A district so extensive can be but faintly pictured in a general and rapid description. Mountains, chiefly covered with heath or ling, but occasionally, on the one hand, displaying sides and summits of naked rock, and on the other, exhibiting a dress of verdure, everywhere rise, at short intervals, in chains, ridges, groups, and even solitary heights. Their forms are of every variety, from the precipitous and pinnacled acclivity, to the broad-based and round-backed ascent; but, in general, are sharp in outline, and wild or savagely grand in feature. Both elongated ridges, and chains or series of short parallel ridges, have a prevailing direction from north-east to south-west, and send up summits from 1,000 to upwards of 4,000 feet above the level of the sea. Glens, valleys, and expanses of lowland stretch in all directions among the mountains, and abound in voluminous streams, and large elongated lakes of picturesque appearance,--nearly all the inland lakes extending in stripes either north-eastward and south-westward, or eastward and westward. Along the whole west coast, at remarkably brief intervals, arms of the sea, long, narrow, and sometimes exceedingly rugged in outline, run north-eastward or south-eastward into the interior, and assist the inland fresh water lakes in cleaving it into sections. The rivers of the region are chiefly impetuous torrents, careering for a while along mountain-gorges, and afterwards either expanding themselves into beautiful lakes and flowing athwart delightful meadows, or ploughing long narrow valleys, green and ornate with grasses, trefoils, daisies, ranunculi, and a profuse variety of other herbage and flowers. Native woods, principally of pine and birch, and occasionally clumps and expanses of plantation, climb the acclivities of the gentler heights, or crowd down upon the valley, and embosom the inland lakes. On the east side, along the coast to the Moray frith, and towards the frontier in the counties of Nairn, Elgin, and Perth, gentle slopes and broad belts of lowland, fertile in soil and favourable in position, are carpeted with agricultural luxuriance, and thickly dotted with human dwellings, and successfully vie with the south of Scotland in towns and population, and in the pursuit and display of wealth. But almost everywhere else, except in the fairyland of Loch Fyne, and the southern shore of Loch Etive, the Highlands are sequestered,--sinless of a town,--a semi-wilderness, where a square mile is a more convenient unit of measurement than an acre.