The house of my friend Mr M'Ian is set down on the shore of one of the great Lochs that intersect the island; and as it was built in smuggling times, its windows look straight down the Loch towards the open sea. Consequently at night, when lighted up, it served all the purposes of a lighthouse: and the candle in the porch window, I am told, has often been anxiously watched by the rough crew engaged in running a cargo of claret or brandy from Bordeaux. Right opposite, on the other side of the Loch, is the great rugged fringe of the Cuchullin hills; and lying on the dry summer grass you can see it, under the influence of light and shade, change almost as the expression of a human face changes. Behind the house the ground is rough and broken, every hollow filled, every knoll plumaged with birches, and between the leafy islands, during the day, rabbits scud continually, and in the evening they sit in the glades and wash their innocent faces. A mile or two back from the house a glen opens into soft green meadows, through which a stream flows; and on these meadows Mr M'Ian, when the weather permits, cuts and secures his hay. The stream is quiet enough usually, but after a heavy day's rain, or when a waterspout has burst up among the hills, it comes down with a vengeance, carrying everything before it. On such occasions its roar may be heard a mile away. [Sidenote: View from the bridge.] About a pistol-shot from the house the river is crossed by a plank bridge, and in fine weather it is a great pleasure to sit down there and look about one. The stream flows sluggishly over rocks, in the deep places of a purple or port-wine colour, and lo! behind you, through the arch, slips a sunbeam, and just beneath the eye there gleams a sudden chasm of brilliant amber. The sea is at ebb, and the shore is covered with stones and dark masses of sea-weed; and the rocks a hundred yards off--in their hollows they hold pools of clear sea-water in which you can find curious and delicately-coloured ocean blooms--are covered with orange lichens, which contrast charmingly with the masses of tawny dulse and the stone-littered shore on the one side, and the keen blue of the sea on the other. Beyond the blue of the sea the great hills rise, with a radiant vapour flowing over their crests. Immediately to the left a spur of high ground runs out to the sea edge,--the flat top smooth and green as a billiard table, the sheep feeding on it white as billiard balls,--and at the foot of this spur of rock a number of huts are collected. They are half lost in an azure veil of smoke, you smell the peculiar odour of peat reek, you see the nets lying out on the grass to dry, you hear the voices of children. Immediately above, and behind the huts and the spur of high ground, the hill falls back, the whole breast of it shaggy with birch-wood; and just at the top you see a clearing and a streak of white stony road, leading into some other region as solitary and