Scotland, like "all Gaul," is divided into three parts, namely, the
Highlands, the Central Lowlands, and the Southern Uplands. These, as a
correctly drawn map will show, are natural divisions, for they are in
accordance not only with the actual configuration of the surface, but
with the geological structure of the country. The boundaries of these
principal districts are well defined. Thus, an approximately straight
or gently undulating line taken from Stonehaven, in a south-west
direction, along the northern outskirts of Strathmore to Glen Artney,
and thence through the lower reaches of Loch Lomond to the Firth of
Clyde at Kilcreggan, marks out with precision the southern limits of
the Highland area and the northern boundary of the Central Lowlands.
The line that separates the Central Lowlands from the Southern Uplands
is hardly so prominently marked throughout its entire course, but it
follows precisely the same north-east and south-west trend, and may
be traced from Dunbar along the base of the Lammermoor and Moorfoot
Hills, the Lowthers, and the hills of Galloway and Carrick, to Girvan.
In each of the two mountain-tracts--the Highlands and the Southern
Uplands--areas of low-lying land occur, while in the intermediate
Central Lowlands isolated prominences and certain well-defined belts
of hilly ground make their appearance. The statement, so frequently
repeated in class-books and manuals of geography, that the mountains of
Scotland consist of three (some writers say five) "ranges" is erroneous
and misleading. The original author of this strange statement probably
derived his ignorance of the physical features of the country from
a study of those antiquated maps upon which the mountains of poor
Scotland are represented as sprawling and wriggling about like so many
inebriated centipedes and convulsed caterpillars. Properly speaking,
there is not a true mountain-range in the country. If we take this
term, which has been very loosely used, to signify a linear belt of
mountains--that is, an elevated ridge notched by cols or "passes"
and traversed by transverse valleys--then in place of "three" or
"five" such ranges we might just as well enumerate fifty or sixty, or
more, in the Highlands and Southern Uplands. Or, should any number
of such dominant ridges be included under the term "mountain-range,"
there seems no reason why all the mountains of the country should
not be massed under one head and styled the "Scottish Range." A
mountain-range, properly so called, is a belt of high ground which has
been ridged up by earth-movements. It is a fold, pucker, or wrinkle
in the earth's crust, and its general external form coincides more or
less closely with the structure or arrangement of the rock-masses of
which it is composed. A mountain-range of this characteristic type,
however, seldom occurs singly, but is usually associated with other
parallel ranges of the same kind--the whole forming together what
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