A district characterized by such features as we have named necessarily exhibits, within very circumscribed limits, varieties of scenery of the most opposite descriptions; enabling the admirer of nature to pass abruptly from dwelling on the loveliness of an extensive marine or champaign landscape into the deep solitude of an ancient forest, or the dark craggy fastnesses of an alpine ravine; or from lingering amid the quiet grassy meadows of a pastoral strath or valley, watered by its softly-flowing stream, to the open heathy mountain-side, whence ‘alps o’er alps arise,’ whose summits are often shrouded with mists and almost perennial snows, and their overhanging precipices furrowed by foaming cataracts. Lakes and long arms of the sea, either fringed with woods or surrounded with rocky barren shores, now studded with islands, and anon extending their silvery arms into distant receding mountains, are met in every district; while the extreme steepness, ruggedness, and sterility of many of the mountain-chains impart to them as imposing and magnificent characters as are to be seen in the much higher and more inaccessible elevations of Switzerland. No wonder, then, that this ‘land of mountain and of flood’ should have given birth to the song of the bard, and afforded material for the theme of the sage, in all ages; and that its inhabitants should be tinctured with deep romantic feelings, at once tender, melancholy, and wild; and that the recollection of their own picturesque native dwellings should haunt them to their latest hours. Neither, amid such profusion and diversity of all that is beautiful and sublime in nature, can the unqualified admiration of strangers, from every part of Europe, of the scenery of the Highlands fail of being easily accounted for; nor can any hesitate in recommending them to visit the more remote or unknown solitudes.[1]
Such are the main features of the Highlands of Scotland at the present day, and, to a considerable extent, the description might have applied to the country at the time of the Roman invasion. Still, in the graphic words of Stuart,[2] “To form an idea of the general aspect of Scotland, as it was some eighteen hundred years ago, we must, in imagination, restore to its now varied surface the almost unbroken gloom of the primeval forest; her waving mantle of sombre hue, within which the _genius loci_ may be supposed to have brooded over the seclusion and the poverty of ‘ancient Caledon.’ In a bird’s-eye view, if such a thought may be indulged, the greatest part of the country presented, in all probability, the appearance of one continuous wood; a mass of cheerless verdure resting on hill and dale--the sameness of its dark extent broken only where some lake or green-clad morass met the view, or where the higher mountains lifted their summits above the line of vegetation. In some districts, considerable tracks of open moorland might, doubtless, be seen clad in the indigenous heather of the North; while, in others, occasional spots of pasture-land would here and there appear;--but, on the whole, these must have formed a striking contrast to the wide expanse of the prevailing forest.”