CROMARTY FRITH. 477 



and shoals, through an expanse of mud, until it is lost in the 

 basin of placid water that extends for twenty miles eastward, 

 having an average breadth of a mile and three quarters, and 

 bounded on the southern side by a low bank from which the 

 country rises gently to form what is called the Black Isle, 

 brown with heath, and unwooded, but having patches of cul- 

 tivation scattered over its surface. The hills of the north screen 

 the country at their base from the cold winds, which sweep un- 

 controlled over the moors of the southern side, producing a re- 

 markable change of climate between the two sides of the inlet, 

 which you perceive is first contracted at that little town about 

 twelve miles distant, named Invergordon, and again beyond 

 Cromarty, at the channel of the Sutors, which affords a free 

 entrance to ships of the largest burden. Is this expanse of 

 water, capable of anchoring the entire British navy in security, 

 and glittering from afar in the beams of the morning sun, any 

 thing else than an arm of the sea ? Surely not. But let us 

 descend, and now that the tide is fast receding, pursue our way 

 along the northern shore. Behind that yair which runs out 

 into the mud is stationed a solitary Heron, while beside it you 

 observe two or three Redshanks busily occupied in searching 

 the mud. Some sea-birds are seen floating on the water, and 

 a few gulls are hovering over its surface ; but as it is sum- 

 mer, the birds are now at their breeding places. Here arei 

 four miles of mud and sand, a stream pursuing its way in 

 the midst, separating into two currents, between which inter- 

 venes the Finden Bank, and all down to Invergordon, broad 

 margins and flats laid bare by the receding waters. Is it now 

 the open sea, or the estuary of the Conon ? Surely an estuary. 

 And were you to see the mighty torrent, swollen with the 

 autumnal floods from those long ranges of lofty mountains that 

 stretch toward the north, even to the confines of Loch Carron, 

 Loch Ewe, and Loch Broom, carrying on its turbid waters the 

 wrecks of the land, ploughing for itself a channel in the tide 

 waters of the frith, and discharging itself into the ocean at the 

 Sutors, you would have little doubt that if at one time the 

 basin presents the appearance of an inlet of the sea, at another 

 it becomes an outlet of a river. 



