We proceeded to the Dargle along the small river whose waters were flowing gently towards us after having passed through the beautiful scenes we were to visit. It was here a tranquil stream, and its banks but thinly clothed; but at the opening of the Dargle-gate, the scene was instantly changed. At once we were immersed in a sylvan wilderness, where the trees were thronging and crowding around us; and the river had suddenly changed its tone, and was sounding wildly up the wooded bank that sloped down to its edge. We precipitated ourselves towards the sound,--and when we stopped and looked around us, the mountains, the champaign, and almost the sky had disappeared. We were at the bottom of a deep winding glen, whose steep sides had suddenly shut out every appearance of the world that we had left. At our feet a stream was struggling with the multitude of rude rocks, which Nature, in one of her primeval convulsions, had flung here and there in masses into its current; sometimes uniting into irregular ledges, over which the water swept with impetuosity;--sometimes standing insulated in the stream, and increasing the energies of the river by their resistance;--sometimes breaking forward from the bank, and giving a bolder effect to its romantic outline. The opposite side of the glen, that rose steeply and almost perpendicularly from the very brink of the river, was one precipice of foliage from top to bottom, where the trees rose directly above each other (their roots and backs being in a great degree concealed by the profusion of leaves in those below them,) and a broken sunbeam now and then struggled through the boughs, and sometimes contrived to reach the river.