h, sweep downwards from their base to the margin of the
Conon. On our own side of the river, the more immature but fresh and
thickly-clustered woods of Conon House rose along the banks; and I was
delighted to find among them a ruinous chapel and ancient
burying-ground, occupying, in a profoundly solitary corner, a little
green hillock, once an island of the river, but now left dry by the
gradual wear of the channel, and the consequent fall of the water to a
lower level. A few broken walls rose on the highest peak of the
eminence; the slope was occupied by the little mossy hillocks and sorely
lichened tombstones that mark the ancient grave-yard; and among the
tombs immediately beside the ruin there stood a rustic dial, with its
iron gnomon worn to an oxydized film, and green with weather-stains and
moss. And around this little lonely yard sprang the young wood, thick as
a hedge, but just open enough towards the west to admit, in slant lines
along the tombstones and the ruins, the red light of the setting sun.

I greatly enjoyed those evening walks. From Conon-side as a centre, a
radius of six miles commands many objects of interest; Strathpeffer,
with its mineral springs--Castle Leod, with its ancient trees, among the
rest, one of the largest Spanish chestnuts in Scotland--Knockferrel,
with its vitrified fort--the old tower of Fairburn--the old though
somewhat modernized tower of Kinkell--the Brahan policies, with the old
Castle of the Seaforths--the old Castle of Kilcoy--and the Druidic
circles of the moor of Redcastle. In succession I visited them all, with
many a sweet scene besides; but I found that my four hours, when the
visit involved, as it sometimes did, twelve miles' walking, left me
little enough time to examine and enjoy. A half-holiday every week would
be a mighty boon to the working man who has acquired a taste for the
quiet pleasures of intellect, and either cultivates an affection for
natural objects, or, according to the antiquary, "loves to look upon
what is old." My recollections of this rich tract of country, with its
woods, and towers, and noble river, seem as if bathed in the red light
of gorgeous sunsets. Its uneven plain of Old Red Sandstone leans, at a
few miles' distance, against dark Highland hills of schistose gneiss,
that, at the line where they join on to the green Lowlands, are low and
tame, but sweep upwards into an alpine region, where the old
Scandinavian flora of the country--that flora