228 SUMMER 



cushat coos, and the roe glides through the secret covert? 

 Or shall we away up by Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, 

 and Mealgayre, into the solitude of streams, that from all 

 their lofty sources down to the far-distant Loch have never 

 yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of 

 bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, 

 or trunk of a tree — none but trunks of trees there, and all 

 dead for centuries — that had sunk down where it grew, and 

 spanned the flood that eddies round it with a louder music? 

 Wild region ! yet not barren ; for there are cattle on a 

 thousand hills that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their 





-2*. L—.L -.•**" ' :3k. L.-:-" ^^~ •» 



'THE STONY REGIONS THAT THE PTARMIGAN LOVE ' 



heads as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and 

 form round him in a half-alarmed and half-threatening 

 crescent. . . . 



' . . . All these are splendid schemes — but what say 

 you, Hamish, to one less ambitious, and better adapted to 

 Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits down by Armaddy — 

 the Forge, Glenco, and Inveraw. We may do that well in 

 some six or seven hours — and then let us try that famous 

 salmon-cast nearest the mansion — (you have the rods ?) — and 

 if time permit, an hour's trolling in Loch Awe, below the pass 

 of the Brander, for one of these giants that have immortal- 

 ised the name of a Maule, a Goldie, and a Wilson.' How 



