Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/128

 makes one precipitate tumble, or leap, into a hollow den; whence some of it again recoils in froth and smoking mist. Above, the river exhibits a broad, expanded, and placid appearance, beautifully environed with plantations of forest trees. This appearance is suddenly changed at the fall: and, below it, the river is narrow, contracted, and angrily boils and thunders among rocks and precipices.

"The same beautiful and romantic walk conducts you back again, along the precipice that overhangs the river, both sides of which are environed by mural rocks, equidistant and regular, forming, as Mr. Pennant expresses it, a "stupendous natural masonry;" from whose crevices, choughs, daws, and other wild birds, are incessantly springing. You descend along the river for about half a mile, till you arrive at the Corra Lin, so called from an old castle and estate upon the opposite bank. The old castle of Corra, overhanging a high rock that overlooks the fall, with Corra house, and the rocky and woody banks of the Clyde, form of themselves a beautiful and grand coup d'oeil: But nothing can equal the striking and stupendous appearance of the fall itself, which, when viewed from any of the different seats placed here and there along the walks, must fill every unaccustomed beholder with awe and astonishment. The tremendous rocks around, the old castle upon the opposite bank, a corn mill in the rock below, the furious and impatient stream foaming over the rock, the horrid chasm and abyss underneath your feet, heightened by the hollow murmur of the water and the screams of wild birds, form