64 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



barren hill-side; while above them the rounded tops of the 

 rocks broke down into several openings gilded with the after- 

 noon sun, and leading into the next valley on the north. 

 Fainter reflections of them, as it were, lined the opposite hill ; 

 while below were heaps of detritus, moraines, blocs perches, 

 smoothed circular hillocks, and every evidence of ice and 

 water-action. Sitting down on a boulder which could tell a 

 wondrous history in connection with its presence here, I 

 endeavoured first to impress the scene, with all its barrenness, 

 and yet its stern beauty, upon my memory, and next to account 

 for the three so-called Roads which lined the sides of the 

 valley. No distraction intervened. Bird-life is wonderfully 

 scarce in many of these desolate glens. Beyond a robin at the 

 farmstead, no bird was in sight to break the savage monotony 

 of the landscape. A silence that might almost be felt brooded 

 over it this afternoon. 



Imagination easily peoples this Glen with the wild natives of 

 former days ; nor is it difficult to reproduce the many skirmishes 

 of mountain warfare, the many deer-hunts of more peaceful 

 times, which it must have seen. Tradition, ever fond of the 

 marvellous, takes us back to FingaPs days, when the parallel 

 roads before the traveller are said to have been constructed as 

 tracks for the hero and his friends to pursue when hunting, or 

 as race-courses. Other stories suppose that they were levelled 

 to serve as defences for a camp or as actual roads to lead out 

 of the Glen. With what complacency does Science point the 

 finger of scorn at these explanations ! How wonderfully does 

 her glamour transcend the wildest dreams of Ossianic romance ! 

 " Instead of tracing back the origin of these mysterious parallel 

 roads of Lochaber to the days of Fingal, they stand before us 

 as the memorials of an infinitely vaster antiquity the shores, 

 as it were, of a phantom lake, that came into being with the 

 growth of the glaciers, and vanished as these melted away." * 

 * Geikie, ubi supra, p. 201. 



