wind and weather, we are faithful to flint; nor shall
any newfangled invention, howsoever ingenious, wean us from our First
Love.

Let not youthful or middle-aged sportsmen--in whose veins the blood yet
gallops, canters, or trots--despise us, Monsieur Vieillard, in whose
veins the blood creeps like a wearied pedestrian at twilight hardly able
to hobble into the wayside inn--for thus so long preferring the steel
pen to the steel barrel (the style of both is equally polished)--our
Bramah to our Manton. Those two wild young fellows, Tickler and the
Admiral, whose united ages amount to little more than a century and a
half, are already slaughtering their way along the mountain-side, the
one on Buachaille Etive, and the other on the Black Mount. But we love
not to commit murder long before meridian--"gentle lover of Nature" as
we are; so, in spite of the scorn of the more passionate sportsman, we
shall continue for an hour or two longer inditing, ever and anon lifting
our eyes from whitey-brown paper to whitey-blue sky, from
memorandum-book to mountain, from ink-bottle to loch, and delight
ourselves, and perchance a few thousand others, by a waking-dream
description of Glen-Etive.

'Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human dwelling anywhere speck-like on
the river-winding plain--or nest-like among the brushwood knolls--or
rock-like among the fractured cliffs far up on the mountain region do
our eyes behold, eager as they are to discover some symptom of life. Two
houses we know to be in the solitude--ay, two--one of them near the
head of the Loch, and the other near the head of the Glen--but both
distant from this our Tent, which is pitched between, in the very heart
of the Moor. We were mistaken in saying that Dalness is invisible--for
yonder it looms in a sullen light, and before we have finished the
sentence, may have again sunk into the moor. Ay, it is gone--for lights
and shadows coming and going, we know not whence nor whither, here
travel all day long--the sole tenants--very ghostlike--and seemingly in
their shiftings imbued with a sort of dim uncertain life. How far off
from our Tent may be the Loch? Miles--and silently as snow are seen to
break the waves along the shore, while beyond them hangs an aerial haze,
the great blue water. How far off from our Tent may be the mountains at
the head of the Glen? Miles--for though that speck in the sky into which
they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cann