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madeinatlantis
LONDON TRAVEL GUIDE
SCOTLAND - GREAT BRITAIN
THE subdivision of Scotland for the purpose of describing the geographical correlations in its several parts may depend upon either of two considerations. On the one hand, is the great structural distinction between the Highlands, the Rift Valley, and the Southern Uplands, upon. which rests a difference of productivity, both of degree and kind; and, on the other hand, the opposition between the east and west coasts, with their respective stream slopes, which has determined the relative accessibility of the various districts and the grouping of the communications.
The diagonal line of fault dividing the Rift Valley from the Highlands, separates Scotland into two roughly equal portions. The parallel line dividing the Rift Valley from the Southern Uplands is of subordinate value; nor, for many purposes, is the continuity of the Highlands appreciably broken by the narrow trench of Glenmore. With the exception of their eastern sill, the counties north of the Highland line are one of the most thinly-peopled regions of all Europe, and, with the same exception, they contain fewer cattle and sheep, and less tillage than any other portion of the British Isles. Gaelic is the language of the inhabitants, except along the coastal sill and in a few of the more open straths. Owing to the north-eastward and south-westward graining of the rocks there are no wide valleys opening to the Rift, for in their consequent reaches even the streams of the Tay system have to pass through gorges, as at Killiecrankle. The Highlands are, therefore, relatively inaccessible except from the eastern sill and the western sea. But the Southern Uplands are completely intersected by the open Tweed and Nith valleys. They constitute one of the great sheep runs of Britain, a fact betokened by the trade term of "Tweed" cloths. Their population is proportionately larger than that of the Highlands, although small indeed when the comparison is with the Rift Valley or the Northumbrian and Cumbrian coalfields. Their inhabitants speak English, even in Galloway. Therefore Scotland may be regarded as falling naturally into two halves, of which the "Highlands" contain the Grampian and Northern Uplands, together with the eastern sill, while the "Lowlands" consist of the Rift Valley and the Southern Uplands.
From the point of view, however, of the drainage slopes, North Britain presents no similar bi-symmetry, for quite three-quarters of the country are drained into the eastern sea. Moreover, the Rift Valley cannot in any sense be regarded as harmonising with the river system, whether the rivers be classified according to origin or destination. It is traversed by waters from two sources, which flow into two seas, in such manner as to divide it into three sections. In Clydesdale and Ayrshire the streams descend from the Southern Uplands to the western sea; in Lothian they come down from the Southern Uplands into the eastern sea; and they flow into the eastern sea across Strathmore from the Highlands. With the first section is intimately connected, by natural ways, the Solway and Galloway slope of the Southern Uplands; with the second, the valley system of the Tweed; with the third, that portion of the Highlands, for the most part drained by the river Tay, which lies to the east of Drumalban and to the south of the Mounth.
On a balance of considerations, then, it appears that Scotland falls most naturally into four great divisions -(1) Lothian and the Tweed borderland; (2) the West of Scotland, consisting of the Solway dales, Galloway, the coastal plain of Ayrshire and Clydesdale, and -- grouped with these by reason of the sea communications -- the peninsulas of Argyll and the Hebridean Isles; (3) Strathmore, the peninsula of Fife, and that portion of the Highlands which lies to the east of Drumalban and to the south of the Mounth; and (4) the remainder of the Highlands, with the low coastal strip which ranges through Buchan, Moray, the Black Isle, Caithness, and the Orkneys. Each of these divisions contains one of the four large towns of Scotland, and each has also a secondary town at an important centre of communications. In the first is the great combined city of Edinburgh and Leith, and Berwick, although technically in England, must be regarded as belonging to the same division, because of its position at the parting of the ways leading, on the one hand, up the Tweed valley, and on the other, by the coastal defile to Dunbar and Edinburgh. Glasgow is situated in the midst of Clydesdale, and Dumfries is at the parting of ways leading northward through Nithsdale to Kilmarnock and Glasgow, and westward through Galloway towards Ireland. Dundee is the largest town of the Tay basin, but Perth is at the centre of the ways in Strathmore. Aberdeen, a city on the same scale as Dundee, stands at the entry to Buchan, while Inverness is at the convergence of the road (1) along the Moray coast from Buchan, (2) over Drumochter from the Tay valley, (3) through Glenmore from Argyll, (4) through Glencarron from Skye and the Western Isles, and (5) along the coast of Sutherland from Caithness and the Orkneys. The first of the divisions corresponds to the Scottish extremity of the old Angle kingdom of Bernicia; the second to Pictish Galloway, British Strathclyde, Scottish Argyll, and the Norse Lordship of the Isles; the third, with the addition of Buchan, to Pictish Alban; the fourth, with the exception of Buchan, to Pictish Moray and Norse Caithness. The second division, including all the western coasts, coincides with the pre-Reformation Archbishopric of Glasgow, and the other three divisions, including all the eastern coasts, to the Archbishopric of St. Andrews; for the mediæval organisation of the Church in Scotland was based, as in other lands, on water communications.
South-Eastern Scotland spreads from the English border to the Firth of Forth. It consists of two groups of counties -- (1) Berwick, Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Peebles in the basin of the Tweed, and (2) Haddington, Edinburgh, and Linlithgow in Lothian. The lines of its structure are drawn from south-west to north-east in alternate ridges and furrows. In succession from the English border they are -- (1) the Cheviot range; (2) the valley of the Teviot and lower Tweed from Hawick to Berwick; (3) the plateau of the Southern Upland, ending north-westward in a scarped edge; (4) the strip of low ground, partly inland, partly coastal, which is drained north-eastward by two little subsequent rivers, the Dalkeith Esk and the Haddington Tyne; and (5) the Pentland ridge, with the subsequent streams of the Water of Leith and the Almond along its north-western foot. The Firth of Forth, entering from the west, makes a north-eastward bend beyond the constriction at Queensferry, and spreads to a great width in prolongation of the lie of the Esk, Leith, and Almond valleys. Between the end of the Pentlands and the coast of the Firth there is a gap, in the midst of which is set the Castle rock, and around this, in the gateway leading to inner Scotland, has grown up the capital city of Edinburgh. The Tweed traverses the Southern Uplands diagonally from west to east, and then bends north-eastward in conformity with the general grain of the land. Its tributaries fall, therefore, into two series, the one consequent, descending from the north-west to its lower left bank, the other subsequent, from the south-west to its upper right bank. In each of these series there is one stream of exceptional significance. Gala Water, from the north-west, has so notched the edge of the plateau which overlooks the Lothian coastland, as to sunder it into two masses, known as Moorfoot to the south-west, between the Gala Dale and Tweeddale, and Lammermoor to the north-east, between Gala Dale and the cliffs of Dunbar and St. Abb's Head. The Teviot, on the other hand, follows the northern foot of the Cheviot range, bearing in the direction of its flow and the breadth of its valley the same relation to the lower Tweed that the Kennet bears to the lower Thames.
The tracks followed by the railways to Edinburgh supply an excellent commentary on the physical configuration. The East Coast line crosses the Tweed at Berwick, surmounts the cliffs of St. Abb's Head by a little valley, and descends into Lothian at Dunbar, whence it turns up the Haddington Tyne and, crossing to the coast of the Firth, enters Edinburgh from the east. The so-called "Waverley" route from Carlisle and the head of Solway Firth, runs up Liddesdale to the ridge which connects the Cheviots with the Southern Uplands, and descends into the Teviot valley at Hawick; thence it traverses the "Scott" country, past Abbotsford and the ruin of Melrose; finally it strikes up Gala Dale, through the Southern Uplands, and descending to the Esk at Dalkeith, enters Edinburgh in company with the East Coast line. The West Coast line extends from Carlisle up Annandale, crosses the Southern Uplands into the head of Clydesdale, and descending to Carstairs Junction, turns northeastward along the foot of the Pentland Hills, and so enters Edinburgh from the west. Certain details in the county boundaries point to the importance of former communications along the same lines. Roxburghshire includes the upper part of Liddesdale, although this is on the Solway slope, and Edinburghshire includes the upper portion of Gala Dale, although this belongs to the basin of the Tweed. 1 A larger fact of similar meaning is the northward extension to the Tweed of that part of Northumberland which is grasped between the end of the Cheviot Hills and the sea coast. In the days before railways nine out of ten travellers entered Scotland along the east coast, and the expression "beyond the Tweed," as an equivalent for Scotland, is therefore precise, notwithstanding the fact that the Tweed constitutes only onesixth of the whole boundary.
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RESTAURANTS
HOTELS
RUSSELL SQUARE
HISTORY
GREAT BRITAIN
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