Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/330

312 junction at the top; and are entirely covered with trees of all sorts, which branch wide, and feather down to the edge of the burn; and by their embraces at the top, form a beautiful canopy over the whole. The masses of pointed and flaky rocks, constantly washed over, look brown and dark; others are covered with green slime, moss, fern, and rushes, which, joined by the never-ceasing roar of the numerous falls, give a darkness and solemnity to this scene not to be described. At length, after creeping over slippery stages of flaky rock, and clambering up and down steps on the rocks, from one huge mass to another, the pools whirling beneath me, and the water dashing, white, and foaming around me, with the mirky canopy above, for a quarter of a mile, I arrived at the highest, and first fall. It is a termination like the concave head of a cavern, open at top, though almost darkened to night by the high over hanging rocks and trees, which no axe has ever reached; no track of any sort, but the channel made by the water, that from a very great height gushes with prodigious violence round a pointed rock, from a black confined passage, arched over by rocks, considerably above it, and covered with impenetrable wood. The water