Chapter XV.
Loch Gruinard.
By William Jolly.
Of all the sea-lochs in the West Highlands, I long thought that Loch Duich, the southern branch of Loch Alsh, bore the palm on the mainland, not only as viewed from the road above the kirk of Loch Alsh, but as enjoyed on the surface of the loch itself, amidst its picturesque and elevated peaks. But after seeing Loch Gruinard, many years ago, in its smiling and varied beauty, homage has been divided. Yet the two scenes are scarcely comparable, so different are they in type,—the one with even shores and unbroken surface, and closely beset by towering mountains; the other open and expansive, and varied with numerous isles. Each is to be admired for its own sake, and both reveal somewhat of the wealth of scenic loveliness created by the union of "the mountain and the flood" in our beautiful land.
Seven miles from Poolewe is Aultbea, with the smooth green Eilean Ewe in front of it, in the middle of Loch Ewe, a transcript of southern cultivation amidst Highland crofts. Before descending on the village the road rises high above the sea, and shews a wonderful view. At your feet lies an upper reach of Loch Ewe, called Tournaig Bay, in calm, smooth as a mirror, which forms the eye of the picture. Beyond it stretches a rolling plateau of bare parti-coloured rock in front, and a screen of great summits round Loch Fionn and Loch Maree behind. You can distinguish, from the left, the fair Maiden, the pointed Beinn Aridh Charr, the bright Beinn Eay, the dark Beinn Alligin, and their numerous fellows, onwards to the lesser eminences behind Gairloch. The crowded sandstone peaks, crowned with the white Quartzite, like Beinn Eay, look in the distance like the white crests of gigantic billows suddenly arrested in wild tumult and transformed to stone.
Near Aultbea you turn to the right, and cross the neck of the peninsula of flat Cambrian sandstone that terminates in the Greenstone Point. Near the top of the ridge the road passes through several long serpentine ridges of gravelly débris, with countless embedded blocks. These are the lateral moraines of the huge glaciers that pushed their resistless march from the mountains above out to sea. They are good and patent examples of their class, interesting as existing so far from the parent source of the great ice-sheet of which they were the enclosing walls, and which has left its footprints in well-marked scratchings and polishings on all the exposed rocks round.
A little beyond the highest and best moraine a point is attained where the whole expanse of Loch Gruinard suddenly comes into view. It forms a broad bay, land-locked on right and left, and open to the Minch on the north. On a day of sunshine and shadow it is truly a fair and picturesque scene.
The free sea in front is soon broken up by islands. Eilean Gruinard lies to the right; Priest Island is the nearest in front; and behind it is an archipelago of rocks and islands, of varied size and outline, called by the pleasant name of the Summer Isles. Bold headlands stretch far beyond. To the left is the wide Minch, with the low lands of the Lews in the dim horizon, terminating in the Butt. On the right the bay is enclosed by the indented shores of the mainland, at the entrances of Great and Little Loch Broom.