Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 1

INTRODUCTION. V
board between the liberties of Berwick and the frith of Forth. Fast Castle-head is 3i
miles to the north-west. Barness, Whitberry-head, and Gulane-point, are in Hadding-
tonshire, — the last on the coast of the frith of Forth. Fifeness, a low, sandy, naked
headland, is the termination of the peninsula of Fife. Buddonness, similar to the former,
and Red-head, a beetling and bold promontory, are in Forfarshire. Jodhead, Garron-
point, Finnonness, and Girdleness, are in Kincardineshire, — the last at the mouth of the :
Dee, and at the end of a range of the Grampians. Buchanness is the most easterly land
in Aberdeenshire, and even in Scotland. Rattray-point, Cairnbulg-head, and Einnaird-
head, are in the same county, — the two last at the entrance of the Moray frith. Knockie-
head is in Banffshire. Coulard-hill and Burgh-head are in Elginshire. Tarbetness,
the termination of the long narrow peninsula between the Dornoch and the Beauly friths,
belongs to Ross-shire. Ord of Caithness, Clytheness, Noss-head, Duncansby-head,
Bunnet-head, and Holborn-head, are in Caithness, — the three last looking across the
Peutland frith to the Orkney Islands. Strathey-point, Whiten-head, Far-out-head,
Cape- Wrath, and Assynt-point, are in Sutherlandshire, — the last on its west coast, and
the three first on its north. More-head, or Ru-more, is on the west coast of Cromarty.
Udrigal-head, and Rhu-Rea-head, are on the west coast of Ross-shire. Ardnamur-
chan-point, the most westerly ground on the mainland, — the Midi of Kintyre, at the
entrance of the Clyde, and of the Irish channel, — and Lamont-point and Tov:ard-point,
the southern terminations on the east and the west of the district of Cowal, on the Clyde,
— are in Argyleshire. Glougli-point, on the Clyde, is in Renfrewshire. Kirkcolm-point,
at the entrance of Loch- Ryan, — Corsewall-point, at the north-west extremity of the
Rhinns of Galloway, — and the Mull of Galloway and Burrow-head, at the southern
extremities of Scotland, — are in Wigtonshire. Ross-head, between Wigton and Kirk-
cudbright bays, — Balcarry-point, at the west side of Auchencairn-bay, — Almerness-
point, between that bay and the estuary of the Urr, — and Southerness-point, at the
extreme south-east of Galloway, — are hi Kirkcudbrightshire.
MARINE WATERS.
The German ocean, where it washes the mainland of Scotland, is closed up on the
east side by Denmark, the entrance to the Baltic, and Christiansand in Norway. The
North sea and the German ocean, where they girdle the northern and western shores,
are — as we shall afterwards see — thickly occupied by the archipelagoes of Scotland, and
both tamed in the fury of their billows, and to a considerable extent stripped of their
superincumbent vapours, by the numerous and boldly screening islands, before they reach
the main shore ; from just the same circumstance, too, or owing to currents, whirlpools,
shoals, rocks, variable winds, and intricacy of channel, among the girdlings of the islands,
or between them and the mainland, these seas are not a little difficult and dangerous of
navigation ; and, owing to the gullets and narrow sounds, which serve like funnels for the
wind between high grounds, and to the great number and magnitude and power of the
rocky or mountainous obstructions which are presented to the breeze and the tide, and to
the labyrinth of paths, and the positions of successive or alternate propulsion, vexation,
opposition, and becalming which have to be traversed by a current, the seas likewise
exhibit in the frequent storms of winter, or amidst a gale on the longest and far extend-
ing day of the hyperborean summer, scenes of awful sublimity, which would appal almost
any sensitive person except a native of the islands or of the mainland sea-board. The
Irish channel, where it washes the Mull of Kintyre, looks up the frith of Clyde, and
sweeps along the Rhinns of Galloway from Carsewell-point to the Mull of Galloway, is
curtained on its west or south-west side by the county of Antrim, the entrance of BeLast
loch, and the county of Down in Ireland, is 13 miles broad at the Mull of Kintyre, and
21 at Portpatrick, and may be viewed as having an average breadth along Wigtonshire
of 24 or 25 miles. At the point where it expands into the Irish sea, or immediately off
the Mull of Galloway, the tides, which come in one slow and majestic current across the
Atlantic, which encounter the long, vast obstruction of the island of Ireland, and which,
sweeping round the ends of that country, enter the space between Ireland and Great
Britain by the opposite inlets at the Mull of Kintyre, and at St. George 's-channel, run
against each other in a tumult of collision, and produce, even in calm weather, a tum-
bling, troughy sea, which no landsman loves to traverse. Resulting from the same
causes, the tidal currents in the adjacent parts of the Irish sea, and above all in the