nity of some of these summits to Ben Muich Dhui has
something frightful in it. Standing on the western shoulder of the hill,
you imagine that you might throw a stone to the top of Brae Riach--we
have been so much deceived by distance as to have seriously made the
attempt, we shall not venture to say how many years ago. Yet, between
these two summits rolls the river Dee; and Brae Riach presents right
opposite to the hill on which we stand, a mural precipice, said to be
two thousand feet high--an estimate which no one who looks on it will be
inclined to doubt. Brae Riach, indeed, is unlike any thing else in
Scotland. It is not properly a hill, but a long wall of precipice,
extending several miles along the valley of the Dee. Even in the
sunniest weather it is black as midnight, but in a few inequalities on
its smooth surface, the snow lies perpetually. Seldom is the cleft
between the two great summits free of clouds, which flit hither and
thither, adding somewhat to the mysterious awfulness of the gulf, and
seeming in their motions to cause certain deep but faint murmurs, which
are in reality the mingled sounds of the many torrents which course
through the glens, far, far below.

Having had a satisfactory gaze at Brae Riach,--looking across the
street, as it were, to the interesting and mysterious house on the
opposite side,--the traveller may probably be reflecting on the best
method of descending. There is little hope, we may as well inform him,
of his return to Braemar to-night, unless he be a person of more than
ordinary pedestrian acquirements. For such a consummation, he may have
prepared himself according to his own peculiar ideas. If he be a
tea-totaller, he will have brought with him a large bottle of lemonade
and some oranges--we wish him much satisfaction in the consumption of
them, and hope they will keep his outer and inner man warm after the
dews of eve have descended. Perhaps his most prudent course (we consider
ourselves bound to give discreet advice, for perhaps we may have led
some heedless person into a scrape) will be to get down to Loch Avon,
and sleep under the Stone of Shelter. Proceeding along the table-land of
the hill, in a direction opposite to that by which he has ascended, the
traveller comes to a slight depression. If he descend, and then ascend
the bank towards the north-east, he will find himself on the top of a
precipice the foot of which is washed by the Loch. But this is a
dangerous wind