Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/32

 is for ever immured in some profound chasm of the mountains of Caucasus. The lake Coruisk is rather more than two miles in length, being fed by a powerful stream at its upper end, and discharging itself into the sea by a wide and rocky channel, a favourite resort of salmon. Its shores are every where covered with huge fragments of rock detached from the mountains above, and it contains two or three small islands which diversify in some measure the darkness of its surface. The nakedness of the rocks is not poetical. On the declivity of the mountain Garsven in particular, they rise from the base to the very summit, a height of at least 3000 feet, in huge smooth sheets at a very high angle, perfectly bare and of a dark iron brown colour, not chequered even by the growth of a single lichen or by one foreign tint to enliven the uniform gloom of the surface. This rock seems indeed absolutely inimical to vegetation, nor does it appear to undergo the slightest decomposition, or to admit of the formation of soil, the detached fragments showing as little tendency to waste as the mountain itself. Had the globe of the earth been entirely formed of this rock it would still have been lifeless and void. It was among these fragments that I observed a rocking stone of considerable size and easily moved, having to all appearance fallen on such an edge as to allow of the conditions required for producing this effect.

In quitting this scene, for which favourable weather is required, since it is inaccessible by land, and the outer loch is subject to dangerous and sudden squalls, little interest occurs on the, east side of Strathaird, except one fine example of a slide by which a large mass of the hill has descended to the water.

Having passed the point of Strathaird a succession of cliffs commences which extends nearly to the end of Loch Slapin, formed of