.,-,// I,IT s between striae ^-^ on a very smooth surface of fine-grained hard quartz rock. The direction in which the engine moved is shown by the arrow. The loch is Loch Maree in Scotland, and the sea horizon is open to the W. of K, and to the E. of S. ; to Greenland, and to Scandinavia. To the west are tall hills of the A pattern, and higher ice-ground rocks of the ' x pattern ; to the east is a deep ice-ground glen x ' running parallel to the striae, and beyond it are high hills of the ^ v pattern, and higher hills of the A shape, and numerous ice- marks, none of which point at the peaks. The dip of the rock is towards D, the white marks in the rubbing are chinks and fractures. At this spot on the backbone of Scotland, at 1800 feet above the present sea-level, ice moved past peaks of the A pattern over hills of the x s pattern, from the direction of the Baltic towards the Atlantic, horizontally. The spoor is so fresh that sand-lines need a fine lens to make them out, while other grooves would hold the mast of a ship ; and the BRITISH ISLES. 17 hill-side is thus worn, for a height of nearly 2000 feet, throughout an area of many square miles. If this plan of copying had been devised twenty years sooner, observations made would have had more value. With such a plain spoor as this ice-tracking is easy work. Sea Horizon, River Ewe. Loch Maree. A A Peaks of Ben Ghuis, about tpcafeet. Weathered quartz. - Carrie. At 1800 feet marks are perfect, from S. 30 E. to N. 30 W. on gray quartz crossing the month of the carrie. A Top of Ben Eith about nooofeet. Weathered quarts: and talus. A Beyond the glen. Top of Ben Slioch, about 4000 feet. Weathered. Pass. Head of nn Bianastle, perfect, N. 60 . ; gray quartz. -x Ridge. Top of Ben Mhonaidh, 2iy>fcet; marks weathered, N. 60 E. gneiss. Pass over the "watershed of Scotland to Dornoch. - Hill-shoulder, 1800 feet; bare quartz ; marks Perfect, S. iff E. to N. 40 W., at right angles to the high marks on the opposite side of the glen on Ken Mhonaidh and Gleann Bianastle. Nearly parallel to horizontal grooves all the -way to the bottom of the glen, about 1600 feet. - Pass. Head of Strath Bran, about 8oo_/i-et. Terraces at Achnasheen, aoozit 700 ; watershed of Scotland. Thence ice- marks follow the run of the water north eastwards to Ben Wyvis and to the sea at the Conan. Peak (!) beyond Strath Bran. FIG. 69. FOREST OF GAIRLOCH. Ice-marks on a hill-shoulder ' - of gray quartz, at about T350 feet above the sea ; level with the opposite edge of the glen , VOL. II. C CHAPTER XXIX. BALTIC CURRENT 2 BRITISH ISLES 2 IRELAND 1 CONNEMARA GALWAV AND WESTPORT CURVES. IN the map of the northern hemisphere (end of vol. i.), a series of curves are drawn from the Pole towards the Equator. The space between two of these corresponds roughly to the existing Arctic Current between Spitzbergen and New- foundland ; and to low grounds in North America which are strewed with glacial drift, and where many large hollows and small ice-rnarks on shore point south-westwards. The space between another couple of curves includes Novaya Zemlya, part of Russia, Scandinavia, Denmark, and the British Isles. It corresponds to the supposed course of an arctic Baltic Current, which, according to theory, only ceased to flow south- west in this tract when the Scandinavian isthmus rose and turned the stream. In the map (vol. i. p. 232), similar curves are drawn, and one ends in the sea at Galway. In a systematic attempt to test the soundness of this theory founded on marks in Scandinavia, a search should begin as far to the south-west as possible. A stick laid in an ice- groove on a hill-top points out the way, and it should be honestly followed. If it leads to the marks already men- tioned, and the whole series point one way, the Baltic Current theory may be launched like a big boulder to find its own resting-place amongst other rough blocks. CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 10 The west coast of Ireland is at the tail of the fossil stream ; so the west of Ireland is the place to search for marks of ice-floats like those which now cumber the Straits of Belleisle. London can be got at from any part of the world, and the western coast of Ireland is very easily reached from London, between morning and midnight. Fir.. 70. CLOCH CORRIL ANL> THK TWELVE PINS OF COXXEMARA. Drawn from nature on the wood, 1863. (Reversed). Forms characteristic of the action of ice are well seen by the way. Eunning into Chester by railway, the N.E. corner of Wales appears in profile, and on leaving the station the hills are conspicuous. They rise gradually from a plain strewed with glacial drift and water-worn boulders, and from the sea, They are green and cultivated ; their bones are hid beneath a skin of clay and soil, and covered by a rich mantle of green and yellow ; but rounded rocks appear, as the skeleton does in a living creature. Where a quarry or railway cutting has 20 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. torn a rent, or cut a gash, the sandstone frame appears broken and angular ; but the hills are all rounded and smooth. This is denudation, but not the work of water. There is not one ravine V between Chester and Rhyll, nor is there a cliff L, though the line runs over a raised beach between the sea and an old margin all the way. At Conway the hills are steeper and higher, but the glens still are rounded, and in them fresh ice-marks abound, as will be shown below. Near the Menai Bridge glens have the peculiar forms of glaciation. Many quarries and cuttings, faults and fractures in the slate, show that the rounded outlines of these hills and dens are not due to fracture and disturbance, but to some O wearing action ; and boulders and beds of clay all tell of ice. The KE. end of the Snowdon range is seen in profile from Anglesea. It has a sloping outline s-*-. like the north- eastern corner of Wales ; but the rocks are harder, the slope is steeper, and some hill-tops are broken and weathered. Anglesea is all ice-ground. Near Holyhead, amongst some drifting sand-hills, glaciated rocks rear their heads amongst the bent. They are smooth and round like the sand-dunes, and their longest slope, like that of the hills, is still towards the NE. The waves which roll in from the S.W., driven by the wind, have their longest slope towards the S.W. If Wales were a new country, the shape of it would suggest the glaciation which is proved by a closer search. From Dublin to Galway the country is boggy, low, and flat. A depression of 500 feet would sink it beneath the Atlantic. The first glance at the country about Galway shows the action of ice. Large boulders piled and scattered broadcast everywhere, low rounded hills, beds of clay stuck full of CONNEMARA GAL WAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 21 rounded stones, walls built of boulders all suggest glacial denudation on the large scale ; but no high mountains are to be seen to account for land-glaciers. Close to the town, on the beach, but above high-water mark, numerous ground rocks show smaller ice-marks distinctly. The scores and grooves point from N.E. to S.W., or thereby. At Blackrock, the favourite bathing-place, these guides point out into Galway Bay, where the track is lost in the Atlantic. About three miles to the west of the town the sea has undermined a long round-backed hill. It is broken short ofl' at the end, leaving a perpendicular cliff about 50 feet high, with a beach of boulders under it. The hill is called Cnoc-a- Bhldka or Blake's Hill, and the point Cnoc-na-Carrig or the Hill of the Stones. The sea-cliff is a section of the boulder-clay, and ice-work of the most striking character. A matrix of hard, compact, bluish-yellow gray clay is stuck full of rounded " subangular " blocks ; some are three or four feet long, others as big as a man's head, others small, like apples, nuts, and peas ; and the beach is made of them. They stand out from the clay where the rain has washed it down, like plums in an iced pudding. Every stone is scratched, grooved, and scored ; and the marks are as plain as if they had just been made with rasps, files, and sandpaper. Many surfaces are polished so brightly that they shine in the sunlight. New-fallen stones, stones in situ, and stones picked out of this cliff, all are polished, ground, scored, and scratched in many directions, and on all sides. There are specimens of red and yellow, coarse and fine granite, fossiliferous dark blue limestone, and other rocks. The hill is a museum of transported stones, gathered long ago by wander- ing ice, and pushed into Galway Bay. Near the place, specimens of the same stones, weathered 1-1 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. and water-worn, may be compared with these boulders. In the dykes, where mountain limestone has been weathered, fossils stand out in relief, showing the minutest detail. In the cliff where the ground surface has been preserved from weather by hard clay, fossils can only be distinguished by their colour. On the beach away from the cliff, rolled pebbles are rounder and dinted; the scratches have disappeared. Where these sea-rolled stones have been weathered, they retain the finished oval shape which sea-waves gave them, after ice had blocked them out. The waterworn and the weathered surfaces are wholly different from the old ice- mark. Here then, at the most western coast- line of northern Europe, are the works of ice ; and here too the prevailing S.W. direction of the wind is pointed out by grow- ing trees. If the direction of the wind is pointed out by a weather- cock, and its prevailing direction by a bent tree on a hill, it is equally well shown on a plain by sand-drifts or grass tufts. If the direction in which a large ice-system moved is well shown by grooves upon hill-tops, it is equally well shown by grooves on a wide plain, where there are no high hills to interfere with the general movement. So at Galway the stria? tell of a general system of glacial action, not of local glaciers. On the tops of low hills, by road-sides, in fields, and generally in the neighbourhood, whatever the kind of rock laid bare may be, grooves have a general KE. and S.W. direction. One end of a long stick laid in a groove points N.N.E. or N. K, and the other end aims a little to the outside of Black Head, past the end of the Clare mountains. This direction agrees neither with the slope of the country nor with the flow of rivers, nor with the present run of the tides ; it only agrees with a system of large hollows which CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 23 cross Ireland, and are marked as valleys and sea-lochs on the best Irish map. The movement was not a result of sliding, for there are no hills to the N.E. of Galway from which ice could slide. This is no part of a local glacier system, but there are clear traces of the general movement, which also left its marks on Scotland, Yorkshire, Wales, and Devonshire, as will be shown below. A good map of Ireland shows the large grooves which correspond to the curves on the map. The northern and southern end of the country is crossed by diagonal valleys, whose general direction agrees with that of the Menai Strait, the Caledonian Canal, the Forth and Clyde Canal, and other Scotch and English hollows. The ice-stream certainly floated over the low grounds of Ireland, and part of it poured out between the mountains of Clare and Connemara, through Galway Bay. Curves drawn from Galway in the direction pointed out by ice-grooves upon hill-tops near the town, cross Ireland by way of Camck-on-Shannon, the end of Lough Conn, and north of Belfast Lough. They pass between the Mull of Ceantire and Portpatrick, into the Firth of Clyde. In Ireland they pass over a low flat country, in the neighbourhood of lakes, canals, and lines of railway. In Scotland they join a system of large wide glens, which traverse that country. Let this be called the Galway curve, and traced back as far as it will lead. Travelling northwards, other curves should be crossed if this were a general movement. From Galway to Ouglitcmrd, the road skirts the north-eastern side of a low range of hills in Moyculleen, and coasts Lough Comb. The hills on this side are all rounded and strewed with large wrecked boulders, hut on the other side they are steeper, and the rock is bare. 24 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. The low country beyond the lake, the shores of the lake, and the lake itself, all are strewed with enormous stones and patches of clay. Low down, boulders and gravel are every- where, but the hill-sides are generally rock with a thin cover- ing of soil or peat, or bare. Where limestone is the foundation of the country, the general outline of glacial denudation alone remains. The rock is furrowed and drilled into the most fantastic shapes, apparently by water and weather. When granite is the rock, the general form is nearly the same, and the surface is still weathered. Crystals stand up separately, veins stand out and run over the backs of rounded tors and ridges. The veins are sharp and angular, but the rocks are all round like Devonshire tors, and the hills to the very top retain shapes into which ice ground them x * . Beyond Oughterard a road leads over a low col down into a wild tract of country where the rocks are bare or smothered in bogs. The surface is generally weathered, so that strire and grooves are hard to find, but when the morning sun is shin- ing across the grooves, the marks come out clearly, as blue lines of shadow on long ridges of warm gray granite, which raise their backs in the dark moor. Low down, at the sea-level, and on hills about 400 feet high, the direction is from N.N.E. or N.E. to the opposite points. At furness Lake, which lies close beneath the Moyculleen Hills, grooves, ridges of granite, and trains of large stones, point the same way. The cut was sketched from nature. It shows part of the Moyculleen Hills, on which ice-marks are plain, and part of the low country, which is strewed with drift and trains of CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 25 blocks. The district is one of the best samples of an ice- ground country that is to be found in Western Europe. These grooves do not aim at the hills ; they run along the hill-foot, and aim at a large groove ^-^. A pass about 500 feet high. At Sgrwb Bridge the direction is still the same ; at Inver Lodge, at Luggecn Lough, at Lough Corrib, the low grooves Fio. 71. TRAIN OF BLOCKS NEAR FURNESS LAKE AND MOVCULLEEN HILLS. Drawn from nature on the wood, 18C3. (Reversed.) all point nearly one way. They do not aim at mountains which surround the low bogs of Connemara and the sea- lochs, but point at glens which lead to the low country beyond the hills, and to great lakes. One of these mountains stands alone. It goes by the name of Cnoc Ourid, and is about 1300 feet high. It is about two miles from SJian Folayh, which is N.N.E. of it, 2000 feet high, and the end of the Mam Turk range. A valley more than 1000 feet deep separates Cnoc Ourid from the higher range, and Shan Folagh is joined to 26 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. Mam Turk by a coL To the S.S.W. is a third isolated hill called Cnoc Mordan, and about 1100 feet high. It is separated from Cnoc Ourid by a boggy plain more than four miles wide, and but little above the sea-level. To the S.E. is a range of low hills in Moyculleen, which makes one side of a block of high land, and is separated from Shan Folagli by the glen of Oughterard. These four high points are well situated for ascertaining the direction of the general movement, which has so ground and altered the whole face of this country. Cnoc Ourid. In mounting Cnoc Ourid from the north side from Eusheen Lake, the rock is seen to be upheaved and strangely contorted. It contains fragments of other rocks, broken and rounded, and is folded about the fragments in waving lines. Ice polished the rock across the edge of the beds, and the surface has been weathered so as to leave the structure of the rock in low relief. Upon ridges and domes of this gray moss-grown gneiss large boulders are perched. At the foot of the hill deep grooves are well preserved, and they point at Mam Turk and Shan Folagh, past the shoulder of Cnoc Ourid. Here then are the works of cold and heat contorted gneiss, upheaved and altered by fluid granite, ground down by ice, and weathered afterwards. Five hundred feet up the hill the rocks are all of the same pattern as those in the plain below, and on them rest large angular blocks of gneiss, and smaller boulders of various hard rocks quartz, greenstone, etc. These last must have travelled far. Eight hundred feet up is a large block of gray trap freshly broken, and near it is a block unbroken, and perched upon a rounded saddle of gneiss. Eleven hundred and sixty feet up, on the top of the northern shoulder, strire and grooves are well preserved on gneiss. They point N.N.E. at the end of the higher range CONNEMARA GAL WAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 27 beyond the valley, and S.S.W. out of Camus Bay at the Atlantic. These marks are unlike those which are made by river-glaciers ; they are like writing made by a shaking hand, for they waver and vary slightly in direction, so as to cross each other at a small angle. Thirteen hundred feet up, by aneroid barometer, on the top, the view is wild and desolate. Lakes appear to lie in every pos- sible direction, in a wilderness of water, stone, and bog, which fades away into a shallow sea, full of low islands, stones, and rocks, scattered broadcast in bays and sea-lochs. Galway Bay is seen over Moyculleen ; Lough Comb and Lougli Mask, and a wide stretch of low land, are seen past the shoulder of Shan Folagh. There is no hill far or near to account for glaciation by land-ice at this spot and in this direction, and yet ice-marks are there, and well preserved. A stick laid in a groove points S.W. by S. at the shoulder of Cnoc Mordan, out of Camus Bay, at the sea-horizon, and N.E. by N. through a notch in the hills, at a sea of lakes and bogs bounded by a land-horizon as flat as the sea The notch is the col which joins Shan Folagh to the Mam Turk range, and the nearest hill-top of equal height is beneath the horizon, if not beyond the sea. Descending the hill on its eastern side, a block is perched at 1200 feet ; and near it, where the wood- cut was sketched, a solitary goat had perched himself upon a saddleback of gneiss. His family and friends were scattered about picking up a scanty supper amongst the bare rocks. They kept peering at the stranger, bleating, stretching their long necks, wagging their gray beards, and flourishing their horns over the sky line. The click-click of a sparring-match between two old bucks was the only sound besides the sough of the evening wind, and the red light of sunset made the old gray rocks and their gray inhabitants glow like fire. 28 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. It was a different scene when the block was dropped by ice 1200 feet above the present sea-level, and when ice floated over the top of Cnoc Ourid. This hill is joined by a low col about 500 feet high to a range of low granite and gneiss hiUs, on the S.E. At the top of this col the grooves point N.E. by K over a wide flat moor, which leads to Lough Comb and Lough Mask. There is no high hill in that direction for many miles. A line drawn on the map passes north of Bel- fast. Patches of hard yellow clay are deposited in sheltered hollows on this col, and these contain small boulders of black FIG. 72. PERCHED BLOCK ox ROUNDED TOK, CNOC OCRID, T200 feet. limestone, mica schist, very hard trap, quartz rock, gray porphyry, and other rocks which are foreign to this hill, but which may be found in the direction of the grooves. The limestone in particular is like rocks near Oughterard on the low shores of Lough Corrib, and the trap is like Antrim trap. The north-eastern slope of the hill and of the col is less steep than the south-western. Cnoc Mordan, the second hill, is even more isolated. It makes the north-western horn of Camus Bay, and no hill of the same height is near it. At the sea-level the stria- are well seen ; they point N.E. by N., S.W. by S. Large granite boulders are scattered about CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTP011T CURVES. 29 iii the moor. One shaped like a chipped pebble, near Inver- more Lake, measures 18 x 12 x 9 feet, and many are still larger. Ascending the north-eastern slope, the angle is less steep than the south-western side of Cnoc Ourid. There are rounded surfaces and perched blocks to the very top. At 600 feet the grooves are N.W. by N. ; at 700 a groove points N. and S. Moycullttn. FIG. "3. PERCHED BLOCK, CNOC MORDAN, 1100 feet. (Reversed.) At 1100 feet above the sea a great angular mass of granite is stranded upon a shelf, like a boat ready for launching. It goes by the name of Cloch mor Binnen na gawr the big stone of the goat's peak. A lot of bare-footed Celts, two pretty girls, two men and a small boy, were clustered about when the sketch was made ; while a party of fishermen out for a walk took shelter from a S.W. breeze, and smoked under the lee of a rock. Behind the stone, Cnoc Ourid and Shan Folagh rose up to the N.E. beyond the lakes of Inver and the endless bogs of Connemara. 30 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. The top of the hill is flat, boggy, and strewed with small boulders, and every rock-surface is ground. Grooves are well marked everywhere, though weathered, and their general direction is N.N.E., S.S.W. The hill is very like a small Dartmoor. Granite tops, which rise out of the moss, are miniature tors, with joints beginning to open and weather. The work is the same though it is further advanced in Devon- shire. A great change has come over Great Britain since these rocks were thus ground at a height of 1300 feet, and yet the marks are so fresh that the change must have happened recently. Granite weathers and crumbles, but these mountain- tops upon which tempests beat, and where rain falls in torrents; mountain-sides, where torrents gather and pour down after every shower ; river-beds, lake-basins, and sea-margins all retain the marks of ice moving diagonally on meridians in a general south-western direction over this corner of Ireland. Shan Folayh (the Hill of Flesh) is the third hill in this row. It is 2000 feet high by the Ordnance map, and by aneroid barometer. The top is about ten miles from Inver Lodge by pedometer. It is the eastern end of Mam Turk (the Range of the Boar), and the top is isolated. At 800 feet on the south-western side the rock is stratified gneiss, dipping at a high angle, and the whole outline of the hill is rounded ; but the surface on this side is much split and weathered. The hill is very steep. At the head of the glen, near the col, the angle is 45. Few boulders are to be seen, and few grooves ; but those which do remain at this height point N.N.E over the shoulder of the hill at the col which joins it to the range, and S.S.W. out to sea past Cnoc Ourid and Cnoc Mordan. They are parallel to the deep glen below them, and to CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. - 31 several chains of lakes which are seen in the plain, and they correspond to marks on the hill-tops at which they point. From this height it is easy to understand how brittle plates of ice of great thickness, like those which drift about off Labrador, might float and slide over low hills of granite in the hollow between Mam Turk and Moyculleen ; for the wide valley six or seven miles across seems almost a plain. In particular, it is easy to see how ice-floes might split and ground upon the tops of Cnoc Ourid and Cnoc Mordan ; score them, break them, stick to them, pick up fragments, and drop them in the lee. Supposing these hill-tops to be awash in a frozen sea moving south-westward, the stream and the ice which it carried would curl round the hill-tops, as a stream curls round a big stone, and it would spread out when it had passed the Straits of Oughterard. At 1450 feet the tops of Cnoc Ourid and Cnoc Mordan sink below the sea-horizon of Shan Folagh, and at that level a groove upon a rounded table of gneiss points S.S.W. over the top of Cnoc Ourid down Camus Bay at the sea-horizon. At 2000 feet, on the very top of Shan Folagh, the rock is gray quartz traversed by white veins. The beds are nearly vertical ; the surface rounded and polished wherever it has not broken and split from weathering. On the north-eastern side of the top, the rocks are polished and scored in the most remarkable manner, and from their hardness the surface is exceedingly well preserved. Great flat tables, sloping towards the N.N.E. at an angle of 54 or thereby, are ground perfectly smooth, and rounded off at the upper edge. Grooves run upwards in various directions, from N., N.N.E., and N.E. by N., and they are peculiar. Some marks are rounded dints, as if the polished rock had been struck and 32 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. ground at one spot by something which was afterwards pushed over the hill-top. Bits of this polished surface are easily picked out, for joints in the stone make it a sort of smooth mosaic work. Looking towards places at which these grooves point, there is no higher land to account for this manifest glaciation. The grooves point 2000 feet over Lough Mask, or 800 feet over Slieve Patry, or level at hills twenty miles off, over glens, and through deep glens, and over the end of Killary Harbour, which shines like a glass amongst the dark hills. These certainly are grooves made by floating ice, which grounded upon this hill-top, 2000 feet above the present sea- level, when the whole land was under water. The whole aspect of the hills seen from this high station is that of something ground at about this level. Moyculleen seems to be a rolling plateau of rounded tops, like those which exist in the valley. Slieve Patiy is a block of high land deeply furrowed by glens, but the top is a smooth even rounded slope. Beyond it lie Castlebar, Lough Conn, Balliua, and Sligo. In one direction only, to the northward, higher mountains seem peaked ; but the northern line, when drawn on a map from the top of Shan Folagh, passes through a deep glen forty miles off, beyond Clew Bay. Standing upon glaci- ated rocks 2000 feet above the sea, and looking at a horizon 54 miles away, it seems almost certain that these ice-ground Irish hills rose in the midst of an arctic current whicli flowed amongst them and altered their forms. So here the first impression suggested by the shape of the country is amply confirmed by closer examination of details. Glaciers. A marine glacial period ending in a rise of land should have produced land-glaciers, and local systems of marks ; and these marks do in fact remain. CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 33 The col and corrie between Shan Folagh and Mam Turk certainly contained a small glacier, for the marks are there. The top of the col is bare ice-ground rock, and the glen has the rounded shape of a glacier valley. There is hardly any talus, though the rocks split easily. Looking downwards from the steep slope at the head, the glen seems to fade away into the boggy plain. There are few large stones in it, and these seem to have rolled down from broken rocks above them. Cnoc Ourid seems nearly to fill the mouth of the glen, and Cnoc Mordan is seen to the right, over the shoulder of Mam Turk. Between them are Camus Bay and the sea-horizon nearly level with the distant hill-tops. The col was a sea-strait when Cnoc Ourid was awash, and the glen ought to be full of wrecked drift dropped in the shelter. It seems to have been swept clean. The hill-sides are ground from top to bottom, for the glen is a trench dug transversely through nearly vertical strata. But when the mouth of the glen is reached, the small river is found to have cut through a bed of boulders and clay nearly fifty feet thick. A green hillock is found to be part of a moraine, and most of the stones contained in the clay seem to be derived from hills which make the sides of the glen. Lower down, ice-ground rocks peer up through the brown moss, and the river washes a grooved rock-surface, which it has failed to spoil But this moraine has been washed out of shape. Shan Folagh was a sunken rock ; then awash ; then a low island at the end of a point ; then a peninsula with small glaciers at the isthmus ; then a hill in a plain : and then the glacier seems to have come to a sudden end, for the moraine stops short in the jaws of the glen. The glacial period pro- bably ended when the land had risen to a certain point. At the moraine-level, about 200 feet above the sea, the VOL. II. D 34 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. low hills between Mam Turk and Moyculleen, and those upon the borders of Lough Corrib, and near Galway, Ballina, and Sligo, would be like rocks which now fill the sea-loughs ; and ice might still drift and carry boulders through straits which are now county Galway, and the glen in which the road has been made to Inver Lodge. At the present level of sea and land, the Arctic Current is shut out by Ireland, Great Britain, Denmark, Scandinavia, and Lapland, and the Gulf Stream flows up in the lee. If the sea were 2000 feet higher on this region of the earth's northern surface generally, the Arctic Current would overflow the dam which separates the Gulf of Bothnia from the White Sea. Then the Equatorial Current might be driven elsewhere, and then the climate would be changed. When Celts named the " hill of flesh," and the " range of boars," the " lake of stags," and similar places, they found other creatures in Connemara than snipes and hares. When they composed the long poems which Connemara peasants still repeat, the pastime of their lives and the burden of their songs were love, war, and hunting ; but before there were ele- phants, elks, and men, to be hunted and smothered in Irish bogs ; the wide Atlantic covered the whole land ; and marks an eighth of an inch deep, made by floating ice on the highest top of Shan Folagh, have not been worn out by all the rain which has fallen there since the day of Finn MacCool, MacArt, MacTreunmor, and since Shan Folagh peered above the waves. Leaca Donna. Shan Folagh, Cnoc Ourid, and Cnoc Mor- dan, being on one side of a strait, the other side is a gneiss hill, called Leaca Donna, or brown slabs. It makes the western corner of the block of high land in Moyculleen, the highest point of which is about 1200 feet above CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 35 the sea. The western face of this block is rounded, and almost bare of soil and vegetation. From the road at Sgriob Lake to the top is about three and a half miles. At the head of Sgriob, Shan Folagh is seen to the north- east as a rounded, conical, isolated hill. Slieve Patry is seen past the eastern shoulder as a block of hills with a smooth sloping top ; and to the westward, in the Moyculleen range, a wide rounded valley runs half a mile eastwards into the hills. About the lake in the low grounds loose blocks of granite are scattered in every direction, and the rocks are all ground and scored. The grooves at high-water mark at this spot run north and south. At the same level, a mile and a half eastwards, grooves are well seen ; they point N.E., S.W., and cross the mouth of the small glen, which seems made to be the habitation of a glacier. If these grooves were made by land-ice they would point due west out of the glen. Half a mile nearer to the hills the ground is strewed with the debris of a small moraine, which makes a curved sweep across the mouth of the glen. It marks the spot where a small glacier ended, at about the same level as the Shan Folagh glacier. This moraine is washed out of shape. In this sheltered nook a village built of boulders, fields fenced with rounded stones, green corn, blighted potatoes, and worm-eaten cabbages, show a better soil than bare granite and wet peat, which make the plain. The base of the hill on the right of this glen, up to 350 feet, is thickly strewed with large loose blocks. Above that level which would join Lough Corrib to the sea, make Moy- culleen an island, and Ireland an archipelago the ice- ground hill is swept bare ; but every here and there perched 36 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. blocks riding on granite saddles hang on the steep hill-side, where a good push would send them rolling to the bottom. The rock generally is rough and weathered, but every here and there a vein of hard quartz stands up half an inch from the gneiss. The quartz surface is smooth, polished, shining, and marked by sand-lines and scores. The edges of the ribs are still angular. Elsewhere hard patches preserve their smooth surface for a couple of square yards. At 700 feet the grooves and finer sand-marks point N.N.E. and S.S.W. along the face of the hill, past Slieve Patry, over Lough Mask, at the Firth of Clyde in one direction, and out to sea in the other. At 1000 feet a well-marked groove on the top of a shoulder points N.E. by N., S.W. by S., near Arran in Scotland, and at the Irish Arran Islands. At 1130 feet by barometer the hill-top is a boggy rolling plateau, with low rocky saddlebacks peering up through black moss. Sea and bog ; hills, islands, lakes and moun- tains ; Galway Bay, Lough Corrib, and the low grounds of central Ireland are spread out like a map, and there is not a hill in sight to account for this glaciation by land-ice. In the foreground of this wild landscape a wild group of figures completed the picture. In a dark wet hollow, where a stream oozed out of a bog, a thin blue smoke curled up into the sunlight. Two bare-footed, black-haired girls, dressed in patched red garments, shaded their eyes from the sun, and peered doubtfully at the intruder. Three men and a boy, picturesque and wild, unkempt, bare-footed, ragged, and polite, paddled about in the black peat. Barrels, casks, noggins, baskets, creels, peats, malt, a copper still, sweet worts, the worm in its tub, a pile of potatoes for supper, and the black holes from which the whole gear had been dug, showed a CONN EM AHA GAL WAY AND WESTPOKT CURVES. 37 poteen distillery iii full work. The Ougliterard gauger bad luck to him found it out. From the ice-period to the period of poteen in Connemara is a long time, but the weathering of gneiss during that time has been less than half an inch ; for it can be measured from the polished surface of a rib of quartz to the rough surface above which it rises. Space could be turned into time if the rate of weathering were known. Surely works of human art, obelisks, pyramids, or sculptured stones, might give the rate of weathering, and so fix the date of the glacial period in Ire- land. Thus, on four isolated hill-tops within sight of each other, but far apart, at a height of 2000 feet and at the sea-level, the Galway curve is repeated in well-marked ice-grooves upon fixed rocks in Connemara. The boulders which ice carried are very remarkable in this district. They seem to spread like a fan from the pass. Close to the road-side, near the police barracks at Inver, lies a great block of granite (p. 10). It measures 36 x 12 x 10 feet, and it rests upon rounded granite, where it fell. It is broken into seven pieces, which retain their positions. The upper side is ground like other neighbouring surfaces ; one end, the rest of the sides, and the fractures, are angular and unground. It is evident that this great stone was a bit of the granite surface of the country ; that it was lifted bodily, carried some distance, and dropped where it lies broken. Perhaps it broke when it fell ; perhaps it split afterwards. It lies in the jaws of a glen, which was a strait at the foot of a rounded granite hill, Shan na Clerich (the Clerk's Hill), which is about 400 feet high. The hill is scored and ground all over. Perched blocks are scattered over it ; but all about it, and chiefly on S.W., or lee-side, enormous blocks of granite 38 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. are thickly strewn. A great many of these are broken, and most of them are rounded on one side or another. Some few are rounded on all sides, and chipped at the lower edge, as if they broke them when they fell down. Sometimes they are ranged in rows, which point N.E. by N. over the shoulder of the hill towards the low pass, through which the road leads from Oughterard. Nearly all these blocks rest upon bare rock, but here and there the rock is covered by compact hard beds of gravel and reddish clay. The gravel is chiefly granite, but the clay encloses small boulders of greenstone, and quartz rock of various kinds and colours. These are foreigners, for there are no rocks of the kind within ten miles at least. Where the clay has been moved to make roads, the granite-surface beneath is perfectly preserved in many places. Crystals of quartz and felspar no longer stand out in relief to give a firm hold to hob-nailed boots, but crystals and strings of harder rock are all smoothed to a fine polished surface ; upon this grooves which a pencil fills and finer marks remain. Hob-nails make almost as clear a mark when they slide upon the rock. The polish on the pillars of the Colosseum is not better preserved, and the marble of the Parthenon is far more weathered than this ice-ground Connemara granite where protected by the clay, which helped to smooth it. All these grooves, great and small, high and low, point nearly N.E. by N. There can be no doubt that ice scraped along, carrying boulders and grinding rocks, and the rocks show whence some of these boulders came ; others may have come from Antrim. Amongst the large blocks, and trains of blocks, ridges of granite of the same kind rise up in the moor. They have strange weird shapes, and suggest gray monsters crawling eastwards out of the moss. They are the sides ^^ of rock- CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 39 grooves ^-^, in which peat-moss gathers and grows, and the dragons and giant caterpillars and maggots are tors and ridges, ready to be jointed, quarried, and carried away to make granite boulders, for the stone is already split. Some, as in the woodcut (p. 7), are actually moved, and left loose in the place where they were first ground into shape, and then quarried and pushed out by ice. These are chiefly to be found at the north-eastern end of ridges, where they were struck and shaken. At other places the angular nest, from which a stone has been pushed, lifted, or dragged, remains, but the stone has disappeared. At some places the granite has been worn so near to a joint that it can be split off in thin layers. Else- where it is solid, and the fracture is never round like the worn surface. All over the moors and bogs, chiefly on the lee-side of isolated hills, these blocks are scattered and ranged in rows. Many are of enormous size. One, near Iiiver Lake, measures 14 x 11 x 12 feet, and must weigh about 130 tons. Cloch Corril (p. 19) is still larger ; it stands on the bank of Lough dbrril, and it probably came from Shan Folagh, ten miles off. The circumference is 66 feet, and the height about 24. The upper side is rounded, the under hollowed and smoothed. The sides are angular, and coincide with the natural fracture of the stone, for it is splitting up and falling in large masses, which lie about it, and the rain drips through it into the hollow beneath. It stands upon a rounded table of granite, on which straw is laid ; it is smoked, for fires are burned beneath it ; and it is rumoured that malt dries there. The lake is a rock-basin full of big stones, and the striae upon its islands point the usual way, towards Cnoc Mordan and Mam Turk. It is a beautiful spot to look at, and " a fine 40 BALTIC CURRENT BKITISH ISLES IRELAND. place for brewing poteen," as a native remarked. It has a bad name, so it is seldom visited. It is haunted by " each uisge," the water-horse, and other dangerous beings so few people go there except to fish or brew spirits ; heather, blae- berries, ivy, yew, holly, birch, and oak scrub, flourish upon the islands ; white goats caper about amongst the stones, and nibble the bark of the trees ; it is a green spot in the midst of a wilderness of brown boggy moor, surrounded by the dis- tant blue hills of the "Joyces' country," and the Twelve Pins of Connemara. The chief feature in the landscape is the old gray boulder, which is very like one upon the Unteraar glacier (vol. i. p. 153). That stone has given shelter to many a tourist to Saussure, Forbes, and to masters and students of glacial action. The Swiss stone rests on ice which is grind- ing rocks ; the Irish stone upon rocks which are ice-ground. Ice is carrying one, and ice certainly carried the other. Such a stone must have a legend, and thus the biggest boulder in Connemara has one of its own. It was the play- thing of a Celtic hero, Corril, who crushed his finger and left the mark in the hollow stone, when he threw it from Mam Turk at Mordan, the father of Goll MacMorna, who stood on his own hill about ten miles off. There can be no doubt that this tract was ground for a depth of 2000 feet by ice moving from N.E. or N.N.E. to the opposite points. All marks, from general forms of hill and dale, down to minute sand-lines, tell one story. If this be glacier-work, the snowshed was beyond Scotland. If it be the work of a current with floats, similar work is going on in O O corresponding latitudes within ten days' sail. Surely it was sea-ice which carried Cloch Corril (p. 19), and set it gently down on its base. Surely it was a fiisible raft which planted a block upon end liko a pillar on a big CONNEMARA GALWAY AND WESTPORT CURVES. 41 stone pedestal at the foot of Cnoc Ourid, on a rock in the midst of a bog. When the sketch was made on the wood, two gray horses stood beside the stone, lazily switching their tails to keep away a host of flies. When it was gently placed upright on its base, sea-horses, seals, and bears, may have played about the hill-sides, where goats now browse. There are " seal-meadows" further south on the opposite coast. These sea-monsters, and the end of the Irish glacial period, may have been seen by the ancestors of the men who are now migrating westward after the glacial period. Celts owned the land at the earliest historical date, the ice-marks are as fresh as Roman and Egyptian sculpture, and all Celtic tribes in the British Isles, from Cornwall to Sutherland, people their lakes and seas with water-horses, water-bulls, dragons, and sea-monsters. Their popular tales speak of ice- mountains, of hills of glass, of islands with fire about them, rising from the sea ; of wicked cities and plains sinking beneath the waves. According to a Connemara man, Finn and his warriors once chased a deer till they lost their way, " and all but two were frozen and starved, so that they died of cold and starvation." The survivors did many marvellous feats. If these myths be of native growth, they must surely be tracks which a recent glacial period has left on human minds. The belief in mythical sea-monsters, large deer and birds, is fresh and vivid, plain and clearly marked, amongst all ancient Britons, as are the ice-marks upon these Irish hills and plains in Connemara. CHAPTEE XXX. BALTIC CUKRENT 3 BRITISH ISLES 3 IRELAND 2 CONNE- MARA 2 NORTH-WESTERN, AND NORTH-EASTERN COASTS GALWAY, WESTPOET, AND DERRY VEAGH CURVES. THE broad trail of the Galway curve is well marked. The fact of glaciation in a certain south-westerly direction for a height or depth of 2000 feet, and a breadth of thirty miles, being established at one point on the western coast of Ireland, the next step is to look to the configuration of the country. Books on geology The Antiquity of Man by Lyell, Jukes' Manual of Geology, and other works of authority show that the sea-level has varied greatly on Irish hills. Shells are found high up, and peat, which grows on shore, is found below low-water mark ; and for numerous reasons it is taken to be an established fact that most of Ireland was under water after its hills had assumed their present general form. If the contour Line of 500 feet is traced, and assumed to be an ancient sea-level, Ireland becomes an archipelago. Fifteen groups of islands are disposed about a central strait, which ends at Galway and Oughterard. If the level of 2000 feet, the top of Shan Folagh, is taken to be the sea-level, very little of Ireland remains. (See map, Antiquity of Man, p. 276.) The western coast at the present sea-level is indented by a series of bays running northwards and eastwards Donegal Bay, Clew Bay, Galway, Shannon, Dingle, Kenmare, Bantry, etc. Most of the high mountains to the west are on promon- GALWAY CURVE. 43 tories which separate these bays. If these western mountains were groups of islands stretching along the lines of movement already indicated, it is easy to understand how a north-eastern current ran amongst them, and to know where to look for conspicuous ice-marks upon Irish plains and hill-tops. The north-eastern corner of each block of high land ought to bear the strongest marks of ice drifting south-westwards ; and curves drawn through glens which were sounds and straits ought to bear reference to main lines drawn by greater streams in the widest openings. The course of a rivulet passing through a row of stepping- stones ; the run of larger streams which split and join in pass- ing a salmon weir; the run of the ebb in a sea-loch studded with rocks and islands ; the curves in the tail of the Gulf Stream where it passes northwards and eastwards amongst islands off Hammerfest and the north of Norway ; the Medi- terranean Current off Gibraltar ; the Baltic Current off the south of Sweden, and the windings of the Arctic Current off Green- land and North America, all are illustrations of the move- ments of an old Arctic Current striking upon Irish hills. The theory is simple ; but a theory, however formed, is worth little till it has been well tried. If it stands examination, it rises in value by every new test. North-western coast. A curve drawn below the 500 level from Galway to Newport joins Clew Bay to Galway Bay, and cuts off a large block of high land which would be a group of islands if the sea were less than 500 feet above its present level. The Twelve Pins of Connemara form part of the group. Roads wind about amongst the mountains in this district and follow the lowest levels, towns are built near the coast ; so ice-marks which occur near roads and towns must either be marks of glaciers sliding from the hills, or of streams flow- 44 BALTIC CURRENT BRITISH ISLES IRELAND. in