BIRD LIFE, ETC. 189 



survey an extensive tract of mountain and moor. The 

 sun, shining clear in a cloudless pale blue sky, gives 

 some warmth to my right side, while a breeze from the 

 north-east comes whirling at times round the cairn, 

 chilling me with its piercing blasts. It is the 4th of 

 September, near sunset. I stand in the midst of a 

 region which might be thought one of stillness and 

 desolation, were it not that symptoms of human life are 

 seen in five little patches of cultivated land, and a group 

 of black huts in a hollow, from one to two miles distant. 

 Yet the range of vision is not less than fifty miles in one 

 direction. Just behind me are the summits of a hill 

 range, not more than a mile distant, beyond which 

 nothing is to be seen ; and therefore I have turned my 

 back upon them. To the left is a rounded hill, running 

 down into a smooth ridge, over a depression in which 

 are seen the hills beyond Ballater, topped by the conical 

 summit of the more distant Mount Keen, singularly 

 white in the pale rays of the western sun. Low ranges 

 extend from it, until there rises, in the south, the massive 

 form of Lochnagar both its corries conspicuously dis- 

 played ; the western illuminated, the eastern in deep 

 impenetrable shade, veiled by a filmy grey vapour. A 

 most beautiful undulated ridgy descent leads the eye to 

 the Glen Ballater mountains, the Beallach-bhui, and the 

 Braemar hills as far as the upper part of Glen Ey. The 

 great mountain stands conspicuous in its massy breadth 

 and towering height, as if upheaved beyond its ordinary 

 elevation. At its base, near Loch Muic, is a large 

 rounded hill ; but elsewhere, all down to the Dee, the 



