These distinctions are admirably expressed, and perfectly true to nature; yet we doubt if it would be possible to preserve them in describing a country, and assuredly they are very often indeed confused by common use in the naming of places. We have said nothing about straths--nor shall we try to describe one--but suggest to your own imagination as specimens, Strath-Spey, Strath-Tay, Strath-Earn. The dominion claimed by each of those rivers, within the mountain ranges that environ their courses, is a strath; and three noble straths they are, from source to sea. And now we are brought to speak of the Highland rivers, streams, and torrents; but we shall let them rush or flow, murmur or thunder, in your own ears, for you cannot fail to imagine what the waters must be in a land of such glens, and such mountains. The chief rivers possess all the attributes essential to greatness--width--depth--clearness--rapidity--in one word, power. And some of them have long courses--rising in the central heights, and winding round many a huge projection, against which in flood we have seen them dashing like the sea. Highland droughts are not of long duration; the supplies are seldom withheld at once by all the tributaries; and one wild night among the mountains converts a calm into a commotion--the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood they are terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems a place of torment. Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there is something to our ears more appalling in that of the fall of waters. Let them be united--and add thunder from the clouds--and we have heard in the Highlands all three in one--and the auditor need not care that he has never stood by Niagara. But when “though not o’er-flowing full,” a Highland river is in perfection; far better do we love to see and hear him rejoicing than raging; his attributes appear more his own in calm and majestic manifestations, and as he glides or rolls on, without any disturbance, we behold in him an image at once of power and peace. Of rivers--comparatively speaking, of the second and third order--the Highlands are full--and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyond compare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds of them--some tiny indeed, but others tall--are for ever dinning in the woods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is the sound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat’s voice; clear amidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain; and all other sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the hark of the eagle--rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as you thread the “glimmer or the gloom” of the umbrage overhanging the Garry or the Tummel--for he used to build in the cliffs of Ben-Brackie, and if he has shifted his eyrie, a few minutes’ waftage will bear him to Cairn-Gower.