North and South Harris yield unequivocal evidence of having been
overflowed by ice which did not stream out of the mountain-valleys,
but crossed the island from the Minch to the Atlantic. A number of
mountain-glens, coming down from the Forest of Harris, open out
upon West Loch Tarbert, and these we see have been crossed at right
angles by the ice--the mountains between them being strongly abraded
from south-east to north-west. It is the same all over South Harris,
which affords the geologist every evidence of having been literally
smothered in ice, which has moved in the same persistent direction. The
rock-faces that look towards the Minch are all excessively naked; they
have been terribly ground down and scraped, and the same holds good
with every part of the island exposed to the south-east.
Now, the mode in which the rocks have been so ground, scraped, rounded,
and smoothed betokens very clearly the action of land-ice, and not of
floating-ice or icebergs. The abrading agent has accommodated itself
to all the sinuosities of the ground, sliding into hollows and creeping
out of them, moulding itself over projecting rocks, so as eventually to
grind away all their asperities, and convert rugged tors and peaks into
round-backed, dome-shaped masses. It has carried away the sharp edges
of escarpments and ridges, and has deepened the intervening hollows in
a somewhat irregular way, so that now these catch the drainage of the
land and form lakes. Steep rocks facing the Minch have been bevelled
off and rounded atop, while in their rear the ice-plough, not being
able to act with effect, has not succeeded in removing the primeval
ruggedness of the weathered strata.
I have said that the movement of the ice was from south-east to
north-west. But a close examination of the ice-markings will show that
the flow was very frequently influenced by the form of the ground.
Minor features it was able to disregard, but some prominent projecting
rock-masses succeeded in deflecting the ice that flowed against them.
For example, if we study the rocks in North Harris, we shall find that
the Langa and the Clisham have served as a wedge to divide the ice,
part of which flowed away into Lewis, while the other current or stream
crept out to sea by West Loch Tarbert. The Langa and the Clisham,
indeed, raised their heads above the glacier mass--they were islets in
a sea of ice. It is for this reason that they and the Tarcull ridge in
South Harris have not been smoothed and abraded, but still preserve
their weathered outline. All surfaces below a height of 1600 feet which
are exposed to the south-east, and which have not been in recent times
broken up by the action of rain and frost, exhibit strongly-marked
glaciation. But above that level no signs of ancient ice-work can be
recognised.
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