Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/157

Rh down to a bed of huge fragments severed from the main rock. It is a very awful view to look down upon these cauldrons from the small ash-tree hanging over them. The depth of the perforation from which the foaming furious water returns, must be wonderful, to cause such an extreme agitation. It is more a scene of solemnity, surprise, and astonishment, than that of beauty; but on descending to the foot of the Lin, the beautiful is there, in a considerable degree, mixed with the sublime. The huge masses of broken rock on each side of the fall are, here and there, ornamented with branches of trees sprouting from every crevice, and timidly bending their light boughs to the loud roaring and foaming water. The sky that gleams through the chasm, between the almost kissing black rocks which hang over the Cauldrons, is extremely curious; and the little ash-tree on the right trembles, as it were, with affright at its perilous station. The vigorous birch, small oak, and ash-trees, on the left, add much to the beauty of the whole. The river does not fall in one plain sheet; but on the left, at the top of the cascade, there is a projecting piece of rock that stretches its arm more than halfway over the fall, as if to stop, if it could, the course of the water. When I saw