174 FORAYS AMONG SALMON AND DEER. 



boundaries of the Laird's domains. At the distance of 

 but a few miles, he said, there were the remains of 

 one situated in the centre of a large loch; nothing, 

 however, now being left beyond the foundations, 

 and those only visible when the water was very low ; 

 though tradition averred that the tower had been 

 originally built high and dry on an island, which after- 

 wards, from some mysterious cause, had in one night 

 sunk beneath the surface of the waters, never to emerge 

 again. Another erection of the same kind is still; I 

 believe, standing, though in a very dilapidated state, 

 on a solitary rock somewhere off the western coast. 

 Though the spirit of the storm has for centuries 

 sported around it, though many a thousand times 

 embosomed in the billow's rude embrace, the old tower, 

 venerable in decay, still rears its head above the waters, 

 still flings from its crumbling sides the waves that 

 threaten destruction. 



Within a couple of miles of the Laird's house, a 

 small stream falls tinkling down the depths of a bosky 

 ravine, on its way from a mountain loch to the blue 

 waters of the ocean below. The wanderer who climbs 

 his way up its rocky channel, will find more than one 

 of those calm retreats, where nature lies sleeping in 

 miniature. 



Above, the birch and the mountain-ash weave their 

 tangled boughs into a canopy to temper the rays of the 

 sun, within whose grateful shade diminutive waterfalls 

 are leaping over rocks of a size proportionate, clad in 

 a velvet robe of the richest green, bound together by 

 gnarled and knotted roots, and crowned by tufts of 

 heather and foxglove. Dwarf ferns are flinging their 

 long arms athwart the sparkling stream, and with 

 grasses of different sorts are dancing to its music. In 

 one place the water has collected in a pool, its bottom 



