CHAP. VII 
VOLCANIC SCENERY OF BRITAIN 
105 
the compass of the British Isles has the political and intellectual progress of 
the people been more plainly affected hy the environment than in this 
central district of Scotland. 
When now we inquire into the origin and history of the topography 
which has so influenced the population around it, we find that its prominences 
are relics of ancient volcanoes. The feudal towers are based on sills and 
dykes and necks. The fields and gardens, monuments and roadways, over- 
lie sheets of lava or beds of volcanic ashes. Isot only is every con.spicuous 
eminence immediately around of volcanic origin, but even the ranges of blue 
hills that close in the distant view to south and north and east and west are 
mainly built up of lavas and tuffs. The eruptions of which these heights 
are memorials belong to a vast range of geological ages, the latest of them 
having passed away long before the advent of man. But they have left 
their traces deeply engraven in the rooky framework of the landscape. 
While human history, stormy or peaceful, has been slowly evolving itself 
<luring the progress of the centuries in these fertile lowlands, the crags and 
heights have remained as memorials of an earlier history when Central 
Scotland continued for many ages to be the theatre of vigorous volcanic 
activity. 
As a final illustration of the influence of volcanic rocks in scenery, and 
of the contrast between their origin and their present condition, I may cite 
the more prominent groups of hills in the Inner Hebrides. In the .singu- 
larly varied landscapes of that region three distinct types of topography 
attract the eye of the traveller. These are best combined and most fully 
developed in the island of Skye. Throughout the northern half of that 
picturesijue island, the ground rises into a rolling tableland, deeply pene- 
trated l)y arms of the sea, into which it slopes in green declivities, while along 
its outer borders it plunges in ranges of precipice into the Atlantic. Every- 
where, alike on the cliffs and the inland slopes, long parallel lines of rock- 
terrace meet the eye. These mount one above another from the shores 
up to the flat tops of the highest hills, presenting level or gently -inclined 
bars of dark crag that rise above slopes of debris, green sward and bracken. 
It is these parallel, sharply-defined bars of rock, with their intervening strips 
of verdure, that give its distinctive character to the scenery of 1101 them 
Skye. Oil hillside after hillside and in valley after valley, they reappear 
with the same almost artificial monotony. And far beyond the limits of 
Skye they are repeated in one island after another, all down the chain of the 
Inner Hebrides. 
In striking contrast to this scenery, and abruptly bounding it on the 
south, rise the Bed Hills of Skye — a singular group of connected cones. 
Alike in form and in colour, these hills stand apart from everything around 
them. The verdure of the northern terraced tableland here entirely dis- 
appears. The slopes are sheets of angular debris, — huge blocks of naked 
stone and trails of sand, amidst which hardly any vegetation finds a footing. 
The decay of the rock gives it a pale yellowish-grey hue, which alter rain 
deepens into I'usset, so that in favourable lights these strange cones gleam 
