190 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [cuap. xx111. 
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 
ias 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 coming 
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 débris. Some 
mountain storm of rain has suddenly filled its bed. Sometimes 
on the occasion of these rapid speats I have had to gather up 
