FEBRUARY, 1882. 129 



the moss towards the shores of Loch Linnhe. But one 

 portion of the mound is solid rock, and a great portion 

 water-worn gravel, and another portion of still larger 

 water-worn stones ; and to suppose the moveable portion, 

 however symmetrical, to be artificial, is to imagine our 

 ancestors to be more numerous than the ignorance and 

 folly required to erect such a supposed artificial mound 

 could have possibly enabled them to be. No one can 

 stand where we now do, and look from sea loch to sea 

 shore, without concluding that the great moss between 

 did not always interrupt the waves of the one from 

 washing into the other, the level even now being but 

 little above the sea. Between us and Ledaig two clear 

 beaches cross the country, that evidently mark the retro- 

 gression of the waters through the elevation of the land ; 

 and the broken snake on which we now stand is most 

 likely a still prior beach, on which the billows tossed 

 pebbles of all sizes, here and there breaking through the 

 softer portions, and rolling through that dip into Loch 

 Creran. For our friend has pushed a fishing rod 18 feet 

 down through the peat moss of that narrow depression 

 between firmer ground, by which the waters no doubt 

 rolled into Creran through the break alongside, ere they 

 retired to form the next beach about a mile distant, 

 leaving an uncommonly good snake to crawl across 

 several miles of Benderloch. There is almost sufficient 

 evidence of design and workmanship in its regularity to 

 bolster up a theory of a Roman fortification, if such were 

 not absurd. 



As we approach the stream, swollen by last night's 

 rain, we find the stepping-stones unapproachable, and yet 

 an hour's labour with a spade would divert it into its old 

 course, at present silted up with sand from landward and 



