310 APPENDIX. 



joy of summer sunshine, or fade and gleam more darkly 

 in the winter rain and snow-drift. The variety of lovely 

 scenery which is presented by the ever-shifting panorama 

 of light and shade on mountain, mere, and river, during 

 a drive on a fine day through Assynt and Edderachyllis, 

 can scarcely be excelled by anything in Scotland. Perhaps 

 one of the very loveliest of the smaller lakes is Loch 

 Beannoch, near Loch Inver, but there are many that 

 rival it in beauty. With the scarred and torrent-torn 

 sides and towering form of Quinaig throughout its whole 

 western range for a background, with a middle distance 

 of lesser heights and tarn-held hollows, and the fore- 

 ground Loch Beannoch, with its birch-clad, heron-inhabited 

 islets and shore, with a rich-tinted gleam of western sun- 

 light purpling the heights and reddening the debris slopes, 

 and casting into shade the nearer outlines, one can scarcely 

 imagine a more fairy-like scene. Or, if we choose the 

 wilder beauties of Loch Assynt, — surrounded by ramparts 

 of hills, and backed by the vast forms of the Assynt 

 mountains, — its edges but partially clad in birch-wood, and 

 its immediate shores precipitous and rocky, let us view it 

 both in its quieter loveliness, and, best, in the wild grandeur 

 of a storm, when masses of dark cloud roll rapidly across 

 the stern outlines of the hills, and the unearthly shriek 

 of the red-throated diver sounds like the last call of a 

 drowning child. 



Some of these lochs are margined by granite slopes and 

 fed by springs of purest water, such as those on the higher 

 ramparts of Ben More, and the great corries of Glasbhein 

 and Ben Uidhe. These teem with the lower forms of 

 life. Others at lower elevations are fed by the limestone 

 burns, and these are full of Crustacea, and yet others are 

 fed by peaty, soft-tasted water, growing the yellow water- 

 lily in abundance, covered with vegetable life, and rich 

 also in water-insects and zoological stores of wealth. By 

 far the larger proportion of these lochs is inhabited by 

 trout, some by salmon and sea-trout in season, and others 

 by char, but a few are or have been originally destitute 

 of piscine life. Had we space we could dilate upon some 



