top of the slope, nearly two thousand feet above the sea, and discover
that from this lofty summit, which is known as Slieve League, the
ground plunges down on the other side in a succession of precipices
into the Atlantic Ocean, which stretches from the far western horizon
up to the very base of the crags beneath our feet. We have in truth
been climbing a mountain whereof one-half has been cut away by the sea.
What a picture of decay here presents itself! We peer over the verge
of the cliffs, still wrapped in their morning shadows, and mark how
peak, ridge, and wall of flinty quartzite, glowing in tints of orange,
yellow, and red, uprear themselves from the face of the declivity,
like the muscles on the limb of some sculptured Hercules, as if the
mountain had gathered up its whole strength and knit its frame together
to defy the fiercest assaults of the elements. But look how every
crag is splintered, how every jutting buttress is rent and creviced,
how every ledge is strewn with blocks that have fallen from the naked
wall above it! If we detach one of these loosened blocks and set it in
downward motion, we may watch it plunge into the abyss, flash from crag
to crag, career down the screes of rubbish and make no pause until, if
it survive so far, it dashes into the surge below. What we can thus
carelessly do in a few moments is done deliberately every winter by
the hand of Nature. Slowly but ceaselessly this vast seawall, swept by
Atlantic storm, sapped by frost, soaked with rain, dried and beaten
by sun and wind, is being battered down under the fire of Nature's
resistless artillery.
So far the scene is one that requires no special acquaintance with
science for its appreciation. The man of literature, who may most
disparage the man of science, may well affirm that here they meet on
common ground and have equal powers of reception and enjoyment. Nor
will he be gainsaid if he claims that for the enjoyment of the distant
view he is likewise quite as well equipped as the other. His eye, too,
can range over the whole glorious panorama of sea and land, across the
wide bay to the hills of Mayo, among which the noble cone of Nephin
rises like a distant Vesuvius; southward to the terraced heights of
Sligo, with their green tablelands and gleaming cliffs, which look
away to the western ocean; eastward and northward, over the billowy
sea of hills that stretch through Donegal round again westward to the
Atlantic. What is there of note in such a landscape, he may demand,
which he, ignorant of science, misses? What added pleasure, what
brighter light, can science cast over it?
By way of reply to these queries, let me ask the reader who has thus
far accompanied me to turn from the distant view to what lies beneath
his feet on the bare, stony, wind-swept summit of Slieve League. Never
shall I forget my own astonishment and enthusiasm when, in company
with some of my colleagues of the Geological Survey, I found the
splintered slabs of stone lying there to be full of stems of fossil
trees, belonging to kinds which occur abundantly in the sandstones
below our Coal-measures. The geologist will at once appreciate the full
meaning of this discovery. It showed that, perched on the summit of
this mountain, some two thousand feet above the sea, lay a cake, only
a few acres in extent, of that division of the Carboniferous rocks
called the Millstone Grit--a formation which spreads over a large tract
of country farther to the east. Here, in the north-west of Ireland, in
the very heart of the region of the ancient crystalline schists, and
occupying the highest ground of the district, lay a little remnant,
which demonstrated that a sheet of Millstone Grit once stretched over
that remote part of the island, and may have extended much farther
westward over tracts where the Atlantic now rolls. And as the Millstone
Grit is followed by the Coal-measures, the further inference could be
legitimately drawn that the Irish coal-fields, now so restricted in
extent, once spread far and wide over the hills of Donegal, from which
they have since been gradually denuded. Truly the woes of Ireland may
be traced back to a very early time, when not even the most ardent
patriot can lay blame on the invading Saxon.
That little cake of grit on the top of Slieve League stands as a
monument of waste so prolonged and so stupendous as to be hardly
conceivable. It proves that the north-west of Ireland was buried under
a sheet of strata many hundreds of feet thick, and that, inch by inch,
this overlying mantle of solid stone has been worn away, until it has
been reduced at last to merely a few scattered patches of which that
of Slieve League is the most westerly. Not only so, but the present
system of hill and valley is thus demonstrated not to be part of the
primeval architecture of the earth, but to have come into being after
that upper envelope of Carboniferous rock had begun to be removed. What
a marvellous series of pictures is thus presented to our imagination!
Standing on that bare mountain-top, we think of the ages represented
by the quartzite of those craggy precipices below, then of the time
when the region lay beneath the waters in which the coal jungles spread
over a large part of Ireland. We try to realise how these jungles sank
foot by foot beneath the sea, how sand and silt were heaped over them,
and how, in course of ages, this submerged area was once more upraised
into land. But we fail to form any adequate conception of the lapse of
time required for the long succession of changes that followed. We only
know that, slowly and insensibly, by the fall of rain, the beating of
wind, the creeping of ice-fields, and the surging of the ocean, hollow
and glen have been carved out, hill after hill has emerged, like forms
from a block of marble under the hand of a sculptor, that ravines have
been cut out here and crags have been left there, until, at last, the
whole landscape has been wrought into its present forms.
We look once more down the face of the precipice, now lit up by the
advancing sun, and, though everywhere upon its ruined surface we mark
how--
'Nature softening and concealing,
Is busy with a hand of healing'--
crusting the bare rock with golden lichen, or hiding its rawness under
a cover of richly tinted weather-stains, we none the less perceive the
sure signs of constant and inevitable decay; we recognise the working
of the same forces that have sculptured the whole landscape, far as
well as near; and we feel awed in presence of this revelation of the
continuity of law and of the potency even of the unregarded operations
of nature when they have had untold ages in which to accomplish their
appointed work.
I should like now to transport the reader to a wholly different scene,
that we may consider together some of the more obvious features in the
landscapes of the south coast of England. At the western end of the
Isle of Wight, a long ridge of chalk-down, which stretches completely
across the island, runs out to sea, and terminates in the well-known
white pinnacles of the Needles. From the highest part of the ridge,
when the air is clear, the eye ranges southward over a vast expanse
of open sea. To the west and north the breadth of water is bounded by
the blue hills of Dorsetshire, the white cliffs of Swanage Bay, and
then the long low brown heights which are crowned with the spires of
Bournemouth and Christchurch. Eastward we note how the ridge on which
we stand sinks down into the hollow of Freshwater Gap, but rises again
on the farther side, and then striking inland for some miles, sweeps
round to form the heights of St. Catharine's, nearly 800 feet high,
whence it descends once more in white cliffs to the sea.
On a summer noon, when a fresh westerly breeze roughens the sea into
deepest azure, and keeps a continual murmur of plashing waves at the
foot of the cliffs, few pieces of English coast scenery offer more
attractions than this. From the verge of the short green sward of the
down, the chalk plunges in a sheer precipice of dazzling whiteness,
that contrasts well with the mingled blue and emerald-green of the sea
below. Projecting massive buttresses, that catch the full blaze of
sunlight, throw into delicate violet shadow the recesses and alcoves
into which the face of chalk has been worn. On the great ocean highway
in front, vessels of every size and rig sail past on their outward or
homeward voyage. Though our perch above the precipice is solitary,
we yet feel within sight and touch of the living world. Across the
bay we mark the smoke of distant villages and towns, and the fields
and woodlands that separate the scattered hamlets. Just below, at the
northern foot of the ridge, sheltered and concealed among its woods,
lies that home so dear to lovers of English literature, where--
'Groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand,
And further on, the hoary channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand.'
Nor are memorials of the past wanting to throw over the scene the
priceless charm of old memory and tradition. The down is roughened here
and there with 'the grassy barrows of the happier dead.' The steeples
and towers of the country churches dotted over the landscape, mark
still, as they have done for centuries, the heart of each parish and
its quiet graveyard. It is a typically English scene, full of that
hallowed, historic interest, and of that subdued, unobtrusive beauty,
where the lineaments of nature are everywhere more or less concealed by
the labours of man, which constitute so chief a source of pleasure in
the landscapes of England.
Here, surely, our literary censor may claim that no room can be found
for the foot of science. What can we pretend to add to the charm of
such scenery; or what can we do, if we touch it at all, but lessen
that charm? Again, I accept the challenge, though with perhaps somewhat
more diffidence; not that I think the contribution from science is here
less available or less appropriate, but because I so fully share in
the feeling that a scene, in itself and to the ordinary eye so full of
everything that can give pleasure, needs no addition from any source.
Let me suppose that we are placed upon the extreme western verge of
the down, with the Needles in front of us. The chalk that forms these
white faces of rock is shown by science to be made up entirely of the
mouldered remains of creatures that gathered on the sea-bottom, ages
before the species of animals living at the present day came into
existence. Sponges, crinoids, corals, shells, fishes, reptiles, mingled
their remains with those of the minuter forms of life that accumulated
on the floor of that ancient ocean. And now, hardened into stone, the
ooze of that sea-bed has been upraised into land. The 'long backs of
the bushless downs,' which for many successive centuries have remained
as we see them, were originally parts of the sea-bed, and are entirely
built up of the vestiges of dead organisms.
But this is not all. Look at one of those noble faces of rock which
shoot up from the restless breakers, and take note of the parallel
lines of dark flints which, as if traced with a pencil, sweep in such
graceful curves from base to crest of the cliffs. Alike on buttress and
recess, from headland to headland, no matter how irregularly the chalk
has been sculptured, these parallel lines may be followed. A feature
so conspicuous in the architecture of the precipices could not escape
the attention of the most casual visitor, but he only vaguely marvels
at it, until geology tells him that these dark lines mark successive
floors of that ancient sea--floors that gathered one over another, as
generation after generation of marine creatures left their crumbling
remains upon the bottom. But now they are bent up and placed on end,
like books on the shelves of a library. And thus we learn that not only
has this ancient sea-bed been turned into dry land, but its layers of
hardened ooze have been tilted up vertically, and that it is the worn
ends of these upturned layers which form the long ridges of the downs.
But science further makes known to us that beyond the cliffy margin
on which we stand, there once stretched an ampler land that has
long disappeared. Far over the English Channel the chalk downs once
extended with their undulating summits, their smooth grassy slopes,
their deep cooms and quiet bournes. That vanished land ran southward,
until it ended off in a range of white precipices. The rain that fell
on its surface gathered into a river that flowed northward through
Freshwater Gap into the Solent. Strange to tell, perched on the top of
the present cliffs, to the east of Freshwater, lie fragments of the
bed of that ancient stream, consisting of gravel and silt which, as
the cliffs are undermined by the waves, tumble to the beach and mingle
with the gravel of to-day. In these ancient deposits are found teeth
of the long-extinct mammoths which browsed the herbage on slopes that
rose southward, where for many a long age the Atlantic has rolled its
restless tides and breakers.
Musing on these records of a dim forgotten past, we once more turn
to the last spurs of chalk and the isolated Needles. There, with
eye quickened to recognise what science has to reveal, we trace on
every feature of the rocky foreground, inscribed in characters that
cannot be mistaken, the story of that process of destruction which
has reduced the Isle of Wight to its present diminished proportions.
The rains, frosts, and tempests splinter the chalk above and the
waves gnaw it away below. Year by year fresh slices are cut off and
strewn in fragments over the sea-floor by the unwearying surge. The
Needles, once part of the down, are perceptibly less than they were a
generation ago. The opposite white cliffs and downs of Dorset were at
one time continuous with those of the Isle of Wight. They too, by their
shattered precipices, tunnelled caverns, and isolated stacks of rock,
tell the same tale of disintegration. And, thus, impressive though the
scenery was before, it now acquires a new interest and significance,
when every cliff and pinnacle becomes eloquent to us of a past so
strange, so remote, and yet so closely linked with our own day by a
chain of slow and unbroken causation.
And now, as a last illustration, let me conduct the reader in
imagination to the far north-west of Scotland and place him on the
craggy slopes above the upper end of Loch Maree as the sun, after a
day of autumnal storm, is descending towards the distant Hebrides
in a glory of crimson, green, and gold. Hardly anywhere within the
compass of our islands can a landscape be beheld so varied in form
and colour, so abounding in all that is noblest and fairest in our
mountain scenery. To the right rises the huge mass of Slioch, catching
on his terraced shoulders the full glow of sunset, and wreathing his
summit with folds of delicate rose-coloured cloud. To the left, above
the purple shadows that are now gathering round their base, tower the
white crags and crests of Ben Eay, rising clear and sharp against the
western sky. Down the centre, between these two giant buttresses, lies
Loch Maree--the noblest sheet of water in the Scottish Highlands--now
ablaze with the light of the sinking sun. Headland behind headland, and
islet after islet rise as bars of deep violet out of that sea of gold.
Yonder a group of pines, relics of the old Caledonian forest, stand
boldly above the rocky knolls. Around us the naked rock undulates in
endless bosses, dotted with boulders or half-buried in the deep heather
that flames out with yet richer crimson in the ruddy light filling
all the valley. Overhead, the banded cliffs of Craig Roy, draped with
waterfalls and wet with the rains of the earlier part of the day, glow
in the varying tints of sunset. We hear the scream of the eagles that
still nest in these inaccessible crags; the hoarse outcry of the heron
comes up from the lake; the whirr of the black-cock re-echoes down the
hill-side. It might seem as if we were here out of sight and hearing
of man, save that now and then the low of cattle, driven home to their
stalls, falls faintly on the ear from the distant hamlet, which is
fading into the gathering twilight of the glen.
At such a time and in such a scene the past speaks vividly to us,
if there be human associations of a bygone time linked with the
place. Here, in this remote Highland valley, we are led backward
in imagination through generations of strife and rapine, clan
warfare and private revenge, bravery and treachery, superstition and
ignorance, far away to that early time when, in the seventh century,
Maelrubha, the red priest from Ireland, preached to the savage Picts,
and first brought this region within the ken of civilised men. More
than twelve hundred years have since passed away, but the memory of
that early missionary still lives here among the solitudes which he
chose as the scene of his labours. The lake yet bears his name, and
his favourite island of retirement, embowered in holly, mountain ash,
and honeysuckle, contains his holy well, which, even to this day, is
visited for the cure of diseases, while offerings are there made to the
saint.
It is just this little touch of 'the still, sad music of humanity'
which is needed to crown the interest and dignity of our Highland
landscape. 'What more, then, can we need or desire?' our literary
critic may once more demand; 'you may go on to elaborate the details of
the scene, for every part of the picture abounds in the most exquisite
detail, beyond the power of pen or almost of pencil adequately to
pourtray. But what can science do here, except to mar what already is
perfect, or to confuse by contributing what is entirely irrelevant?'
Again I feel the force of the objection, and all the more because
to combat it as I should wish to do, would involve me in geological
details which would here be wholly out of place. Let me say, briefly
and decidedly, that after many years of experience in every variety of
landscape in this country, I know nowhere a scene which has its true
inner meaning as a source of impressiveness more strikingly revealed,
or which has its ordinary interest more vividly intensified by the
light which geological history throws upon it.
The most cursory traveller, even as he drives rapidly along this
valley, can hardly fail to observe that three distinct rocks enter
into the composition of the landscape, each differing from the others
in form, colour, and relative position, and each contributing its
own characteristic features to the scenery. First of all a series of
curiously hummocky eminences of dark grey rock mounts from the edge
of the lake up the sides of Slioch, forming a kind of rude and rugged
platform on which that mountain stands. Next comes a pile of brownish
red sandstone, which in parallel and almost horizontal bars, like so
many courses of cyclopean masonry, forms the upper and main mass of
the height. And lastly, there is the bedded white rock which, hanging
upon the flanks of the red sandstone, towers in the cliffs of Craig
Roy on the one side of the valley and builds up almost the whole of
Ben Eay on the other side. The differences and contrasts between these
three kinds of material are so marked, and have obviously played so
essential a part in producing the special peculiarities of the rocky
landscape, that even our literary censor himself could hardly, in spite
of himself, fail to note them and might venture to ask a question about
them.
To answer his question as it might best be answered would be most
briefly and vividly done by a true poet. I can only pretend to present
the mere facts, but even such a presentation in the driest and baldest
way cannot conceal their inherent marvellous interest.
Those grey bosses of rock that rise out of Loch Maree and form the
base and outworks of Slioch are portions of the very oldest known
land-surface of Europe, as incalculably more ancient than the rest
of the Highlands, as the Highlands in turn are more ancient than the
Alps or the Apennines. Their heights and hollows existed before the
red sandstones were laid down. To this day, you can walk along the
shore-line of the vanished lake or sea in which these sandstones
accumulated, and can mark how hill after hill, and valley after valley,
sank under its waters, and were buried beneath its quietly gathering
sand and shingle. That primeval land-surface, slowly settling down,
came at last to lie under several thousand feet of such sediment. Long
subsequently, after the sand, hardened into sandstone and the gravel,
consolidated into conglomerate, had been partially raised out of water,
came the time when the white rock of Ben Eay and Craig Roy gathered as
fine white sand on the sea-bottom. Some beds of this compacted sand are
filled with millions of the burrows of sea-worms that lived in it, and
higher up come bands of shale and limestone containing here and there
trilobites, shells, corals, sponges and other organisms belonging to
an age anterior to that of even the very oldest fossiliferous rocks
of most of the rest of Britain. These sheets of marine sediment point
to a period when there were no hills in north-west Scotland, for the
primeval heights still lay deeply buried, and a shoreless sea spread
far and wide over the region.
At length after a vast interval of time came an epoch of gigantic
terrestial disturbance, when north-western Europe, from the North Cape
to the south of Ireland, was convulsed; when the solid crust of the
earth was folded, crumpled, and fractured, until its shattered rocks,
crushed and kneaded together, acquired the crystalline characters which
they now display. In the course of these tremendous displacements (to
which there is no parallel in the later geological history of this
country) huge slices of the earth's crust, many hundreds of feet thick
and many miles long, were wrenched asunder and pushed bodily westwards,
sometimes for a distance of ten miles. By this means portions of
the oldest rocks of the region were torn off and planted on the top
of the youngest. The whole country, thus broken up, underwent many
subsequent mutations, and was finally left to be gradually worn down by
the various agents that have carved the surface of the land into its
present shape.
Our three groups of rock, so distinctly marked out in the landscape,
thus record three successive and early chapters in the long history by
which the topography of the Scottish Highlands has been brought into
its existing form. Knowing what is their story, we find that every crag
and scar acquires a new meaning and interest. Past and present are once
more brought into such close and vivid union that while we gaze at the
landscape as it stands now, its features seem to melt away into visions
of what it has once been. We can in imagination clothe it with its
ancient pine-forests through which the early Celtic colonists hunted
the urus, the wild boar, the wolf, the brown bear, and the reindeer.
We can fill up the valley with the stately glacier which once stretched
along its hollow and went out to sea. We can dimly conceive the passage
of the long ages of persistent decay by which mountain and glen, corry
and cliff were carved into the forms which now so delight our eye.
In a memorable and often-quoted passage, Johnson wrote, 'To abstract
the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were
endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever
withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past,
the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us
in the dignity of thinking beings.'[19] If this be a just judgment,
surely we may further maintain that whatever heightens our interest
in the landscapes around us, whatever quickens the imagination by
presenting new views of what has long been familiar, whatever deepens
our reverence by teaching us to recognise the proofs of that long
orderly progress through which the land has been fashioned for our use,
undoubtedly raises us in the dignity of thinking beings, stimulates the
emotional side of our nature, and furnishes abundant material for the
exercise of the literary and artistic faculties. Science even in her
noblest inspirations, is never poetry, but she offers thoughts of man
and nature which the poet, in the alembic of his genius, may transmute
into purest poetic gold.