Thirdly, the nature of the outlets from the supposed lakes. This appears
to me the best and newest part of the paper. If Sir James Clark would
like to attend to any particular points, direct his attention to this:
especially to follow Glen Glaster from Glen Roy to L. Laggan. Mr. Milne
describes this as an old and great river-course with a fall of 212 feet.
He states that the rocks are smooth on upper face and rough on lower,
but he does not mention whether this character prevails throughout the
whole 212 vertical feet--a most important consideration; nor does he
state whether these rocks are polished or scratched, as might have
happened even to a considerable depth beneath the water (Mem. great
icebergs in narrow fiords of T. del Fuego (522/9. In the "Voyage of the
'Beagle'" a description is given of the falling of great masses of ice
from the icy cliffs of the glaciers with a crash that "reverberates
like the broadside of a man-of-war, through the lonely channels" which
intersect the coast-line of Tierra del Fuego. Loc. cit., page 246.))
by the action of icebergs, for that icebergs transported boulders on to
terraces, I have no doubt. Mr. Milne's description of the outlets of
his lake sound to me more like tidal channels, nor does he give any
arguments how such are to be distinguished from old river-courses.
I cannot believe in the body of fresh water which must, on the lake
theory, have flowed out of them. At the Pass of Mukkul he states that
the outlet is 70 feet wide and the rocky bottom 21 feet below the level
of the shelf, and that the gorge expands to the eastwards into a broad
channel of several hundred yards in width, divided in the middle by what
has formerly been a rocky islet, against which the waters of this large
river had chafed in issuing from the pass. We know the size of the river
at the present day which would flow out through this pass, and it seems
to me (and in the other given cases) to be as inadequate; the whole
seems to me far easier explained by a tideway than by a formerly more
humid climate.
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