Next morning, in the soft sky was the wild outline of the Cuchullins, with which we were again to make acquaintance. Somehow these hills never weary, you never become familiar with them, intimacy can no more stale them than it could the beauty of Cleopatra. From the hotel door I regarded them with as much interest as when, from the deck of the steamer off Ardnamurchan ten years ago, I first beheld them with their clouds on the horizon. While at breakfast in the public room, farmer and drover dropped in--the more fiery-throated drinking pale ale instead of tea. After breakfast we were again in the dog-cart driving leisurely toward Sligachan--the wonderful mountains beyond gradually losing tenderness of morning hue and growing worn and hoary, standing with sharper edges against the light, becoming rough with rocky knob and buttress, and grayly wrinkled with ravines. When we reached the inn we found it full of company, bells continually jangling, half a dozen machines at the door, and a party of gentlemen in knickerbockers starting with rods and fishing-baskets. Here we returned the dog-cart to the landlord, and began to address ourselves to the desolate glen stretching between the inn and Camasunary. [Sidenote: Glen Sligachan.] In Glen Sligachan, although you lose sight of the Cuchullins proper, you are surrounded by their outlying and far-radiating spurs. The glen is some eight miles in length, and is wild and desolate beyond conception. Walking along, too, the reticulations of the hills are picked out with that pale greenish tint, which I had noted as characteristic of the hills seen from Lord Macdonald's deer forest, and which gives one the idea of the overflow of chemical fluids, of metallic corrosions and discolorations. There is no proper path, and you walk in the loose debris of torrents; and in Glen Sligachan, as in many other parts of Skye, the scenery curiously repels you, and drives you in on yourself. You have a quickened sense of your own individuality. The enormous bulks, their gradual recedings to invisible crests, their utter movelessness, their austere silence, daunt you. You are conscious of their presence, and you hardly care to speak lest you be overheard. You can't laugh. You would not crack a joke for the world. Glen Sligachan would be the place to do a little bit of self-examination in. There you would have a sense of your own meannesses, selfishnesses, paltry evasions of truth and duty, and find out what a shabby fellow you at heart are--and looking up to your silent father-confessors, you would find no mercy in their grim faces. I do not know what effect mountains have on the people who live habitually amongst them, but the stranger they make serious and grave at heart. Through this glen we trudged silently enough, and when two-thirds of the distance had been accomplished, it was with a feeling of relief that a lake was descried ahead. The sight