THE AMATEUR TRAMP IN SCOTLAND 151 



has to tumble a couple of thousand feet or so, with 

 little elbow-room to do it in. Down it goes, through 

 a series of gorges, leaping in foaming little cascades, 

 roaring with all its tiny force in scores of tempestuous 

 miniature cataracts, catching its breath in swirling pools 

 before it breaks forth again upon its headlong career. 

 Unless you could leap and light on your feet like the 

 chamois, or wear wings on your double-soled walking- 

 boots, a la Mercury, it would be sheer matter of 

 impossibility to keep close company with it through- 

 out. But, by dint of scrambling and slipping, cutting 

 off precipitous corners, and swinging yourself down- 

 wards by bending boughs, you make shift somehow to 

 rejoin it in the rocky cleft at the bottom. The path 

 you have found or forced is but seldom trodden, and 

 the pair of ravens who have their nesting-place in the 

 rocky recess greet your intrusion with discordant 

 croaks, that are meant unmistakably for malignant 

 execrations. The sun rarely touches these depths, 

 except when he takes a flying shot through the hill- 

 tops some time late in the afternoon ; and it is an 

 agreeable change from their sombre shadows into the 

 light of the widening valley below. Thence your path, 

 though it sometimes rises, on the whole leads down- 

 wards in an easy descent. Now it winds through 

 groups of Scotch firs, more or less shattered and 

 storm-beaten, throwing out their distorted limbs over 

 jungles of luxuriant bracken. Now it runs by the 

 shores of silent lakelets, their surface seldom broken by 

 the oar, and reflecting in their glassy mirror their 



