Geognosy of the Cruachan District

Abstract

From an elevated hill, a mile from Dalmally station; on which a monument to the Highland poet, Duncan Ban M'Intyre, is erected; a view is obtained of the scene of the present paper. It embraces a range of forty miles, from Ben Doirainne, at the upper end of Glenorchy, to Ford, at the foot of Loch Awe; and the question to be considered is the glaciation of that district. From the map of the glaciation of Scotland attached to Dr Archibald Geikie's last edition of the scenery of Scotland: he places the ice-field of the south-east Highlands somewhere about the Moor of Rannoch, and towards Loch Laggin, from which the ice-course proceeded to west and south by King's House to Loch Etive, and so on to the sea at Connel Ferry. Another proceeded down through the hills to the south of the Black Mount, by the Strae and the Orchy, into what is now Loch Awe, and excavated that Loch basin. In the above-mentioned book of Dr Geikie's, he states the former outlet of Loch Awe to have been into Loch Gilp, as evidenced by the marks of ice action on the islands and along the shore of the Loch, and on the land between Ford and Loch Gilp; shewing that ice which had filled the present basin of the Loch Awe; had ascended over the rocky barrier to Kilmartin. The evidence of this was quite clear to me in the striated rocks and innumerable moraine mounds along the whole