340 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



so that it may be said great gaps in the mountains extend 

 like arms of an immense cross to four points of the 

 compass. 



Ben Nevis and the high land which holds alike the head 

 waters of the Roy and of the Spey is a great example of what 

 weathering can do in carving the scenery of a district. The 

 high ridges of the Ben are sometimes only a few yards broad 

 across their crests, and much of the mountain's surface is piled 

 with broken fragments of its granite. The precipice which 

 frowns down upon the north-western approach is 1,500 to 

 2,000 feet high, its rifted buttresses of porphyry adding to the 

 sense of vast disintegration. The great screes of broken rock 

 drag from the upper walls like stretched skins of primeval 

 beasts ; while the small hill torrents wash down the debris and 

 undermine the loose rocks. 



The great transverse valleys are believed by geologists to 

 be of very early formation, and to have been hollowed out 

 before the last subsidence of the land, when layers of deposit 

 largely or entirely filled up those glens then beneath the sea. 

 On the later elevation of the land, the first drainage was 

 naturally again at right angles to the main axis, but not always 

 at the same places. When in the same places, however, as 

 appears to have been largely the case in the district now under 

 review, the new erosion again laid bare the old rocks. The 

 glaciers which occupied the valleys certainly found Glen Roy 

 and the Upper Spean in the same general condition as to their 

 upper levels as we see them to-day. In both localities we see 

 the so-called Parallel Roads, which represent the old shores of 

 those glaciers before the terminal moraines were broken down 

 by the impounded melted ice and snow. 



THE LOCHY 



The river Lochy is, as it were, the counterpart of the river 

 Ness, Loch Linnhe being the counterpart of the Inverness 

 Firth. It is a fine open, swinging river, with gravel bed and 

 open shores. A river to wade in and throw a long line. Some 

 of the pools, and notably Mucomer, cannot, however, be well 

 covered without the help of a boat. 



The length of the river is about 9 miles, and the volume of 



