56 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



Loch-Ness, along whose glittering expanse the business of commerce is now 

 directed by the new impulse of steam, occupies the Great Valley for more than 

 twenty miles. The scenery in which it is embedded presents a succession of grand 

 and imposing features pastoral acclivities, picturesque rocks, woods and water- 

 falls, dark ravines and dismal precipices, from which the frequent torrent dashes 

 with its foaming tribute to the lake. Here and there, isolated rocks, starting 

 forth like landmarks in the forest, bear testimony to the awful convulsion by 

 which the ancient mountains were split, and when the lake sprang forth between 

 the disruptured banks. The whole chain of these lakes occupies one vast chasm, 

 through which the sea must have forced its way, and thus divided the country 

 into two distinct portions.* The scenery of Loch-Ness, although generally 

 fine, from whatever point it may be contemplated, is most so when viewed from 

 the north shore, instead of the deck of the steamer. In the former case, owing 

 to the doublings and undulations of the road, every turn presents the lake under 

 a different aspect, and adds some new feature to the landscape. The waters of the 

 lake fill the whole interval between the mountains, which dip so suddenly, that, 

 within a hundred yards of the shore, the depth is often forty or fifty fathoms. 

 Towards the centre, soundings have been made to the depth of one hundred 

 and thirty fathoms a fact which fully accounts for its never -freezing ; for even 

 a Highland winter is too short to reduce so great a depth and volume of 

 water to the point of congelation. After long continued rains, the lake has 

 been known to rise eight or ten feet above its natural level. It abounds 

 in trout. The water, though considered salubrious by the natives, has often 

 the opposite effect upon strangers, who drink it freely in the " shooting season." 

 This is said to be owing to the immense numbers of confervce adhering to the 

 rocks at the bottom, and there giving off a decomposed vegetable matter, which, 

 by intermixture, has a tendency to produce diarrhoea. In other respects the 

 water is exceedingly pure ; no saline ingredients having yet been detected by 

 the ordinary tests of analysis. At the time of the great earthquake at Lisbon, 

 the waters of this lake were thrown into violent agitation ; rushing up their 



It is hardly possible to contemplate the great valley of the Ness, without coming to the conclusion that 

 the German and Atlantic Oceans once communicated through this long and narrow chasm ; thus separating 

 Caledonia into two distinct parts; but if so, how comes a lake now in the centre, some ninety feet higher 

 than the level of either ocean ? It may be accounted for by supposing that the high or mountainous banks 

 of this strait fell in during some earthquake or convulsion, so as to block up the chasms in two or three 

 places say at Inverness, or Fort Augustus thus insulating as it were the site of Loch-Ness. The conse- 

 quence would be, that the lake would gradually rise by the streams from the mountains, till the waters 

 found an exit, as at present, into the Moray Frith. The Recess, by JAMES JOHNSON, M.D., Physician 

 extraordinary to the King. 





