Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/264

246 of that spirit, not only put himself into the river at the top of the fall of Fyres, but voluntarily went down the cataract into the pool, from which he paddled away like a duck, and climbed up the rock side, safe and unhurt, saying, "that was nothing to the fall of Niagara, down which he had precipitated himself many a time." Now the fall of Fyres is four hundred and seventy feet perpendicular, over broken rocks to the pool, and that, no one knows the depth of. I own I cannot swallow any part of the history; but I give it as I heard it.

As soon as I left the green bank, I walked to the bridge, not above a hundred yards higher up the river. This is a scene truly picturesque and very romantic, as well as beautiful. A simple arch, from rock to rock, ready to receive the soft winding river above it, and admit it to its rough and narrow approach to the cataract; but its labours begin just before the bridge, where the rough masses seem determined to impede its passage through the arch, lying heap upon heap to stop the way. The contest becomes extremely violent, and the whirl-pools boil up with fury, and then dash through the bridge down falls without end, entering with loud groans into the