Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/300

282 I met it quietly gliding through the vale, and issuing smoothly from the opening between the vast ranges of hills leading to Loch Spey. Whatever fury the river Spey acquires before it finishes its course, it does not shew it till many a mile below Garvimore: for when I left its banks, eight miles below the inn on that Moor, it was gliding away towards the huge mountains near the bridge of Spey, just as quietly as at the first moment I saw it. The tearing waters about Corryarraick, are in fact, no more than copious springs, incessantly flowing from that mountain; and in great rains swelling to furious cataracts, carry every thing before them, to the stream which conveys them to the Spey in the valley.

At the foot of the zig-zag, I looked up the mountain of Corryarraick with astonishment, to think, that by a distance of only a mile and a half, I had descended an eminence that was full nine miles to climb on the other side. I longed, but I longed in vain, for the effect of a moving zig-zag, such as was described by my friend Major Barry. One part of the 24th regiment, in which he served in the year 1746, was, on a fine sun shining day, marching from Fort Augustus over Corryarraick. The officers, to add to the