and tempers of some beautiful girl who for the moment has crossed his path, can find a wealth of graces and frequent recurring changes in it. According to the majority of these he classifies the loch. Thus Assynt is featureless and commonplace, Ericht sullen, Garry black-browed. Tay, on the other hand, is sunny, Shin bright-eyed, Laggan winsome and smiling. How should Loch Shiel be characterised? Running twenty-three miles inland, and winding in glittering coils among the mountains, with here a grassy correi catching the eye, there a range of steep rock-wall where nothing can set foot save the raven and the eagle, while at one point a dark warm clothing of firs runs down to the water's edge, and at another a shepherd's hut or keeper's shieling does but accentuate the waste moor around it, the mind is strongly impressed with a sense of its unity in diversity, its successive beauties of soft nature and wild desolation. Like the elements of a musical harmony, these features are separately beautiful, but fuse into a still more beautiful whole. The mountain forms which hem in the loch are every here and there of a strongly contrasted shape, while the ever-recurring play of lights and shadows flits over their craggy faces. Where loch becomes river towards the west long yellow sandbanks and spits of shingle gleam against the blue streams that cut them, in which, during July, thousands of the water violet (Hottonia palustris), with pale blue and white petals, wave in the breeze. From the head of the loch arises Glenfinnan, a barren district lying between the three deer forests of Meoble, Conaglen, and Gulvain. Shiel, therefore, furnishes a changeful succession of land and water painted, as it were, in numerous schemes of colour. In the best sense of the much-abused adjective, the proper epithet for it would seem to be picturesque. Look at it where you will it is always different both in character and tone.

The physical characteristics of Loch Shiel it enjoys in common with other sea-water lochs of Western Scotland, and with the Fiords of Norway. It is an ancient glen, partly depressed, but still more carved out by glaciers, and resembles specially in this point Lochs Awe and Ericht. It bears signs of ice-action in the worn surfaces round its lip, and is a true rock-basin of quite recent geological date. Raised beaches, too, may be found, all showing that Shiel is as different as possible from the mountain tarns seen in the Eastern Highlands. Indeed, the student of ice-action will see much to instruct him in its vicinity. The whole distance from Inverness to the basalt slopes of Mull and Morven will well repay careful investigation, and he will find that "there is no marked line of demarcation between the land valley, watered by its river, and the sea valley

filled with its ebbing and flowing tides." The vast scale on which Nature worked in her ice-sculpture of Scotland is clearly apparent in this district, and to the geologist rambling over it with the key to its composition in his mind, it seems inconceivable that the secret of ice-action was so long undiscovered, and he gains juster ideas of the genius of Agassiz.

The pilgrim to Loch Shiel can remain at a little inn known as the Stage House at its upper end, or at Shiel Bridge Hotel near the sea, while Auchnashelloch, in its vicinity, also offers hospitality; and Dalelea, not unconnected with Prince Charles, about the middle of the loch, will also receive him. At certain times a steamer from Oban puts in at Salen, Loch Sunart, whence three miles further on Shiel Bridge is reached. If, however, the visitor wishes to see some of the finest moorland scenery of Scotland, and time is not of much importance, let him rather seek Corran, Ardgour, by a Fort William steamer, and go on in the postal "machine," some fifteen miles to Strontian, along Glen Tarbert. Another mail-cart will take him ten miles farther along a dangerous but exquisite road skirting Loch Sunart, all the way till Salen is reached. The household at Shiel Bridge (if not very sleepy) can then be knocked up some time after midnight. It is well to make certain of beds beforehand in Highland hotels, more especially in the thick of the tourist season, or when "the gentlemen are expected for the shooting." Sport reigns supreme in the Highland mind, and rooms are often engaged months beforehand for the "Twelfth."

All who gain Shiel Bridge will be delighted at the fine view of crags and fir-trees, while underneath is a large deep pool in which salmon may be seen rolling over and over at times like porpoises, and on a projecting rock stands a spruce-fir reported to be hung with artificial flies. The river Shiel runs here for three miles to the sea at Loch Moidart, forming several capital salmon-pools on either side. The northern side belongs to Lord Howard of Glossop, while the laird of the Ardnamurchan country, Mr. Dalgleish, holds the other. Both sides are let, and the river is generally very prolific in salmon and sea-trout. The character of the Shiel is erratic and changeful as a girl of sixteen, with long sandbanks, heaps of shingle, strips of fir-trees coming down to its banks; it pursues a circling course till it reaches the living rock, and flows through rounded channels which it has cut out for itself. Throughout its journey it resembles the Virgilian river,

cadens raucum per levia murmur

Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva,

'Geikie's Scenery of Scotland, Ed. 2, 1887, pp. 231 seq. 182.

while, if it be the reader's lot to ramble through the oat-fields by it during such a time of drought as prevailed in the summer of 1893, he will be astonished at its varied beauties, called forth by the different surroundings of wood, rock, and heather alluded to above. This varied scenery strongly differences Shiel from the multitude of rivers which run out of other Highland lochs. They cut moor, or heath, or rushy waste, and no more is seen of them. It lovingly winds round the rocks, and makes long circuits, unwilling to lose itself and its changeful beauties in the sea. But the plunge is at length taken into the blue Atlantic near Castle Thiorin, and far in the misty distance like a cloud-strip lies the island of Muck, and even the wonderful Scuir of Eigg rears itself grey against the sky. A herd of cattle generally stands in the embouchure of the river during summer, lending judicious spots of colour to the artist.

Just before the river reaches the sea toll is taken every now and then of its salmon from the fishing station adjacent. Boats put out, and the hardy fishermen row and nets are let down, and there is much excitement. These fish are partly consumed in the district and partly sent away, but communication with the world beyond the mountains is not easy, so that it is generally possible for anyone in the district to obtain "saumon." A painter might immortalise the worthy captain who presides over this business; many are the friends who will recall his genial face, but humble prose can only commemorate his good heart. Castle Thiorinius must in old days have been exceedingly strong. Its grey, windowless walls and massive roof-trees, long since stripped of their covering, still meet every blast from the Atlantic with indifference, and stand like the ghosts of departed warfare. A peep through the postern shows perhaps a ladder or a peaceful garden rake. No sound of man breaks the monotonous wash of the waves at its feet or the mournful wail of the seagulls overhead. Mingary Castle, in Ardnamurchan, presents similar features of desolation. Like the old firs on Rannoch Moor, these two castles are survivals of a long-dead time when Scotland was held by different clans, governed Cyclops-fashion each by its own chieftain, little recking what form of worship or laws prevailed at Edinburgh. Revenge, rapine, and cruelty dwelt too often in these castles, which were more impregnable, thanks to their sea-guarded portals, than even the English castles in the evil days of Stephen. Now the wandering artist or salmon-fisher gazes idly on Castle Thiorin and the rest of the old Scotch maritime holds, and even the osprey has deserted their turrets. But the tides ebb and flow beside them as of old, and the immanence of Nature mocks even their thick walls and

projecting turrets. The guide-books furnish prosaic particulars of each; probably most men are satisfied without history with the almost pathetic desolation of these Highland castles.

A cheerful modern house hard by Castle Thiorin, the abode of Lord Howard of Glossop, Dorlin, commands a fine sea view, and is backed by well-timbered crags. Few gardens are so carefully sheltered. Behind them rise mighty rock walls which need no mortar and broken glass to keep out intruders. White rabbits with pink eyes dart in and out of the brushwood, suggesting ferrets at the first blush to the passer-by. A few black rabbits pleasantly diversify their ordinary inconspicuous brethren, just as three or four "dookers" please the eye when seen diving among sea-gulls. Higher up the river than Dorlin, where the shallows begin, sea-trout may be observed in summer evenings trying to ascend just as darkness falls. Up they flash and boldly rush through the shallows, leaving wakes like great V's behind them, but it may be (as this year) there is too little water, and then they soon turn round vanquished and seek the deeper floods of the estuary. The salmon-fishers have named the different pools up to the Loch; the "Garrison" and the "Sea" Pool are famous, and hold fish if there be any in the river. Most picturesque is the "Bridge" Pool just in front of Loch Shiel Hotel; large, deep, and surrounded by crags planted with birch and pine, it delights the tourist as much as the angler, especially when large fish come to the surface and disport themselves. Stages are fitted up here and there on the river whence, just as at the head of Loch Awe, the gaudy salmon flies can the better be sent to their victims. The vicinity of the loch, and especially the riversides, are fraught with interests of all kinds to the visitor; rocks, trees, flowers, birds, and fish, all at the same time appealing to his sense of wonder and bestowing novel impressions upon him. A moment's reflection will show that it is this ability of presenting new notions and fresh objects of interest to the mind which largely constitutes the delight of a holiday in Scotland. Sights, sounds, customs, food, plants, fish, birds-all are novel, and make frequent demands upon every sense. Together with the crisp and bracing air, the floods of sunlight, the momentary changes of colour upon the hills, this sense of the novel and the unexpected acts as the best possible curative agent. Cares are flung to the winds; troubles which seemed all-important at home are suddenly discovered to be of very trifling import in the North. Such are some of the blessed effects of a stay in Scotland. The scenery of the upper river is more bare, yet its wide sandbanks, shallow waters, and pebble reaches possess a wild beauty of their own; one

which sinks into many hearts more than much pronounced loveliness of trees and crags and peeps of blue breadths of distant lochs. It reminds the idle dreamer of Lowell's keen perception of beauty in a similar landscape :

Dear marshes, vain to him the gift of sight

Who cannot in their various incomes share,
From every season drawn, of shade and light,
Who sees in them but levels brown and bare;
Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free
On them its largess of variety,

For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare.

Everyone can admire a Turner or a Ruysdael, but few and only poetic souls love a sandhill with a few bents and pink blossoms of thrift upon it, even though painted by a Wynants. The low tones and melancholy wastes of such scenery as appears on the Upper Shiel river are only relieved by a few whitewashed huts of crofters with sundry square yards of garden round them painfully recovered from the moor. The thoughts thus evoked, as the crofters stand round with lack-lustre eyes and aimless lives, harmonise with the dull outlines and grey tints in front of the sea of heather which sweeps up to the great mountains :—

All round, upon the river's slippery edge,

Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide,
Whispers and lears the breeze-entangling sedge;

Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide,

Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun,

And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run

Of dimpling lights, and with the current seem to glide.1

The great object in life of these crofters seems to be to drive cows out of their patches of oats. Sometimes it is their own cow, more frequently that of a neighbour, but the colley is at once incited to turn it out, and barks and shouting resound by the Shiel river from the earliest peep of summer dawn to the last faint pulse of expiring light. This is the absorbing summer occupation of all the women and children. Driven out of the oats, the cows merely march into the loch and there sybaritically enjoy the grateful coolness where their tormentors cannot reach them. There is a general sense of indolence in the air. No one does anything during the summer months. Odysseus must have sailed here during his wanderings and found his lotus-eaters by the Shiel. The women never take the trouble to put on bonnets, the old ones wear white caps. While regretting that they thus miss a topic which takes up

An Indian Summer Reverie.