Biirsts of' Subterranean Water. 281 



about a third of the way from the summit, no less than from 

 fifteen to sixteen of these openings have been made, varvino- in 

 breadth from thirty to forty yards. Each of these appears to 

 have had an immense column of water issuing from it, which 

 has cut a tract for itself to the very base of the mountain, into 

 the Glashault burn. The ravines are all of them of very pecu- 

 liar formation. Their margins or sides ai'e completely defined 

 by a fence of stones, raised considerably above the surface, 

 something like that presented by the track of an avalanche. Dr 

 Robertson of Crathie concludes, from the appeai-ances, that the 

 water burst from the bowels of the mountain in repeated jets, 

 rather than in one continued stream ; and such we know to have 

 been the case at Tomanurd. Some of the stones on the sides 

 are of great size, and must have required a powerful force to 

 have placed them there. None of these appearances existed 

 previous to the 3d and 4th of August, but were noticed im- 

 mediately afterwards. They are by no means confined to the 

 Muclde Glashault, being observed of greater or lesser magni- 

 tude by Dr Robertson in all the hills he had an opportunity of 

 examining. To have stood in the midst of a solitary amphi- 

 theatre of these wildernesses, with all the elements warring 

 around, and to have beheld the mountain sides heaving, and 

 these ' fountains of the great deep broken up,' and their streams 

 sent forth as messengers of Almighty power, would have 

 been inconceivably grand.'' At page 206 of the same work is the 

 following account of another burst of subterranean water : " Be- 

 fore leaving the district of Abernethy, I have to notice a won- 

 derful ravine formed in the side of Bein-a-chavirin, near the 

 Dhu-Lochan, above the bridle-road from Strathspey to Braemar, 

 and a quarter of a mile from the march of that country. It ex- 

 tends a mile in length down the steep slope of the mountain, is 

 from forty to fifty yards wide, and of proportionable depth. Its 

 former contents are now .spread all over the base of the hill, co- 

 vering an immense surface. The mountain side was formerly 

 an entire and beautiful green sward, and there was no stream 

 or spring there ; but the new channel is now occupied by a rill, 

 the remains of the tremendous burst of subterranean water that 

 occasioned it. Soon after it took place, a man passing on horse- 

 back, who was not aware of the water-charged and unstable 



JULY SEPTEMBER 1830. T 



