Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/253

Rh grand scene; but my legs would carry me no farther, I was therefore obliged to submit.

The space between the Murray Firth, and Loch Eil, may be truly termed a hollow of sixty-one miles; the broadest part of it is occupied by the waters of Loch Ness; in many other parts it is not so much as a quarter of a mile in width. In former times, the noble family of the Cummings (there being no less than seven earls in it), had immense property in this part of the country; and I was told they had a chain of strong castles in the hollow, from Fort William all the way to Inverness, the ruins of which still exist; but they have now, as well as the land, a variety of proprietors. The country people still call Fort Augustus by its old Galic name, Kil-y-a-Whoimin, or the burying place of the Cummings; which it was in the time of that great family.

Let a frost be ever so hard, Loch Ness never has been known to freeze; it is therefore imagined, the whole bed of it is of sulphur. The water of the Ness river, and I believe most of the water about Inverness, is strongly impregnated with it, and often disagrees with man and beast, particularly with strangers unaccustomed to it. In the spring, 1796, some military men were obliged to