Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

LOCH SCAVIG. 473
pose, and, as the twilight thickened, the dark rocks
appeared to draw nearer, the mountain tops seemed to
approach, and when night at lengh closed in, we felt as
if moored in some tremendous cavern of an unknown
world, where the light of day was never to break again.
All night long I seemed to hear the fall of the cascade,
which, alone visible in the gloom, was streaming down
in white foam, high over our mast head ; the mountains
appeared as if falling into the vessel ; and when, after a
disturbed night, I went on deck, instead of finding the
usual open sea, I felt as if I could stretch out my hand and
touch the high precipices, which excluded all light but
the faint, grey, glimmer of morning as it descended from
above. I saw it once a far other scene. The basin was
filled with as many vessels as it could well hold, the
boats were busied in drawing their nets, fires were
lighted on the rocks, and to the bustle and activity of all
the busy groups, was added the screaming of ten thou-
sand sea birds which had been attracted by their prey.
The contrast thus formed to the deep gloom of that
which seemed never before to have been violated by
the presence of man, rendered, even more striking, the
solemnity of a place, amid the magnitude and tranquillity
of which, all this bustle seemed to be but as the turmoil
of an ant-hill or the buzzing of the evening gnats.
I had no reason to be disappointed with Loch Scavig,
It had amply fulfilled all the promises of rocks by which
I had been tempted ; and if the notion which I had
thought fit to form of its scenery was not accomplished,
I had the pleasure of enjoying my own creations and the
far different ones of Nature also. Here, as far as my in-
formation went, the affair was terminated ; and had I
pinned my faith on the feelings of Donald for the sublime
and beautiful, my expedition would have terminated also.
I was told of a cascade abounding in salmon ; and there