THE KIRKAIG 285 



then the stream drops over its precipice. This fall is a very 

 fine spectacle, but it is likely for all time (unless, say, another 

 glacial period should come upon us) to remain quite impassable 

 to salmon. The Kirkaig is the southern boundary of the 

 county of Sutherland. 



The catchment basin is rather less than that of the Inver, 

 but rather greater than that of the Laxford. In the area closed 

 to salmon there are many fine trouting lochs, such as Fionn, 

 Veyatie, Cam Loch, Urigill, and Borrolan, by the side of which 

 the fishing hotel of Aultnacallagach stands. The western 

 portion of this area as well as the whole coast belt up to Rhu 

 Stoer, is a rough and endless succession of rounded and worn 

 bosses of rock formed of the Archaean gneiss. Wherever this 

 ancient rock is exposed, as it is so largely in western Sutherland 

 and Ross, the general features of the landscape are similar. 

 The hollows between the innumerable rounded knolls are 

 occupied by lochs great and small, while at intervals great 

 landmarks rise in isolated masses on the surface of this ancient 

 foundation. In this neighbourhood the most remarkable is 

 Suilven the Sugar Cone. To mention Loch Inver and the 

 Kirkaig and make no reference to Suilven, would be like 

 describing London without St. Paul's. Suilven rises a bare, 

 gaunt, and impressive monument of Torridon sandstone 2,399 

 feet above the sea. The other mountains in the district 

 Canisp, Quinag, Cul Mor are of the same formation. In 

 Suilven the rock is bedded horizontally, in the others there is a 

 gentle dip. From a great distance out in the Minch it is easy 

 to identify Suilven. A vast thickness of strata has been 

 denuded by the ice between those isolated hills. When we 

 look at the rocky knolls by the Inver and the Kirkaig we are 

 seeing the foundation-stones of Scotland, at one time buried 

 deep by the stuff Suilven is made of. That hill is merely a 

 remnant of the old surface. 



In the 2| miles of the Kirkaig there are twenty-two separate 

 casts. In general character it is a rocky, swift-flowing river, 

 with a nice inviting look in many of the pools ; but one has to 

 be careful of one's footing, for many of the pools are not too 

 easy to reach, and in coming and going from one pool to another 

 a deal of climbing up and clambering down has to be done in 

 the rocky gorge of the upper section. The Fall Pool is a sort 



