A noble vision of mountains is to be obtained from the road above Cladich. Dalmally is a very paradise of a Highland inn,--quiet, sequestered, begirt with the majesty and the silence of mountains,--a place where a world-weary man may soothe back into healthful motion jarred pulse and brain; a delicious nest for a happy pair to waste the honeymoon in. Dalmally stands on the shores of Loch Awe, and in the immediate vicinity of Kilchurn Castle and Ben Cruachan. The castle is picturesque enough to please the eye of the landscape-painter, and large enough to impress the visitor with a sense of baronial grandeur. And it is ancient enough, and fortunate enough too--for to that age does not always attain--to have legends growing upon its walls like the golden lichens or the darksome ivies. The vast shell of a building looks strangely impressive standing there, mirrored in summer waters, with the great mountain looking down on it. It was built, it is said, by a lady in the Crusade times, when her lord was battling with the infidel. The most prosaic man gazing on a ruin becomes a poet for the time being. You incontinently sit down, and think how, in the old pile, life went on for generations--how children were born and grew up there--how brides were brought home there, the bridal blushes yet on their cheeks--how old men died there, and had by filial fingers their eyes closed, as blinds are drawn down on the windows of an empty house, and the withered hands crossed decently upon the breasts that will heave no more with any passion. The yule fires, and the feast fires that blazed on the old hearths have gone out now. The arrow of the foeman seeks no longer the window slit. To day and night, to winter and summer, Kilchurn stands empty as a skull; yet with no harshness about it; possessed rather of a composed and decent beauty--reminding you of a good man's grave, with the number of his ripe years, and the catalogue of his virtues chiselled on the stone above him: telling of work faithfully done, and of the rest that follows, for which all the weary pine. [Sidenote: Loch Awe.]