Mealfourvounie (Gael. Meall-fuar-mhonaidh, ` mountain of the cold moor '), a mountain in Urquhart parish, Inverness-shire, 11 miles NNE of Fort Augustus. Situated at the foot of Glen-Urquhart and GlenMoriston, and forming a conspicuous feature on the NW flank of Loch Ness, it is broad-based and roundbacked, and sends up from a stage at two-thirds of its whole elevation a dome-shaped peak, which attains an altitude of 2284 feet above sea-level. The great mass of the mountain, from the summit downward, consists of coarse conglomerate, whose abraded portions are gneiss, granite, quartz, mica-schist, and sandstone, cohering with extremely little cement; and its lower declivities, including seemingly the entire base, consist of a hard compact splintery rock, which has usually been described as primary red quartz, but which may be stratified sandstone completely indurated, and in great measure divested of its stratification by the subjacency of granite, and which is so hard and crystalline as to be quarried and regularly used for causewaying the streets of Inverness. The upper stage or peak of the mountain is very steep on the W, and almost mural on the N and S; and it is connected with the rest of the mountain, on the E, by a long tapering ridge. On the western side, at the bottom of the peak, is Loch nam Breac Dearga (6 x 1½ furl.; 1500 feet), whence a streamlet runs 4¼ miles south-south-westward and eastward to Loch Ness, tumbling along a broken channel down the face of a frontlet of rock, overshadowed by trees in its lower course, and forming two beautiful waterfalls amidst foliage of the richest tints. On the W side of this rill, near its source, is a rocking-stone 20 feet in circumference, which is moveable by two persons. The view from the summit of Mealfourvounie is grand and extensive, and comprehends the whole of the Glenmore-nanAlbin, from Fort George on the NE to Fort William on the SW, a distance of more than 70 miles. On the N the eye wanders over various scenery away to the mountains of Ross and Caithness; and on the S it takes in the whole of Stratherrick and the country watered by the head-streams of the Spey. Right below is Loch Ness, like a narrow ditch, sunk deeply within steep banks; and at 3 miles' distance the Fall of Foyers glitters in its belt of shining spray between sheets of dark-brown mountain, like a glint of sky struggling through a vertical fissure in the cliffs. Mealfourvounie is noted for being the first landmark seen by mariners after they pass the Moray Firth round Kinnaird Head, or from the S, and for guiding their navigation over most of that vast gulf.—Ord. Sur., sh. 73, 1878.
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