16 ON THE PARALLEL ROADS 



steep acclivities, like those I have supposed. I should have 

 little difficulty in enumerating many such pieces of water. In 

 the earlier part of the very tour which ultimately led to ray 

 first visit to Glen Roy, our party accomplished a rather ardu- 

 ous expedition to Loch Aven, a lake very much answering 

 the above description. It is situated in the very bosom of the 

 Cairngorum range of mountains, having that which is more 

 properly called Cairngorum rising on its western side, directly 

 from its waves, almost to the utmost height of the mountain • 

 and on the south-eastern side Ben-mach-duie, the highest 

 point of the whole chain, is seen elevating itself equally sud- 

 denly, and with a rocky, and almost overhanging front still 

 grander and more abrupt. This lonely lake presents an as.- 

 semblage of every thing that is wild and sublime in Scottish 

 scenery. The gentlemen of our party who were familiar with 

 the ruder parts of the Swiss Alps, admitted that Loch Aven 

 furnished no very insignificant specimen of the terrific scenery 

 to be met with in that interesting country ; and the resem- 

 blance was rendered more striking, when we saw it, on the 1st 

 of August, from an immense unmelted glacier, which shone 

 through the thin mist floating on the brow of the rocks at the 

 farther extremity of the lake. Mr Robson, who in his 

 " Sketches of the Grampians" has given a very faithful out- 

 line of it, is, I believe, the only person who has had the merit 

 of noticing this desert and desolate, but magnificently o-loomy 

 spot. As we climbed the rugged, and almost inaccessible front 

 of one of the crags, rearing itself over its upper extremity, by 

 a pass which ascended between two torrents, precipitating 

 themselves with dreadful roar from the glacier on the brow of 

 the mountain above us, 1 could distinctly perceive, when look- 

 ing downwards to the lake, that a narrow shallow shelf almost 

 every where surrounded it, within which it seemed, by its sud- 

 den 



