Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

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A HIGHLAND PARISH.
for daybreak. Then began the fun and frolic!—
“ sky-larking,” as the sailors call it, among the
rocks—pelting one another, amid shouts of laugh¬
ter, with clods and wrack, or any harmless substance
which could be collected for the battle, until they
were wearied, and lay down to sleep in a sheltered
nook, and all was silent but the beating wave, the
“ eerie” cries of birds, and the splash of some sea-
monster in pursuit of its prey. What glorious
reminiscences have I, too, of those scenes, and
especially of early morn, as watched from those
green islands! It seems to me as if I had never
beheld a true sunrise since; yet how many have
I witnessed! I left the sleeping crews, and
ascended the top of the rock, immediately before
daybreak, and what a sight it was, to behold the
golden crowns which the sun placed on the brows
of the mountain-monarchs who first did him hom¬
age ; what heavenly dawnings of light on peak
and scaur, contrasted with the darkness of the y.
lower valleys ; what gems of glory in the eastern
sky, changing the cold, gray clouds of early morn¬
ing into bars of gold and radiant gems of beauty;
and what a flood of light suddenly burst upon the
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