HOURS AMONG THE ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 187 



and penetrate his weeping labyrinths, without the energy or industry to unlock 

 his chasms and subject his slopes to the power of enterprize and culture. In the 

 whole wilderness of the dismal ravines environing the five-beaconed mountain, 

 is neither tree or shrub, nor the fragment of a hut to shelter the wanderer 

 within two or three long miles of the summit. Mists take a long and deep 

 slumber upon the mossy hollows, and are only roused when a blast from the 

 north, thundering upon the broken cams, clears for a moment the wild table 

 ridges, and the clouds lazily roll into the deep hollows below, speedily to re-ascend 

 and prowl round their old positions. But there is no prominent mark to assure 

 the wanderer of his bearings ; the five summits of the mountain, all nearly of 

 equal height, circle round a flat expanse and assume the same monotonous aspect, 

 each crowned with a similarly -formed dreary earn ; and still wherever the turf 

 or moss has been laid bare by the storm, the same black bog-mud, or the same 

 pavement of snowy quartz-rock meets the wearied eye. Even the eager sports- 

 man, who once a year fires upon the scattered and almost annihilated Red 

 Grouse, warily takes his shepherd-guide and bag of rations for the long-protracted 

 expedition ; and woe to the luckless wight who, confiding in his map, becomes 

 inextricably involved in grave-like turbaries, and deep ravines, where no skill 

 can avail to push forward through impassable quaking-bogs, or overcome the 

 interminable deviations they occasion ; where to go on is dangerous, and to 

 retreat impossible. Amidst his efforts, perhaps, the sun goes down, engulphed 

 amidst the darkest masses of vapour that fill up the west, and the deepening 

 shadows usher in confusion and despair. 



But there is, after all, a charm in the very risk a desolate series of quaking 

 bogs and labyrinthal defiles offers to the foot of the naturalist. To be involved 

 in the embrace of the fleecy cloud, levelled prostrate by the rude north wind at 

 the base of a earn, chase a scudding hat or sketch-book down a steep declivity 

 into the splashing stream, or, seated on the soft moss, discussing sandwiches and 

 brandy, are enjoyments which exercise and imagination will always seek, even 

 at the risk of that almost wished-for consummation of losing one's way, or leaving 

 a solitary carcase well fixed in a bog, to be exhumed some centuries hence for the 

 benefit of science ! But then it is requisite to have company in order to be 

 pleasingly lost. To sink midleg in water — to scale a fearful crag for an observa- 

 tion which the gloom allows not — to trace in twilight the threadings of a stream, 

 now deep and silent beneath black towering rocks, and now suddenly gliding 

 down a slippery barrier, and raving and roaring amidst huge bouldery obstruc- 

 tions, all uncertain whither the defile tends, and which of its now diverging forks 

 leads soonest from the wild hills — or to plunge at random into bog and gulley 

 over mound and roaring waters for some phantom light or supposed cottage 

 window that disappears at length while in mid-chase — all this and more than 



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