Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/211

Rh however, we arrived on the banks of the Isla, very near the fall. A gude wife was our guide, who first conducted us to the top of the great cataract, and then to the bottom of it, down a long, dangerous, and slippery bank; and then from one huge stone to another, we arrived at the pool into which the river falls. Imagine yourself upon prodigious masses of slippery rock, severed from the mountain, damming up, in some degree, the vast body of water in front, precipitating itself from an immense height over jagged heaps of rock upon rock, in every possible form, with a violence that sends out its spray to a very great distance; and falling into a pool, of which no one knows the depth: and then on the right, goes dashing against tower beside tower of rocks, rising majestically to the sky, with sprigs of mountain ash, birch, and oak, thinly and carelessly scattered over them. To the left, is a curved recess of rocks equally high with the opposite towers; in which, either by cliffs, or ravages made by the force of the dashing water, caves in numbers, deep and black, appear, to affright the timorous, or the guilty wight. To attempt to get at these caves is almost certain destruction; but what dares not he do, whom guilt