HISTORY OF LOCH MAREE 71 



I know nowhere a scene which has its true inner 

 meaning as a source of impressiveness more strikingly- 

 revealed, or which has its ordinary interest more vividly 

 intensified by the light which geological history throws 

 upon it. 



The most cursory traveller, even as he drives 

 rapidly along this valley, can hardly fail to observe 

 that three distinct rocks enter into the composition 

 of the landscape, each differing from the others in 

 form, colour, and relative position, and each contri- 

 buting its own characteristic features to the scenery. 

 First of all a series of curiously hummocky eminences 

 of dark grey rock mounts from the edge of the lake 

 up the sides of Slioch, forming a kind of rude and 

 rugged platform on which that mountain stands. 

 Next comes a pile of brownish red sandstone, which 

 in parallel and almost horizontal bars, like so many 

 courses of cyclopean masonry, forms the upper and 

 main mass of the height. And lastly, there is the 

 bedded white rock which, hanging upon the flanks 

 of the red sandstone, towers in the cliffs of Craig 

 Roy on the one side of the valley and builds up almost 

 the whole of Ben Eay on the other side. The dif- 

 ferences and contrasts between these three kinds of 

 material are so marked, and have obviously played so 

 essential a part in producing the special peculiarities 

 of the rocky landscape, that even our literary censor 

 himself could hardly, in spite of himself, fail to note 

 them and might venture to ask a question about them. 



To answer his question as it might best be answered 

 would be most briefly and vividly done by a true poet. 

 I can only pretend to present the mere facts, but even 



