330 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



Ben Nevis and the high land which holds alike the head waters 

 of the Eoy 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 1500 to 2000 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 im- 

 pounded 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 nine miles, and the volume of 

 water considerable, since from Mucomer onwards the water of the 

 Spean is added. The artificial channel between the loch and 

 Mucomer, to which reference will presently be made, is not con- 

 sidered worth fishing, I understand. Certainly no attempt seems 

 ever to have been made to create lies for fish, the channel as it exists 

 being shallow and uniform. 



