Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/271

From the Callader water, whose flood I before mentioned, as having torn away and overwhelmed the road with stones, to High Bridge, a distance of about seventeen miles, I counted at least a hundred mountain torrents, and above thirty of of them fine ones. These torrents require some sort of bridges to cross them, and art and constant labour, requisite to keep those bridges in passable repair; but it is impossible, without seeing such scenes, to understand or conceive their beauties from description. I was the whole way in constant exclamation;—here is another; oh, how fine! how beautiful! how dashing!—Hopping and rushing sometimes down mountains perpendicular to the road, so that I was continually obliged to draw up the glasses of the carriage to prevent the spouts coming upon us. Again, on the opposite side of the lakes, where the mountains are equally high and woody with those on our side, I saw white stripes of foaming torrents, as often as those I was close to: but all this happens only on a rainy day: as most of these falls suddenly flow with fume and violence, and as quickly subside, when it is fair; leaving nothing but a rough channel to shew where they