air, of unfamiliar aspect. One of the popular The 

 excursion resorts in the near highlands of Mountain 

 Argyll and Dumbarton is Loch Goil Head. 

 A dweller there told me last autumn that of 

 the hundreds who land every week, and 

 especially on Saturdays and Fair holidays, and 

 generally with an impatient eagerness, by far 

 the greater number soon tire of the loneliness 

 of the hills a brief way inland, and become 

 depressed, and with a new and perhaps per- 

 turbing eagerness seek again the house-clad 

 ways and the busy shore ; and seem content, 

 an hour or two before their steamer sails, to 

 sit where they can see the movement of 

 familiar life, and turn their back upon the 

 strangely oppressive loneliness, so perturbingly 

 remote, so paralyzingly silent. 



But for those who love the hills as 

 comrades, what a spell, what enchantment ! 

 To wander by old grassy ways, old 'pack- 

 road ' or timeless mountain path ; to go 

 through the bracken, by grey boulders tufted 

 with green moss and yellow lichen, and see 

 nothing but great rounded shoulders or sudden 

 peaks overhead or beyond, nothing near but 

 the yellow-hammer or wandering hawk or 

 raven : to feel the pliant heather underfoot, 

 and smell the wild thyme, and watch a cloud 

 trail a purple shadow across the grey-blue 



17 c 



