HOURS AMONG THE ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 
187 
and penetrate his weeping labyrinths, without the energy or industry to unlock 
his chasms and subject his slopes to the power of enterprize and culture. In the 
whole wilderness of the dismal ravines environing the five-beaconed mountain, 
is neither tree or shrub, nor the fragment of a hut to shelter the wanderer 
within two or three long miles of the summit. Mists take a long and deep 
slumber upon the mossy hollows, and are only roused when a blast from the 
north, thundering upon the broken earns, clears for a moment the wild table 
ridges, and the clouds lazily roll into the deep hollows below, speedily to re-ascend 
and prowl round their old positions. But there is no prominent mark to assure 
the wanderer of his bearings; the five summits of the mountain, all nearly of 
equal height, circle round a flat expanse and assume the same monotonous aspect, 
each crowned with a similarly-formed dreary earn; and still wherever the turf 
or moss has been laid bare by the storm, the same black bog-mud, or the same 
pavement of snowy quartz-rock meets the wearied eye. Even the eager sports¬ 
man, who once a year fires upon the scattered and almost annihilated Red 
Grouse, warily takes his shepherd-guide and bag of rations for the long-protracted 
expedition; and woe to the luckless wight who, confiding in his map, becomes 
inextricably involved in grave-like turbaries, and deep ravines, where no skill 
can avail to push forward through impassable quaking-bogs, or overcome the 
interminable deviations they occasion; where to go on is dangerous, and to 
retreat impossible. Amidst his efforts, perhaps, the sun goes down, engulphed 
amidst the darkest masses of vapour that fill up the west, and the deepening 
shadows usher in confusion and despair. 
But there is, after all, a charm in the very risk a desolate series of quaking 
bogs and labyrinthal defiles offers to the foot of the naturalist. To be involved 
in the embrace of the fleecy cloud, levelled prostrate by the rude north wind at 
the base of a cam, chase a scudding hat or sketch-book down a steep declivity 
into the splashing stream, or, seated on the soft moss, discussing sandwiches and 
brandy, are enjoyments which exercise and imagination will always seek, even 
at the risk of that almost wished-for consummation of losing ones wag, or leaving 
a solitary carcase well fixed in a bog, to be exhumed some centuries hence for the 
benefit of science ! But then it is requisite to have company in order to be 
pleasingly lost. To sink midleg in water-—to scale a fearful crag for an observa¬ 
tion which the gloom allows not—to trace in twilight the threadings of a stream, 
now deep and silent beneath black towering rocks, and now suddenly gliding 
down a slippery barrier, and raving and roaring amidst huge bouldery obstruc¬ 
tions, all uncertain whither the defile tends, and which of its now diverging forks 
leads soonest from the wild hills—or to plunge at random into bog and gulley 
over mound and roaring waters for some phantom light or supposed cottage 
window that disappears at length while in mid-chase—all this and more than 
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