LANDSCAPE. 123 



my walks. The view which the eye commands from 

 thence is of a character wilder and more sublime than 

 can be either rightly imagined or described. Towards 

 the east and south there spreads a wide savage prospect 

 of rugged mountains, towering the one over the other 

 from the foreground to the horizon, and varying in 

 colour, in proportion to the distance, from the darkest 

 russet to the faintest purple. They are divided by deep 

 gloomy ravines that seem the clefts and fissures of a 

 shattered and ruined planet; and their summits are 

 either indented into rough naked crags, or whitened over 

 with unwasting snows ; forming fit thrones upon which 

 the spirits of winter might repose, each in a separate in- 

 sulated territory, and from whence they might defy the 

 milder seasons as they passed below. To the north and 

 west the scene is of a different description ; it presents a 

 rocky indented shore, and a wide sea speckled over with 

 islands. On both sides, however, though the features 

 are dissimilar, the expression is the same. Scarcely more 

 of the works of man appear visible in the whole wide 

 circumference than appeared to the gaze of Noah, when 

 he first stood on the summit of mount Ararat, and con- 

 templated the wreck of the deluge. 



' It was on a beautiful evening in the month of June 

 that I first climbed the steep side of this hill and rested 

 on its summit. I was much impressed by the wide 

 extent and sublime grandeur of the scene. Part of the 

 eastern skirt of the Atlantic was spread out beneath me, 

 mottled with the Hebrides. In one glance I had a view 

 of Longa, Skye, Lewis, Harris, Rona, Raza, and several 

 other islands with whose names I was unacquainted. 

 The sky and sea were both coloured with the same warm 

 hue of sunset, and appeared as if blended together ; 

 while the islands which lay on the verge of the horizon 



