THE LAND OF THE HILLS AND 

 THE GLENS 



CHAPTER I 



SUNSET AND SUNRISE ON BEN NEVIS 



AT one period Ben Muich Dhui was held to be the highest 

 hill in these Islands, but with the advent of more scien- 

 tific methods in the determining of altitude it was forced 

 to yield pride of place to Ben Nevis, the summit of 

 which, dominating the Atlantic seaboard of Scotland, stands 

 just over four thousand four hundred feet above sea level. 

 In reality, Ben Nevis has a great superiority in height 

 over the first-mentioned hill, for at its base it is not more 

 than one hundred feet above the waters of the Atlantic, 

 whereas Ben Muich Dhui rises from the high ground of 

 Mar at an elevation of quite one thousand eight hundred feet. 

 It was early one afternoon in late July when I left Glen 

 Nevis with the object of spending the night on the summit of 

 the Ben. After a long spell of cold and misty conditions, 

 an Atlantic anti-cyclone, which had for some time been 

 struggling to dominate the weather of the Western High- 

 lands, at length gained the upper hand over a series of 

 small depressions, and a succession of magnificent days 

 was the result. The walk up the lower slopes of Ben Nevis 

 is comparatively uninteresting, though I noted that up to 

 the one thousand five hundred feet level straggling birches 

 clothed the hillside, and it was interesting to compare the 

 limit of their growth here with that attained by them on the 



