HA!', iv.j LOOKING ABOUND. 167 



that a portion of Lochfyne is fine only in name, and I can 

 well agree with her while looking at the rocky sides of 

 Cantyre ; but giving reins to the imagination, we can fill up 

 the scene and picture the savages of a few thousand years 

 ago fishing from the rocks with their bone-tipt spears, and 

 hauling the produce of their skill out of the waters with 

 rough branches of trees ; and, as time flies onward, we can 

 note in our mind's eye the rude canoes as they progress into 

 ships becoming instruments of commerce and tokens of civilis- 

 ation. At our very feet are the immense masses of granite 

 that form the mountain on which we stand ; and near at 

 hand, towering up alongside, are the cones of two other hills, 

 forming with Goatfell a silent council of three that seem to 

 be ever engaged in mysterious communing. The silence on 

 the mountain-tops is wonderful, indeed oppressive : there is not 

 a sound to relieve the ear except perhaps a roar of water, 

 howling and hissing and boiling in endless torture in one of 

 the valleys ; and as the wind fitfully moans as it soughs adown 

 some weird vale, half hidden from us by the clouds that float 

 over it, the scene looks 



" So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 

 The scenery of a fair}' dream." 



Looking around, one could feel that the island has a 

 history, if we could but ascertain it. Books have been 

 written about Arran, and the stone period and the metal- 

 lurgic period, as illustrated by the antiquities of the place, 

 have been canvassed with a keen zest ; in fact, Arran is, if 

 that be possible, more interesting to the antiquary than the 

 geologist. Its chambered cairns and cromlechs are silent 

 monuments of great events, as also are its standing-stones ; 

 and the place is rich in those grey monoliths that would speak 

 to us, if we could but interpret their silent eloquence, of deeds 

 achieved ages ago by the valiant warriors of a long past time. 



