London to John O' Groat's. 375 



the traveller and keep him from dashing over the 

 concealed precipices. About the middle of the after- 

 noon I reached the summit of the two water-sheds, 

 where a horse's hoof might so dam a balancing stream 

 as to send it southward into the Tay or northward into 

 the Moray Firth. Soon a rivulet welled out in the 

 latter direction with a decided current. It was the 

 Spey. A few miles brought me suddenly into a little, 

 glorious world of beauty. The change of theatrical 

 sceneries could hardly have produced a more sudden and 

 striking contrast than this presented to the wild, cold, 

 dark waste through which I had been travelling for 

 a day. It was Strathspey ; and I doubt if there is 

 another view in Scotland, of the same dimensions, to 

 equal it. It was indescribably grand and beautiful, 

 if you could blend the meaning of these two commonly- 

 coupled adjectives into one qualification, as you can 

 blend two colors on the easel. To get the full enjoyment 

 of the scene at one draught, you should enter it first 

 from the south, after having travelled for twenty miles 

 without seeing a sheaf of wheat or patch of vegetation 

 tilled by the hand of man. I know nothing in America 

 to compare it with or to help the American reader 

 to an approximate idea of it. Imagine a land-lake, 

 apparently shut in completely by a circular wall of 

 mountains of every stature, the tallest looking over 



