Page:Long pack, or, A shot with Copenhagen (2).pdf/21

 Many are the scenes of wild gandeur and rugged deformity which amaze the wanderer in the Grampian deserts: but none of them surpasses this in wildness and still sublimity. No sound salutes the listening ear, but the rushing torrent, or the broken eldrich bleat of the mountain goat. The glens are deep and narrow, and the hills steep and sombre, and so high, that their grizly summits appear to be wrapped in the blue veil that canopies the air. But it is seldom that their tops can be seen; for dark clouds of mist often rest upon them for several weeks together in summer, or wander in detached columns among their cliffs; and during the winter they are abandoned entirely to the storm. Then the flooded torrents and rushing wreaths of accumulated snows spend their fury without doing harm to any living creature; and the howling tempest raves uncontrolled and unregarded.

Into the midst of this sublime solitude did our jovial party wander in search of their game.— They were highly successful. The heath cock was interrupted in the middle of his exulting whirr, and dropped lifeless on his native waste; the meek parmigan fell fluttering among her grey crusted stones, and the wild-roe foundered in the correi. The noise of the guns, and the cheering cries of the sportsmen, awakened those echoes that had so long slept silent; the fox slid quietly over the hill, and the wild deer bounded away into the forests of Glendee from before the noisy invaders.

In the afternoon they stepped into a little bothy, or resting lodge, that stood by the side of a rough