8. The extreme length of Great Britain from northeast to south-west is 600 miles in a straight line, along the west coast from the granite cliffs of Land's End to the red sandstone rocks overlooking Pentland Firth. From Duncansby Head along the east coast to the South Foreland is 540 miles. From the latter to Land's End is 320 miles.

The following mean ings of names will be found useful in studying the maps of Scotland and Ireland, in which the words

The Scotch Loch and the Irish Lough are sounded nearly alike, and are used alike for lakes and land-locked inlets of the sea. The Irish Ford and the Scotch Firth, different forms of the Norwegian "fiord," are applied to arms of the sea connected with river-mouths. The names Wexford and Waterford, &c., tell tales of Norse inroads.

CHAPTER II.

SCOTLAND.

Historical.

1. Less than 300 years have passed since Scotland ceased to be a separate kingdom.

2. Time after time during the foregoing centuries had the kings of the southern realm striven, with no lasting success, to extend their sway over their kinsfolk north of the Cheviots, and to force the Scottish sovereigns to do them homage. Time after time had the hardy Scots beaten back the encroaching southron overlords. During centuries of border warfare had Scotch Douglas fought against English Percy, at one time for flocks and herds, at another for honour or revenge, upon the bleak moorlands which, stretching in a north-easterly direction from the head of the Solway Firth to the mouth of the Tweed, form a natural barrier between the two countries.

3. At length, on the death of the English Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, the Scottish King James Stuart mounted the throne of England, as the great grandson of Henry VII.

4. Then at last the two peoples, having one sovereign, agreed to live peaceably side by side. Yet a hundred years more passed before one government was established over the whole island. Both nations then became one people in their dealings with outsiders; but sixty years more went by before they became one in feeling. To this day each nation maintains its own laws, church, and local

customs.

5. The inhabitants of the southern part, or Lowlands, of Scotland, are the offspring of Angles and

Saxons mated with daughters of Picts and Scots. The Scots are thought to have come over from Ireland across the narrow North Channel before the Roman occupation of Britain. They overcame and drove away from the plains to the mountains earlier settlers akin to the Keltic tribes of southern Britain, whom they next proceeded to harass.

6. Having rocky fastnesses wherein to entrench themselves, these northern savages were able to withstand such power as Rome chose to put forth, and to retain their homes intact. They were, however, no match for the Angles and Saxons who, sailing up the Tweed and the Firths of Forth, Tay, and Clyde, little by little overspread and subdued the whole of the Lowlands. On the north-east the Keltic tribes were beaten back by Norsemen, who long held Caithness, and the Orkney and Shetland Isles.

7. Thus only the north-western parts of the country, the barren Highlands, and the Western Isles or Hebrides, as in England the Cumbrian, Welsh, and Cornish heights, were left to the earlier Keltic settlers.

8. The natives of those parts still speak their old tongue, which is called Gaelic, and is akin to the Erse spoken by the Irish, the Cymric spoken by the Welsh, and the Manx of the Isle of Man.

9. Let us now glance briefly at some of the natural features of

"Caledonia stern and wild,

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood."

10. If we were to grind down the surface of England and Wales, so as to fill up the hollows and bring all to one level, we should have a plateau about 400 feet above the sea level. Southern Britain has only twenty-four peaks above 2000 feet in height, of which five only exceed 3000 feet.

11. Were we to grind down the quartz and granite peaks and ridges of Scotland, to fill up her narrow glens, and raise her plains to one level, we should have a table-land towering far above that of England. The loftiest Highland peak, Ben Nevis (ie., Cloudcapped Hill), reaches a height of 4406 feet, which exceeds by 1177 feet Scafell, the highest of our Cumbrian mountains, and by 835 feet, the Welsh Snowdon.

12. The Highlands boast four other peaks,* of 4000 feet and upwards, and many above 3000; while even the Lowland hills throw up several peaks nearly 3000 feet high.

13. England is a land of broad, well-watered plains, and of rolling uplands, drained by gently flowing streams. But of Scotland three-fourths consist of barren mountains and rugged moors, while the narrow glens are seamed with swift mountain torrents.

CHAPTER III.

SCOTLAND.

Outline.

I. In searching the map of Scotland, to look for the high peaks just named, we cannot fail to have noticed how unlike is its outline to that of England. Its rocky and rugged coast is far more deeply indented, especially on the west, where it is pierced by deep, narrow inlets, some of which admit the waters of the Atlantic thirty miles inland.

* Ben Macdhui, or Black Boar Mountain (4296 feet), Cairntoul, Cairngorm, and Ben Attow. Ben is of course the same Keltic word as Pen in the British Pen-y-gant. A Welshman often pronounces B as P.

2. With but half the area of southern Britain, Scotland has a coast-line of 2500 miles. One of her counties, Argyll (which means West Gael), has 600 miles of sea-coast; which is just one-third of the coast-line of all England. This long sea-board, tenanted chiefly by prudent and industrious fishermen, forms, even more than that of southern Britain, a nursery for the supply of those hardy seamen by whose skill and bravery we keep command of the

seas.

3. From north to south Scotland spreads, not to say sprawls, for about 270 miles. Its easternmost headland, Buchan Ness, stretches a few miles to the eastward of a. line drawn due north and south from Berwick-on-Tweed along the Pennine range, over the Peak district, and between Stafford and Birmingham, to St. Alban's Head.

4. From Peterhead (the easternmost town in Scotland, and the headquarters of the whaling fleet), to the western shores of Ross, the breadth of the mainland is 160 miles; while the wasp-like waist between the Firth of the Forth and that of the Clyde, is only thirty-three miles.

5. The island of Great Britain may be likened to a grotesque human figure, seen sideways, squatting Iwith its head bent forward and capped by a high bonnet. The Mull of Galloway will be the tip of the chin; the Mull of Cantyre, that of the nose; Wales the hands; Cornwall the feet. Both nose and feet nearly touch the sixth meridian,* stretching further west than the finger-tips at Holyhead and St. David's Head; while the shaggy eyebrow of Ardnamurchan stretches as much to the westward of the sixth meridian as the back of the head at Buchan Ness stretches to the eastward of the second meridian.

6. Round the headgear and wrinkled face of

* Meridians are lines drawn round the globe through both poles. See Book V., Lesson III.