34 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PPIYSICAL FEATURES 
anything in Scotland. Perhaps one of the very loveliest of the 
smaller lakes is Lochi Beannoch,^ near Loch Inver, but there are 
many that rival it in beauty. With the scarred and torrent-torn 
sides and towering form of Quinaig throughout its whole western 
range for a background, with a middle distance of lesser heights and 
tarn-holding hollows, and for the foreground Loch Beannoch, with 
its birch-clad, heron-inhabited islets and shore, with a rich-tinted 
gleam of western sunlight purpling the heights and reddening the 
debris slopes, and casting into shade the nearer outlines, one can 
scarcely imagine a more fairy-like scene. Or, if we choose the 
wilder beauties of Loch Assynt, — surrounded by ramparts of hills, 
and backed by the vast forms of the Assynt mountains, — its edges 
but partially clad in birch-wood, and its immediate shores pre- 
cipitous and rocky, let us view it both in its quieter loveliness, 
but, best, in the wild grandeur of a storm, when masses of dark 
cloud roll rapidly across the stern outlines of the hills, and the 
unearthly shriek of the red-throated diver sounds like the last call 
of a drowning child. 
Some of these lochs are margined by granite slopes and fed by 
springs of purest water, such as those on the higher ramparts of 
Ben More, and the great corries of Glasbhein and Ben Uidhe. 
These teem with the lower forms of life. Others at lower eleva- 
tions are fed by the limestone burns, and these are full of Crustacea ; 
and yet others are fed by peaty, soft-tasted water, growing the 
yellow water-lily in abundance, covered with vegetable life, and rich 
also in water-insects and other zoological stores of wealth. By far 
the larger proportion of these lochs is inhabited by trout, some by 
salmon and sea-trout in season, and others by char, but some are, 
or have been originally, destitute of piscine life. Had we space we 
could dilate upon some of the extraordinary peculiarities of the 
inhabitants of certain others. Some remarks upon these will be 
found in their proper places when we treat of the fishes of our 
district. 
Many of these lovely sheets of water are studded over with 
birch-clad islets, under the branches of which flourish the giant 
1 The Blessed Locb, or Loch of Blessings. 
