We must now tell our pilgrim how he is to find his way by the more direct route from Loch Avon to Braemar, and we may at the same time afford a hint to the reader who desires to proceed towards the lake without crossing Ben Muich Dhui. Near where the stream of the Avon issues, it is necessary to turn to the right, and to keep rather ascending than descending. In a few miles the brow of the hill shuts us out from the wintry wild, and in a hollow are seen two small lakes called the Dhu Lochan, with nothing about them to attract notice but their dreariness and their blackness. The course of a burn which feeds them marks the way to the water-shier between the Spey and the Dee, whence a slight descent leads down to Glen Derrie, the position of which has been already described. We now propose another excursion--our last on the present occasion--to the sources of the Dee. We place our wanderer again at the Linn of Dee. As he proceeds up the stream, the banks become flatter, and the valleys wider and less interesting, until after some miles--we really cannot say how many--the river turns somewhat northwards, and the banks become more close and rocky. At this spot there is a fine waterfall, which, in the midst of a desert, has contrived to surround itself with a not unbecoming clump of trees. The waters are divided into two; the Geusachan burn joining the stream from the west. At last the conical peak of Cairn Toul appears over-topping all the surrounding heights; and then, a rent intervening, we approach and soon walk under the great mural precipice of Brae Riach, which we have already surveyed to so much advantage from the top of Ben Muich Dhui. We are here in the spot which to us, of all this group of scenery, appears to be the most remarkable, as being so unlike any other part of Scotland, or any place we have seen elsewhere. The narrowness of the glen and the height of its walled sides are felt in the constrained attitude in which we look up on either side to the top, as if we were surveying some object of interest in a tenth story window of our own High Street. This same narrowness imparts a sensation as if one could not breathe freely. If we compare this defile to another of the grandest mountain passes in Scotland--to Glencoe, we find a marked difference between them. The scene of the great tragedy, grand and impressive as it is, has no such narrow walled defiles. The mountains are high, but they are of the sugar-loaf shape--abrupt, but never one mass of precipice from top to bottom. Cairn Toul resembles these hills, though it is considerably more precipitous: but Brae Riach is as unlike them as a tower is distinct from a dome. In this narrow glen we could tell of sunsets and sunrises, not accompanied by such disagreeable associations as those we have recorded in Glen Avon. Picture the very hottest day of a hot year. The journey in the wide burning glen up from the Linn of Dee has been accomplished only with the