The Scenery of Scotland Viewed in Connexion with Its Physical Geology

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Macmillan, 1865 - 360 páginas

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Página 312 - As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie Couched on the bald top of an eminence ; Wonder to all who do the same espy, By what means it could thither come, and whence; So that it seems a thing endued with sense : Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself...
Página 2 - Into one place, and let dry land appear.' Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky: So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, Capacious bed of waters: thither they...
Página 259 - Urn-like it was in shape, deep as an urn ; With rocks encompassed, save that to the south Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close ; A quiet treeless nook, with two green fields, A liquid pool that glittered in the sun, And one bare dwelling ; one abode, no more...
Página 310 - Some of his skill he taught to me; And, Warrior, I could say to thee The words that cleft Eildon hills in three, And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone.
Página xvi - ... there ; and while the mists Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes And phantoms from the crags and solid earth As fast as a musician scatters sounds Out of an instrument ; and while the streams (As at a first creation and in haste To exercise their untried faculties) Descending from the region of the clouds, And starting from the hollows of the earth More multitudinous every moment, rend Their way before them — what a joy to roam An equal among mightiest energies...
Página 10 - If indeed a river consisted of a single stream, without branches, running in a straight valley, it might be supposed that some great concussion, or some powerful torrent, had opened at once the channel by which its waters are conducted to the ocean ; but, when the usual form of a river is considered, the trunk divided into many branches, which rise at a great distance from one another, and these again subdivided into an infinity of smaller ramifications, it becomes strongly impressed upon the mind,...
Página 289 - Clyde, above its loftiest fall, which, being 80 feet in height, it is utterly impossible for fish of any kind to surmount. The fact is accounted for in this way. After passing Tinto Hill, the bed of the Clyde approaches to a level with that of the Biggar Water, which is close at hand, and discharges itself into the Tweed. On the occasion of a large flood the two streams become connected, and the Clyde actually pours a portion of its waters into one of the tributaries of the Tweed, which is accessible...
Página 65 - is the devastation that has taken place amidst this wreck of nature. Close to the Isle of Stenness is the Skerry of Eshaness, formidably rising from the sea, and showing on its westerly side a steep precipice, against which all the force of the Atlantic seems to have been expended : it affords a refuge for myriads of kittiwakes, whose shrill cries, mingling with the dashing of the waters, wildly accord with the terrific scene that is presented on every...
Página 63 - Stevenson in 1 8 1 6 to be an island every flood tide; yet even within the memory of some old people then alive, it had formed one continuous tract of firm ground.
Página 201 - Spean, and ponded back the water, gradually melted away. The drainage of Glen Roy, Glen Spean, and their tributary valleys was then no longer arrested, and as the lake crept step by step down the glen towards the sea, the streams one by one took their places in the channels, which they have been busy widening and deepening ever since.

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