fishing-boats. Further, the coast here is very steep and the
difficulties of communication between the successive villages
considerable — a fact which has checked their growth. Every
one who has travelled south by this route knows also how
difficult it has made railway construction, as seen by the
incessant tunnels.

This brief description may serve to make clear what is
meant by saying that the Riviera towns have need to take
their climate and their beauties of land and sea to market,
have need to sell their charms, for the possibiHties of honest
work are few. Their forcing-house chmate is due to the
/ nearness of the mountains to the sea, to the height of these
mountains ; therefore there, where the chmate is best, is there
least opportunity of intercommunication by land, is there
least level ground which can be cultivated, are the streams
too short to form important valleys. If we keep these
facts in mind the possibilities of disappointment will be
lessened, the tendency to cheap cynicism diminished. ' From
Hyeres to the frontier,' said an indignant chasseur Alpin
in the train to the author, ' there are nothing but rogues
and thieves, and no honest man can live.' Without accept-
ing this position in its entirety, one may admit that the



CHARACTERS OF THE REGION 245

forcing-house atmosphere does not suit the higher human
virtues. One must go to the Riviera for what it can give,
and not seek for more.

What can it give to the serious traveller ? An almost
perfect winter climate, beauty of scenery, due especially to
that telescoping of cUmatic zones of which we have spoken,
which brings the snowclad Alps within, apparently, a stone's-
throw of rich sub-tropical vegetation, and almost unequalled
opportunities for seeing — but not always handUng — a very
large variety of plants. Almost all the rest is artificial, and
much of it depressing in the extreme.

There is, as we have already emphasised, very little level \
ground, and the difficulties of communication are great.
On the other hand, most of the visitors are too elegantly
dressed to want to do much, and for individuals to walk
would be to suggest that they could not afford to keep motor-
cars. Thus to make a health resort, the cUmate being given,
the chief essential is to construct a promenade where beauty
and fashion may be conveniently displayed, and to supply
a few roads capable of being used for motoring. As the hills
were not, in earher times, utilised in that elaborate fashion
which characterises the Alps further north, pasturage being
scanty, there are few hill paths, and those in existence are
mostly very rough. In the Alps further north, that very
complicated system, whereby the pastures of the various
levels are used at different seasons, has resulted in the establish-
ment of a series of paths which required no very great
modification to be made available for the use of tourists.
No such system of paths makes the hills of Liguria readily
available to the ordinary tourist.

■Further, what cultivable land exists can, owing to the
cUmate, be utilised for costly crops, and therefore careful
fencing is required. While at one time the characteristic
Mediterranean plants, especially the olive, were much grown,
now on the French Riviera at least the land is being iucreui*-



I.'



246 BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEA

ingly put down to early flowers and vegetables, for which
the visitors afford a local market. The constant spreading
of this intensive gardening naturally diminishes the amount
of land carrying the original Mediterranean vegetation,
though this can still be studied on the hill-sides. Further,
since the visitors must be housed, much of the relatively
level land is required for the huge hotels with their gardens,
and the equally large villas with their parks, which, not
unnaturally, are always tending to spread over the most
beautiful areas. Thus the sensitive visitor will be inclined
to say of certain of the resorts that if the region is compared
as a whole to a forcing house, his share of the sun has to be
enjoyed on what he may not unjustly describe as a narrow
band of greenhouse staging, from which he may see the
trees peeping over the high villa walls, hke plants appearing
over the edge of flower pots.

The result is that except, we may repeat, for the oppor-
tunities for plant study, which are still great, the serious-
minded traveller has not a great deal to look for along the
Riviera belt, and he will probably be best advised to travel
leisurely right along it, going in by the Mont Cenis and
Genoa and returning through Marseilles and Lyons, taking
the interesting towns of Provence on the way north.

Of the visitors who stay many are, at least theoretically,
invalids, the others are mostly those who make no pretence
of having an interest in any branch of geography or natural
science. They are of those who travel chiefly for a change
of golf, as the working-man is sometimes stated to migrate
in search of a change of beer. The author is under the
impression that golf is to be obtained at many of the resorts,
but speaks here as one without knowledge. If the devotee
be unsatisfied, however, he can but travel further, for one
may say broadly that the really practical Briton, when he
cannot sterilise land by factories or pit-heaps, will always
strive to do it by the construction of golf courses, and will,
we may be sure, survey the flowery glades of paradise when



A DIGRESSION 247

he reaches them from this point of view only. Indeed
a solemn British guide-book, in describing the glories of
the East, which to some minds have stood for paradise,
gives a special recommendation to Nuwara Ehya in Ceylon
because there, * among other attractions, there is an 18-hole
golf course which is said to be the best in the East.' This
great achievement is due undoubtedly to British enterprise,
and, one feels, ought to move the poet of empire to thrill
the nation with another hymn to duty. If the Riviera
golf-courses are relatively inferior it is no doubt because
here British organising abiUty has not full sway.

But this is to wander from the point. If the golf be not
all it should be, there is tennis, pigeon-shooting, gambhng,
survepng the wonders of the deep at the Monaco Oceano-
graphical Museum, and reflecting on the various uses to
which man at different stages of his history has put money
acquired by means against which his conscience revolts. It is
an excellent museum, but it is difficult not to break ofP one's
study of models illustrating the sahnity of the ocean in order
to wonder if the recent swing of the pendulum away from the
late Victorian passion for ' science ' as the way of escape
from human woes is not partially due to the sad experience
that it can be bought, as in earUer times the church was
bought ; once one built or decorated a church with the
thirty pieces of silver, now one endows a lecturer to prove
that the great betrayal was based on scientific principles,
or can be justified on eugenic grounds.

If these pleasures fail, one may contemplate the sea and
Usten to the band, but on the whole prolonged residence
in the region is unsuitable for the analytical, or the restless
of temperament. A winter greenhouse is, after all, best
fitted for grossly overfed chrysanthemums or drugged and
anaesthetised Uhes of the valley.

On the other hand, a somewhat hurried journey along the
whole coasthne, with occasional stops, not only gives one
a cumulative impression of the beauties of land and sea and



248 BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEA

flowers, but also helps to emphasise the point already made,
that adaptation to the purposes of a tourist resort almost
necessarily involves a want of adaptation to cultivation or
other forms of utiUsation. Thus the wider bays, where a
bigger stream, due to the fact that the mountains are not
80 near the shore, has laid down a larger alluvial cone, are
more likely to be given up to market-gardening than to the
functions of a health resort pure and simple. At the same
time one must not over-stress these facts, for Nice, for
example, while to at least a very large extent displaying the
characteristic Riviera climate, owes its origin as a consider-
able town to what we may describe as natural conditions —
i.e. not entirely to wealth introduced from a distance. Thus
it has many of the advantages of Genoa, if on a smaller scale.
It has a sheltered port ; it has access, though not very easy
access, by the Col di Tenda with the plain of Piedmont, and
by Digne with the valley of the Durance ; it has in its vicinity
considerable tracts of fertile land, which can be devoted,
owing to the chmate, to valuable crops, and of these neigh-
bouring tracts it forms the natural outlet. But the very
fact that it is fundamentally an independent and not purely
a parasitic city renders it in the eyes of many less suitable
as a resort than places hke Monaco and Mentone, where there
is but httle local individuaUty to interfere with the pleasures
of the stranger. Places are like human beings, when they
make it their one object to serve the senses of strangers, it
must needs be at the sacrifice of individuality — they neces-
sarily sell their souls as well as their bodies. One must admit
also that the northerners who are the purchasers — whether
really rich or only pretending to be — do not show their best
qualities as sojourners by the tideless sea.

Refekences. As we have seen, the chief geographical interest of
the Riviera is found in its flora, and for books relating to this reference
should be made to p. 96. The other specially interesting feature, the
chmate, is fully discussed in Hann's book (p. 58).



CHAPTER XIX

AN UPLAND REGION I THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

' Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have ta'en delight.'

We have now considered the great chains of Central Europe
and their margins under various aspects, with a view to
bringing out the present features of their surface and the
causes of these. But since in connection with the Central
Alps we emphasised chiefly the past and present effects of
ice, it may be well to repeat here, with renewed emphasis,
some of the points in regard to structure which were briefly
mentioned in the earlier chapters.

We have seen that the Alps consist of a great variety of
rocks — crystalline, sedimentary or modified sedimentary and
volcanic. Whatever their composition, however, they owe
the fact that they are mountains to earth movements.
Certain regions, like the Dolomites, consist of almost horizontal
strata, elevated en bloc, and then dissected by the forces of
erosion into sharp-peaked or pyramidal mountain masses,
some of which, Uke the Cinque Torri, are themselves in the
act of being worn away — are Uke ruined buildings at a disused
pithead, which will shortly crumble down to grass-grown
mounds. Others, hkc the Matterhorn, the Mythen near the
shores of the lake of Lucerne, the Great Spannort at Engel-
berg, and so on, are the result of overthi'usting on the gigantic
scale — are the dissected remnants of rock-shces which have
been pushed over obstructing earth-masses, and have come
to lie far from their point of origin in the crust. Others

219



250 THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

again, like the Santis Mountains, are directly due to folding,
the great crumples of which that mountain group consists
being obvious on its sides. In short, the Alps owe their
elevation above the surface to what are called tectonic causes,
though they owe the details of their form to erosion. They
have not, since the geologically recent period of their origin,
been worn down to base-level, and, as we have seen, the
levelling forces are now acting upon them with prodigious
activity.

As contrasted with the Alps and the mountain ranges of
which they form a part, we have in Europe, as aheady seen,
a number of upland regions, which are in origin the much
dissected and redissected remnants of far older mountain
chains. Of these we shall take the Highlands of Scotland
for somewhat fuller treatment. These Highlands have, as
we shall see, great beauty and much charm, but — and we
should be clear on this point — they do not show typical
mountain scenery. One sometimes hears it said that it is
absurd for thousands of the inhabitants of Great Britain to
seek the Alps every year, for there are splendid mountains
in their own country. The reply is that there are no true
mountains in the British Islands : nothing but mountain
stumps, ' rejuvenated ' as the American geographers say, so
as to present some resemblance to mountain forms, but lacking
all the splendour and vigour of youth. To seek mountain
form in the strict sense in the Highlands is to court
disappointment.

After this brief introduction let us turn back to Fig. 2, p. 19,
and consider the broad Unes of the structure of the Highlands,
In the extreme north-west of the mainland of Scotland, as
well as in the Hebrides, there exist at the present day areas
floored by a very hard and much worn rock called, from the
Island of Lewis where it is very abundant, Lewisian gneiss.
The regions in which it occurs are exceedingly barren and,
except where other rocks occur, undulating and featureless.



THE NORTH-WESTERN HICxHLANDS 251

It is believed that this is an exposed remnant of the first land-
mass of Europe. A similar kind of rook occurs in eastern
Canada, and also in Sweden and Finland (see Fig. 2),
suggesting that in the earliest times of which we can form a
conception, a land- mass lay to the north and north-west of
what is now Europe.

But this is not the only type of rock which occurs in north-
west Scotland. In Sutherland, where much of the surface
is formed of the barren, undulating, monotonous gneiss, there
rise up in certain places steep-sided conical or pyramidal
mountains, of which Suilven (Lochinver district) is a good
example. These mountains are built up of red sandstone,
called the Torridon sandstone from its abundance round
Loch Torridon, and resemble the Dolomites described in the
last chapter in that their beds he almost horizontally. As
the capping of Torridon sandstone is found on a number of
separate peaks (Suilven, Coul More, Coul Beg, Stac Polly,
etc.) which rise from the plateau of gneiss, it seems reasonable
to conclude that the sandstone once constituted a uniform
covering, and has been removed in certain places by
denudation, while being left in other regions, which now
form hills. In some places in the north-west, on top of the
Torridon sandstone we find beds of white quartzite and other
rocks of later date, but still belonging to a very early period
of the earth's history ; that in which many of the rocks of
North Wales were laid down, hence called Cambrian. The
conclusion drawn from the presence of these two kinds of
sedimentary rocks (that is rocks laid down in water), is
that the rivers of the ancient land surface to the north-west
carried down quantities of debris to the sea, on whose
floor the sandstones and the overlying quartzites, grits, and
limestones were laid down. How far these beds extended
over the present Highlands we do not know. All the next
stages are indeed obscure, for, apparently during the period
called Silurian, a great chain of mountains was ridged



252 THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

up over what had once been the sea-floor to the south of
the old land-mass. As in the case of the Alps, the crumphng
force in Scotland acted towards the north-west, and just as
the earth blocks in middle Europe stemmed the great earth
waves when the Alps arose, so the old land-mass to the north-
west acted as a breakwater to the earUer waves. Again, much
as in the Alps, owing to the existence of this obstacle, over-
thrusting occurred ; for since the folds were blocked by the
resistant upland in front of them, they bent over, and the
beds were thus inverted, so that lower lie on the top of higher ;
they are also reduplicated, because upright folds become
horizontal. At the same time great sheets of rocks were
carried over the crest of the obstacle, and came to lie far
from their region of origin. During the folding, crumphng
and overthrusting the rocks in the Highlands lost their
original characters, whatever these were, and became con-
verted into schists and similar rocks, and, as in the Alps,
volcanic eruptions took place in connection with the great
earth movements. In the Southern Uplands the folding
was less intense, and the rocks preserved more of their original
characters, so that their age can be determined.

The great range of mountains which arose in this fashion
is called by Suess the Caledonian range, and, at the period
of its maximum development, it stretched not only through
Scotland but also through western England into Wales and
Ukewise involved the greater part of Ireland. The same
chain was apparently continuous across what is now the
North Sea into Norway.

Beyond the period of the origin of the Caledonian range we
do not need to follow the geological history of Scotland ; the
point of importance is the great age of this chain, which is
infinitely older than the Alps. In its prime it was doubtless
a towering and magnificent range, with peaks and needles,
glaciers and snowfields — all the attributes of a true mountain
chain. But the forces of erosion have acted upon it for



THE CALEDONIAN CHAIN 253

countless ages, and probably not once but more than once
has it been worn down to base-level. It has also been frac-
tured and faulted, the line of the Great Glen in Scotland
and the boundaries of the Midland valley indicating Unes
of breakage in the earth's crust. Long, long ago, therefore,
the Caledonian range lost all the characters of a true mountain
range.

But though new earth-folds have never re-formed on the
site of the old, movements of elevation and depression have
taken place. If a mountain chain remain for a prolonged
period above the surface of the sea, the forces of erosion
at first act upon it with great rapidity and then gradually
slacken, till the final result is a monotonous, undulating
surface, whose rivers have all but done their work. If such
a tract be again raised some distance above sea-level, then
the rivers re-acquire volume, speed, and thus power to erode
and transport, and the cycle recommences. If the process
be repeated more than once then all the softer rocks will
in course of time be removed, so that even after the recom-
mencement of a new cycle only rounded forms will tend to
be produced.

Now before the onset of the Ice Age the Highlands of
Scotland— the only part of the site of the ancient Caledonian
range which we shall consider — were in the midst of such a
renewed cycle. An ancient monotonous plateau had been
uplifted and was in process of being dissected anew, the
dissection having taken place to a greater extent to the west
than to the east, no doubt because of the greater rainfall
there. The mountains were undulating and were all of
approximately the same height, this marking the elevation
of, the old plateau from which they were being carved. The
valleys were wide and open, the constituent rocks uniform
over wide areas.

What did the ice do ? In the period of greatest glacia-
tion the whole land surface and part of the sea-bottom



254 THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

was covered with ice, nunataks (see p. 194), if they existed,
being few and far between, and conjBxied to the west. During
such periods the work of the ice must have been chiefly the
smoothing of the surface in the higher region, transporting
debris to the lower regions, and, owing to the load of stones
or grit in the under layers of the ice, assisted perhaps by the
sub-glacial water, hollowing out basins in the underlying
rock, especially where the ice debouched from higher ground to
lower, or where several streams of ice converged. But for
the most part, during the maximum glaciation, the effects,
whether of erosion or of deposition (boulder clay), must have
been best marked outside the Highland area.

In the later stages, however, there seems httle doubt that
separate valley glaciers existed, which headed in cirques or
corries and then flowed down valleys, much as glaciers do
in the Eastern Alps to-day. These later glaciers seem to have
produced a marked effect on the surface. They modified
the upper regions of the mountains, where they converted
the old valley heads into cirques (Plate XXV.) ; they
altered the valleys, turning the old V-shaped river valleys
into U-shaped ones, giving rise to lake basins, smoothing
watersheds where they over-rode them because their own
valleys were too small to hold the mass of ice, laying down
great piles of morainic matter, and so forth.

Thus to the general tourist, the most interesting points
about the Highlands must be, first, the indications of the
old plateau, seen especially in the vast extent of undulating
surface, lying at a considerable height above sea-level;
second, the frequent appearance towards the summit of
the hills of extraordinary steep-sided cirques which some-
times approach one another at opposite sides so that
peaks and aretes are produced ; third, the pecuhar
characters of the Highland vafleys, glens as they are caUed,
with their often steep walls, their lakes, their waterfalls,
their great moraines, and so forth. It is the combination



IM.ATK \XV




\'io\v ill (.ilencoe, showing a typical Higlilaml cunii.' hanging high ahove
the ovcr-deeiieneil valley.

(I'hoto hij the Geological Survey.)



THE CAIRNGORM REGION 255

of these three different types of scenery that give the High-
lands their special features. One result is that photographs
give but a very imperfect notion of their beauties, for the
mountain corries and the glens can rarely be included in the
same view, and comprehensive views are apt to seem dull
because they tend to show neither glen nor corrie, but only
undulating slopes. This again leads to the fact that the
most popular photographs are those which include woodland,
most abundant in Perthshire and the Dee valley, or water
effects, and such photographs give an incomplete conception
of the scenery as a whole. Geographically, we may repeat,
the interest of the Highlands comes from the co-existence of
remnants of two stages of erosion, and to appreciate this one
must know the region both from above and from below, must
combine a number of separate impressions. The ' pretti-
ness ' of Perthshire, which is so apt to be regarded by the
stranger as the best the Highlands have to offer, is not dis-
tinctively Highland.

To get a real grip of their topographical pecuHarities one
should visit not only some part of the eastern plateau, with its
very moderate dissection, but also some part of the western
region, where dissection had proceeded much further before
the ice came, and where the effect of the ice was often to
carve out the summits into something which closely resembles
mountain peaks, and to turn the valleys into deep, steep-
sided glens, characterised by their lateral waterfalls, their
rapid brown streams, and their beautiful lakes.

For the eastern region the Cairngorms (Plate XXVI.), or
perhaps still better the Lochnagar district may be recom-
mended. In chmbing Lochnagar one ascends, at least from
the Loch Callater side, by long slopes not much more than
gentle, and one has all round an interminable expanse of roll-
ing country, rounded and smoothed by ice, but essentially a
plateau and not a mountain region. As one reaches the
summit plateau of the White Mounth and, somewhat dis-



256 THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

illusioned. strolls onward to reach the cairn which marks
the undistinguished summit, one suddenly finds oneself
overlooking a huge steep-sided corrie, holding a lake on its
floor, having magnificent buttresses running out from its
sides, and showing altogether a splendour of rocky scenery
for which the long trudge up has given no preparation. ' This,'
in the famous words of Agassiz on another occasion, ' is the
work of the ice,' and this also is what gives the Highlands
half their charm. A further investigation of the valleys
which trench the great plateau so abruptly will reveal here
also the efiect of the vanished glaciers, for many of the
features which we noticed in the Alpine valleys — the shape,
the valley lakes, the hanging lateral valleys, the smoothed
cols and watersheds, the morainic mounds — are present here
as they were there.

Of the western region the island of Arran, where in
the Goat Fell region the old plateau is deeply dissected,
and its summit levels eaten back on all sides to peaks and