Frank insisted upon seeing an eagle, and continually pointed to the precipices above, believing that he descried the king of birds. Miles did condescend to say that one of the objects to which Frank drew our attention was not so very unlike at a distance, but that the resemblance was lost as you approached the reality—a piece of rock not less than twenty feet high. At last we actually beheld a very large bird soaring towards us with considerable dignity. Frank was delighted; and when Miles uttered the dissyllable “raven,” I certainly thought he would have hit him. There are eagles in this neighbourhood beyond a doubt (though Frank surveyed it with an incredulous and sarcastic air); but they are not very likely to be much at home when bugles are playing and cannons roaring from morn to dewy eve.
Emerging from the Gap, we were “to save a mile, and see the best of the scenery,” and to effect this, we were taken over a country, which is, I dare say, a pleasant one for Mrs. Moriarty's goats, but to bipeds in boots (and one must be neat, you know, with so many pretty girls about), is by no means of an agreeable character. To derive consolation from the calamities of others is humiliating, but natural; “il y a toujours quelque chose,” says the French cynic, “qui nous ne déplait point dans les malheurs d'autrui;” and I found, I am ashamed to say, considerable refreshment in surveying the distress of a portly old gentleman, who, impinging a good deal on the craggiest parts, “larded the lean earth as he walked along,”
“and panted hard,
As one who feels a nightmare in his bed,
When all the house is mute.”
I saw from the knolls and undulations, which diversified the surface of his enormous shoes, that his Pilgrims Progress had a good deal to do with Bunyan's, although his adjurations were not of that pious kind, which would have issued from the lips of the “preaching tinker,” and the deities, to whom he referred in his affliction, were, principally, Zounds and Jingo.
But we soon found a truer solace in the view of Coom Dhuv, the Black Valley, and in listening to the roar of its mountain streams, which, rising and falling upon the breeze, sounded as though some monster train bore giants over the hills, at express speed, with Gog and Magog for Guard and Stoker!
Lo! the dark valley darkens, and its foaming waterfalls seem to whiten beneath the low black clouds; and we stay not to visit the Logan Stone, which a child may move, but nothing under an earthquake could dislodge; but hasten, by Lord Brandons Cottage, to the Upper Lake, where, a boat awaiting us, we embark for Roknaines Island.
