THE SCOTCH FIR OR PINE. 



349 



burned to expel the wolves. In the neighbour- 

 hood of Loch Sloy, a tract of woods, nearly twenty 

 miles in extent, was consumed for the same pin^- 

 pose ; and at a later period, a considerable part of 

 the forests adjoining Lochiel was laid waste by 

 the soldiers of Oliver Cromwell, in their attempts 

 to subdue the Clan Cameron. It is not above 

 eighty years since Glen Urcha was divested of a 

 superb forest of Firs some miles in extent. The 

 timber was bought by a company of Irish adven- 

 turers, who paid at the rate of sixpence a tree 

 for such as would now have been valued at five 

 guineas. After having felled the whole of the 

 forest, the purchasers became bankrupt, and dis- 

 persed ; the overseer of the workmen was hanged 

 at Inverary for assassinating one of his men ; the 

 laird never received the purchase-money of his 

 timber, and a considerable number of the trees 

 were left upon the spot where they fell, or by the 

 shores of Loch Awe, whither they had been carried 

 for conveyance, and gradually consumed by the 

 action of the weather. The mosses where the 

 ancient forests formerly stood are filled with the 

 short stumps of trees still standing where they 

 grew. Age has rendered them almost rotten to 

 the core, and the rains and decay have cleared 

 them of the soil ; yet their wasted stumps and 

 the fangs of their roots retain their original shape. 

 Abundance of similar remains are to be seen in 

 other parts of the Highlands, sometimes inter- 

 spersed with living and flourishing trees, but sur- 

 rounded on all sides by the shattered stumps, fallen 

 trunks, and blasted limbs of a departed forest.* 

 A like fate has overtaken the forest of Glen- 



* J. H. Allan's " Last Deer of Beann Doran." 



