190 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [CHAP. xxm. 



Looking down the course of the water, you suddenly see beyond 

 the woodland a wide extent of corn-land, interspersed with 

 groves of timber and houses ; beyond this the golden line of the 

 sand-hills of Culbin, dividing the plains of Morayshire from 

 the Moray Firth, while beyond the line of blue sea-water are 

 the splendid and lofty rocks on each side of the entrance of the 

 Bay of Cromarty, backed by a succession of various-shaped peaks 

 of the Sutherland and Caithness, the Ross-shire and the Inver- 

 ness shire mountains. Opposite you is the massive and square 

 mountain of Ben Nevis : to the west, on a clear day, you can 

 see far into the peaked and sugar-loaf shaped mountains of 

 Strath Glass and Glen Strathfaerer, cutting the horizon with 

 their curious outlines. The inland mountains of Sutherland on 

 a clear day are also visible, and Ben Morven, in Caithness, in 

 its solitary grandeur, always forms a conspicuous object ; while 

 the Moray Firth gradually widening till it joins the German 

 Ocean, and dotted here and there with the white sails of the 

 passing ships, completes the scene. It is worth all the trouble 

 of a voyage from London to see this view alone. Far and wide 

 may you travel without finding such another combination of all 

 that is lovely and grand in landscape scenery wood and water, 

 mountain and cultivated ground, all in their most beautiful 

 forms, combine together to render it pre-eminent. The river 

 has a wider and more open current as you leave the woods, and 

 is little confined by cliff and rock. Many a destructive inroad 

 has it made into the fertile plain below, carrying off sheep and 

 cattle, corn and timber, to be deposited on the sand-banks near 

 Findhorn harbour. Calm and peaceful as it looks when at, its 

 ordinary height, the angler, on a bright summer's evening, is 

 sometimes startled by a sound like the rushing of a coining 

 wind, yet wind there is none, and he continues his sport. 

 Presently he is surprised to see the water near which he has been 

 standing suddenly sweep against his feet ; he looks up the stream 

 and sees the river coming down in a perpendicular wall of water, 

 or like a wave of the sea, with a roaring noise, and carrying 

 with it trees with their branches and roots entire, large lumps of 

 unbroken bank, and every kind of mountain debris. Some 

 mountain storm of rain has suddenly filled its bed. Sometimes 

 on the occasion of these rapid speats I have had to gather up 



