t of nothing,
there it was! endued with some novel beauty--for of all the lochs we
ever knew--and to be so simple too--the White Loch had surely the
greatest variety of expression,--but all within the cheerful--for
sadness was alien altogether from its spirit, and the gentle Mere for
ever wore a smile. Swans--but that was but once--our own eyes had seen
on it--and were they wild or were they tame swans, certain it is they
were great and glorious and lovely creatures, and whiter than any snow.
No house was within sight, and they had nothing to fear--nor did they
look afraid--sailing in the centre of the loch--nor did we see them fly
away--for we lay still on the hill-side till in the twilight we should
not have known what they were, and we left them there among the shadows
seemingly asleep. In the morning they were gone, and perhaps making love
in some foreign land.

The BLACK LOCH was a strange misnomer for one so fair--for black we
never saw him, except it might be for an hour or so before thunder. If
he really was a loch of colour the original taint had been washed out of
him, and he might have shown his face among the purest waters of Europe.
But then he was deep; and knowing that, the natives had named him, in no
unnatural confusion of ideas, the Black Loch. We have seen wild-duck
eggs five fathoms down so distinctly that we could count them--and
though that is not a bad dive, we have brought them up, one in our mouth
and one in each hand, the tenants of course dead--nor can we now
conjecture what sank them there; but ornithologists see unaccountable
sights, and they only who are not ornithologists disbelieve Audubon and
Wilson. Two features had the Black Loch which gave it to our eyes a
pre-eminence in beauty over the other three--a tongue of land that
half-divided it, and never on hot days was without some cattle grouped
on its very point, and in among the water--and a cliff on which, though
it was not very lofty, a pair of falcons had their nest. Yet in misty
weather, when its head was hidden, the shrill cry seemed to come from a
great height. There were some ruins too--tradition said of some church
or chapel--that had been ruins long before the establishment of the
Protestant faith. But they were somewhat remote, and likewise somewhat
imaginary, for stones are found lying strangely distributed, and those
looked to our eyes not like such as builders use, but to have been
dropped there most probably from the moon.