130 AUTUMNS ON THE SPEY. 



rounding verdure. These eminences were doubt- 

 less originally cut by water out of a conglomerate 

 composed chiefly of materials from the under- 

 lying Silurian beds and forming part of the middle 

 division of the old red sandstone formation, and 

 would appear to owe their present configuration to 

 atmospheric influences. Successive frosts and 

 rains gradually decompose the softer material, 

 which is slowly washed away, and the same pro- 

 cess, continued annually, leaves at last nothing but 

 the denuded and comparatively hard portion ad- 

 hering to the central backbone, as it were, of these 

 elevated cones and turrets. 



Following the eccentric course of the burn 

 towards the hills, and trudging laboriously through 

 the loose boulders under your feet, new scenes, 

 though of limited extent, are continually disclosed, 

 as each in succession vanishes from your view ; 

 while, with the bright sunshine falling upon many 

 a little promontory of fantastic form projecting 

 into the foreground and lighting up the recesses 

 of the larch and fir-groves above the opposite 

 banks being at the same time veiled in dark 

 shadow you feel that, at every turn, an artist 

 would gladly linger, for the sake of adding a 

 charming vignette to the pages of his sketch- 

 book. 



