OSSIAN AND WEST HIGHLANDS 113 



the Atlantic are found to ebb and flow into remote and 

 solitary glens. The mountains plunge abruptly into 

 the salt water, and for the most part only along the 

 valley-bottoms are little strips of level land to be seen. 



As a consequence of this intricate interlacing of land 

 and sea, the warm, damp breezes from the Atlantic 

 furnish abundance of mist, cloud, and rain to the western 

 Highlands. Thus to the wildness of rugged mountains 

 and stormy firths, there is added a marvellous range of 

 atmospheric effect. Nowhere in Britain can such an 

 union be beheld of picturesque mountain-form and of 

 clear and vivid colour. Nowhere is the grandeur of 

 a winter storm more impressive than when a south- 

 westerly gale drives the breakers against the headlands, 

 howls up the glens, and fills every gully with a foaming 

 torrent. 



The scenery of the western Highlands of Scotland 

 was first brought prominently before the world by the 

 publication in the year 1760 of what purported to be 

 Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands. 

 The success of this volume encouraged the translator, 

 James Macpherson, to prepare a much larger collection 

 which he combined into an epic poem and published 

 in 1762, under the name of Fingall. A second epic, 

 Temora^ appeared during the following year. Keen 

 discussion arose as to the authenticity of these poems. 

 They were by one group of writers upheld as a price- 

 less contribution to literature, recovered by the skill 

 and labour of one man from the lips of the peasantry, 

 and from faded manuscripts that handed down the 

 traditions of a long vanished past. By another class of 

 disputants they were branded as impudent forgeries 



