A HIGHLAND INN. 100 



rotting on the ground the property of some unfor- 

 tunate speculatist. I thought at the time that I might 

 have met with many things less characteristic of the past 

 and present ages than the oak and the sawn wood. The 

 one spoke of an age of barbarism, in which whole forests 

 were either suffered to moulder on the soil which had 

 produced them or removed by fire as positive encum- 

 brances ; the other, of the days of projectors and bank- 

 ruptcy. 



1 The sun disappeared behind one of the hills on 

 our right when we were yet several miles from our 

 stage, and the evening gave promise of a storm. The 

 clouds thickened as the night advanced, and there 

 came on a chill drizzling rain. I had untied the 

 bundle in which we had packed up our bed-clothes, 

 and with a thick coverlet which I raised on four pike 

 handles, I was forming a tilt over the cart, when a 

 sudden turn of the road brought us full in view of the 

 solitary inn of Achnicion, and ere I had replaced the 

 coverlet, we had driven up to it. We found in it a cheer- 

 ful fire and an obliging landlord, excellent things in 

 themselves, and particularly so in the midst of a desert ; 

 and it did not detract from our pleasure to hear the rain 

 pattering on the windows and the blast howling wildly 

 over the roof. From the door of the inn I saw a dreary 

 prospect of a barren and mountainous country stretching 

 away for several miles, and clothed in the black-grey 

 tints of a stormy summer evening. The hills were 

 covered with wreaths of mist, which, ever and anon, 

 rolling into the valleys, brought with them a fresh deluge. 

 And the sounds which predominated were well-nigh as 

 dreary as the scene. There was the sullen roar of a dis- 

 tant river, the louder and more rattling dash of a large 

 stream which rushes over a rocky declivity beside the 



