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terises and surrounds the mountain of Loch-na-gar. The early impressions shadowed forth inhis “ hours of idleness,” congenial with his genius, and illustrative of his enthusiastic admirationof the grandest features of nature, burst forth in the course of his more matured and morepopular works, and he never forgot the days, when in these wilds “ his young footsteps ininfancy wandered.” In a note to his poem of “ The Island,” he records his admiration ofmountain scenery, and attributes the delight he experienced in after life, when gazing on theAlps or the Appenine , far less to them, or to classic remembrances, than to those heartfeltassociations which were connected with his boyhood and Loch-na-gar.
Grand as this mountain is, fearful as are its precipices, tempest-torn as are the ravinesand crevices on its summit, dark and solemn as lies the tarn at its base, it is not to be com-pared in wildness and terrific grandeur to the scene where Loch Avon fills the chasm whichappears created by a convulsion of nature, that has torn asunder the mountains of Ben-Macdhu,Cairngorum, and Ben-na-Main. The enthusiast in wild mountain scenery will do well to visitthis unequalled scene ; he will there see nature in its grandest form, and a wilderness that itappears the foot of man was never destined to tread. An amphitheatre of gigantic precipiceencloses the western extremity of Loch-Avon, and from the shoulder of Ben-Macdhu, thehighest of the surrounding masses of mountain, descends in torrents the water which formsthe lake, rushing down a precipice of immense height, a dark and dreary mass, in which theline is only broken by the cataracts descending in one uninterrupted stream of silvery foamuntil they dash into the loch. To the south-west the rocks assume a still bolder form, andthe stupendous cliff which overhangs the shelter stone and from which it has fallen, standsisolated and distinct from the masses which surround it. Between it and the next boldfragment of Ben-Mac-dhu, descends a mountain torrent of great impetuosity, which in astate of flood sweeps all before it, excavating its banks, from whence roll down blocks ofloosened granite, adding to the accumulation of rocks already piled upon each other, andwhich have separated, and thundered down from the gigantic precipice to which they havebeen originally attached. One of these is called the shelter stone, an immense block ofred granite which having fallen upon some others, has formed a cave in which travellersfrequently take refuge. At a short distance from this wild habitation, the loch stretches tothe eastward, occasionally disappearing behind the projections of rock terminating the pre-cipices either of Cairngorum or Ben-na-Main. Nothing can be clearer or more beautifulthan the waters of this mountain loch, which are of great depth. If any person wishesreally to know what the sublimity of nature is, let him pass a night during a storm at LochAvon; when the rush of waters, the crashing of loosened masses of granite, added to thereverberation of the wind as its sound thunders amongst the surrounding rocks and preci-pices, form a combination surpassing in grandeur, and awful effect, anything that imaginationcan conceive.
During the first visit of the Queen to Balmoral , in the autumn of 1848, her Majesty,and Prince Albert , ascended the mountain of Loch-na-gar; and the Monarch of the greatestEmpire of the world stood on the summit of the Grampians .