Coruisk, black as Acheron, running up two miles at the base of perpendicular precipices 600 feet in direct height.* We are looking into, through it, in all its dark translucent beauty-no reflected ray to mar its mystery; there are millions of globules, but, as far as vision goes, they lie asleep amid the gloom of this gulf of desolation. There is, seemingly, no life, aquatic or aerial: an osprey or white eagle soars round it instinctively, or, like the birds over the Dead Sea, it might drop into the dark water. And there is an elemental silence the rushing streams are mute to us, so high and distant are we poised: yet it seemed we might have leaped from our ledge into the cauldron at a bound.

There is a brighter gleam streaming down for a moment, and there come out Rum and Canna on the ocean-two purple gems lying in a bed of molten gold.

We descend to the base of Strona Stree or Stru-auStree, the Hill of Contention, the scene of Bruce's encounter with Cormac Dhoil; and there is a glittering stream 250 yards from the lake ere it falls from the rocks edged with the whitest sand and pebbles.

An otter dives across the stream, his mode of fishing for trout. We are now on the shore of Coruisk, and there are tiny green mounds with bunches of juniper peeping from the water like emeralds on a floor of ebony, and a green meadow at its northern end; and why a water kelpie does not rise and scare us from his

* Corr, waterpit; uisge, water; corc, cauldron-The water-kettle.

cauldron throne we know not. There is life in the lake; very gay mountain trout are leaping.

Coruisk is majestically beautiful in noontide light; but by oneself benighted in a storm at midnight in this desert! it is awful even to think of. The associations that would crowd into the mind, and the real elemental perils by which we might be encircled, would tend to induce a high-wrought enthusiasm akin to the sublime in one's mind; but a timid heart might arrest the circulation and end in fatal terror.

The tiny Loch Dhu lies snugly in its broad corrie at the base of Scaur-nan-Stree. Black-cocks are whirring on the wild moor as we ascend the ridge en route to Sligachan. The red granite of Trooba and Drunhain lies along from the summit in most noble blocks; for a practised cragsman they form a pavement easier for the ascent than the heather ground, but the foot must be firm and well planted-a slip may cost us dearly. Gigantic blocks of hypersthene are scattered in profusion along the corries, and some on the shore of Loch Coruisk. It is the most enduring rock, almost permanent, eternal; it suffers no disintegration in itself, for, when it is detached by the solution of the felspar that forms the very narrow sand shore of Coruisk, there lie the hypersthene blocks as they fell ages ago. And others we see resting on a ledge; they probably fell in deep snow, dragged down, as it were, with the snow in an avalanche. The snow is melted and leaves them eccentrically poised, or even moveable like the logans on a pivot. These, but more especially the down-fallen blocks under Garsven, certainly point to the glacial theory as illustrative of the geology of the Cuchullins.

And here the ponies are brought from Sligachan to meet those who are from Broadford and have dismissed their boat. As evening comes on or a storm is rising, it is a very serious dilemma to be disappointed the course of nine miles to the inn is rugged and difficult, and even the hardy pedestrian caught in such a dilemma would do well to grope his way to the farm of Camusanary, and even repose in a barn or a hovel. Our little guide not long ago left two fair dames to shiver in this corrie throughout the gloom of evening while he hurried to the inn to bring a promised but forgotten pony.

We believe this little Dhu was once called the "Lake of the Woody Glen." The corrie is now treeless, yet we are told black wood is found strewn among the mosses.

From the eastern ridge over the red corrie we look down on Loch na Creach, that lying at the base of a shoulder of Blaven, that comes down at once without a shore into the lake, its streamlet as black as ink running through white sand from the little Loch na Nain or Loch naan Annan-the Lake of the Ford.

It is clear that Scott drew his very fine picture from the two lakes Coruisk and Creach: to the last he first ascended by mistake. Much of the description answers better to Loch na Creach, that has no islet, no sand, and not a tuft or blade on the rocks that tower over it. It is, however, a compilation as splendid as any of the inspired touches of Turner.

But there is a far deeper stigma on the pen of so devoted an archæologist as Sir Walter than this poetic license. The translation or change of proper names is profanation even in a poem ; it is a wilful fraud in an annotation.