OF LOCHABEU. 41 



distance, but it has also, much nearer to its bed, a second and 

 interior bounding enclosure, consisting of a line of banks on 

 each side, flattish, and rather plain above, but having steep 

 and abrupt, though perfectly smooth faces, towards the level 

 bottom in which the river runs. These banks seem to be 

 chiefly formed of alluvial matters. They appear immediately 

 below the junction of the river Treig, whence they sweep with 

 various bendings, sometimes at a greater, and sometimes at a 

 lesser distance from the Spean, enclosing a beautiful narrow plain 

 about a mile in length, through which the stream flows gently 

 over a gravelly bottom. This plain is suddenly shut in at 

 the lower end, by the close approach of these banks on both 

 sides. Here the river, suddenly altering its character, pours 

 itself into a deep ravine, which it seems to have worn through 

 a rocky neck of about five hundred yards in thickness, where 

 it is heard roaring along in a series of cataracts, of which the 

 great waterfall of Tulloch forms the grandest specimen. The 

 stream has no sooner eiFected this turbulent passage, than it 

 enters a second beautiful and level plain, about two miles 

 long, and bounded on the sides by a similar series of banks. 

 Through this it again flows with perfect placidity, until, by a 

 second approach of the sides to one another, at a point a little 

 above what I have called the Mouth of Glen Spean, the tran- 

 quillity of the river is a second time interrupted by another 

 rocky neck, like that I have just described. Here it again 

 forms into an abyss, of the same depth and appearance as the 

 former, where, besides being hurried over a number of lesser 

 cascades, it is precipitated over the fall of Munessie, equal in 

 grandeur to that of Tulloch. These two necks of rock, through 

 which the Spean has thus cut its way, are both called in Gae- 

 lic Kenmuir, which signifies, the End of the Lake. Escaping 

 irom the gloomy and overhanging rocks of this second deep 

 VOL. IX. p. t F and 



