3OO Highland Mountains and Denudation. 



of granite, the high land has been cut up into innu- 

 merable valleys by the repeated action of rain, rivers, 

 and glaciers, whence their mountainous character ; for 

 the special outlines of mountains, as we now see them, 

 are rugged, less by disturbances of strata, than by the 

 scooping away of material from greatly elevated tracts 

 of country. By mere elevation and disturbance of 

 strata, the land might rise high enough ; but as moun- 

 tain regions now exist, it is by a combination of dis- 

 turbance of strata with extreme denudation, going on 

 both while and after slow disturbance and elevation 

 was taking place, that peaks, rough ridges, ice-worn 

 surfaces, and all the cliffs and valleys of the Highlands 

 in their present form, have been called into existence. 

 They are undergoing further modification now. 



Let anyone go to the western part of Sutherland 

 and climb Suilven, and he will get a clear idea of what 

 is meant by a considerable amount of denudation. The 

 mountain is based on a wide, low, undulating plateau of 

 Lauren tian gneiss, dotted with unnumbered lakes and 

 tarns. From this plateau it rises abruptly into the air, 

 like a little Matterhorn, 2,396 feet in height, and its 

 sides are as steep as those of the noble Swiss mountain. 

 They are formed of horizontal Cambrian purple con- 

 glomerate and grits, cut by nature into great terraced 

 steps, on which by devious courses the climber reaches 

 the summit. From thence let him turn to the east, and 

 there, five miles distant, set on the same plain, he will 

 descry the steep-sided Canisp, formed of the same 

 Cambrian strata once united to those of Suilven, and 

 Coulmore. Here is ' a monstrous cantle ' cut out of these 

 strata, and yet if the reader, for the whole, would 

 multiply that by a hundred, he would probably not 



