586 GLENS CANLOCHEN AND DOLE. [October, 



Isla from Glen Dole, following the course of a little burn, the 

 banks of which were fringed with Salix arenaria, Sm. At 

 last, after a weary climb, we reached the level, and a dreary ex- 

 pause it was : nothing but black peat, of varying degrees of 

 consistency, studded with hassocks of grass, as far as the eye 

 can reach ; — however, we have not yet quite reached the water- 

 shed, for the streams still continue to run towards the west. A 

 small lake, or rather pool, of blackest water, marks the highest 

 pomt, and as we reach its margin, some rocks appear in the far 

 distance, rising a few feet above the moor, serving to relieve 

 the monotony of the view, and forming landmarks for us to steer 

 by ; now too we first catch a glimpse of something like a glen 

 in our front, and our only misgiving is whether it may not be 

 Glen Prosen instead of Glen Dole, for we feel little confidence 

 in our maps, and indeed they are on far too small a scale to be 

 of any great use. Had we been conscious of our whereabouts, 

 we should have known that we were passing within a mile to the, 

 south of the Little Culrannoch, the station for Lychnis alpina ; 

 but all was unknown ground to us, and our main object then 

 was to reach Clova before nightfall. In half an hour the rocks 

 are reached, and to our infinite surprise and astonishment, we 

 find that instead of their being only of some twenty feet elevation 

 above the peaty moor, they are in fact the summits of some 

 magnificent crags which descend perpendicularly on the other 

 side to a depth of seven or eight hundred feet, and compose the 

 western wall of a very deep and narrow glen which now all at once 

 opens upon our view. Its depth is almost equal to that of Glen 

 Dee, and it is, if anything, more striking, from being so much 

 narrower, certainly not more than three-quarters of a mile from the 

 spot where we stand to the top of the opposite precipices, with a 

 yawning chasm 1500 feet in depth between us. This glen is in 

 fact the far-famed Glen Dole. We had unconsciously steered 

 straight for Craig Maid, the top of which formed the very rocks 

 we had descried across the moor, and so, if we had had a guide 

 with us, we could not have chosen our route better. The next 

 thing was to get to the bottom of the glen, and a queer descent 

 it was, down slopes of turf and loose boulders not very far re- 

 moved from the perpendicular. When we arrived at the stream 

 which wound through the bottom of the glen, the view looking 

 up it was grand in the extreme. About a quarter of a mile 



