LETTER XXIII. 165 



of an old man bulging over his shoes. It .gives the impression of 

 the rock having cut into the heart of the tree. 



Having breakfasted at an early hour next morning, we went 

 to the keeper's cottage, where we saw some magnificent Scotch 

 greyhounds for staghunting, and then started off on a journey of 

 five miles over the most desolate, death-like tract of peat-moss, 

 greystone, and interminable straths of coarse, sprit-like grass. A 

 few black tarns or lochans only varied the surface. On one was 

 a solitary diver, alternately appearing and disappearing. This 

 sole instance of life amid such bleak sterility looked like the " last 

 man" One could almost fancy at every dive that he was vainly 

 trying to commit suicide. Glok ! glok ! bark a pair of Eavens 

 high overhead the Scandinavian pet, emblematic of ravening 

 and desolation. Hurrah ! life at last ! A string of wild geese 

 rise in a spiral out of a dismal lochlet with sonorous cacklings.' 

 Ah ! had we but known they were there ! So we trudge on till the 

 head of Loch Tarbert appears in sight. This is the object of our 

 walk, and we trace its banks for some six miles or more of very 

 rough walking. The head of this loch is a large sheet of water 

 some two miles in diameter ; then conies a very narrow channel, 

 only about a hundred yards wide, between two high precipitous 

 rocks, which again expands into another basin, speckled with little 

 heathery islets. A mile or so lower down comes another con- 

 traction, a narrow rocky channel, through which the tide rushes 

 like a river, swirling round the shattered splintery rocks forming 

 its banks. An almost continuous flitting goes on over its surface 

 of Shieldrake, Eiders, Widgeon, and other wild ducks, to and fro, 

 going and returning from the sea to the feeding grounds afforded 



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