larger beaches of
lava boulders, behind which are pools of sea-water, and fresh-
288
DEPOSITION.
water ponds ; and rivers still flow through openings in this
lava-dam raised by the sea at the far end of a bay.
Near Snsefell is the. most remarkable beach of all. It is
a great black natural mound running across a valley, so as to
dam back the drainage waters, and hold in the ebbing tide.
The crest of the ridge is composed of smooth egg-shaped blocks,
larger than a man's head, tossed about in the wildest confu-
sion at the top, and more neatly packed at the base. The
The pas.
FIG. 95. BOLANDS HOFVDI. August 16, 1862.
A cliff of columnar lava, interstratified with ashes, and resting on coarse hard breccia of
rolled pebbles. The talus beneath the cliff is chiefly sand ; it makes an angle of 32
with the horizon, and is the only pass along this shore.
seaward slope lower down is fine black sand, strewed with
brilliant shells, like those which are found in boulder-clay.
The back of the mound has a different steeper curve and slope.
The whole is as near the shape of breaking rollers which fall
upon it as the materials of which it is composed will admit.
Small stones have been thrown over the mound like
spray, and rest where they fell. It is a solid roller, which
WAVES BEACHES. 289
has not reached the shore. The shore of the inland lake is
strewed with pumice, and suchlike volcanic materials, and
is haunted by flocks of birds. The whole structure rests upon
a foundation of igneous rock, and is the work of fire arranged
by water. If this beach were found anywhere ; in a quarry,
or on a hill-side, it would tell of waves as large as those which
fall upon it : ocean-waves, which may roll without a break
from the South Pole to the beach at Snsefell.
The district of Myra Syssla in Iceland seems to be land
formed in this way. Beneath high broken precipices, which
look like sea-cliffs, a wide tract of boggy flat land slopes to-
wards the sea. It is traversed by ridges of gravel, which
have the form of dilapidated beaches, and between these the
whole country is a quaking bog, through which occasional
rocks appear. But these old beaches are far higher above the
sea than modern beaches, and they are not horizontal. They
prove that the whole land has risen unevenly. They mark a
late change ; and if similar changes took place in early times,
they too should be recorded somewhere amongst the old beds.
At Malar in the north, at the end of a deep fjord, where
big rollers cannot now come, are similiar raised beaches, with
small moors and bogs resting in hollows amongst the boulders.
In Scandinavia are many similar marks ; and they are found
high up on the Himalayas.
At the head of the large Newfoundland bays, which face
the Atlantic Conception, Trinity, Bonavista, etc. beaches of
this pattern form ramparts along the whole shore. Some are
bars under water, others run from point to point like moles
or breakwaters ; fishing craft anchor behind them, rivers form
brackish pools on the land side, and silt-beds gather in the
still pools. Icebergs drift about in deeper water outside, and
there drop stones earned from Greenland. Higher iip are
u
290 DEPOSITION.
terraces of larger glaciated Newfoundland and foreign stones,
confusedly mixed with sand, rolled pebbles, and beach-stones.
These in their turn rest upon glaciated rocks, which have
risen, and are still rising. In winter, bay-ice packs old chips
along the shore. In spring, rivers dig materials from old
terraces to build new deltas behind new sea-beaches. The
bays are like Myra Syssla, the Miry Shire of Iceland, but in
Newfoundland the sea-bottom has not emerged, though it is
rising ; and the low ridges are now parallel to the sea.
Surely these beaches may help to explain the osar and
kames of the glacial period.
In North America raised beaches abound. They were
first described by Hitchcock, and they are conspicuous on the
White Mountains, Green Mountains, and elsewhere, at great
elevations. They appear to be sea-beaches, formed like those
now forming in the bays of Newfoundland, and ebbed dry in
glens which were bays in the glacial period. Those which
were most exposed (the highest) are, like the beach at Snaefell
in Iceland confused stone-heaps tossed about and irregular in
shape. Those which were sheltered by rising points are like
those now forming in the bays of Newfoundland. At the
head of one glen, at Gorham in the White Mountains, a
laminated terrace of fine sand and mud, disposed horizontally,
appears to be a delta formed in still water at the end of a
bay. The formation is about fifty feet thick, and from its
position may be a fresh-water deposit formed in a lake which
burst outwards through a distant terrace, and left the glen
for the railway to occupy. Upon this delta, if such it proves
to be, large glaciated boulders are piled.
The translation of the whole record made on the spot in
1864 is, that ocean-currents, icebergs, and bay-ice, drifted
along the course now followed by the Grand Trunk Eailway,
WAVES BEACHES. 291
and dropped foreign boulders in still bays and straits, which
are now glens and passes amongst the highest of the Alle-
ghanies. The American author who followed Chambers
thought he saw raised beaches in Wales ; and sea-shells have
been found there at 3000 feet. He also thought that he saw
the spoor of the sea in Switzerland at similar heights. Till
sea-shells are found there, and in the White Mountains, there
is room for argument ; but there is little doubt that these so-
called raised sea-beaches are marks of waves in water, in
air, and, it may be, in light.
A ripple-mark is then a copy of a ripple ; a beach copies a
larger wave, and both are marks of deposition, and tool-marks.
This mark is a thermometer like the rest, and it is also a
water-gauge.
The beach is formed at the water-margin. If land rises,
or water sinks, the beach is left high and dry. If land rises
"straight away" from the earth's centre, if one spoke of the
wheel grows longer, the old beach-mark is level there. It is
like a storm-beach ; a higher mark paralle 
