stag bounding by. Yet may a herd, a thousand strong, be drawn up, as in
battle array, on the cliffs above your head. For they will long stand
motionless, at gaze, when danger is in the wind--and then their antlers
to unpractised eyes seem but boughs grotesque, or are invisible; and
when all at once, with one accord, at signal from the stag, whom they
obey, they wheel off towards the Corries, you think it but thunder, and
look up to the clouds. Fortunate if you see such a sight once in your
life. Once only have we seen it; and it was, of a sudden, all by
ourselves,

"Ere yet the hunter's startling horn was heard
Upon the golden hills."

Almost within rifle-shot, the herd occupied a position, high up indeed,
but below several ridges of rocks, running parallel for a long distance,
with slopes between of sward and heather. Standing still, they seemed to
extend about a quarter of a mile, and as with a loud clattering of hoofs
and antlers, they took more open order, the line at least doubled its
length, and the whole mountain-side seemed alive. They might not be
going at full speed, but the pace was equal to that of any charge of
cavalry; and once and again the flight passed before us, till it
overcame the ridges, and then deploying round the shoulder of the
mountain, disappeared, without dust or noise, into the blue light of
another glen.

We question, if there be in the Highlands any one glen comparable with
Borrowdale in Cumberland. But there are several that approach it, in
that combination of beauty and grandeur, which perhaps no other scene
equals in all the world. The "Gorge" of that Dale exhibits the finest
imaginable assemblage of rocks and rocky hills, all wildly wooded;
beyond them, yet before we have entered into the Dale, the Pass widens,
with noble cliffs on one side, and on the other a sylvan stream, not
without its abysses; and we see before us some lovely hills, on which--

"The smiling power of cultivation lies,"

yet leaves, with lines defined by the steeps that defy the ploughshare,
copses and groves; and thus we are brought into the Dale itself, and
soon have a vision of the whole--green and golden fields--for though
most are in pasture, almost all seem arable--sprinkled with fine single
trees--and lying in flats and levels, or swelling into mounds and
knolls, and all diversified with every kind of woods; single cottages,
with their out-buildings, standing everywhere they should stand,