UP GLEN ROY. 6 1 



ably, from their green appearance, with the desolate and rugged 

 ground in their neighbourhood. The moor on the left side of 

 Spean has clearly been once a lake-bottom, and these level 

 terraces are due to the course of ages covering with vegetation 

 the rough, unsightly edges of the accumulated rubbish from ex- 

 tinct glaciers. On the same side occur many hillocks of sand, 

 some of which are denuded by wind and weather, and exhibit 

 the characteristic marks of water-worn rubbish. Exactly op- 

 posite these, a huge boulder may be noticed, stranded, as it 

 were, in a potato-field, which doubtless once upon a time fell 

 there on the bottom of a sea or lacustrine bed from a floating 

 iceberg. Many of the cottages, too (if not all of them), are 

 built of these large ice-borne boulders comfortable habitations 

 enough, though their irregular walls suggest abundant rheuma- 

 tism. Loosely fitted together, these remnants of ice-action are 

 invaluable to the natives as a quarry. At the debouchure of 

 Roy into Spean, where our path tnrns to the left, a couple of 

 these long, natural earthworks remain, while the mountains of 

 Glen Treig rise behind, Ben Chlinaig and his brethren, forming 

 the boundaries of a typical Highland landscape. Here and 

 there on the rising hill-sides shepherds are dimly visible col- 

 lecting their flocks : near at hand, one is lying on a patch of 

 heather, with his dog beside him ; while the young people of 

 the valley the girls mostly bare-headed, with twisted wealth 

 of brown hair stroll up and down, enjoying the unusually 

 serene afternoon. 



Most of the inhabitants of this district are Roman Catholics, 

 under the care of a priest who visits them from a neighbouring 

 glen, so that the Calvinistic rigour of a Scotch Sabbath is here 

 softened into the peacefulness of an English Sunday. Soon a 

 fresh geological feature meets the eye. On the right from the 

 hill-sides, which continuously rise from the Roy River, banks of 

 rubbish project at right angles, falling away abruptly into the 

 water. These " lateral moraines," which strike even the most 



