UP GLEN ROY. 65 



And yet this explanation does not remove them from the realm 

 of imagination. It only summons us to a still more fascinating 

 fairy-land than was ever traversed by the heroes of Morven. 

 No prosaic element is present in Mr. Geikie's theory. The 

 great level line which may be noticed on the south of the 

 Spean river, running along the hillsides, before the traveller 

 turns up Glen Roy, is only an introductory symbol of glacial 

 action that mighty power which has here written its primeval 

 history in the three parallel roads in front of us. Like the clue 

 which Ariadne gave Theseus to the Labyrinth, it turns up Glen 

 Roy ; and now seen faintly, now more clearly, over the peat- 

 haughs in the bottom, at length expands into the three Roads 

 so deeply cut on our left, and only a little less strongly repeated 

 on the cliffs to the right. " Each of them is a shelf or terrace, 

 cut by the shore waters of a lake that once filled Glen Roy. 

 The highest is, of course, the eldest, and those beneath it were 

 formed in succession, as the waters of the lake were lowered.' 

 The germ of this elucidation is due to Agassiz, and Mr. Jame- 

 son has shown that it is fully borne out by the evidences of 

 great glacial erasion, some of which I have named ; while others 

 are to be found in the Great Glen of the Caledonian CanaL 

 This valley seems once to have been filled to the brim with ice. 

 which dammed back the mouth of Glen Spean, and caused the 

 waters of Glen Roy to escape into Strathspey, when the upper- 

 most terrace or road (1,140 feet above the present sea-level), 

 was formed. Next, the lake gradually sunk, as more of this 

 ice melted away, to its second level, the waters now flowing; 

 into Loch Laggan. Finally, as the great glacier of the Cale- 

 donian Canal melted still lower, the waters of Glen Roy and the 

 neighbouring glens fell into their present channels, which, of 

 course they have been ever deepening. Science thus waves 

 her magic wand, and the mystery of the Roads " fades into the 

 light of common day." As in the Eastern fairy-tale, the pos- 

 session of an old lamp could build up splended palaces in a. 



