180 SCENERY OF GLEN TILT. 



trout, that any one who pleases may catch as many dozens 

 in a day as he can conveniently carry. These streams 

 work their way in solitude through dreary mosses and 

 come winding down the glens sometimes in comparative 

 tranquillity, and at others bursting and rooting up every 

 thing about them ; the mighty force with which they 

 descend may be read in the vast rocks and fragments of 

 wreck which they heap up as monuments of their power. 



Supplied by such numerous forces, the Tilt becomes 

 powerful in its infancy. Born in rugged regions it cleaves 

 its way, at the base of impending mountains and rocky 

 precipices, in a dark, deep, and narrow trench. Arrived 

 at the green pastures of Ben-y-gloe, its bed begins to ex- 

 pand, and the waters pass down in a freer course ; still 

 however they come racing and flashing along with over- 

 whelming violence. 



A little lower its wrath is tempered with all the orna- 

 ment that art and nature can bestow. First of all a few 

 straggling trees deck its margin; then groups of birch 

 stand airy and light, displaying their glossy stems upon 

 the knolls, or shelving down the sides of the great moun- 

 tain, vivid as it here is with luxuriant pasture. The woods 

 now skirt the braes in larger masses, winding on the hill 

 sides and conforming themselves to the varied undulations 

 of the surface. They press closely on the river where the 

 valley is contracted, and their branches wave over it, and 

 shed the sear leaf in the stream. Some of the masses are 

 dense ; others admit the sunbeam, striking on the scarlet 

 berries of the mountain ash, and bringing out the rich 

 autumnal tints of the brachen which grows beneath them. 

 All soon uniting in mass, gathers into larch and pine forest, 

 and at length mingles with the woods of Blair. 



