Black Marten {Viirimdo A'jms L.). Si-S 



But as to the black martens. One of the branches of the 

 river Beauly, or Glass, between Inverness and Ross shires, 

 forms an alpine valley, about twenty-five miles in length, sur- 

 rounded by rugged conical mountains, upon which the snow 

 often lies until the month of August. Two narrow lochs, 

 through which the stream flows that descends from this glen, 

 extend together, and fill about twelve miles of its length. The 

 whole valley was in former times one continued forest of 

 native fir (Pinus sylvestris), which for many centuries fur- 

 nished timber for the boats and roofs for the cottages of the 

 south-western part of Ross and the Isle of Skye ; and for 

 sixty years, until lately, it has been cut and floated to the 

 Beauly Firth ; so that now the extent of the forest in that 

 valley is almost confined to the banks of those lochs : but still, 

 for about three quarters of a mile in breadth, it covers the 

 sloping skirts of the mountains on the southern side, and 

 forms one of the most extensive pine forests in Scotland. 

 Through this the traveller has to fight his way by a track 

 broken, rough, and circuitous in a strange and perplexing 

 degree, and so encumbered by rocks and insulated masses of 

 granite, and huge tortuous roots of trees, that a stranger from 

 the Lowlands, and without experience in such districts, finds 

 it not a little difficult to persuade himself that he actually 

 traverses part of his native land. It was my fortune to pass 

 through this wilderness for the first time alone, and in the 

 close of the evening ; and I am not likely to forget the impres- 

 sion. The trees having all been cut over below the main 

 branches, and these being often of great size, and left to 

 remain where they had been severed from the trunks, and the 

 timber being of the hardest and most imperishable kind, the 

 ruins of a hundred years, in all stages of decay, were crowding 

 the long heath in the intervals between the standing trees. 

 Stripped of the bark by time, and bleached white by the 

 storms and weather, they looked like the ribs and bones of 

 immense animals, the race of which had long perished fi*om the 

 earth. Moreover, as none of the hollow, diseased, or crooked 

 trees had ever been felled, most of these had died, and were 

 likewise divested of their bark ; and their grey and fantastic 

 forms, between which was at times reflected the snow wreaths 

 of the opposite mountains, added very much to the loneliness 

 and dreariness of this strange scene of desolation. 



Since that time it happened to me to be with some friends 

 in a boat upon one of these lochs, and while contemplating 

 the grandeur of such an extent of gloomy forest, and the 

 effect of the broad masses of light and shade, varying from 

 " tufted ridge to hollow glen," I was greatly surprised to 



