Ben Cruachan, if not the monarch of Scottish mountains, is, at all events, one of the princes of the blood. He is privileged to wear a snow-wreath in presence of the sun at his midsummer levee, and like a prince he wears it on the rough breast of him. Ben Cruachan is seen from afar: is difficult to climb, and slopes slowly down to the sea level, his base being twenty miles in girth, it is said. From Ben Cruachan and Kilchurn, Loch Awe, bedropt with wooded islands, stretches Obanwards, presenting in its course every variety of scenery. Now the loch spreads like a sea, now it shrinks to a rapid river--now the banks are wooded like the Trosachs, now they are bare as the "Screes" at Wastwater; and consider as you walk along what freaks light and shade are playing every moment--how shadows, hundred-armed, creep along the mountain-side--how the wet rock sparkles like a diamond, and then goes out--how the sunbeam slides along a belt of pines--and how, a slave to the sun, the lake quivers in light around her islands when he is unobscured, and wears his sable colours when a cloud is on his face. On your way to Oban there are many places worth seeing: Loch Etive, with its immemorial pines, beloved by Professor Wilson; Bunawe, Taynult, Connel Ferry, with its sea view and salt-water cataract; and Dunstaffnage Castle, once a royal residence, and from which the stone was taken which is placed beneath the coronation chair at Westminster. And so, if the whole journey from Inverary is performed on foot, Luna will light the traveller into Oban. _OBAN._ [Sidenote: Oban.]