I A Gossip on a Sutherland Hill-side 281 



at Loch Inver, wait patiently, rise early and go to 

 bed late, for any moment may disclose one of the 

 most marvellously strange and beautiful bits of 

 scenery in Europe. That peak of red sandstone, 

 rising between 1500 and 1600 feet in one bold 

 pinnacle, even more precipitous than the form from 

 which it takes its name, standing out clear and 

 distinct from the surrounding mountains, with a 

 boldness and freedom of outline perfectly indescrib- 

 able, is certainly worth any trouble, waiting, or 

 expense to see. It is hard to say whether the 

 'Sugar-loaf is grander on a bright day, which 

 brings out its outline clear and sharp, and bathes it 

 in a glorious red glow at sunset ; or on a cloudy 

 one, when the summit is shrouded in mist, which 

 throws a deep purple gloom round its base, and 

 removes the background into infinite distance, lurid 

 and mysterious. Alas ! I once spent a week at 

 Loch Inver without once seeing it in either state. 



If you are an artist in search of a subject, and 

 happen to be at Loch Inver at the time the herring- 

 boats are starting for the East coast, I strongly advise 

 you to go to the little fiord a mile or two to the 

 north, and study what you will see there. That 

 little rocky basin of a bay, the few black huts, with 

 tiny scraps of yellow oats struggling to ripen in the 

 gray gneiss rock, the broad brown boats, sharp fore 

 and aft, with their sturdy crews sorely suffering at 

 the leave-taking, but trying to look stout and 

 cheerful, and the women turning homewards with 



