A TIGER AT KILLIECRANKIE. 231 



sat there with devouring eyes almost for a week, without 

 going further. My first walk into the Pass was alone, 

 on a sweet, calm, dewy morning. I was thinking of other 

 days, of the wild cries which had once echoed along that 

 rocky river, and of the bloody Clavers, whose bones lay 

 buried almost beneath my feet ; when, on approaching a 

 very solemn pine- shadowed portion of the Pass, I neared. 

 a peculiar kind of carriage with an iron grating, and ad- 

 vancing upon it for a close inspection, an enormous Ben- 

 gal tiger with its burning breath sprung up to meet me. 

 Though fond of natural history, I was somewhat startled 

 by the suddenness of this unexpected salutation. But I 

 had scarcely time to wonder where I was, before a gorgeous 

 group of eight richly harnessed horses, drawing an open 

 carriage, passed before me. Then came a vehicle nearly 

 as high as a steeple — at least so high that I cannot yet 

 conceive how the old umbrageous branches of the over- 

 hanging forest permitted it to pass below. Various other 

 carriages, with two, three, or four horses, followed in the 

 wake, till at last the mystery was solved by the fact 

 flashing on me, that Van Amburg and his beasts had been 

 at Inverness, and were now travelling southwards to a 

 more genial clime. But the effect of meeting such a 

 miscellaneous and incongruous group, in the solemn and 

 otherwise silent Pass of Killiecraukie, was singular and 

 rather striking in its way. I doubt not, no other came- 



