'Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human dwelling anywhere speck-like on the river-winding plain--or nest-like among the brushwood knolls--or rock-like among the fractured cliffs far up on the mountain region do our eyes behold, eager as they are to discover some symptom of life. Two houses we know to be in the solitude--ay, two--one of them near the head of the Loch, and the other near the head of the Glen--but both distant from this our Tent, which is pitched between, in the very heart of the Moor. We were mistaken in saying that Dalness is invisible--for yonder it looms in a sullen light, and before we have finished the sentence, may have again sunk into the moor. Ay, it is gone--for lights and shadows coming and going, we know not whence nor whither, here travel all day long--the sole tenants--very ghostlike--and seemingly in their shiftings imbued with a sort of dim uncertain life. How far off from our Tent may be the Loch? Miles--and silently as snow are seen to break the waves along the shore, while beyond them hangs an aerial haze, the great blue water. How far off from our Tent may be the mountains at the head of the Glen? Miles--for though that speck in the sky into which they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot hear its cry. What giants are these right opposite our Pyramid?--Co--grim chieftain--and his Tail. What an assemblage of thunder-riven cliffs! This is what may be well called--Nature on a grand scale. And then, how simple! We begin to feel ourselves--in spite of all we can do to support our dignity by our pride--a mighty small and insignificant personage. We are about six feet high--and everybody around us about four thousand. Yes, that is the Four Thousand Feet Club! We had no idea that in any situation we could be such dwindled dwarfs, such perfect pigmies. Our Tent is about as big as a fir-cone--and Christopher North an insect!
What a wild world of clouds all over that vast central wilderness of Northern Argyllshire lying between Cruachan and Melnatorran--Corryfinuarach and Ben Slarive, a prodigious land! defying description, and in memory resembling not realities, but like fragments of tremendous dreams. Is it a sterile region? Very. In places nothing but stones. Not a blade of grass--not a bent of heather--not even moss. And so they go shouldering up into the sky--enormous masses--huger than churches or ships. And sometimes not unlike such and other structures--all huddled together--yet never jostling, so far as we have seen; and though often overhanging, as if the wind might blow them over with a puff, steadfast in the storm that seems rather to be an earthquake, and moving not an hair's-breadth, while all the shingly sides of the mountains--you know shingle--with an inconstant clatter--hurry-skurry--seem to be breaking up into debris.