Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/299

Rh from the heights by violent rushing waters in hard rains. I can easily conceive this to be a frightful pass in a flood; when torrents at every step must threaten destruction to the traveller, and the natural desolation of the place rendered terrific by the additional gloom of rain, hurricanes of wind, and the frightful night of such mists as frequently obscure, and hide Alpine districts. I had none of these alarming difficulties to encounter; the day was sufficiently dry for walking, and the mountain torrents were all hushed, by a cessation of rain for twenty-four hours. I had heard and read so much of the horrors of this pass that, I confess, I was disappointed at its tameness. At the same time I made great allowance for the difference of appearance in a very bad day, and a tolerable one. I had read, that the Spey river, at Corryarraick, spreads horrid devastation, tearing away every thing before it, and also thence takes its source, which is not quite correct; for the torrents which issue from Corryarraick, are only trifling tributaries to the noble Spey river, which has its beginning in Loch Spey, far to the south-west of Corryarraick, in that part of Badenoch leading to Fort William, from Garvimore; and when I reached the plain,