Smaller Islands.—The most extensive of the many island groups and islets are those which lie off the broken west coast of Scotland, the wild and rugged Outer and Inner Hebrides, of which Lewis, separated by the channel called the Minch, and Skye, Mull, Islay and Arran, in the inner group, are the largest. The Orkney group, separated from the north of Scotland by the turbulent Pentland Firth, consist of no fewer than fifty-nine rocky islets; and the Shetlands, forty miles farther north, comprise upwards of a hundred separate points. The high Isle of Man, in the middle of the Irish Sea; Anglesey, close to the Welsh coast; and now united to it by the famous railway tubes across the Menai Strait; and the Isle of Wight, “the garden of England,” in the English Channel, separated from the mainland by the busy Solent, are the others of importance. The Channel Islands, of which Jersey and Guernsey are the largest, belong politically to Britain, but are physically parts of France.
Surface: Mountains and Lowlands.—In the island of Great Britain the highest portions lie generally to north and west, the lowlands to south and east.
The heather-covered Highlands, which fill the north of Scotland, are divided by the great natural passage of Glen More, which runs in a straight line across the island from northeast to southwest into two chief groups, the northern and central.
The northern group consists of irregularly-distributed and often almost isolated masses, separated, it may be, by deep sea-fiords, and presenting every variety of contour, from that of the round mass of Ben Wyvis to the steep, wall-like sides of Suilvein or the sharp peak of Ben Stack. The Central Highlands or the Grampians, extending from the peninsula of Cantyre northeastward to the precipitous coast of Buchan on the North Sea, are far more massive and continuous.
Ben Nevis, a huge round mass ascending abruptly from the shores of Loch Eil at the mouth of the Great Glen, is the highest mountain of the British Isles.
The Southern Highlands of Scotland are more broken, and separated by river valleys. Mount Merrick, in the southwest, is their highest point; the Lowther Hills form their central group; the Pentlands, Moorfoot, and Lammermoor hills their more detached portions, on the northeast.
With the Cheviot Hills, the boundary range between Scotland and England, begins the long Pennine chain, which reaches due south into the heart of England. Cheviot Hill, in the north, Crossfell, and Whernside, and the Peak of Derby, in the south, mark the summits and direction of the chain. To the west of the Pennine chain rises the compact circular knob of slate mountains of Cumberland, of which Scawfell is the summit of England proper. And corresponding to this mass, near the opposite coast, are the eastern moorlands and wolds of Yorkshire.
Separated from the Pennine heights by the plain of Cheshire (west of England) rise the highlands of Wales, collectively called the Cambrian Mountains.
Across the Bristol Channel we come to the heights of the southwestern peninsula of England, with its three groups of Exmoor, Dartmoor, with its rugged granite tors, and the Cornish Heights. These are the more important mountain groups of Great Britain.