Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/350

332 the name of Strath Fillan; the river also, which flows through the Strath there, bears the name of Fillan. The mountains are by no means so verdant as those I left behind me in Glen Dochart. The flat country, however, between them produces oats, barley, and coarse meadow grass; mixed with a pretty large portion of rushes; but as I drove near to Tyndrum, nothing was to be seen there but brown bare mountains, their sides broken by torrents and numberless springs, which render every yard upon them a bog, except the road, which is secured from their ravages. At Tyndrum inn the road branches in a triangle. To the east, is the road I came, towards Taymouth and Loch Earn Head; to the west, towards Dalmally, Oban, and Inveraray; to the north, up an excessive narrow opening, overhung by prodigious crags, is the road to Fort William. The inn at Tyndrum is reckoned to be on one of the highest spots on which any house stands in Scotland; and yet at it, it seems in a hollow. All things go by comparison; so when I looked at the mountains around me, the spot whereon the inn is built, appeared low. Innumerable torrents and springs rise in every direction at Tyndrum; and within half a mile of the house,