AND ITS CASTLE.

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lake and mountain. The town is small, but neat and well-built, though it exhibits little evidence of business or prosperity. It belongs to the Duke of Argyle, and is languishing much, it is said, under the effect of nonresidence, the princely proprietor having been an absentee from his castle adjoining it, for more than six years. The wood of the park and pleasure grounds, which embrace a circuit of thirty miles, though all a plantation, is disposed in such taste, and has attained such a growth, as to appear perfectly the work of nature.

The castle has long been celebrated among the most magnificent residences of Scotland. It is a stately embattled quadrangle of blue granite, two stories in height, ornamented with circular towers at the corners, and surmounted by an immense square pavilion, rising from the centre. I was disappointed in the exterior, and think it as a whole, incongruous in its architecture, and in decidedly bad taste, though a design by Adam. The arrangement of the interior is good, however; and there is an air of domestic comfort as well as elegance in the size, furniture, and general aspect of the apartments which we have seldom observed in the palaces. of the princes of the empire. The principal drawing-room is ornamented and furnished with a chasteness and delicacy of taste, combined with elegance and splendour which I have scarce seen equalled. The walls are covered with Gobelin tapestry of the most exquisite colouring and workmanship, in groups of figures, surrounded by embellishments of drapery, and flowers, in the most vivid hues of nature. The

chairs and sofas are in keeping, and the painting and gilding of the doors and windows in a corresponding style. Another principal ornament of the room is a mantel of Italian marble and sculpture, consisting of two beautiful female figures as supporters, sustaining a vase between them.

A romantic hill, called Dunaquaich, from which there is an extensive and magnificent view, rises abruptly above the castle on the east, to a height of seven hundred feet, much in the manner in which "the Mount Vision," of Cooper's Pioneers, on the Lake of Otsego, towers over the residence of our friends, the Bowers' family, of the Lakelands. Indeed the whole loch, as seen from many points in which the town and castle are not embraced, is so strikingly like the Otsego, though on a much larger and wider scale, that I have in two or three instances been made to burst into involuntary exclamations of pleasure and surprise, and more than once have felt myself transported by it to the home of my boyhood, and the scene of many of the happiest days of my riper years. This was so strikingly the fact at one point which I came to, in a walk round Dunaquaich, that I took a sketch of the mountains and water from it, which, with the addition of the glittering cupolas and handsome dwellings of Cooper's Town in the distance, on one side, and the white colonnades and chimneys of the Lakelands, amid their groves of pine and maple, on the other, would be thought even by an inhabitant of the valley, a drawing from some spot near THE SOURCES OF THE SUSQUE

HANNA."

CHANGE OF PLAN.

161

LETTER LII.

LOCH AWE, AND THE VALE of GLENORCHY.

Leave Inverary-Mountain torrents, and cascade in the ArayWalk from Cladich to Dalmally—A Highland laddie—Moral and intellectual traits of the people-Beauty of Loch Awe, and historic interest of its islands-Highland cottages-Their rudeness, and want of cleanliness-Vale of Glenorchy, and its prominent objects of beauty-Mr, Copley Green, and Mr. Warren, of Boston-Scenery between Glenorchy and Taynuilt-Kilchurn Castle-Ben Cruachan-Pass of Bunderawe-Battle in 1308 between Bruce and the Mac Dougals of Lorn-Sabbath at Glenorchy-Appearance of the congregation-Difference in the general characteristics of the peasantry of England and Scot, land.

DEAR VIRGINIA,

Glenorchy, Argyllshire.
August 20th, 1832.

DURING midsummer, a steamboat leaves the town of Oban, on the sea coast, thirty-two miles from Inverary, twice every week for an excursion round the Isle of Mull, and its celebrated neighbours, Staffa and lona. It was our intention originally to be at Oban in time for the boat of the 18th inst., and avail ourselves of this opportunity of a visit to " Fingal's Cave," the famed retreat of science in the dark ages-and to the ancient tomb of the kings of the north.

Circumstances, however, occurred to alter our determination; and disappointed in this trip to the

162

CASCADE OF THE ARAY.

Islands, I felt desirous of compensating myself in some degree, by a circuit of Loch Awe, including a peep at Glenorchy. Not being able to procure any vehicle for this route at Inverary, 1 determined to perform it on foot, after taking the coach on the road to Oban, for some nine or ten miles-Captain Bolton continuing directly to that place, to wait my arrival there.

The principal interest of the drive to Loch Awe, -at a ferry across which, near Cladich, 1 left my friend-arose, after leaving the beautiful park and grounds of Inverary Castle, from a heavy rain of the preceding night, which had filled the river Aray and all the mountain torrents with floods. The roarings of these, in their impetuous currents, were heard on either hand echoing loudly among the wild hills and glens around, while every few moments sections of them burst upon the eye, in seeming streams of silver, as they were foaming down the sides of the hills, or plunged deeply over some rocky ledge, to beds of foam below. A few miles from Inverary, there is a cascade in the Aray, which in such a state of its waters, I left the coach, for a few moments, to view. It is some twenty-five, or thirty feet in height, and not dissimilar, in its general aspect, to one of the smaller leaps of the Trenton Falls, in the State of New York.

Loch Awe is one of the most beautiful of the lakes of Scotland; especially in the scenery at its north end, above the ferry. It is long and narrow, being near thirty miles in length, and scarce more in breadth at any point, than two or two and a half

miles. On alighting from the coach, I engaged a "laddie" of twelve or thirteen, as a companion more than a guide, for the walk to this place: and a delightful walk it proved to be.

The lake opposite to my route, is studded with several islets, some of them mere rocks tufted with bushes, others presenting a smooth turf, and others again, ornamented with fine luxuriant groves. Several possess no little historic interest, though the largest is scarce half a mile in circumference. Upon Innis Hail, the ruins of a convent may be distinguished, and on Innis Chonnel stands a crumbling and ivy crowned tower, of what was once a magnificent castle of the family of Argyll, in the earliest ages of their feudal glory. Another is pointed out as the scene of an incident in one of the poems of Ossian. The day was beautiful in its lights and shades; and as I stopped time after time, to gaze, and to admire the lake and its islands, and the mountains grouped around, and from one or two points made a hasty sketch, the eyes of my little companion sparkled with pleasure, as he exclaimed with strong idiomatic accent-"A bonnie loch is this, and these are bonnie isles."

I discovered him to be an intelligent and well principled lad, and in answer to various questions, learned that the inhabitants, rude and miserable as are their cabins, and cold and naked their country, are familiar with the common branches of knowledge,―all read, and write, and understand something of arithmetic; all possess and read the bible, go to the kirk on the sabbath, have sabbath schools, and