This largest and geologically most important of all the Scottish plateaux comprises the island of Skye, at least as far south as Loch Eishort, and the southern half of Raasay, but is shown by its sills to stretch as far as the Shiant Isles on the north, and the Point of Sleat on the south (see Map VI.). It may be reckoned to embrace an area of not less than 800 square miles. The evidence that its limits, like those of the other plateaux, are now greatly less than they originally were, is abundant and impressive. The truncated edges of its basalts, rising here and there for a thousand feet as a great sea-wall above the breakers at their base, and presenting everywhere their succession of level or gently inclined bars, are among the most impressive monuments of denudation in this country. But still more striking to the geologist is the proof, furnished beyond the margins of the plateau, that the Jurassic and other older rocks there visible were originally buried deep under the basalt-sheets, which have thus been entirely stripped off that part of the country. Throughout most of the district, wherever the base of the basalts can be seen, it is found to rest upon some member of the Jurassic series, but with a complete unconformability. The underlying sedimentary strata had been dislocated and extensively denuded before the volcanic period began. On the southern margin, however, the red (Torridon) sandstones emerge from under the basalts of Loch Scavaig, and extending into the island of Soay are prolonged under the sea into Rum. This ridge probably represents the range of the ancient high ground of the latter island already referred to. Nowhere are the distinctive topographical features and geological structure of the basalt-plateaux better displayed than in the northern half of the island of Skye. The green terraced slopes, with their parallel bands of brown rock formed by the outcrop of the nearly flat basalt-beds, rise from the bottoms of the valleys into flat-topped ridges and truncated cones (Fig. 283). The hills everywhere present a curiously tabular form that bears witness to the horizontal sheets of rock of which they are composed.[262] And along the sea-precipices, each excessive sheet of basalt can be counted from base to summit, and followed from promontory to promontory (Figs. 284, 286). In the district of Trotternish, the basalt hills reach a height of 2360 feet. Further west, the singular flat-topped eminences, called "Macleod's Tables" (Fig. 283) ascend to 1600 feet. [Footnote 262: These features are more fully described in my _Scenery of Scotland_, 2nd edit (1887), pp. 74, 145, 216.] [Illustration: Fig. 283.--Terraced Hills of Basalt Plateau (Macleod's Tables), Skye.]