108 STORM AND WIND. 



was no escaping it. Such a wind I certainly never 

 before experienced. Each successive blast seemed to 

 pierce through one's dress, searching and chilling to the 

 very bones and marrow. Now and then, as it whirled 

 violently round the angles of some huge rock, a sharp 

 report was produced, like the crack of a hunting-whip ; 

 so that the approach of a blast might be learnt while 

 yet at a distance, the sounds increasing in loudness as 

 the distance diminished ; while far above us, in the 

 clefts of the high cliff which shot up almost perpen- 

 dicularly to a height of 1500 feet, there was a continual 

 roar, loud as that of the ocean in the fiercest storm. 



As we passed along the shores of a secluded loch, the 

 sheltered waters of which are generally smooth and 

 unruffled as a mirror, the effect produced was curious 

 in the extreme. The blasts sometimes poured down 

 from all quarters of the compass at once, and meeting 

 in fierce collision, drove the surface into large waves, 

 and lashing the water up bodily into the air, carried it 

 along like a drenching rain; then separating, they 

 ploughed up the loch in opposite directions ; or chasing 

 each other across its bosom, left their wake marked by 

 a line of foam. On looking up the mountain-side, I 

 could almost have fancied myself in a most densely 

 populated country, where the hearths of some thou- 

 sands of families, the cottages themselves invisible, 

 were sending up their smoke in so many thin white 

 columns curling heavenwards, an appearance which 

 was produced by the fierce currents of air catching up 

 the waters of many a little burn as they swept athwart 

 its rocky channel. 



After a walk of some five miles, without seeing any- 

 thing in the shape of game, we reached a deep corrie, 

 the usual resort of deer in rough weather ; but though 



