THE SALMON RIVERS AND LOCHS 

 OF SCOTLAND 



INTKODUCTOKY 



IT is difficult at first to realise that our mountains have been made 

 by our rivers, yet such seems to be the literal truth. When the 

 geologist restores the country, in imagination, to its earliest 

 condition, he sees it as a great plateau of more or less uniform 

 height. He finds the main axis lies in a north-east and south-west 

 direction, and from this the water has run off chiefly in trans- 

 verse courses. Through process of time, in which " a thousand years 

 are but as yesterday," the erosion eats back from the mouths of 

 the water channels towards the main divide, and rivers begin to 

 show the characters we now recognise; the lower courses through 

 the wide open valleys, the upper courses still descending from 

 considerable heights. 



All our Scottish mountains of any importance are of more or less 

 similar height. We have no towering peaks as in Switzerland. 

 Our hill-tops represent, in a somewhat modified degree, the surface 

 of our old plateau. Our rivers and glaciers have scooped out the 

 valleys so as to form the hills, and have sculptured the face of our 

 beautiful country. 



On top of the old rocks lie, or at one time lay, great depths of 

 sandstones, which have evidently filled up our early valleys. To 

 account for this and other features it is necessary, geologists tell us, 

 to understand that the old and already much eroded plateau sank 

 beneath the waves, and that the sand was thus laid down, so 

 that when the country again emerged from the waters the plateau 



