Black Isle, the peninsula between the Beauly and the Moray Firths and the Firth of Cromarty, comprising parts of Ross, Cromarty, and Nairn shires. It contains the parishes of Killearnan, Kilmuir-Wester, Knockbain, Avoch, Rosemarkie, Cromarty, Resolis, and Urquhart; and it consists largely over its north-western portion of the broad based hill, Ardmeanach. It constitutes a poor law combination, and has a poorhouse with accommodation for 100 inmates. A project was adopted at a public meeting at Fortrose, in October 1872, to form a line of railway, about 22 miles long, through the Black Isle, from Muir of Ord to Cromarty.
Ardmeanach, or Mullbuie, a broad-based, extensive, ridgy hill, in the counties of Nairn, Ross, and Cromarty, forming the backbone of the Black Isle, or peninsula between the Beauly and Moray Firths and the Firth of Cromarty. Its length, from SW to NE, is about 16 miles, its culminating point is 646 feet above sea-level, and its breadth is proportionate far more to its length than to its height. It has a gently-featured outline, and commands very pleasant prospects. Its surface, for the most part, was long allowed to lie half waste, chiefly in a state of commonage, yet was all pronounced, by good judges, at an early period of the age of agricultural improvement to be, every yard of it, available for the plough, with generally as good soil as the low grounds of the peninsula. Its prevailing rock is the Devonian sandstone, and has been extensively quarried.
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