Chapter 2 - Page 2

chance with an unfavourable wind, and shapes his course so as to be
driven back as little as possible.

The mountains, as they would have been called in England,
_Scottice_ the steep _braes_, rose abruptly over the little
glen, here presenting the gray face of a rock, from which the turf had
been peeled by the torrents, and there displaying patches of wood and
copse, which had escaped the waste of the cattle and the sheep of the
feuars, and which, feathering naturally up the beds of empty torrents,
or occupying the concave recesses of the bank, gave at once beauty and
variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill,
in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly in
autumn, contrasting beautifully with the thickets of oak and birch,
the mountain ashes and thorns, the alders and quivering aspens, which
checquered and varied the descent, and not less with the dark-green
and velvet turf, which composed the level part of the narrow glen.

Yet, though thus embellished, the scene could neither be strictly
termed sublime nor beautiful, and scarcely even picturesque or
striking. But its extreme solitude pressed on the heart; the traveller
felt that uncertainty whither he was going, or in what so wild a path
was to terminate, which, at times, strikes more on the imagination
than the grand features of a show-scene, when you know the exact
distance of the inn where your dinner is bespoke, and at the moment
preparing. These are ideas, however, of a far later age; for at the
time we treat of, the picturesque, the beautiful, the sublime, and all
their intermediate shades, were ideas absolutely unknown to the
inhabitants and occasional visitors of Glendearg.

These had, however, attached to the scene feelings fitting the time.
Its name, signifying the Red Valley, seems to have been derived, not
only from the purple colour of the heath, with which the upper part of
the rising banks was profusely clothed, but also from the dark red
colour of the rocks, and of the precipitous earthen banks, which in
that country are called _scaurs_. Another glen, about the head of
Ettrick, has acquired the same name from similar circumstances; and
there are probably more in Scotland to which it has been given.

As our Glendearg did not abound in mortal visitants, superstition,
that it might not be absolutely destitute of inhabitants, had peopled
its recesses with beings belonging to another world. The savage and
capricious Brown Man of the Moors, a being which seems the genuine
descendant of the northern dwarfs, was supposed to be seen there
frequently, especially after the autumnal equinox, when the fogs were
thick, and objects not easily distinguished. The Scottish fairies,
too, a