it a huge circular basin, miles in diameter, over the rim of which
peered the tops and peaks of mountains more distant. Up the side of the
Horn, which was the loftiest in the ring, ran a stone wall, in the
language of the country a dry-stane-dyke, of considerable size,
climbing to the very top--an ugly thing which the eye could not avoid.
There was nothing but the grouse to have rendered it worth the
proprietor's while to erect such a boundary to his neighbour's
property, plentiful as were the stones ready for that poorest use of
stones--division.

The farms that border the hollow, running each a little way up the side
of the basin, are, some of them at least, as well cultivated as any in
Scotland, but Winter claims there the paramountcy, and yields to Summer
so few of his rights that the place must look forbidding, if not
repulsive, to such as do not live in it. To love it, I think one must
have been born there. In the summer, it is true, it has the character
of _bracing_, but can be such, I imagine, only to those who are pretty
well braced already; the delicate of certain sorts, I think it must
soon brace with the bands of death.

The region is in constant danger of famine. If the snow come but a
little earlier than usual, the crops lie green under it, and no store
of meal can be laid up in the cottages. Then, if the snow lie deep, the
difficulty in conveying supplies of the poor fare which their hardihood
counts sufficient, will cause the dwellers there no little suffering.
Of course they are but few. A white cottage may be seen here and there
on the southerly slopes of the basin, but hardly one in its bottom.

It was now summer, and in a month or two the landscape would look more
cheerful; the heather that covered the hills would no longer be dry and