10 THE FERNS OF SUTHERLAND AND ROSS. 



itself, lying deep in its mountain bed, and breaking in sweet murmurs on 

 its white beach, with the wavelets glittering, and playing, and dancing, 

 as if in sportive gladness at the sweetness of its music, and in delight of 

 its beauty, with Ben Stack at its head, like a giant, 

 "To sentinel enchanted laud." 



The scenery along the loch is of much the same character as that along 

 Loch Markland, only grander and wilder. The hills on the one side 

 are steep, broken, and rugged, covered far up with birch, and under- 

 grown with Poly-podium vulgare, Pteris aquilina, Lastrea dilatata, L. 

 Filix mas, and Athyrium Filix feemina. On the other, they receded 

 from the water in rounded masses, cleft here and there by deep ravines, 

 till towards the head of the loch, where the rocks rise, at the water's 

 edge, bare, bold, and bluff. 



Horses were changed at the head of the loch, and we set off at a 

 quick pace round the base of Ben Stack, through low-lying ground, along 

 the side of a loch growing thick with Nymplioea alba. The ground shortly 

 rises, and has an undulating kind of appearance, the rocks being a sort 

 between gneiss and greywacke. We in a little time reached the highest 

 point of the road, and then descended to Loch Stack. The road, 

 cut partly from the rock, and built up partly from the loch, makes a 

 sudden sweep, and discloses at once the whole lake, — a scene of wondrous 

 wildness. The hills rise on the one side almost perpendicular for several 

 hundred feet, here and there along the base strewn with huge rocks torn 

 from the higher parts, and overgrown far up with birch, ferns, foxglove, 

 etc., while the overhanging summits are broken up into every variety of 

 form, now smooth, now round, now jagged, now jutting out in fantastic 

 ridges, now seeming to topple over. 



"The rocky summits, split and rent, 

 Formed turret, dome, or battlement, 

 Or seemed fantastically set 

 With cupola or minaret, 

 Wild crests as pagod ever deck'd, 

 Or mosque of Eastern architect." 



On the opposite side of the loch, the hills rise in every shape and colour, 

 in deepening array,— round, steep, abrupt, serrated, peaked, deeply furrowed, 

 white, grey, green, dark, mottled, — all bathed in a glorious sunshine, 

 casting their deep shadows the one on the other, and forming a fairy 

 sight of light and shape. Towards the end of the loch, the scenery 

 becomes much tamer, and the road that lies between the loch and 

 Laxford Bridge may be said to have a desolate and an uninviting appearance, 

 passing through a part with a low, broken, bare, rocky surface. Beyond 

 Laxford Bridge, the country loses its terrible sublimity, and assumes an 



