​HIGHLANDS, THE, that part of Scotland north-west of a linedrawn from Dumbarton to Stonehaven, including the Inner andOuter Hebrides and the county of Bute, but excluding theOrkneys and Shetlands, Caithness, the flat coastal land of theshires of Nairn, Elgin and Banff, and all East Aberdeenshire (seeScotland). This area is to be distinguished from the Lowlandsby language and race, the preservation of the Gaelic speech beingcharacteristic. Even in a historical sense the Highlanders werea separate people from the Lowlanders, with whom, duringmany centuries, they shared nothing in common. The town ofInverness is usually regarded as the capital of the Highlands.The Highlands consist of an old dissected plateau, or block,of ancient crystalline rocks with incised valleys and lochscarved by the action of mountain streams and by ice, theresulting topography being a wide area of irregularly distributed ​mountains whose summits have nearly the same height abovesea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudationto which the plateau has been subjected in various places.The term “highland” is used in physical geography for anyelevated mountainous plateau.