Seven Lectures on the United Kingdom for use in India / Reissued for use in the United Kingdom

by Halford John Mackinder

And now we come to the grandest, most lonely scenery in the Western Highlands of Scotland. Here on the heathery and grassy moors, which spread for miles and miles over the mountain heights, are still to be found some of the wild animals of Britain, which elsewhere have been driven from the land by civilisation. This is a stag of the large species known as the Red Deer. You see here the colouring of the moors and the atmospheric effects which you must put for yourselves into the black and white photographs that follow. But first we have another colour photograph, a golden eagle beside her nest on the crags.

47.
Sligachan, Skye.

48.
Glen Sligachan, Skye.

49.
Loch Coruisk, Skye.

Now we have two or three views in the Island of Skye. They are in black and white, but your minds must clothe them in the rich tints we saw just now. Note the treeless character of the scene. And see here a mountain rising nakedly to the sky, without even the covering of grass or heather. And again, in this same Island of Skye is Loch Coruisk, one of the wildest and remotest spots in the United Kingdom. From the head of the loch there is a walk of several miles over a mountain pass before you reach the first habitation of man. So curious is the contrast between the ocean edge of the British Islands and the thickly populated plain of England. London is the largest city in the world, but the Highlands of Scotland are among the least populated regions of all Europe. Here, therefore, is the playground of many of the British people, who go in the summer time to walk over these mountains, to steam through these lochs, to catch the fish, and to shoot the deer and the birds. So they gain the health which enables them to work in London at the business of the Empire during the dark winter.

50.
Clett Rock, Thurso.

51.
Duncansby Head.

Finally we come out to the ocean itself, and here we see the great history of Nature. Layer upon layer, hundreds of layers thick, we have the beds of rock which were once laid down at the bottom of the sea. They are now dry and hard, and have been cut into by the waves, so that this stack of rock, which was once a piece of Scotland, is now detached as a little island. Here is yet another scene where the rocks are of a different kind, and the shape of the islets therefore different.

52.
Atlantic Rollers.