For rarely human eye has known
A scene so stern as that dread lake
With its dark ledge of barren stone.
Seems that primeval earthquake's sway
Hath rent a strange and shatter'd way
Through the rude bosom of the hill,
And that each naked precipice,
Sable ravine, and dark abyss,
Tells of the outrage still.
The wildest glen but this can show
Some touch of Nature's genial glow;
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe,
And copse on Cruchan-Ben;
But here—above, around, below,
On mountain or in glen,
Nor tree nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power
The weary eye may ken.
For all is rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone,
As if were here denied
The summer's sun, the spring's sweet dew,
That clothe with many a varied hue
The bleakest mountain-side.
No wonder that the exiled monarch, Bruce, should say:
A scene so rude, so wild as this,
Yet so sublime in barrenness,
Ne'er did my wandering footsteps press
Where'er I happed to roam.
Returning to their vessel after an extraordinary walk, the party left Loch Scavig and, rounding its southern cape, sailed into the Loch of Sleapin, where they visited Macallister's Cave. Here they found a wonderful pool, which, 'surrounded by the most fanciful mouldings in a substance resembling white marble, and distinguished by the depth and purity of its waters, might be the bathing grotto of a Naiad.'
In the morning they sailed toward the south and
Merrily, merrily goes the bark
On a breeze from the northward free,
So shoots through the morning sky the lark,
Or the swan through the summer sea.
The shores of Mull on the eastward lay,
And Ulva dark and Colonsay,
And all the group of islets gay
That guard famed Staffa round.
They were following the same route, or nearly so, which the poet afterward laid down for Robert Bruce on his return from the Island of Skye to his native coast of Carrick.
They stopped at Staffa to view the famous basaltic formation,—
Where, as to shame the temples decked
By skill of earthly architect,
Nature herself, it seemed, would raise
A minster to her Maker's praise.
'The stupendous columnar side walls,' says the Diary; 'the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern is filled—the variety of tints formed by stalactites dropping and petrifying between the pillars and resembling a sort of chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble filling the interstices of the roof—the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over a red, and in some places a violet-coloured rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars—the dreadful noise of those august billows so well corresponding with the grandeur of the scene—are all circumstances unparalleled.'