IN GALLOWAY. 



381 



of the group, and supposed by Mr Macmillan 

 to be the highest land in this quarter. It is pro- 

 bably not less than 1750 feet high. The valley 

 at the head of Loch Doon, is wild, and bleak, and 

 sterile. No wood : heath and rocks almost solely 

 appear to occupy the ground. A northern ex- 

 posure ; four human habitations only to be seen, 

 and these merely thatched huts. 



In an inland, stands the Castle, a ruin, interest- 

 ing from the wildness of its situation, and the 

 antique simplicity of its appearance. It is of no 

 great extent, and appears, like most of the old Scot- 

 tish castles, to have been little more than a single 

 tower. The island on which it stands, is a bare 

 granite-rock, of fifty or sixty yards in diameter, 

 and which, the lake after a large fall of rain, or 

 on the melting of the snow in winter, sometimes 

 nearly overflows. The lake itself, as already 

 stated, is nine miles long, stretching from about 

 N. N. W. to S. S. E., and is in some places nearly 

 half a mile wide. It has no island of conse- 

 quence, except that on which the castle stands, 

 nor is there a tree or bush to be seen along its 

 banks, — one wild scene of heath and bare rock. 

 It has salmon, trout, pike, perch, and eels. It is 

 not deep, readily freezing over by a night or two's 

 frost. It was, however, a good deal deeper for- 

 merly than it is at present. For in the year I790, 

 the Earl of Cassilis, and the late Mr Macadart of 

 Craigengillan, the proprietors on each side, by a cut 



