HISTORY OF LOCH MAREE 73 



At length after a vast interval of time came an epoch 

 of gigantic terrestial disturbance, when north-western 

 Europe, from the North Cape to the south of Ire- 

 land, was convulsed ; when the solid crust of the 

 earth was folded, crumpled, and fractured, until its 

 shattered rocks, crushed and kneaded together, ac- 

 quired the crystalline characters which they now display. 

 In the course of these tremendous displacements (to 

 which there is no parallel in the later geological history 

 of this country) huge slices of the earth's crust, many 

 hundreds of feet thick and many miles long, were 

 wrenched asunder and pushed bodily westwards, some- 

 times for a distance of ten miles. By this means 

 portions of the oldest rocks of the region were torn 

 off and planted on the top of the youngest. The 

 whole country, thus broken up, underwent many sub- 

 sequent mutations, and was finally left to be gradually 

 worn down by the various agents that have carved the 

 surface of the land into its present shape. 



Our three groups of rock, so distinctly marked out 

 in the landscape, thus record three successive and early 

 chapters in the long history by which the topography 

 of the Scottish Highlands has been brought into its 

 existing form. Knowing what is their story, we find 

 that every crag and scar acquires a new meaning and 

 interest. Past and present are once more brought into 

 such close and vivid union that while we gaze at the 

 landscape as it stands now, its features seem to melt 

 away into visions of what it has once been. We can 

 in imagination clothe it with its ancient pine-forests 

 through which the early Celtic colonists hunted the 

 urus, the wild boar, the wolf, the brown bear, and the 



