VALLEYS OF THE AREA. 



XXXV 



THE VALLEYS OF THE AEEA. 



Perthshire can, I think, with justice claim to contain more 

 varied and more lovely scenery than any other area of Scotland. 

 Almost every variety exists, from the wildest mountain recesses, 

 tops, and screes and haunches, such as the Glens Lyon and Lochy 

 spurs of the main range or the great rolling summits of the 

 Grampians which encompass the whole ; and the vast, dreary, silent 

 Moor of Eannoch, with the great extent of flow-land and gravelly 

 heather-topped " knobbies " and glimmering tarns and lochlets, and 

 the longer and wider lochs Baa and Luydon ; down through the 

 narrow veins of the descending waters of innumerable streams, all 

 rushing to meet the parent river of the Tay ; thence onward to the 

 quiet haughs and winding waters of the lower reaches in' the great 

 plains of Strathmore and through the Carse of Gowrie ; and lastly, to 

 the "links" and sand-hills of north-east Fife and Forfar, and the 

 rocky coast-line north of Arbroath. High amongst the 3000-feet 

 mountains, deeply embosomed, lie innumerable " sleepy hollows " of 

 the hills, traversed by hundreds of sparkling rills, with their narrow 

 "haughs" stretching along their banks on either side, flanked by 

 huge ribs and sinews and tendons of the mountains, reaching even to 

 the very centre of the area, and carrying this wondrous variety of 

 scenery throughout the whole of their extent. Through all the 

 vast Breadalbane territory — or the older and even greater " Eegion " 

 of Atholl, which spreads with massive grandeur over nearly three- 

 fourths of the county of Perth, and laps over in the west into 

 Argyll and the Blackmount Forest-land — are the many famous 

 grouse-moors, rich in their red or purple blaze of colour, well-beloved 

 of the weary liahitu^s of our overcrowded cities. 



Above the heather tracts rise the steep hills which afford homes for 

 the Ptarmigan, the Dotterel, and the Snow-Bunting, and from which 

 the deer descend at times and seasons from their summer pastures 

 in the afforested portions. But deer-forests are rapidly on the 

 increase now year by year, and the grouse-ground is becoming 

 smaller and smaller annually. At the present time deer-ground 

 stretches almost from sea to sea — from the western limits of the old. 

 Blackmount on the shore of Loch Etive far to the east of the chain 

 of the Grampians at Glen Tanar of Dee ; thus being also continuous 



