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By the assistance of roots of trees, weeds, moss and stones, we arrived at a rockey projection which was about sixty or seventy feet down. the precipice; where we remained a few minutes, in order to recruit our strength. Here, for the first time I caught a glimpse of the whole body of water, falling through a shapeless breach in a huge rock, above the eye, in one rude, unbroken, and impetuous flood into the depth below.

While standing in this curious spot, my guide directed my attention to the bold projection of a rock that appeared at a vast distance perpendicularly below our feet, from which, he informed me we could command a full view of the astonishing cataract, and that there was no possibility of proceeding lower down unless by the assistance of ropes.

With this information we again proceeded downwards, but our progress was rendered extremely tardy, on account of the stones (upon which we could alone depend for safe footing) frequently giving way: yet notwithstanding the imminency of my danger, I could not so wholly regard my personal safety as not to behold without a considerable degree of sublime pleasure, the fate of those fragments of rock, which were

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broken off by our adventurous feet. After rolling from side to side, and being tossed from rock to rock with headlong fury and increasing velocity, they were at length lost in the foaming surge below, whilst the dying cadences of the secret echoes their passage had awakened, mingled with the hollow dashings of the water, and in a few seconds were no longer heard.

Watching the fate of stone after stone, I thought what a terrible, yet sublime mode of death it would be, to be hurled down that deeply-yawning abyss, and suffer all the dreadful transitions, I beheld the inaniinate stones undergo.

My reflections were not uninteresting; and I stood for a while in their indulgence until my guide (who was now decended far below), bawled out, desiring me to follow him with all due care or I should certainly miss the proper road, and consequently suffer that very death which I had been contemplating in my imagination.

Obeying his instructions, I arrived in a few minutes at the intended station, and was instantly gratified by the view of a spectacle, of which I had not formed the least adequacy of idea. It is not possible for me to describe the sensations of For some mind, this grand scene inspired.

minutes I felt so amazed by the vast sublimity of all the surrounding objects, that my faculties appeared to have suspended their functions, and I stood gazing upon the scenery before me almost deprived of sensation.

"Smooth to the shelving brink, a copious flood
"Rolls fair and placid; were collected all,

"In one impetuous torrent, down the steep
"It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.
"At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad;
"Then whitening, by degrees, as prone it falls,
*And from the loud resounding rocks below
"Dash'd in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft
"A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shower;
"Nor can the torpid wave here find repose;
"But raging still amid the shaggy rocks,
"Now flashes o'er the scatter'd fragments, now
"Aslant the hollowed channel rapid darts;
"And falling fast from gradual slope to slope,
"With wild infracted course, and lessened roar,
"It gains a safer bed, and steals, at last,

**Along the mazes of the quiet vale."

I stood now exactly opposite to the torrent; nature seemed here to have opened wide her boundless womb, and exhibited a mighty proof of her gigantic powers, and unsearchable profundity. A vast pile of shapeless mountains appearing to support the heavens, and having a broad zone of silvery clouds, playing around them, en

closed this select spot and nearly precluded the light of day from visiting the black profundity of the abyss.

The base of these mountains, forming the bed of the river and sides of the vast cauldron into which the waters fell, exhibited a great variety of beautiful tints, and scattered clumps of young birch trees, whose autumnal foliage is peculiarly warm and variegated, and formed a fine and striking contrast to the gloomy wavings of the pines on the heights.

The rock, through whose narrow fissure the water rolls, is by admeasurement four hundred and seventy feet above the bottom of the cataract, and the fall itself, is about two hundred feet, bursting through an opening midway on its height.

This rock forms an immense cauldron, nearly circular, except the aperture through which the waters run after their descent, and this abyss is of an unknown depth no line being able to fathom it. Down this black gulph the waters were precipitated with a tremendous roar, that appeared to shake the rocks which frowned above, and the water, as if angry at being so horribly disturbed, foamed, and raged, and beat in furious

violence: The knotted trunks of large and ancient oaks were to be seen tossing about, and played with as toys and as baubles. By way of exciting a dread of going too near the edge of the precipice, upon whose brink we stood, my guide began a long narration of the death of an interesting young man, who had fallen a sacrifice to his ardent curiosity, when visiting that fall, several years ago.

He informed me that a young Englishman who was making the tour of Scotland alone, arrived one evening at his hut. The hour was late, and the light of day had faded away from the west, but the moon shone brightly, and all the sage advice of the host of the hut, was ineffectual in his endeavours to prevent the young traveller, who was an enthusiastic admirer of nature's romantic scenery, from visiting the falls, even at that late hour in the evening.

Some domestic occurrence having prevented the guide from attending him, the hapless youth sat out alone by moonlight, in order to ramble through the solitary recesses of those stupendous mountains which every whêre surround the great fall of Foyers and examine their awful features, through that subdued but interesting

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