Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/267

Rh Doe, the road mounted another shelf hanging over the river, unseen, but heard; dashing through wood and over rocks, forcing its way by perpendicular shoots, down the mountains to Loch Ness, which it enters. It was a sad pull up the shelf over the Doe; but within a mile after that rise, I started from my seat at the view that unexpectedly opened to my sight. The head of Loch Ness, with a verdant flat around it of about a mile in diameter; watered by two large rivers in different directions, with bridges over them near the mouth of each. Fort Augustus itself, like a large old palace, whose white walls rise on the centre of the Loch's head; the rivers forming a rampart on each side of it, emptying themselves into the lake close by the walls of the fort. The town appears like offices to the castle, or palace, a few trees filling up the defects and uniting the whole. The lake; its majestic sides of rocks, some bare, others dressed with wood, and enriched by every tint that nature paints, particularly a soft purplish red blended with yellow, that gave such a rich softness to the rays of the sinking sun, lingering on the tops of the mountains, as cannot be described. From the lake and fort my eyes wandered to the rough points of hill upon hill,