MEMOIR OF PENNANT. 15 



irregular, either broken into frequent precipices, or 

 towering into rounded summits, clothed with trees, 

 not so close but to admit a sight of the sky between 

 them. The wild animals which possessed this wild 

 scene were stags and roes, black game, and grouse : 

 on the summits white hares and ptarmigans." He 

 seems equally struck with the scenery round Inver- 

 cauld. " The views from the skirts of the plain 

 near Invercauld, are very great. The hills that im- 

 mediately bound it are clothed with trees, particu- 

 larly with birch, whose long and pendent boughs, 

 waving a vast height above the head, surpass the 

 beauties of the weeping willow. The southern ex- 

 tremity is pre-eminently magnificent : the mountains 

 form a vast theatre, the bosom of which is covered 

 with extensive forests of pines above, the trees 

 grow scarcer and scarcer, and then seem only to 

 sprinkle the surface after which, vegetation ceases, 

 and naked summits of surprising height succeed, 

 many of them topped with perpetual snow; arid, 

 as a fine contrast to the scene, the great cataract of 

 Garvalbourn, which seems at a distance to divide 

 the whole, foams, amidst the dark forest, rushing 

 from rock to rock to a vast distance." Thus could 

 he seize the characters of the scenes he visited, the 

 sudden effects of light and shade on the mountain 

 lochs, with their rugged precipices and tangled thic- 

 kets, or the dark and deep, yet rich tints of a bound- 

 less waste, in storms of wind and rain. 



This Tour is also illustrated with views of the 



