g like a drop of ink at the base of a huge dark mural
precipice--yet it is not so small when seen near at hand. This little
tarn, with its back-ground of dark rocks interspersed with patches of
snow, might strongly remind the Alpine traveller of the lake near the
Hospice of the Grimsel. The two scenes are alike hard and leafless and
frozen-like--but the Alpine pass is one of the highways of Europe, and
thus one seldom crosses it without encountering a pilgrim here and
there. But few are the travellers that pass the edge of Loch Etichan,
and if the adventurous tourist desires company, he had better try to
find an eagle--not even the red-deer, we should suppose, when driven to
his utmost need, seeks such a shelter, and as for foxes and wild-cats
they know too well the value of comfortable quarters in snug glens, to
expose themselves to catch cold in so Greenland-like a region.

The climber will know that he is at the top of Ben Muich Dhui, when he
has to scramble no longer over scaurs or ledges of rock, but walking on
a gentle ascent of turf, finds a cairn at its highest part. When he
stands on this cairn, he is entitled to consider himself the most
elevated personage in the United Kingdom. Around it is spread something
like a table-land, and one can go round the edges of the table, and look
down on the floor, where the Dee, the Avon, the Lui, and many other
streams, are seen like silver threads, while their forest banks resemble
beds of mignionette or young boxwood. There are at several points
prodigious precipices, from which one may contemplate the scene below;
but we recommend caution to the adventurer, as ugly blasts sometimes
sweep along the top.

When a mountain is the chief of a district, we generally see from the
top a wide expanse of country. Other mountains are seen, but wide
valleys intervene, and thus they are carried to a graceful distance.
Probably, more summits are seen from Ben Nevis, than from any other
height in Scotland, but none of them press so closely on the monarch as
even to tread upon his spurs. The whole view is distant and panoramic.
It is quite otherwise with Ben Muich Dhui. Separated from it only by
narrow valleys, which some might call mere clefts, are Cairn Toul, Brae
Riach, Cairn Gorm, Ben Avon, and Ben-y-Bourd--all, we believe, ascending
more than four thousand feet above the level of the sea--along with
several other mountains which very closely approach that fine round
number. The vici