Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/294

276 described. Nothing but the eye can convey to the mind an adequate idea of it. When I entered into the bosom of the mountains, which perhaps would for ever hide that view from my bodily eyes, I really felt my spirits sink; the road became rough, but not in the least alarming: all the pain I felt was for my poor horses, on whom it bore hard, notwithstanding the pair before them. The first seven miles of ascent are not positively on the sides of Corryarraick; but of other mountains nearly equal in height. It is not till after the crossing the bridge over the river Tarff, at the hollow, called in Galic Laga-ne-viene, the hollow of milk, that the base of Corryarrick begins. All these mountains afford fine pasture for sheep, and are at present nothing but sheep-farms; though formerly both black cattle and sheep were raised on them. There being some wood hanging about the broken banks of the Tarff, the descent to the bridge is very pretty; but in crossing it, and mounting the narrow steep way on the opposite side, I preferred the safety of my own legs to a reliance on the horses. At about four miles of the ascent from Fort Augustus, the ploughman-driver informed us, that five Edinburgh gentlemen had that morning gone up