THE SOUND OF MULL. 4*73 



My next climb to the cairn-peaks of Dundeveuch (Dun- 

 daghavithe) was in fair contrast to this stern scene of savage 

 magnificence. On one of those inspiring summer days, when 

 a light breeze tempers the broiling sun, staff in hand, and 

 coupled dogs by my side, I wound a devious track, after many 

 a halt, to the retreat of the hardy ptarmigan. Comparison 

 rules our feelings more than we are aware, or perhaps would 

 allow. The man brought up among hills, when threading the 

 bleak heather, has little of that lonely depression experienced 

 by the inhabitant of cultivated plains, or the frequenter of 

 courtly cities. He knows many of the mountain-flock by head- 

 mark, is well acquainted with their shepherd, and has made 

 friends with their shy collie. The grouse rise naturally, as if 

 accustomed to man, and dreading his power. The moss- 

 cheeper darts from her hiding among the heath ; nor is the 

 social swallow a rare visitor to the trackless moors. But let 

 even this mountain child ascend to the higher regions, where 

 the rock supplants the heather where the sheep seldom feed, 

 and the grouse are never seen where the shepherd's whistle 

 and his collie's bark are rarely heard, and the wild tameness of 

 the ptarmigan is the certain pledge that destroying man is a 

 stranger there, and even he will know their power, and feel 

 that " this is solitude." 



I stood on the crest of Dundeveuch, my eye sated, almost 

 wearied ; nothing but mountain and ocean, brown hill and 

 purple sea. On every side grandeur too still, too great for 

 me, in my present littleness, to enjoy. My dogs stared round 

 languidly ; no cover for grouse, this rough pavement, and the 

 sharp points had already frayed their feet. I set them free to 

 examine the ground, for the only game they perhaps had never 

 seen ; but their heart was not in their work, and they picked 

 their steps tenderly, heedless even of the glorious sea-eagle 

 which bounded up towards the sky, and, cleaving the air with 

 steady wing, settled down on the opposite cairn : she soon rose 

 again, and returned to her first resting-place. If the desolate 



