Dr. Mac Culloch on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy. 315 



The appearance of the parallel roads is so extraordinary as to 

 impress the imagination of the most unphilosophical, nay, even of 

 the most incurious spectator. It is not therefore surprising that 

 they should excite the admiration of the natives, in whom the 

 progress of civilization has not yet extirpated those poetical feelings 

 and that sense of the sublime, of which their literary relics still 

 afford us proofs. 



On each side of a long, hollow, deep valley, bounded by dark 

 and lofty mountains, and at a great elevation, three strong lines are 

 traced, parallel to each other and to the horizon, the levels of the 

 opposite ones coinciding precisely with each other. So rarely does 

 nature present us in her larger features with artificial forms, or with 

 the semblance of mathematical exactness, that no conviction of the 

 contrary can divest the spectator of the feeling that he is contem- 

 plating a work of art, a work, of which the gigantic dimensions 

 and bold features appear to surpass the efforts of mortal powers. 

 We cannot therefore wonder that the solitary and poetical High- 

 lander, educated amid mountain storms and hourly conversant with 

 the sublime appearances of Nature, should attribute to the ideal and 

 gigantic beings of former days a work which scorning the mimic 

 efforts of the present race, marches over the mountain and the 

 valley, holding its undeviating course over the impassable crag, and 

 the destroying torrent. 



But it is the duty of the philosopher to investigate causes. I 

 purpose therefore to give as ample and detailed a description as I 

 was able to draw up, of the appearances themselves, and afterwards 

 to examine the several modes of explanation which have been 

 offered ; stating the arguments for and against the different hypo- 

 theses as amply and as distinctly as I can, and deducing from the 

 balance of probabilities such conclusions as the evidence appears to 



