ii. MULL, MORVEN AND ARDNAMURCHAN

This plateau covers nearly the whole of the island of Mull, embraces a portion of Morven on the Argyleshire mainland, and, stretching across Loch Sunart, includes the western part of the peninsula of Ardnamurchan (Map VI.). That these now disconnected areas were once united into a continuous lava-field which extended far beyond its present limits is impressively indicated by their margin of cliffs and fringe of scattered islands and outliers. The plateau went west, at least, as far as the Treshnish Isles, which are composed of basalt. On its eastern border, a capping of basalt on the top of Beinn Iadain (1873 feet) in Morven, and others further north, prove that its volcanic sheets once spread into the interior of Argyleshire (Fig. 266). On the south, its fine range of lofty cliffs, with their horizontal bars of basalt, bear witness to the diminution which it has undergone on that side; while, on the north, similar sea-walls tell the same tale. Not only has it suffered by waste along its margin, it has also been deeply trenched by the excavation of glens and arms of the sea. The Sound of Mull cuts it in two, and the mainland portion is further bisected by Loch Sunart, and again by Loch Aline. The island of Mull is so penetrated by sea-lochs and divided by deep valleys that a comparatively slight depression would turn it into a group of islands. But, besides its enormous denudation, this plateau has been subjected to disruption, and perhaps also to subsidence, from subterranean movements. In the southern portion of the island of Mull it has been broken up by the intrusion of large bosses and sheets of gabbro, and by masses as well as innumerable veins of various granitoid and felsitic rocks. In Ardnamurchan, it has suffered so much disturbance from the same cause that its original structure has been almost obliterated over a considerable area. Moreover, it has been dislocated by many faults, by which different portions have been greatly shifted in level. The most important of these breaks is one noticed by Professor Judd, and visible to every tourist who sails up the Sound of Mull. It traverses the cliffs on the Morven side, opposite Craignure, bringing the basalts against the crystalline schists, and strikes thence inland, wheeling round into the long valley in which Lochs Arienas and Teacus lie. On its western side, the base of the basalt-series is almost at the sea-level; on its eastern side, that platform rises high into the outliers of Beinn na h-Uamha (1521 feet) and Beinn Iadain. The amount of displacement is probably more than 1000 feet. Many other minor faults in the same district show how much the crust of the earth has been fractured here since older Tertiary time.

[Footnote 240: There are no fewer than three faults in the basalt-capping on the summit of Beinn Iadain. By bringing the basalts and schists into juxtaposition, they have given rise to topographical features that can be seen even from a distance.]

A little to the west of Mull, and belonging originally to the same plateau, lies the isle of Staffa, the famous columnar basalts of which first attracted the attention of travellers, and gave to the Tertiary volcanic rocks of Scotland their celebrity (Fig. 266_a_).

In spite of the extent to which it has suffered from denudation and subterranean disturbance, and indeed in consequence thereof, the Mull plateau presents clear sections of many features in the history of the basalt-outflows and of the subsequent phases of Tertiary volcanic action which cannot be seen in the more regular and continuous tableland of Antrim. Moreover, it still possesses in its highest mountain, Ben More (3169 feet), a greater thickness, and probably a higher series, of lavas than can now be seen in any other of the plateaux.

The difficulties, already referred to in regard to Antrim, of tracing the probable form of ground on which the volcanic eruptions began, are even greater in the case of the Mull plateau. We can dimly perceive that the depression in the crystalline rocks of the Highlands which had, from at least the older part of the Jurassic period, stretched in a N.N.W. direction along what is now the western margin of Argyleshire, lay beneath the sea in Jurassic time, and was then more or less filled up with sedimentary deposits. The hollow appears thereafter to have become a land-valley, whence the Jurassic strata were to a large extent cleared out by denudation before its subsequent submergence under the sea in which the upper Cretaceous deposits accumulated. Professor Judd has shown that relics of these Cretaceous strata appear on both sides of the plateau from under the protecting cover of basalt-sheets. But, before the volcanic eruptions began, the area had once again been raised into land, and the youngest Secondary formations had been extensively eroded.

In their general aspect the basalts of Mull agree with those of Antrim, and the circumstances under which they were erupted were no doubt essentially the same. But considerable differences in detail are observable between the succession of rocks in the two areas. When I first visited the island in 1866, the only available maps, with any pretensions to accuracy, were the Admiralty charts; but, as these do not give the interior except in a generalized way, it was difficult to plot sections from them, and to arrive at satisfactory conclusions as to the thickness of different groups of rock. Accordingly, as the successive nearly flat flows of basalt can be traced from the sea-level up to the top of Ben More, I contented myself with the fact that the total depth of lava-beds in Mull was at least equal to the height of that mountain, or 3169 feet. The publication of the Ordnance Survey Maps now enables us to make a nearer approximation to the truth. From the western base of the magnificent headland of Gribon, the basalts in almost horizontal beds rise in one vast sweep of precipice and terraced slope to a height of over 1600 feet, and then stretch eastwards to pass under the higher part of Ben More, at a distance of some eight miles. They have a slight easterly inclination, so that the basement sheets seen at the sea-level, at the mouth of Loch Scridain, gradually sink below that level as they go eastward. It is not easy to get a measurement of dip among these basalts, except from a distance. If we take the inclination at only 1°, the beds which are at the base of the cliff on the west, must be about 700 feet below the sea on the line of Ben More, which would give a total thickness of nearly 3900 feet of bedded lava below the top of that mountain. We shall not probably overestimate the thickness of the Mull plateau if we put it at 3500 feet.

The base of the volcanic series of Mull can best be seen on the south coast at Carsaig, and at the foot of the precipices of Gribon. As already stated, it is there found resting above Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks. The lowest beds are basalt-tuffs, of the usual dull green colour. They are in places much intermingled with sandy and gravelly sediment, as if the volcanic debris had fallen into water where such sediment was in course of deposition. One of the most interesting features, indeed, in this basement part of the series, is the occurrence of bands of non-volcanic material which accumulated after the tuffs and some of the lavas had been erupted, but before the main mass of basalts. Those at Carsaig include a lenticular bed, 25 feet thick, of rolled flints, which, with some associated sandy bands, lies between sheets of basalt. On the opposite side of the promontory is the well-known locality of Ardtun, from which the first land-plants in the volcanic series were determined. The actual base of the basalts is not there seen, being covered by the sea. The "leaf-beds," with their accompanying sandstones, gravels, and limestone, lie upon a sheet of basalt, which in some parts is exceedingly slaggy on the top, passing down into a black compact structure, and assuming at the base of the cliff a columnar arrangement, with the prisms curved and built up endways towards each other. Some of the gravels exceed 30 feet in thickness, and consist of rolled flints, bits of chalk, and pieces of basalt and other basic igneous rocks. But some of their most interesting ingredients are pebbles of sanidine lavas, which have been recognized in them by Prof. G. Cole.[241] No known protrusions of such lavas occur anywhere beneath or interstratified with the plateau-basalts of this district. As will be afterwards shown, all the visible acid rocks, the geological relations of which can be ascertained, are here of younger date than these basalts. I am disposed to regard the fragments found in the Ardtun conglomerates as probably derived from some of the basalt-conglomerates of the plateau, in which fragments of siliceous igneous rocks do occur. Though there is no evidence that any lavas of that nature were here poured out at the surface before or during the emission of the basalts, the contents of these fragmental volcanic accumulations suggest that such lavas, already consolidated, lay at some depth beneath the surface, and that fragments were torn off from them during the explosions that threw out the materials of the basalt-conglomerates to the surface.

[Footnote 241: _Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc._ xliii. (1887) p. 277.]

The succession of strata at the Ardtun headland varies considerably in a short distance, some of the sedimentary deposits rapidly increasing or diminishing in thickness. The section as measured by Mr. Starkie Gardner is as follows[242]:--

Columnar basalt, 40 feet. Position of first leaf-bed, obscured by grass, about 2 feet. Gravel varying from about 25 feet to a maximum of nearly 40 feet. Black or second leaf-bed, 2-1/2 feet. Gravel about 7 feet. Grey clay, 2 feet. Laminated sandstone, 6 inches, with 3 inches of fine limestone, containing leaves at the base. Clay, with leaves at base, 1 foot. Clunch, with rootlets, 7 inches. Amorphous basalt, becoming columnar at base, about 60 feet.

[Footnote 242: _Op. cit._ p. 280.]

Mr. Starkie Gardner has called attention to the extraordinarily fresh condition of the vegetation in some of the layers of the Ardtun section. One of the leaf-beds he has found to be made up for an inch or two of a pressed mass of leaves, lying layer upon layer, and retaining almost the colours of dead vegetation. Among the plants represented is a large purple _Ginkgo_ and a fine _Platanites_, one leaf measuring 15-1/2 inches long by 10-1/2 broad. The characteristic dicotyledonous leaves at this locality possessed relatively large foliage.[243]

[Footnote 243: For fuller local details regarding the Ardtun leaf-beds, I may refer to the original paper by the Duke of Argyll (_Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc._ vii. p. 89), and to the memoir by Mr. Starkie Gardner (_op. cit._ xliii. (1887), p. 270).]

To the early observations of Macculloch we are indebted for the record of an interesting fact in connection with the vegetation of the land-surface over which the first lava-flows spread. He figured a vertical tree trunk, imbedded in prismatic basalt, and rightly referred it to some species of fir.[244] This relic may still be seen under the basalt precipices of Gribon. Mr. Gardner found it to be "a large trunk of a coniferous tree, five feet in diameter, perhaps _Podocarpus_, which has been enveloped, as it stood, in one of the flows of trap to the height of 40 feet. Its solidity and girth evidently enabled it to resist the fire, but it had decayed before the next flow passed over it, for its trunk is a hollow cylinder filled with debris, and lined with the charred wood. A limb of another, or perhaps the same tree, is in a fissure not far off."[245]

[Footnote 244: _Western Islands_, vol. i. p. 568, and plate xxi. Fig. 1.]

[Footnote 245: _Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc._ xliii. p. 283.]

At different levels in the volcanic series of Mull, beds of lignite and even true coal are observable. These seem to be always mere lenticular patches, only a few square yards in extent. The best example I have met with lies among the basalts near Carsaig. It is in part a black glossy coal, and partly dull and shaly. Some years ago it was between two and three feet thick, but now, owing to its having been dug away by the shepherds, only some six or eight inches are to be seen. It lies between two basalt-flows, and rapidly disappears on either side.

More frequent than these inconstant layers of fossil vegetation are the thin partings of tuff and layers of red clay, sometimes containing iron-ore, which occur at intervals throughout the series between different flows of basalt. But even such intercalations are of trifling thickness, and only of limited extent. The magnificent precipices of M'Gorry's Head and Gribon expose a succession of beds of columnar amorphous and amygdaloidal basalt, which must attain a thickness of at least 2500 feet, before they are overlain by the higher group of pale lavas in Ben More. On the east side of the island, thin tuffs and bands of basalt-conglomerate occur on different horizons among the bedded basalts, from near the sea-level up to the summit of the ridge which culminates in Beinn Meadhon (2087 feet), Dùn-da-Ghaoithe (2512 feet), and Mainnir-nam-Fiadh (2483 feet). Reference has already been made to the remarkably coarse character of some of the breccias intercalated among the basalts in this part of Mull, and to the enormous dimensions of some of the masses of mica-schist and quartzite which have been carried up from a depth of 2000 feet or more by volcanic agency (see _ante_, p. 196, and Fig. 262).

Above the ordinary compact and amygdaloidal basalt comes the higher group of pale lavas already referred to as forming the uppermost part of Ben More, whence it stretches continuously along the pointed ridge of A'Chioch, and thence northwards into Beinn Fhada. The same lavas are likewise found in two outliers, capping Beinn a' Chraig, a mile further north, and I have found fragments of them on some of the loftier ridges to the south-east. This highest and youngest group of lavas in the plateaux has been reduced to mere isolated patches, and a little further denudation will remove it altogether. Yet it is not less than about 800 feet thick, and consists of bedded andesitic or trachytic lavas, which alternate with and follow continuously and conformably upon the top of the ordinary plateau-basalts. These dull, finely crystalline or compact, light-grey rocks weather with a characteristic platy form, which has been mistaken for the bedding of tuffs. The fissility, however, has none of the regularity or parallelism of true bedding, and may be observed to run sometimes parallel with the bedding of the sheets, sometimes obliquely or even at right angles to it. Even where this structure is best developed, the truly crystalline nature of the rocks can readily be detected. Some of them are porphyritic and amygdaloidal, the very topmost bed of the mountain being a coarse amygdaloid. Intercalated with these curious rocks there are others in which the ordinary characters of the dolerites and basalts of the plateaux can be recognised. The amygdaloids are often full of delicate prisms of epidote.

In Mull, as in the other areas of terraced basalts, we everywhere meet with gently inclined sheets, which do not thicken out individually or collectively in any given direction, except as the result of unequal denudations. So far as I have been able to discover, they afford no evidence of any great volcanic cone from which they proceeded. Their present inclinations are unquestionably due, as in Ireland, to movements subsequent to the formation of the plateau. In Loch-na-keal they dip gently to the E.N.E.; in Ulva and the north-west coast to N.N.E.; near Salen to W.S.W. on the one side, and N.W. on the other. Round the southern and eastern margins of the mountainous tract of the island, they dip generally inwards to the high grounds.

The Mull plateau presents a striking contrast to that of Antrim, in the extraordinary extent to which it has been disrupted by later protrusions of massive basic and acid rocks over a rudely circular area, extending from the head of Loch Scridain to the Sound of Mull, and from Loch-na-keal to Loch Buy. The bedded basalts have been invaded by masses of dolerite, gabbro, and granophyre, with various allied kinds of rock. They have not only been disturbed in their continuity, but have undergone considerable metamorphism.

Again, further to the north, in the promontory of Ardnamurchan, the plateau has been disrupted in a similar way, and only a few recognisable fragments of it have been left. These changes will be more appropriately discussed in connection with similar phenomena in the other plateaux further north.