CONTENTS. THE DREAM ITS CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE - BEN DHUI-THE START-GLEN NEVIS AND BEN MUICH GUIDE-BOOKS. THE CAIRNGORM MOUNTAINS. I had a dream that was not all a dream." 'T befell me once, on a ramble otherwise fruitful of the pleasantest recollections, to have been afflicted with an oppressive dream, which, entirely eluding the reminiscences of several years, some of which had brought their own enjoyments, fixed itself down on a dreary period of school discipline, and recalled its most oppressive features all too vividly. There was nothing in the scenes and adventures of the day before, nor in those that might be expected to come with the morrow, to A call up weary or oppressive visions. I had walked up between the limestone walls of the valley of Lauterbrunnen, and had seen the Jungfrau spread forth her vast robe of snow before the sun, as if in haughty defiance of his power. I had examined as closely as one who does not want a sousing could the great Staubbach, or Fall of Dust, called the highest cataract in Europe; but perhaps it should be called the largest shower-bath, since, as the traveller usually sees it, it is all dispersed into a heavy rain before it reaches the green meadows of Lauterbrunnen. After this, I had gone up the Wengern Alp as the night was falling, had watched the darkening, and had seen that, while the top of the Staubbach glittered in the setting sun, it passed downwards from pink to purple, deepening as it went, so that the ribbon of water lost itself in blackness, while the snows of the mountain, after bathing themselves in rosy light, sank also into darkness as the night walked upwards. Next day was for the Grindelwald glacier, the great cataract of the Reichenbach, and the long rocky stair that descends into many-fountained Meyringen. Surely there was nothing in all this to call up the dreariest recollections of bygone days; yet so it was, that although all previous |