ur right--for the other side was only a continued
high ridge or craggy barrier, broken along the top into petty spiral
forms--were the grandest I had ever seen. It seldom happens that
mountains in a very clear air look exceedingly high, but these, though we
could see the whole of them to their very summits, appeared to me more
majestic in their own nakedness than our imaginations could have
conceived them to be, had they been half hidden by clouds, yet showing
some of their highest pinnacles. They were such forms as Milton might be
supposed to have had in his mind when he applied to Satan that sublime
expression--

'His stature reached the sky.'

The first division of the glen, as I have said, was scattered over with
rocks, trees, and woody hillocks, and cottages were to be seen here and
there. The second division is bare and stony, huge mountains on all
sides, with a slender pasturage in the bottom of the valley; and towards
the head of it is a small lake or tarn, and near the tarn a single
inhabited dwelling, and some unfenced hay-ground--a simple impressive
scene! Our road frequently crossed large streams of stones, left by the
mountain-torrents, losing all appearance of a road. After we had passed
the tarn the glen became less interesting, or rather the mountains, from
the manner in which they are looked at; but again, a little higher up,
they resume their grandeur. The river is, for a short space, hidden
between steep rocks: we left the road, and, going to the top of one of
the rocks, saw it foaming over stones, or lodged in dark black dens;
birch-trees grew on the inaccessible banks, and a few old Scotch firs
towered above them. At the entrance of the glen the mountains had been
all without trees, but here the birches climb very far up the side of one
of them opposite to us, half concealing a rivulet, which came tumbling
down as white as snow from the very top of the mountain. Leaving the
rock, we ascended a hill which terminated the glen. We often stopped to
look behind at the majestic company of mountains we had left. Before us
was no single paramount eminence, but a mountain waste, mountain beyond
mountain, and a barren hollow or basin into which we were descending.

We parted from our companion at the door of a whisky hovel, a building
which, when it came out of the workmen's hands with its unglassed
windows, would, in that forlorn region, have been little better than a
howling place for the win