GOLDSPIE. 369 



so thickly that a road that leads to it from the shore 

 seems dark as a vaulted passage. There is much of 

 antique simplicity if not of ducal magnificence in its 

 whole appearance, and it says something for the taste of 

 the family that they have not employed their vast 

 wealth upon it in making it tawdry and fine. A 

 genuine old castle, that had earls and barons in it five 

 hundred years ago, is one of the things which money 

 cannot produce. 



' The Andersons mention in their Guide Book that 

 there is a fine waterfall in the neighbourhood of Golspie. 

 I have just been seeing it ; but the weather of late has 

 been dry, and so, though the woods and rocks do their 

 part pretty well, the stream has almost struck work, and 

 sputters over the face of the precipice much in the sort 

 of sublime style I have seen the contents of a washing- 

 tub assume when emptied over a window. But the dell 

 in which it falls is not unworthy of being seen ; it is 

 an Eathie on a larger scale, and richer in wood. It has 

 been hollowed in the Old Red Sandstone ; there are 

 precipices of diluvium a full hundred feet in height in 

 the lower part of it, and the cataract has been formed, 

 as such cataracts always are, where the stream suddenly 

 passes from a harder to a softer rock. I am too old, I 

 think, for getting into ecstasies with scenes of but 

 ordinary fineness. The Golspie water-fall would do 

 quite well for young ladies and romantic gentlemen, but 

 the mature man needs something strong to move him. 

 I wish I had an opportunity of trying the effect of 

 Niagara. 



' On leaving the waterfall I struck up along a very 

 steep path to the Duke of Sutherland's monument. The 

 day was warm, and the labour considerable. As I 

 approached the top I saw within some sixty or eighty 



VOL. ii. 24 



