Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/313

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PART OF SCOTLAND.
295

mountain, in the hollows of which, as I have before mentioned, poor Charles Stuart concealed himself. On the west side of the lake, opposite to this mountain, is a patch of verdure by a little burn's side, backed by the mountains of Lochaber, and the stony crags of Ben Aulder forest, hanging over the western side of Loch Ericht. On this green plat stands a solitary sheelin (or shepherds hut), in which lives a shepherd, whose employer, at stated times, conveys meal and other provisions to him, by means of the lake; but he and his family never quit this sequestered spot, except to preserve and follow the sheep entrusted to their care. The wind rose too high to permit me to land, otherwise I should have been pleased to have seen such aborigines. The boatmen assured me, there was not a more healthy, or more bony family in the Highland sthan this shepherd's; and what is extraordinary, they can neither speak nor understand Galic; a strong proof of their solitude, and that they have no communication with their neighbours in Rannoch. I think there cannot, in nature, be a more forlorn or desolate place than that about Loch Ericht; but I am glad I saw it; and as I returned from it, and came down towards Rannoch, that