LOCH MAREE AND WEST ROSS. 67 
interested asks what it means. The mountain sides are 
rounded and scored. Above Ru Noa the quartzite is grooved 
and polished. Where peat or turf has been removed from 
the underlying rocks, the same appearances present them- 
selves. The islands of Loch Maree illustrate the same 
feature beautifully. Some of the smaller islands slope 
gently to the south-east and show rugged, broken faces 
to the north-west. 
Rudha-aird-an-anail, a hard knob of rock at the south-east 
extremity of Craig Tollie, which has withstood the grinding 
action of the ice better than the surrounding rocks, stands 
out into the loch, scored on all sides, and dips sheer into 
deep water. Everywhere it is the same. Large boulders 
are left—travellers—high on the mountain sides. One above 
Talladale is right on the summit of the ridge at an elevation 
of over 1000 feet. 
As the climate near the close of the Glacial Period became 
less severe and the glaciers retreated up the valleys to 
the mountains, these lesser glaciers also left their record. 
On the slopes of Ben Eay, as elsewhere, moraines are 
abundant. 
Passing on to a more recent period, we note, everywhere 
in the peat, stumps of trees. Sometimes whole trunks are 
found by the peat cutters. At first one is inclined to 
accept the statement that early in the seventeenth century 
English companies brought iron ore from Cumberland to 
the west coast of Scotland and cut down the trees for 
smelting purposes, thereby denuding the country of its 
woods. Doubtless this destruction continued for a long 
period—considerably over a hundred years, and a large area 
must have been cleared in consequence. 
Mr Dixon, in his excellent book on Gairloch Parish, 
locates six old iron furnaces or bloomaries on or near the 
shores of Loch Maree, and the destruction implied by these 
must have been very great; but remains of trees occur in 
the peat of Orkney, and these islands must at one time have 
been covered with wood. Solinus, who is supposed to have 
written about 240 a.D., says of the Orkneys (I quote from 
Prof. Geikie’s interesting account of post-glacial deposits in 
Scotland in Zhe Great Ice Age) :—“They are three in 
