Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/274

256 lake, and at about the midway of it I found Letter Findlay inn, close on the edge of the lake, screened at the back by high mountains, and very much shaded by wood. At the door of the inn is a small green patch, bordered by birch and alders; rushes, bushes, and shrubs creeping down to the water. On this fairy green I had the chaise turned that I might face the grand scenery of lake, wood, and mountains, on the north side of the Loch; whose bold sides, with precipitate projections, drive back the encroaching waters. Two solitary huts I saw under these mountains, nodding, as it were, at Letter Findlay; but how they were got at, I could not imagine. A patch of coarse verdure adorns these habitations: all around besides is wood and rocks, rising from them and the lake nearly perpendicular. Had I not afterwards been told to the contrary, I should have imagined that ravens must feed the beings, if any were, dwelling there, as in appearance nought but what drops from the clouds can reach them; but being informed there was a ferry to them from Letter Findlay I was better satisfied with their fate: besides, I was told they were shepherds, and that they and their flocks made as