GREAT GLEN OF SCOTLAND. 205 
upon a fine smooth plain, bounded on the south by the 
Leys, and containing on its surface many of the richest 
and most beautiful farms in the country. This second flat, 
which is the most interesting of the three, commences near 
Loch Ness, and runs all the way to Fort George, a distance 
of from 14 to 18 miles. It comes close in on the back of 
Inverness, forming the Castle-hill and the site of the an- 
cient castle of Macbeth ; and then turning to the east, it 
proceeds along the coast, towering above the sea, or retir- 
ing into sweeping and verdant banks. Its breadth between 
the Leys and the sea varies from one to four miles ; but the 
most interesting circumstance attending it is, that a si- 
milar gravel bank, of the very same height and character, 
can be traced, with very few interruptions, along the whole 
of the Beauly Frith, and on the opposite shores of Ross- 
shire. 
I shall now mention the substances of which these alluvial 
beds are formed. These consist of fragments of rocks be- 
longing to the primitive and secondary classes, and they 
exhibit not only all the varieties found in the mountains of 
the neighbourhood, but also many that appear to have 
come from very distant parts of the country. Such are 
the white stone of Ben Nevis and Strath Conon in Ross- 
shire, and the quartz-rock of Foyers. The substances 
of this gravel occur in nearly horizontal beds, which vary 
in fineness from the smallest sand to round boulders of se- 
veral feet in circumference. The most general size, how- 
ever, of these fragments, is that of a man's head, or of a 
large cannon-ball. The rocks of which these are composed, 
are principally the following, viz. granite, syenite, gneiss, 
mica-slate, seldom or never clay-slate, varieties of primitive 
trap, green-stone, and felspar-porphyry ; quartz-rock, chlo- 
rite-slate, white-stone, fresh common felspar, common quartz, 
and precious serpentine. Of the secondary rocks, I only 
