one belt or "range" from another, often run across the very heart
of great mountain-masses. Our "ranges" are distinguished from each
other simply by superficial differences of feature and structure. No
long parallel hollows separate a "range" of schist-mountains from
the succeeding "ranges" of quartz-rock, gneiss, or granite. And no
degree of careful contouring could succeed in expressing the niceties
of configuration just referred to, unless the maps were on a very
large scale indeed. A geological classification or grouping of the
mountains into linear belts cannot therefore be shown upon any ordinary
orographical map. Such a map can present only the relative heights
and disposition of the mountain-masses, and these last, in the case
of the Highlands, as we have seen, cannot be called "ranges" without
straining the use of that term. Any wide tract of the Highlands, when
viewed from a commanding position, looks like a tumbled ocean in
which the waves appear to be moving in all directions. One is also
impressed with the fact that the undulations of the surface, however
interrupted they may be, are broad--the mountains, however they may
vary in detail according to the character of the rocks, are massive,
and generally round-shouldered and often somewhat flat-topped, while
there is no great disparity of height amongst the dominant points of
any individual group. Let us take, for example, the knot of mountains
between Loch Maree and Loch Torridon. There we have a cluster of eight
pyramidal mountain-masses, the summits of which do not differ much in
elevation. Thus in Liathach two points reach 3358 feet and 3486 feet;
in Beinn Alligin there are also two points reaching 3021 feet and
3232 feet respectively; in Beinn Dearg we have a height of 2995 feet;
in Beinn Eighe are three dominant points--3188 feet, 3217 feet, and
3309 feet. The four pyramids to the north are somewhat lower--their
elevations being 2860 feet, 2801 feet, 2370 feet, and 2892 feet. The
mountains of Lochaber and the Monadhliath Mountains exhibit similar
relationships; and the same holds good with all the mountain-masses of
the Highlands. No geologist can doubt that such relationship is the
result of denudation. The mountains are monuments of erosion--they
are the wreck of an old table-land--the upper surface and original
inclination of which are approximately indicated by the summits of the
various mountain-masses and the direction of the principal water-flows.
If we in imagination fill up the valleys with the rock-material which
formerly occupied their place, we shall in some measure restore the
general aspect of the Highland area before its mountains began to be
shaped out by Nature's saws and chisels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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