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PARALLEL ROADS.
69
This may have been effected in two ways: the deposit
may have been made in a lake tilling a basin-shaped
valley, and the river may have cut down and lowered
the channel of its outlet considerably beyond its original
depth, and thus have not only drained the waters of the
lake, but have given sufficient inclination and velocity to
the river, to enable it to carry with it much of the soft
earthy matter over which it was flowing; or, it may
be, that this was an estuary valley, an ancient fiord,
up which the sea stretched an arm, the alluvium being
deposited by the river when it entered the sea; and
after this was done, the whole valley, mountains, river,
and its deposit, were all uplifted by the fiery forces
within the earth which battle against the working of
the waters outside, raising new mountains while the
waters wear the old ones down. Such an uplifting
would lengthen the journey of the river, as the sea
rolled back from the uplifted land. In its new course,
the river would cut through the soft plain over the
bottom of the ancient fiord, and continue cutting down
till it reached nearly the level of the sea; and thus
the depth of the cutting would measure the amount
of uplifting.
Throughout nearly the whole of to-day’s walk—
about twenty-five miles—terraces formed of alluvium
were visible. In some parts the river flows at the foot
of a steep bank of even slope above three hundred feet
high, the top of which is a cultivated or wooded level;
at other parts there are several step-like terraces,
" parallel roads," as they are called in Scotland. Near
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