Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/362

344 of Glen Coe: I never saw such mountains! even the inhabitants of Fort Augustus think nothing of their own mountains, in comparison of the height and wildness of those in Glen Coe, and they have reason for so doing. As I advanced, every succeeding hill seemed more tremendous than those I had passed, and I very soon got into a labyrinth of them. At the foot of the Devil's Staircase begins a dreadfully steep zig-zag, up the front of a mountain, ten times more terrific than the zig-zag on Corryarraick; but as this wicked-named pass, made by General Wade, is superseded by a somewhat easier one, through Glen Coe, I only took a peep at it. Indeed I cannot conceive how any sort of wheel-carriage could ever go up and down it, or even the shelties keep upon their legs. A breed of mules, such as pass the heights about the Andes, should have been procured at the time the Devil's Staircase was in use. Those mules, I have read, sit down on their hind parts, and curl themselves up in a manner so as to slip all the way down the dangerous heights, with safety to themselves and to those upon them. The Highlandman assured me, the descent on the other side of the mountain, called the Devil's Staircase, is beyond comparison more steep,