GLEN LYON. 



liii 



US by Mr. Evans, who spent some weeks in the later summer and 

 early autumn in the Killin district. 



GLEN LYON. 



It was only after waiting somewhat wearily at Fortingall that 

 at last we viewed the beauties of this "most beautiful of all the 

 beautiful glens of Perthshire." 



Should any one be — as I was — unacquainted with these beauties, 

 he will first admire its lower reaches after leaving Strath Appin, 

 the heights of Drummond Hill rising boldly upon the left, and the 

 beauty- slopes of Garth more gently rising on the right, whilst the 

 road follows up the broad lower courses of the river and haughs, 

 shaded by almost continuous avenues of stately timber-growth — 

 larch, elm, plane or sycamore, spruce, fir, and oak. The river flows 

 through a rather rich alluvial or gravelly haugh-land to a little 

 beyond Fortingall. Arrived there, there appears but little promise 

 of superlative beauty — though it is all beautiful — as the wide plain 

 opens out more widely still ; but only one short mile further on the 

 road bends away suddenly to the right, and with startling suddenness 

 a wild gorge and narrowly-contracted valley opens like a very " gate 

 of the glen " before us. Around Fortingall the hills are low and 

 rounded, and a wide opening leads across to Loch Tay by the Fearnan 

 road — grassy sheep-slopes and rather featureless, stunted, heather- 

 clad braes make the above sudden changes in the aspects of the 

 middle and upper glen all the more like a transformation scene. 

 A long, rugged ridge crosses the upper portion of the circular 

 flat above Fortingall, and stops abruptly, seeming almost to jam 

 up against the higher rampart of hills which form the portal of 

 the glen on the north side, and from which point the road follows 

 the direction of the run of the river. Suddenly — as said — at this 

 point on the road, and where it turns quickly from a northerly to a 

 westerly direction, the first startling view of the beauties of Glen 

 Lyon literally " burst " upon one's vision. Far below, and stretching 

 for the distance of, say, half a mile, foams the turbulent river, hemmed 

 in on either side by the hanging woods and rocky defile formed by 



