Garbh Choire Mhor 



often in the Garbh Choire : I have seen him sail up the 

 corrie on motionless wings, facing a blizzard of driving snow 

 so fierce that I could scarcely look into the wind. The pere- 

 grine falcon I have never once seen in the corrie, though he 

 may sometimes pass here, nor the sable raven of stately 

 flight. The eagle would doubtless nest in the dark precipices 

 were it not that in April, the season of her building, they are 

 entirely filled with snow. Nor does this snowy covering 

 commence to melt until the latter part of May, when the 

 burn of the Garbh Choire comes rapidly into spate and with 

 milky waters — they are never peat-stained here — hurries, 

 fbaming, down the corrie to meet the Dee in the Lairig 

 beyond it. 



During the spring of 1920 the snow was later in leaving 

 the corrie than I ever remember. Even in June the western 

 and most precipitous end of the corrie was entirely white, 

 and when elsewhere the wind was warm, to leeward of this 

 great snowfield the air had an icy touch. So fierce was the 

 wind at times that the water from the melting snow was 

 lifted high into the air, and falling on the plateau above 

 the corrie in the form of rain, seemed strange indeed as 

 descending from a sky of cloudless blue. 



Not many stags are in the corrie at any time. In October, 

 on misty days, when all about the corrie is wrapped in gloom, 

 their hoarse roarings may be heard, especially towards night- 

 fall. They are of a wonderful charm these autumn nights, 

 when after sunset the Aurora plays about Braeriach, lighting 

 up the Lairig and all the sky away to the northward ; when 

 the pale moon, high in the heavens, floods the Garbh Choire 

 so that its snows seem all the whiter in her rays. Then, 

 maybe, the fine weather goes from the hills and the west 

 wind rushes across the high tops, eddying around the preci- 

 pices and surging about the black cliffs of Coire Bhrochain. 

 And on the arms of the gale there may come squalls of rain 

 and sleet, hurrying across from the Atlantic in clouds that 

 are black as night. 



179 



