INVERFARRAKAIG. ALTSAY BURN. &8 



old chiefs ; and near them those of the principal branches of the Frasers, the 

 Chisholms, and other tribes in the adjacent valleys. The variety of figures on 

 the more ancient tombstones is considerable ; some elegantly carved, and many 

 of the inscriptions in the ancient Saxon character. The north aisle belongs 

 exclusively to the Mackenzies of Gairloch. The effigy of a knight, recumbent, 

 in full armour, marks the resting-place of Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, who died 

 in 1493, and was the first chief of that name interred here ; all his ancestors 

 having been buried in lona. 



We now return to those points of view in the vicinity of Loch-Ness to which 

 the accompanying illustrations have immediate reference. Of these, the first 

 is the Pass of Inverfarrakaig a defile which, in many respects, may vie with 

 some of the minor passes of the Swiss Alps. It has all the characteristics 

 usually observed in that country, glaciers excepted; and presents a combination 

 of features rising in striking gradation, from the softness of cultivated landscape, 

 through the different stages of the beautiful, the picturesque, and romantic, 

 till it closes the picture with those sublime and stupendous bulwarks with which 

 Nature appears to exclude the habitable world. There is nothing in the High- 

 lands, says an able writer, more picturesquely beautiful, wild, or even stupendous, 

 than the Pass of Inverfarrakaig. Woods of birch line the bottom of the deep 

 ravine, from which a few groups and single trees extend along the face of the 

 precipitous rocks above, waving their graceful twigs like flowery garlands along 

 the mountain's brow, and blending in harmonious colouring their own bright 

 green with the grey stone, purple heath, and the azure blue of the incumbent 

 sky. At the entrance of the Pass, and for a considerable space, the eastern 

 side consists of a range of perpendicular and rugged precipices, in the crevices 

 of which a few straggling knotted oak, ash, birch, and elm trees, maintain a 

 precarious footing. As Loch-Ness comes into view, the high and broad frontlet 

 of the Black Rock, surmounting an ample birch-clad acclivity, terminates the 

 range of precipices, and crowning its summit, we discern the green-coloured 

 walls of the ancient vitrified fortress of Dundarduil. 



The accompanying illustration of Altsay-burn, presents an incident in one of 

 the most sanguinary feuds ever recorded in the annals of Inverness-shire. The 

 historical circumstance to which it refers, is the barbarous outrage emphatically 

 known as the " Raid of Gillie-Christ." In the early part of the seventeenth 

 century, Angus, eldest son of the Glengarry chief, Macdonell, had made a 

 foray into the territory of the clan Mackenzie, in the Frith of Beauly, with 

 whom the Macdonells were at war. On his way home from this fatal expe- 

 dition, the heir of Glengarry was intercepted and slain, with several of his 



VOL. II. P 



