THE FEIiNS OF SUTHERLAND AND ROSS. V 



I was joined by a companion at the manse, and on Monday, August 

 4th., we started from Lairg for Durness. The road at first lies along^the 

 side of Loch Shin; it runs, on leaving Lairg, through a fine avenue of 

 natural birch, interspersed with tall tangled patches of the more common 

 Ferns, Lastrea dilatata, L. spinulosa, L. oreopteris, Athyrium Fitixfcemina; 

 on emerging, it enters on bare, benty, low-lying ground, where we were 

 greeted by the scream of the Curlew and the whirr of the Grouse. The 

 country all along the loch has the same bleak appearance, and the hills 

 on the opposite side are low, and rise in gentle round masses, their brown 

 surfaces broken here and there by a house and its plot of tilled land. 

 Near Shiness the land is cultivated, the only place along the loch, and 

 many fine trees enliven the parks. As we proceed the view becomes 

 more varied; in front, the hills rise in serrated masses, with Ben 

 More Assynt far away in the distance, towering high over all. On 

 nearing the end of the loch, and coming to the next in order, Loch 

 Greim, the scene is wild and grand. The road appears to be barred up, 

 and it is only on reaching a high point on the road that it is seen, 

 running along the edge of the loch, at the foot of a hill, steep, rugged, 

 and bare, with a few clumps of stunted birch hanging on its sides, while 

 on the other side the hills rise in black heavy masses. Eight cheerily 

 did we wheel along the deep glen where Loch Markland, the next in 

 succession, lies. We had on one hand the loch, backed by dark hills, 

 with here and there a bare polished rock glistening in the sun, and their 

 sides furrowed by torrents that dashed down in foam to the lake, and 

 sent across in fitful notes their murmurs, softened by distance; and on the 

 other, hills rising, sometimes steep, sometimes broken and jagged, and 

 sometimes round, with the deep blue heavens spangled with white fleecy 

 clouds, and a hot sun overhead, and the breeze coming from the hills in 

 refreshing gusts. On reaching the watershed, a little beyond the loch, 

 a scene singularly bold and beautiful is opened up. The hills in front 

 rise black and frowning; their bases and half-way up their sides are strewn 

 thick with rocks torn from their ribs, all huddled and heaped in terrible 



confusion — 



"Crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurled, 

 The fragments of an earlier world," 



overgrown with birch, whose dark foliage is in unison with the scene, while 

 towards the summits their sides are almost perpendicular, broken up into an 

 endless variety of pinnacle and ridge, one here and there shining in the 

 sun like the eye of the mountain's guardian god, looking out from his 

 storm-rocked couch to admire and watch over the beauty and grandeur 

 of his charge. Down the slope we swept, and round an overhanging 

 cliff, some hundred feet high, to Loch More, that gradually displayed 

 VOL. vii. c 



