shore, has rent the side of a rock; a thunderbolt, in another place, has furrowed and blackened the granite ridge. The boatman indicated with his finger the approaches to Coir-Nan-Uriskin, the cavern of the Brownies. One only of our guides proceeded with us as far as Invershaid. On quitting Loch Katrine we gaily braved the fatigue of traversing a kind of desert; that is to say, a series of eminences and damp ravines, where the very verdure is a snare, concealing an insecure soil, which yields under the foot, and entraps it into a clammy mud; and where sometimes, also, the traveller gives sudden vent with his feet to streams of water, of a black, slimy consistence, or red as blood. From point to point we perceived a human figure appearing on a little hillock; it was a shepherd enveloped in his grey, square mantle, and leaning on a heavy staff of citisus, sometimes surveying our progress with a more indifferent than curious air, at others, exchanging a few words in Gaelic with our guide. Occasionally, in order to break the monotonous silence of the desert, while threading some humid gorge; we stopped to pick up a stone, and hurl it with all our force; the noise it made frequently started a bird as white as snow, called here the Ptarmigan,* as it roosted on a tuft of myrtle, bearing jet black berries.† A species of Gelinote, or Tetrao Lugopus. We had traversed two-thirds of our way, when we made a halt for a few minutes at a cottage, or mountain hut, which I may describe as the model of almost all those which are met with in the Highlands. This hut was built of irregular unconnected stones, and covered with turf and heath for a roof. The interior was divided into two apartments by a partition of birchen planks; the largest being the general sleeping apartment by night, and during day the parlour. In the middle was lighted a turf fire, over which was suspended a cauldron supported by a hook and chain attached to the ceiling. The opening for the smoke was made laterally, fear of rain precluding it being made directly over the fire; it would, indeed, seem that in winter this kind of chimney is closed, in order to prevent the smoke from escaping from any other issue than the common door-way. The second apartment is reserved for the cow, the poney, and the poultry; in many of the huts there is but a single apartment for the cattle and the family. At length we no longer encountered ascents, and perceived no more mountains on the horizon; we were descending a narrow gorge clothed with thick hazles, and other shrubs. We began to breathe a purer air, of which we stood in need. It was not so much our guide that indicated our proper direction as the course of a rivulet, whose tinkling murmur soon enabled us to re-discover it, when the projection of some occasional nook or the impenetrable shrubbery compelled us to make a 486 TOUR IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. circuit. After a final mile's walking, through these smiling labyrinths, which prepared us for a transition to some enchanting spectacle, we were not deceived in finding ourselves suddenly on the banks of Loch Lomond, the finest of the Scotch lakes. We entered the hut of a boatman, and requested some bread and milk, which was brought us on the grass. Never had I anticipated a more exquisite repast, but it must be confessed, that the milk had remained since morning in the hut, and was nauseously flavoured with smoke. As to the bread, that also required all the ravenousness of our appetite to subject to the tooth an oaten cake of unleavened dough, which crumbled in the mouth like sand, and was of a most disagreeable taste. Like one of the heroes in Gil Blas, I moistened my bit of cake in the water of a spring, which ran by us on its passage to the lake. My companion and myself smiled at each other during the repast; when it was finished we recovered all our strength and courage; the boatman found us a new guide, and we took leave of our aboriginal host and his primitive table. THE END. KHACHELL AND ARROWSMITH, JOHNSON-COURT, FURET-STEERT. |