will understand how really pleasant and enjoyable, coeteris paribus,
must have been our upland wanderings on that delightful day.
We have no intention of entering on anything like a minute
or photographic description of Glen Nevis, for which, indeed,
half-a-dozen Nether Lochaber columns would hardly suffice; we can
only hurriedly glance at what most instantly and indelibly struck
us in the day's excursion. First of all, we were all struck by the
exceeding pellucidity and crystal clearness of the waters of the
Nevis. Nowhere else did we ever see a mountain stream so beautifully
transparent. Standing on the brink of any selected pool, many feet
in depth, you distinguished the smallest pea-sized pebble, its veins,
scratches, and striations, as distinctly as if you had it on the palm
of your hand, under a lens, and within less than a foot focus of
your eyeball! And all this remarkable pellucidity, observe, not in
one particular pool, or in any one particular stretch of the river,
but throughout all its beautiful windings. Another remarkable feature
of the glen is the manner in which its natural birch woods grow. They
occupy a pretty broad belt almost half-way up the mountains, leaving a
still broader belt between themselves and the river banks comparatively
bare and treeless. In all the other Highland glens with which we
have any acquaintance, whatever of wood there is always begins,
as seems most natural, at the river banks, where it is thickest and
most luxuriant, growing away and upwards on either side to a greater
or less altitude, according to the nature of the soil and the shelter
to be had from the prevailing winds. And speaking of winds, this is
the place to observe that of all our glens Glen Nevis is perhaps the
stormiest, the wind in a gale not blowing steadily, but in fitful
gusts and whirlwind-wise, striking in from the corries right and
left, and meeting in the centre with a force and fury unimaginable by
non-residenters. How do you know, the reader may ask, for it was calm
and quiet enough during your visit on Friday? True, and yet we failed
not to notice a very striking proof of the storminess at times of Glen
Nevis notwithstanding. As you pass the forester's house at Auchreoch,
lift up your eyes, and please observe how carefully, how thoroughly,
closely, compactly, and painstakingly it is thatched; and observe
further and over all a network of wire as thick and strong as that
used in our overland telegraphy, and to the end of each wire as it
almost reaches the ground in front and at the back of the house,
please notice suspended a large stone, water-worn boulders from the
river below, each of a hundredweight or more, and you will not fail,
we think, to understand how we so confidently decided that Glen Nevis
at times must be an exceedingly stormy place. If you assert that
other Highland glens may be quite as stormy in the season of storms,
we shall not contradict you; what we do say is this, that never did a
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