none but trunks of trees there, and all dead for centuries--that
had sunk down where it grew, and spanned the flood that eddies round it
with a louder music? Wild region! yet not barren; for there are cattle
on a thousand hills, that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their heads
as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and form round him in a
half-alarmed and half-threatening crescent. There flocks of
goats--outliers from Dalness--may be seen as if following one another on
the very air, along the lichen-stained cliffs that frown down unfathomed
abysses--and there is frequent heard the whirring of the gorcock's wing,
and his gobble gathering together his brood, scattered by the lightning
that in its season volleys through the silence, else far deeper than
that of death;--for the silence of death--that is, of a churchyard
filled with tombs--is nothing to the austerity of the noiselessness that
prevails under the shadow of Unimore and Attchorachan, with their cliffs
on which the storms have engraven strange hieroglyphical inscriptions,
which, could but we read them wisely, would record the successive ages
of the Earth, from the hour when fire or flood first moulded the
mountains, down to the very moment that we are speaking, and with small
steel-hammer roughening the edges of our flints that they may fail not
to murder. Or shall we away down by Armaddy, where the Fox-Hunter
dwells--and through the woods of Inverkinglass and Achran, "double,
double, toil and trouble" overcome the braes of Benanea and
Mealcopucaich, and drop down like two unwearied eagles into Glen-Scrae,
with a peep in the distance of the young tower of Dalmally, and the old
turrets of Kilchurn? Rich and rare is the shooting-ground, Hamish, which
by that route lies between this our Tent and the many tarns that freshen
the wildernesses of Lochanancrioch. Say the word--tip the wink--tongue
on your cheek--up with your forefinger--and we shall go; for hark,
Hamish, our chronometer chimes eight--a long day is yet before us--and
what if we be benighted? We have a full moon and plenty of stars.

All these are splendid schemes--but what say you, Hamish, to one less
ambitious, and better adapted to Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits
down by Armaddy--the Forge--Gleno, and Inveraw. We may do that well in
some six or seven hours--and then let us try that famous salmon-cast
nearest the mansion--(you have the rods?)--and if time permit, an hour's
trolling in Loch Awe