UP GLEN ROY. 59 



shepherd, no signs of life appeared. It was a keen pleasure in 

 that grey, wet afternoon to meet at length a shepherd driving 

 his black-faced flock. Artistic fancies at once crowded on the 

 mind. The sheep might have stepped out of one of Ansdell's 

 canvases ; while, as no one but Apelles was suffered to paint 

 Alexander the Great, so none but Landseer could have done 

 justice to the colley. As for the tall, handsome shepherd, bear- 

 ing on his shoulders a wearied sheep, whose legs he held under 

 his chin, the early Christian drawings in the catacombs have 

 immortalised this grouping, and art has ever since loved to re- 

 produce it, while an endless association of endearing images 

 has crystallized around it. Their witchery in due time brought 

 me to the wild moor on which the mighty porphyry prism of 

 Ben Nevis is set. I had passed in front of its northern face in 

 the morning, and had seen a patch of last winter's snow yet 

 lingering high up on the dark precipices. Now two great 

 cataracts were flinging themselves wildly over its face one in 

 a series of sinuous leaps, the other in two huge bounds, while 

 the air was vocal with their distant roar. Still it was with a 

 sense of relief that I reached Spean Bridge, with its neat little 

 hostelry, some time after darkness had fallen. 



Much of this walk had taken me through that wonderful 

 fissure known as the Great Glen, the line of the Caledonian 

 Canal which cuts Scotland in twain. Geologists still contend 

 over the causes which produce this singular depression. It 

 may mark a dislocation of strata, and the chain of lakes which 

 form great part of its bed may be owing to successive subsid- 

 ences or fractures ; while the rocks on either hand are but the 

 upturned edges of the mighty crack, with their faces weathered 

 and denuded by the storms of centuries. Or, which seems the 

 truer view, after the great fissure had been caused by disloca- 

 tion, the deeply-scored sides, and especially the valleys (which 

 are now lake-beds, Loch Oich, Loch Ness, and Loch Lochy), 

 were the work of vast ice-action. " The Great Glen receives 



