ARGYLLSHIRE, a county on the west coast of Scotland, the second largest in the country, embracing a large tract of country on the mainland and a number of the Hebrides or Western Isles. The mainland portion is bounded N. by Inverness-shire; E. by Perth and Dumbarton, Loch Long and the Firth of Clyde; S. by the North Channel (Irish Sea); and W. by the Atlantic. Its area is 1,990,471 acres or 3110 sq. m. The principal districts are Ardnamurchan on the Atlantic, Ardnamurchan Point being the most westerly headland of Scotland; Morven or Morvern, bounded by Loch Sunart, the Sound of Mull and Loch Linnhe; Appin, on Loch Linnhe, with piers at Ballachulish and Port Appin; Benderloch, lying between Loch Creran and Loch Etive; Lorne, surrounding Loch Etive and giving the title of marquess to the Campbells; Argyll, in the middle of the shire, containing Inveraray Castle and furnishing the titles of earl and duke to the Campbells; Cowall, between Loch Fyne and the Firth of Clyde, in which lie Dunoon and other favourite holiday resorts; Knapdale between the Sound of Jura and Loch Fyne; and Kintyre or Cantyre, a long narrow peninsula (which, at the isthmus of Tarbert, is little more than 1 m. wide), the southernmost point of which is known as the Mull, the nearest part of Scotland to the coast of Ireland, only 13 m. distant.
There are no navigable rivers. The two principal mountain streams are the Orchy and Awe. The Orchy flows from Loch Tulla through Glen Orchy, and falls into the north-eastern end of Loch Awe; and the Awe drains the loch at its north-western extremity, discharging into Loch Etive. Among other streams are the Add, Aray, Coe or Cona, Creran, Douglas, Eachaig, Etive, Euchar, Feochan, Finart, Fyne, Kinglass, Nell, Ruel, Shiel, Shira, Strae and Uisge-Dhu. The county is remarkable for the numerous sea-lochs which deeply indent the coast, the principal being Loch Long (with its branches Loch Goil and the Holy Loch), Loch Striven (Rothesay’s “weather glass”), Loch Riddon, Loch Fyne (with Loch Gilp and Loch Gair), Lochs Tarbert, Killisport, Swin, Crinan, Craignish, Melfort, Feochan, Etive, Linnhe (with its branches Loch Creran, Loch Leven and Loch Eil) and Sunart. There are also a large number of inland lakes, the total area of which is about 25,000 acres. Of these the principal are Lochs Awe, Avich, Eck, Lydoch and Shiel. The principal islands are Mull, Islay, Jura, Colonsay, Lismore, Tyree, Coll, Gigha, Luing and Kerrera. Besides these there are the two small but interesting islands of Staffa and Iona. The mountains are so many as to give the shire a markedly rugged character. Some of them are among the loftiest in the kingdom, as Ben Cruachan with its summit of twin pyramids (3689 ft.), Ben More, in Mull (3172), Ben Ima (3318), Buachaille Etive (3345), Ben Bui (3106), Ben Lui (or Loy), on the confines of the shires of Perth and Argyll (3708), Ben Starav near the head of Loch Etive (3541), and Ben Arthur, called from its shape “The Cobbler” (2891), on the borders of Dumbartonshire. There are many picturesque glens, of which the best-known are Glen Aray, Glen Croe, Glen Etive, Glendaruel, Glen Lochy (“the wearisome glen”—some 10 m. of bare hills and boulders—between Tyndrum and Dalmally), Glen Strae, Hell’s Glen (off Lech Goil) and Glencoe, the scene of the massacre in 1692. The waterfalls of Cruachan are beautiful; and those of Connel, which are more in the nature of rapids, caused by the rush of the ebbing tide over the rocky bar at the narrowing mouth of Loch Etive, have been made celebrated by Ossian, who called them “the Falls of Lora.” In several of the glens, as Glen Aray, small falls may be seen, enhanced in beauty when the rivers are in flood. Pre-eminently Argyll is the shire of the sportsman. The lovely Western Isles provide endless enjoyment for the yachtsman; the lochs and rivers abound with salmon and trout; the deer forests and grouse moors are second to none in Scotland.
Geology.—The mainland portion of the county consists chiefly of the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Highlands, nearly all the subdivisions of that series (see [Scotland]: Geology) being represented. They form parallel belts of varying width trending north-east and south-west. The slates and phyllites referred to the lowest group occur along the shore at Dunoon, and are followed by the Beinn Bheula grits and albite schists, forming nearly all the highest ground in Cowall between Loch Fyne and the Firth of Clyde and the greater part of Kintyre. The green beds, Glensluan mica-schists and Loch Tay limestones are developed in Glendaruel, and have been traced north-east to Glen Fyne and at intervals south-west to Campbeltown. The next prominent zone is that of the Ardrishaig phyllites, with quartzites in the lower portion and soft phyllites in the upper part, which cover a belt from 3 to 6 m. across, stretching from Glen Shira by Inveraray and Ardrishaig to south Knapdale.
Next in order come the Easdale slates, phyllites with thin dark limestone, the main limestone of Loch Awe and the pebbly quartzite (Schiehallion), which are repeated by innumerable folds and spread northwards to Loch Linnhe and westwards to Jura and Islay. The slates of this horizon have been largely quarried at Easdale and Ballachulish, and this main limestone is typically developed near Loch Awe, near Kilmartin, on the islands of Lismore and Shuna, and in Islay between Bridgend and Portaskaig. The quartzites of this series form the highest hills in the south of Islay, occupy nearly the whole of Jura, and are continued in the mainland, where, by means of the rapid isoclinal folding, they form lenticular masses. In Islay and at various localities on the mainland a conglomerate occurs at or near the base of the quartzites, which contains fragments of the underlying rocks and boulders of granite not now found in place in that region.
On the mainland, on the north side of the compound synclinal folding of Loch Awe, the Ardrishaig phyllites reappear at Craignish near Kilmartin, and the quartzites of this group are supposed to come to the surface again in Glencoe, not far from the outcrop of the Schiehallion quartzite.
The metamorphic rocks are associated with bands of epidiorite which have shared in the folding and metamorphism of the region. These are largely developed near Loch Awe, in Knapdale, and on the south-east coast of Islay. They have been usually regarded as intrusive, but south of Tayvallich on the mainland, lavas and tuffs, which have escaped deformation, occur in the Easdale slates and the pebbly limestone.
The Lower Old Red Sandstone, chiefly composed of volcanic rocks—lavas and tuffs—rests unconformably on the metamorphic series. These rocks cover a wide area in Lorne between Loch Melfort, Oban and the Pass of Brander, and they reappear in the lofty mountains on both sides of Glencoe. Representatives of this formation are found in Kintyre, south of Campbeltown, where the sediments prevail. The intrusive igneous rocks belonging to this period are widely distributed and form conspicuous features. The plutonic masses are represented by the granite of Ben Cruachan, by the diorite of Gleann Domhainn, and by the kentallenite (a basic rock related to the monxonites), near Ballachulish. Throughout the Lorne volcanic plateau there are numerous dykes of porphyrite which likewise traverse the schists and part of the Ben Cruachan granite. Sheets of quartz-porphyry, lamprophyre and diorite are also represented, the first of these types being quarried at Crarae on the north shore of Loch Fyne.
The Upper Old Red Sandstone forms isolated patches resting unconformably on all older rocks, on the west coast of Kintyre, and between Campbeltown and Southend. In the district of Campbeltown these red sandstones and cornstones are followed by the volcanic rocks of the Calciferous Sandstone series, which lie to the south of the depression at Machrihanish, and are succeeded by the lower limestones and coals of the Carboniferous Limestone series.
On the north and south shores of the promontory of Ardnamurchan there are small patches of Jurassic strata ranging from the Lower Lias to the Oxford Clay, and in Morvern on the shores of Loch Aline representatives of the Upper Greensand are covered by the basaltic lavas of Tertiary age. The acid and basic plutonic rocks (gabbros and granophyres) of Tertiary time occur in Ardnamurchan. A striking geological feature of the county is the number of dolerite and basalt dykes trending in a north-west direction, which are referred to the same period of intrusion. There is, however, another group of dolerite dykes running east and west near Dunoon and elsewhere, which are cut by the former and are probably of older date.
Lead veins occur at Strontian which have yielded a number of minerals, including sphalerite, fluorite, strontianite, harmotone, brewsterite and pilolite. Near Inveraray, nickeliferous ore has been obtained at two localities.