Natural History in the Highlands and Islands. F. Darling Fraser

and Loch Mor into Loch Laxford; the Inver from Loch Assynt into Enard Bay; the Kirkaig out of the lochs below Suilven; the Polly, the Kannaird, the Broom and the Dundonnell Rivers; the superb Gruinard River which is only six miles long on its run from Loch na Sheallag; the Little Gruinard, even shorter, coming from the Fionn Loch which is one of the most famous trout lochs in the North; and the River Ewe, only two miles long after it leaves Loch Maree, but very broad; the Kerry River running into Gairloch, famed for its pearls; and the Applecross River which drains much of the peninsula of that name. Most of these rivers are noted for salmon and sea trout, though some are curiously poor. As things stand at the moment the rivers of this region, so variable in their flow from day to day, make up in economic value for the poverty of the land for agricultural and pastoral purposes and for general lack of timber.

      The boreal or sub-arctic affinities of the northern zone are most marked on the two geological formations already named, the gneiss and the sandstone. Each rock has its very distinctive form and each contributes to what is probably the wildest scenery in Scotland except for the small area of the Cuillin Hills of Skye (Plate IIIa). But here in the interplay of gneiss, sandstone and quartzite the naturalist may walk for a week or more and see no human habitation other than an occasional stalker’s cottage. So rough and wild is the country that habitations unconnected with sport are difficult to find away from the sea’s edge. The outcrop of limestone in the Assynt district allows the exception of the crofting townships of Elphin and Cnockan to which allusion was made in the first chapter.

      The Lewisian gneiss of the mainland rises to greater heights in the general run of the country than it does in the Hebrides, except in Harris and at one place in South Uist. Also, it is not hidden under such a blanket of peat as in Lewis. The gneiss country of Sutherland and Ross is one of a myriad little hills of great steepness, with little glens running hither and thither among them. The lochans are seemingly countless and most of them have a floor of peat. The gneiss hills themselves are like rock buns, looking as if they had risen in some giant oven and set into their rough shapes. This ground holds up the water in pockets in the rock and allows the formation of cotton sedge bogs and such very shallow lochans as grow water lobelia and water lilies. When these lochans are near the sea and grow reeds the bird life is rich. Greenshanks (Plate XIIb) are common in the gneiss country—say one pair to 3,000 acres, which is quite twice as many as may be found on the adjoining Torridonian sandstone. Heather (Calluna) is not common on the gneiss; the complex is one of dwarf willow, sedge and poor grasses. Also, this type of vegetation does not appreciably alter in the altitudinal range of the gneiss. For example, I could find no major difference in sample patches in the Gruinard Forest at the foot of Carn nam Buailtean at 600 feet, and at the top of Creag Mheall Mor in the Fisherfield Forest at over 2,000 feet. The hills maintain over all their mottled pattern of green and grey, and when the snow is on the tops there is never the distinctive line at about 1,750 feet which is commonly seen on the Torridonian formation.

      The gneiss is difficult country to walk through: by keeping to the little glens it is impossible to steer a straight course for any distance and no one would attempt to go in a straight line over the hills. On the upper gneiss country where many detours are necessary round rock faces and soft spots, a speed of one mile an hour is quite good going. It is also quite easy to lose one’s self, for these little round hills are all very much alike.

      The crofting townships on the gneiss are strictly coastal. Their arable grounds (Plate 7b) are usually tiny patches of an acre or less in the hollows or in the less steep faces of the rocks. Loch Laxford, a sea loch, shows some typical low gneiss country with crofts at Foindlemore and Fanagmore.

      The gneiss tends to get higher the farther it goes inland. A’ Mhaighdean (the maiden) reaches 2,850 feet above the Dubh Loch in Ross, 10–12 miles from the sea as the crow flies. It forms a high cliff face on this hill of exceptional grandeur, a rare thing for the formation on the mainland. Its sea cliffs are nowhere impressive here because they are never sheer or higher than a couple of hundred feet. Even the Torridonian, a formation which one might expect to make magnificent cliffs, does not provide these in any quantity at the sea’s edge. The island of Handa, near Scourie and opposite Fanagmore at the mouth of Loch Laxford, is a splendid exception. The Torridonian rock is stratified horizontally, so the vertical breaks make nesting ledges for sea birds such as guillemots, razorbills and kittiwakes. There are sheer cliffs of nearly 400 feet on Handa, and in the little screes of earth among these, now covered with fescue and scurvy grass, there are large colonies of puffins and fulmar petrels. The white-tailed sea eagle nested on Handa until the second half of the 19th century. Handa is one of the few places on the Torridonian sandstone which provide true sea-bird cliffs. No other place on the formation can compare with it for numbers of auks, except perhaps Clo Mor, about four miles east of Cape Wrath, where there is a cliff of over 800 feet.

      The splendour of the Torridonian is in the peaks it makes inland. Some are fantastic and others superb. There is only one Suilven and it is undoubtedly the most fantastic hill in Scotland (Plate 3b). It rises to 2,309 feet out of a rough sea of low gneiss. Seen from north and south it has a distinctive shape of a very steep frontal cliff and rounded top called Casteal Liath (the grey castle), then a dip and a lesser knob before a more gentle slope down to the east. But when seen from west or east the extreme thinness of the hill is apparent. Probably the Dolomites would be the nearest place where such an extraordinary shape of a hill could be seen. Suilven means the pillar which is a good name for the hill seen from the west. It is often likened to a sugar loaf, also. There are greyish-white quartzite boulders sprinkled on the top, yet there is a little alp of grass up there and an occasional bed of Rhacomitrium moss. The great terraces of Caisteal Liath itself are but thinly marked by such grasses and sedges as Festuca ovina forma vivipara and Luzula spicata as can send their roots far into the cracks.

      One of the striking things about the Torridonian peaks of the far north-west is their isolation, caused by the vast denudation which has taken place, leaving these few hard cores of sedimentary rock overlying the wilderness of gneiss hillocks and innumerable lochans. The term hard core is here being used metaphorically and not geologically. North of Suilven and Loch Assynt is the massif of Quinag, five conical peaks capped with quartzite, with a fine rampart of cliff and scree on the west side, which is nearly three miles long. The massif is no higher than 2,653 feet, but how much more impressive is it than half a hundred three-thousand-footers in the Central Highlands! South of Suilven there is Cul Mor, 2,786 feet, surrounded on three sides by great precipices; and Stac Polly, 2,009 feet (Plate 4b and Plate 10) the narrow ridge of which is like one of those fairy castles of childhood tales perched on the top of steep slopes. Ben More Coigach rises to over 2,000 feet in under a mile from the sea as the crow flies. The air of this countryside with its lower rainfall is generally much clearer than farther south in the Highlands and adds to that sub-arctic quality which characterizes the area.

      Before leaving this far northern corner, the ranges of Foinaven, 2,980 feet, and of Ben More Assynt, 3,273 feet, must be mentioned. The group culminating in Foinaven is without doubt the barest range in Scotland, and composed of that unyielding white rock, the Cambrian quartzite. The northern part is like a giant E, the crossbars being ridges peppered heavily with boulders which form screes again below the shoulders: the hollows of the E are fine corries on the slopes of which the snow bunting has bred. The southern part is a horseshoeshaped ridge of which Ben Arkle, 2,580 feet, is the western rampart. This hill of Cambrian quartzite with its banding of white scree may be viewed to perfection from the highroad on the shores of Loch Stack; but for the greatest glory of this range a six-mile trek must be made to reach the vast horseshoe corrie and Loch an Easain Uaine, the loch of the green falls. It is well to rest here awhile and realize that the pine marten is probably commoner in this neighbourhood than anywhere else in Britain, to remember the snow bunting up in the tumble of boulders and possibly see him feeding on the buds of Saxifraga oppositifolia. The alpine species of plant creep far down these bare hillsides and one wonders what there is here to recompense the deer for the energy used in attempting to graze these slopes. The boreal affinity of this range was further emphasized by the occurrence of alpine butterwort (Pinguicula alpina), which was found nowhere else in Britain but on the high tops of Sutherland and Ross; unfortunately this species may now be quite extinct, as it has not been found since 1900, according to Druce’s Comital Flora. The same authority puts 1794 as the last