Page:EB1911 - Volume 02.djvu/524

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486
ARGYLLSHIRE
  

in 1837, and two daughters, the second of whom died in infancy.

George John Douglas Campbell, 8th duke (1823–1900), the second son of the 7th duke, was born on the 30th of April 1823, and succeeded his father in April 1847. He had already obtained notice as a writer of pamphlets on the disruption of the Church of Scotland, which he strove to avert, and he rapidly became prominent on the Liberal side in parliamentary politics. He was a frequent and eloquent speaker in the House of Lords, and sat as lord privy seal (1852) and postmaster-general (1855) in the cabinets of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston. In Mr Gladstone’s cabinet of 1868 he was secretary of state for India, and somewhat infelicitously signalized his term of office by his refusal, against the advice of the Indian government, to promise the amir of Afghanistan support against Russian aggression, a course which threw that ruler into the arms of Russia and was followed by the second Afghan War. His eminence alike as a great Scottish noble, and as a British statesman, was accentuated in 1871 when his son, the marquess of Lorne, married Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria; but in the political world few memorable acts on his part call for record except his resignation of the office of lord privy seal, which he held in Mr Gladstone’s administration of 1880, from his inability to assent to the Irish land legislation of 1881. He opposed the Home Rule Bill with equal vigour, though Mr Gladstone subsequently stated that, among all the old colleagues who dissented from his course, the duke was the only one whose personal relations with him remained entirely unchanged. Detached from party, the duke took an independent position, and for many years spoke his mind with great freedom in letters to The Times on public questions, especially such as concerned the rights or interests of landowners. He was no less active on scientific questions in their relation to religion, which he earnestly strove to reconcile with the progress of discovery. With this aim he published The Reign of Law (1866), Primeval Man (1869), The Unity of Nature (1884), The Unseen Foundations of Society (1893), and other essays. He also wrote on the Eastern question, with especial reference to India, the history and antiquities of Iona, patronage in the Church of Scotland, and many other subjects. The duke (to whose Scottish title was added a dukedom of the United Kingdom in 1892) died on the 24th of April 1900. He was thrice married: first (1844) to a daughter of the second duke of Sutherland (d. 1878); secondly (1881) to a daughter of Bishop Claughton of St Albans (d. 1894); and thirdly (1895) to Ina Erskine M‘Neill. Few men of the duke’s era displayed more versatility of intellect, and he was remarkable among the men of his time for his lofty eloquence.

He was succeeded as 9th duke by his eldest son John Douglas Sutherland Campbell (1845–  ), whose marriage in 1871 to H.R.H. Princess Louise gave him a special prominence in English public life. He was governor-general of Canada from 1878 to 1883; member of parliament for South Manchester, in the Unionist interest, 1895 to 1900; and he also became known as a writer both in prose and verse. In 1907 he published his reminiscences, Pages from the Past.

See the Autobiography and Memoirs of the 8th duke, edited by his widow (1906), which is full of interesting historical and personal detail.  (P. C. Y.; H. Ch.) 


ARGYLLSHIRE, a county on the west coast of Scotland, the second largest in the country, embracing a large tract of country on the mainland and a number of the Hebrides or Western Isles. The mainland portion is bounded N. by Inverness-shire; E. by Perth and Dumbarton, Loch Long and the Firth of Clyde; S. by the North Channel (Irish Sea); and W. by the Atlantic. Its area is 1,990,471 acres or 3110 sq. m. The principal districts are Ardnamurchan on the Atlantic, Ardnamurchan Point being the most westerly headland of Scotland; Morven or Morvern, bounded by Loch Sunart, the Sound of Mull and Loch Linnhe; Appin, on Loch Linnhe, with piers at Ballachulish and Port Appin; Benderloch, lying between Loch Creran and Loch Etive; Lorne, surrounding Loch Etive and giving the title of marquess to the Campbells; Argyll, in the middle of the shire, containing Inveraray Castle and furnishing the titles of earl and duke to the Campbells; Cowall, between Loch Fyne and the Firth of Clyde, in which lie Dunoon and other favourite holiday resorts; Knapdale between the Sound of Jura and Loch Fyne; and Kintyre or Cantyre, a long narrow peninsula (which, at the isthmus of Tarbert, is little more than 1 m. wide), the southernmost point of which is known as the Mull, the nearest part of Scotland to the coast of Ireland, only 13 m. distant.

There are no navigable rivers. The two principal mountain streams are the Orchy and Awe. The Orchy flows from Loch Tulla through Glen Orchy, and falls into the north-eastern end of Loch Awe; and the Awe drains the loch at its north-western extremity, discharging into Loch Etive. Among other streams are the Add, Aray, Coe or Cona, Creran, Douglas, Eachaig, Etive, Euchar, Feochan, Finart, Fyne, Kinglass, Nell, Ruel, Shiel, Shira, Strae and Uisge-Dhu. The county is remarkable for the numerous sea-lochs which deeply indent the coast, the principal being Loch Long (with its branches Loch Goil and the Holy Loch), Loch Striven (Rothesay’s “weather glass”), Loch Riddon, Loch Fyne (with Loch Gilp and Loch Gair), Lochs Tarbert, Killisport, Swin, Crinan, Craignish, Melfort, Feochan, Etive, Linnhe (with its branches Loch Creran, Loch Leven and Loch Eil) and Sunart. There are also a large number of inland lakes, the total area of which is about 25,000 acres. Of these the principal are Lochs Awe, Avich, Eck, Lydoch and Shiel. The principal islands are Mull, Islay, Jura, Colonsay, Lismore, Tyree, Coll, Gigha, Luing and Kerrera. Besides these there are the two small but interesting islands of Staffa and Iona. The mountains are so many as to give the shire a markedly rugged character. Some of them are among the loftiest in the kingdom, as Ben Cruachan with its summit of twin pyramids (3689 ft.), Ben More, in Mull (3172), Ben Ima (3318), Buachaille Etive (3345), Ben Bui (3106), Ben Lui (or Loy), on the confines of the shires of Perth and Argyll (3708), Ben Starav near the head of Loch Etive (3541), and Ben Arthur, called from its shape “The Cobbler” (2891), on the borders of Dumbartonshire. There are many picturesque glens, of which the best-known are Glen Aray, Glen Croe, Glen Etive, Glendaruel, Glen Lochy (“the wearisome glen”—some 10 m. of bare hills and boulders—between Tyndrum and Dalmally), Glen Strae, Hell’s Glen (off Lech Goil) and Glencoe, the scene of the massacre in 1692. The waterfalls of Cruachan are beautiful; and those of Connel, which are more in the nature of rapids, caused by the rush of the ebbing tide over the rocky bar at the narrowing mouth of Loch Etive, have been made celebrated by Ossian, who called them “the Falls of Lora.” In several of the glens, as Glen Aray, small falls may be seen, enhanced in beauty when the rivers are in flood. Pre-eminently Argyll is the shire of the sportsman. The lovely Western Isles provide endless enjoyment for the yachtsman; the lochs and rivers abound with salmon and trout; the deer forests and grouse moors are second to none in Scotland.

Geology.—The mainland portion of the county consists chiefly of the metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Highlands, nearly all the subdivisions of that series (see Scotland: Geology) being represented. They form parallel belts of varying width trending north-east and south-west. The slates and phyllites referred to the lowest group occur along the shore at Dunoon, and are followed by the Beinn Bheula grits and albite schists, forming nearly all the highest ground in Cowall between Loch Fyne and the Firth of Clyde and the greater part of Kintyre. The green beds, Glensluan mica-schists and Loch Tay limestones are developed in Glendaruel, and have been traced north-east to Glen Fyne and at intervals south-west to Campbeltown. The next prominent zone is that of the Ardrishaig phyllites, with quartzites in the lower portion and soft phyllites in the upper part, which cover a belt from 3 to 6 m. across, stretching from Glen Shira by Inveraray and Ardrishaig to south Knapdale.

Next in order come the Easdale slates, phyllites with thin dark limestone, the main limestone of Loch Awe and the pebbly quartzite (Schiehallion), which are repeated by innumerable folds and spread northwards to Loch Linnhe and westwards to Jura and Islay. The slates of this horizon have been largely quarried at Easdale and Ballachulish, and this main limestone is typically developed near Loch Awe, near Kilmartin, on the islands of Lismore and Shuna, and in Islay between Bridgend and Portaskaig. The quartzites of this series form the highest hills in the south of Islay, occupy nearly the whole of Jura, and are continued in the mainland, where, by