-like a dark porch or portico, in the very face of
the rock, halfway up, he will descry the cave in question. He should now
cross the Glenwherry at the village, in its grassy gorge, and draw
nearer to the portico on the hillside beyond it, keeping a steady
look-out for the roots of oaks, for they are still to be discovered
there, as he ascends the cliff. Three of them in a row, about twenty
feet below the cave, but directly in front of it, although now
overwhelmed with ruins, still send up shoots; and two more, a little
farther up to the west of it, are equally conspicuous. He will find the
cave itself half-ruined already, by the continual fall of basaltic
masses from the mountain; and in attempting to scale the rock at the
door of the cave, he should be as circumspect as possible, lest a worst
thing than the breaking of a bone befals him. He need not, however, be
afraid of "strong-winged eagles," for they are gone; nor need he look
for "bounding roes" in the valley, for they are probably exterminated;
but he may still look westward on one of the sweetest and stillest vales
in the bounds of the Island; and when he remembers that he is now within
a few miles of Connor, which is the Temora of Ossian, he will have no
difficulty in understanding how Ferad-Artho was brought for shelter and
for safety to the cave just above him; or how easily the boy-king could
be discovered there by his friends in Fingal's camp to the south, who
knew exactly where to find him. Such explorations are but the one-half
of what may still be made from the text of Ossian, in this very region;
but these will occupy at least three days of a week in summer, and are
long enough for present detail in the columns of the _Celtic_. There are
other regions however, far beyond Ireland, not so accessible to ordinary
tourists, which may be examined nevertheless, with equal certainty by
geological survey and geographical report; and to these, on some future
occasion, we may take an opportunity of directing the reader's
attention.

In the meantime, by way of bringing our present argument to a point,
would the reader believe that Macpherson, by whose text alone hitherto
we have been guided, was himself more ignorant of these very scenes than
a school boy; that he never, in fact, saw them, and did not know where,
in Scotland or in Ireland, they were to be found? Yet such is the case.
Of the Clyde, of which he could not help knowing something, he knew
nevertheless