coast, M'Ian sat high in the bow smoking, and covering with his gun every now and again some bird which came wheeling near, while the boatmen joked, and sang snatches of many-chorused songs. As the coast behind became gradually indistinct, the coast in front grew bolder and bolder. You let your hand over the side of the boat and play listlessly with the water. You are lapped in a dream of other days. Your heart is chanting ancient verses and sagas. The northern sea wind that filled the sails of the Vikings, and lifted their locks of tarnished gold, is playing in your hair. And when the keel grates on the pebbles at Kilmaree you are brought back to your proper century and self--for by that sign you know that your voyage is over for the present, and that the way to Coruisk is across the steep hill in front. [Sidenote: Camasunary.] The boat was moored to a rude pier of stones, very similar to the one from which we started a couple of hours before, the guns were taken out, so was also the basket of provisions, and then the party, in long-drawn straggling procession, began to ascend the hill. The ascent is steep and laborious. At times you wade through heather as high as your knee; at other times you find yourself in a bog, and must jump perforce from solid turf to turf. Progress is necessarily slow; and the sun coming out strongly makes the brows ache with intolerable heat. The hill-top is reached at last, and you behold a magnificent sight. Beneath, a blue Loch flows in, on the margin of which stands the solitary farm-house of Camasunary. Out on the smooth sea sleep the islands of Rum and Canna--Rum towered and mountainous, Canna flat and fertile. On the opposite side of the Loch, and beyond the solitary farm-house, a great hill breaks down into ocean with shelf and precipice. On the right Blaavin towers up into the mists of the morning, and at his base opens the desolate Glen Sligachan, to which Glencoe is Arcady. On the left, the eye travels along the whole south-west side of the island to the Sound of Sleat, to the hills of Knoydart, to the long point of Ardnamurchan, dim on the horizon. In the presence of all this we sink down in heather or on boulder, and wipe our heated foreheads; in the presence of all this M'Ian hands round the flask, which is received with the liveliest gratitude. In a quarter of an hour we begin the descent, and in another quarter of an hour we are in the valley, and approaching the solitary farm-house. While about three hundred yards from the door a man issued therefrom and came towards us. It would have been difficult to divine from dress and appearance what order of man this was. He was evidently not a farmer, he was as evidently not a sportsman. His countenance was grave, his eye was bright, but you could make little out of either; about him there was altogether a listless and a weary look. He seemed to me to have held too constant