Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

POETRY OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 257
from the deck of a crowded steamer or the top of a stage
coach, rapid views of mountains, moors, and sea-lochs,
which may for a moment please the eye and refresh
the spirits. But it is not thus that the mountain soH-
tudes render up their secret, and melt into the heart.
A momentary glance at the pine woods of Rothie-
murchus, and the granite cliffs of the Cairngorm,
snatched from a flying railway-train is better than
Cheapside ; that is all. Even those more fortunate
ones who can pass a month at a shooting lodge in some
Highland glen, or by some blue sea-loch, are for the
most part so absorbed in grouse-killing or deer-stalking,
that they have seldom eye or ear for anything beside.
Those only have a chance of knowing what the real
Highlands are, who go with hearts at leisure to see and
to feel, and who ' go all alone the while ' : some adven-
turous wanderer, who has had the gentle hardihood to
leave the crowded tourist-paths, with their steamers and
hotels, and setting his face, unattended, to the wilder-
ness, has been content to shelter for nights together be-
neath some huge boulder-stone, or in a cave, or under the
roof of crofter, keeper, or shepherd ; or some deer-stalker
who has lain for hours in the balloch or hill-pass, waiting
till the antlered stag came by; or the grouse-shooter,
who, when wearied with a whole day's walking, has sat
down towards evening on some western hill-side, and
watched the sun going down to the Atlantic Isles. At
such seasons the traveller and the sportsman, while his
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