Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/279

Rh came quietly, and tolerably level, from amongst the stupendous mountains towards Badenoch. But this river, at times, rises to an immoderate height, particularly at the melting of snow; as it is fed, not only by five lakes (two of them tolerably large), but innumerable torrents from Ben Nivis, and other far more distant high mountains, south-east and north, from the place where I was admiring it. Some of the feeding streams rise from the mountains farther north than Loch Spey, and near it; others as far east as the ridge hanging over the west side of Loch Ericht, near Rannoch; consequently, at the breaking up of a frost, or in a season of great floods, the Spean river must be filled with such huge pieces of ice, accompanied by a weight of water sufficient to carry off and devastate every thing in its way, with a violence not to be imagined or understood by Lowlanders, unaccustomed to the ravages of rivers in Highland countries.

Through the vast moor before me, there was nothing but the road to be seen, except a few scattered huts; some of them in such bogs, that it seemed impossible for any thing human to exist in such places. Peat-moss, rushes, coarse grass, and now and then a patch of heath, are the whole