44 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



touched with the setting sun's last rays, and, if he has sufficient 

 skill in handiwork, he may rival the savage witchery of 

 Ruysdael and Claude. The fulness, depth, and colour of 

 heather admirably adapt it to landscape composition, apart 

 from the sentiment obtained by its use. And what dignity 

 does it not acquire in the eyes of the lover of poetry as 

 he remembers that it was of heather, according to yEschylus, 

 that the telegraphic beacon fires were composed which flashed 

 from afar to Clytemnestra at Argos the news of the taking of 

 Troy! 



But a Highland landscape is of itself sufficiently beautiful. 

 It merely requires heather to give it the predominant tone, and 

 interest a beholder by means of the many associations sure to 

 suggest themselves when he sees the purpled braes. Take, for 

 instance, the valley of the Garry in mid July. It possesses a 

 charm of its own ; and yet Scotland owns a thousand more 

 valleys which, to casual observers, appear very similar when they 

 are flooded with heather-bloom, such is the magic of this humble 

 shrub. The prevailing colours in the open country on either 

 side of the Garry are reds and purples, derived mainly from 

 heather, but largely reinforced by clover and vetches. These 

 tints are set off by the flaunting blossoms of the broom on every 

 neglected corner, while the tender waxen Erica tetralix gathers 

 round the head of each mimic burn that cleaves the moorland. 

 Every here and there are patches of turnips, rejoicing the 

 farmer's eye with their healthy green leaves, as yet free from the 

 fly's ravages, while above them on the crags, and below towards 

 the waste spots, an ocean of heather surges in, like the flood- 

 tide, swallowing up, as it were, one by one the numberless grey 

 and black trap boulders which are piled up in confusion, the 

 gravestones of a long-buried world, and among which tower 

 foxgloves of great size and beauty. On one side is a barley- 

 field, in which the " blueys " are perceptibly colouring its ripen- 

 ing tints ; the delicate pink of the corn-cockles, intermingled, 



