104 
VOLCANIC ROCKS AND SCENERY 
HOOK 1 
vantage no sound may be lieard for a time to show that he himself is any- 
where near ns. Yet ever and anon from the deep lanes, hidden out of 
sight under their canopy of foliage, tliere will come the creak of the groan- 
ing waggon and the crack of the waggoner’s whip, as evidence that there are 
roads and human traffic through this bosky silent countiy. 
Amid so much quiet beauty, where every feature seems to be eloquent 
of long generations of undisturbed repose, it must surely stir the imagina- 
tion to be told that underneath these orchards, meadows and woodlands lie 
the mouldering remnants of once active and long-lived volcanoes. Yet we 
have only to descend into one of the deep lanes to find the crumbling lavas 
and ashes of the old eruptions. The landscape has, in truth, been carved out 
of these volcanic rocks, and their decomposition has furnished the rich loam 
that nourishes so luxuriant a vegetation. 
Not less impressive is the contrast presented between the present and 
former condition of the broad pastoral ujrlands of the south of Scotland. 
Nowhere in the British Islands can the feeling of mere loneliness be more 
perfectly experienced than among these elevated tracts of bare moorland. 
I'hey have nothing of the grandeur of outline peculiar to mountain tracts. 
Sometimes, for miles around one of tlieir conspicuous summits, we may see 
no projecting knob or pinnacle. The rocks have been gently rounded off 
into broad featureless hills, which sink into winding valleys, each with its 
thread of streamlet and its farms along the bottom, and its scattered remnants 
of birch-wood or alder-copse along its slopes and dingles. Across miles of 
heathy pasture and moorland, on the summits of this great tableland, we may 
perchance see no sign of man or his handiwork, though the bleating of the 
sheep and the far-off barking of the collie tell that we are here within the 
quiet domain of the south-country shepherd. 
In this pastoral territory, also, though they hardly affect the scenery, 
volcanic rocks come to the surface where the foldings of the earth’s crust 
have brought up the oldest formations. Their appearance extends over 
so wide an area as to show that a large part of these uplands lies on 
a deeply- buried volcanic floor. A wdiole series of submarine volcanoes, 
extending over an area of many hundreds of square miles, and still in great 
part overlain with the accumulated sands and silts of the sea-bottom, now 
hardened into stone, underlies these quiet hills and lonely valleys. 
A contrast of another type meets us in the broad midland valley of 
Scotland. Around the city of Edinburgh, for instance, the landscape is 
diversified by many hills and crags which show where harder rocks project 
from amidst the sediments of the Carboniferous system. On some of these 
crags the forts of the early races, the towei's of Celt and Saxon, and the 
feudal castles of the middle ages were successively planted, and round their 
base clustered for protection the cots of the peasants and the earliest home- 
steads of the future city. Beneath these crags many of the most notable 
events in the stormy annals of the country were transacted. Under their 
shadow, and not without inspiration from their local form and colour, litera- 
ture, art and science have arisen and flourished. Nowhere, in short, within 
