We see now why it is that the hill-slopes opposite the Minch should,
as a rule, be so much more sterile than those which slope down to the
Atlantic. The full force of the ice was exerted upon the south-east
front, in the rear of which there would necessarily be comparatively
"quiet" ice. For the same reason we should expect to find much of the
rock débris which the ice swept off the south-east front sheltering on
the opposite side. Neither clay nor sand nor stones would gather under
the ice upon the steep rocks that face the Minch. The movement there
was too severe to permit of any such accumulation. But stones and clay
and sand were carried over and swept round the hills, and gradually
accumulated in the rear of the ice-worn rocks, just in the same way as
gravel and sand are heaped up behind projecting stones and boulders
in the bed of a stream. Hence it is that the western margin of Harris
is so much less bleak than the opposite side. Considerable taluses
of "till," as the sub-glacial débris is called, gather behind the
steeper crags, and ragged sheets of the same material extend over the
low-grounds. All the low-grounds of Lewis are in like manner sprinkled
with till. Over that region the ice met with but few obstacles to its
course, and consequently the débris it forced along underneath was
spread out somewhat equally. But wherever hills and peaks and hummocks
of rock broke the regularity of the surface, there great abrasion took
place and no till was accumulated.
Thus the position and distribution of this sub-glacial débris or
bottom-moraine tell the same tale as the abraded rocks and glacial
striæ, and clearly indicate an ice-flow from the south-east. This is
still further proved by the manner in which the upturned ends of the
strata are frequently bent over underneath the till in a north-westerly
direction, while the fragments dislodged from them and enclosed in the
sub-glacial débris stream away as it were to the same point of the
compass. Not only so, but in the west of Lewis, where no red sandstone
occurs, we find boulders of red sandstone enclosed in the till, which
could not have been derived from any place nearer than Stornoway. In
other words, these boulders have travelled across the island from the
shores of the Minch to the Atlantic sea-board.
Having said so much about the glaciation of Lewis and Harris, I need
not do more than indicate very briefly some of the more interesting
features of the islands further south.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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