Sitting on a huge boulder, at the edge of the mountain, just where the hill began to slope down into the valley, we commanded a view of one of the most unrivalled landscapes in the world. To our left rose up the mountain, bold, rugged and barren, like the back of some vast monster reared against the sky—but on the right nothing interposed to destroy the view: whose loveliness so far exceeded even my expectations, that for some minutes I gazed on the scene in mute admiration. Beneath me stretched the valley, diversified with gently sloping elevations, and sprinkled with fields of waving golden grain; while here and there a patch of woodland, with its dark green hue, lay slumbering on the landscape—the surface of the forest ever and anon varying to a lighter tint as the wind swept over the tree-tops. Right through the centre of the valley meandered the river, now rolling betwixt bluff banks, and now stealing gently among the rich meadow lands in the distance, until at length it turned to the left, and, skirting the foot of the far off hills, was lost behind the profile of the mountain before us. In the centre of the vale was the village, with its white houses and airy church steeple, smiling over the scene. Far away on the horizon stretched a line of hills, their dark blue summits, half hid by the clouds, which wrapped them as in a veil of gauze. No sound came up from the valley. Occasionally the twitter of a bird would be heard from the surrounding trees—while the low tinkle of a tiny waterfall on our left kept monotonously sounding in our ears. The morning rays of a summer’s sun poured down upon the landscape, and every thing around was bright, and gay, and beautiful. I was still lost in admiration at the loveliness of the scene, when the old man signified his readiness to commence his tale.