Extract

The extraordinary and hitherto solitary phenomena which I have undertaken to describe, although long known and celebrated by the natives as the traditional works of their great ancestors, remained concealed from the world in general till Mr. Pennant published a short account of Glen Roy in an appendix to his Tour. A second description appeared in the Statistical Survey of Scotland, since which I know not that any attempt has been made to explain the origin of the Parallel Roads, although they have long been objects of curiosity to philosophical as well as to ordinary tourists. However convinced the Highlanders may have formerly been that these parallel roads, as they are called, were the works of Fingal and the heroes of his age, they have lately inclined to a different belief, and with most philosophers are willing to think that they may have been the result of the action of water. Still the matter remains disputed among the partizans of the different theories, and as the establishment of the latter opinion is attended with geological consequences of the first importance, it deserves to be investigated with the greatest care.

The appearance of the parallel roads is so extraordinary as to impress the imagination of the most unphilosophical, nay, even of the most incurious spectator. It is not therefore surprising that they should excite the admiration of the natives, in whom the progress of civilization has not yet extirpated those poetical feelings and that sense of the sublime, of which their