August 30th.  We set out with four horses.  We had two highlanders to run by us, who were active, officious, civil, and hardy.  Our journey was, for many miles, along a military way, made upon the banks of Lough Ness, a water about eighteen miles long, but not, I think, half a mile broad.  Our horses were not bad, and the way was very pleasant; the rock, out of which the road was cut, was covered with birch-trees, fern, and heath.  The lake below was beating its bank by a gentle wind, and the rocks beyond the water, on the right, stood sometimes horrid, and wild, and sometimes opened into a kind of bay, in which there was a spot of cultivated ground, yellow with corn.  In one part of the way we had trees on both sides, for, perhaps, half a mile.  Such a length of shade, perhaps Scotland cannot show in any other place.

You are not to suppose, that here are to be any more towns or inns.  We came to a cottage, which they call the General’s Hut, where we alighted to dine, and had eggs and bacon, and mutton, with wine, rum, and whiskey.  I had water.

At a bridge over the river, which runs into the Ness the rocks rise on three sides, with a direction almost perpendicular, to a great height; they are, in part, covered with trees, and exhibit a kind of dreadful magnificence:—­standing like the barriers of nature, placed to keep different orders of being in perpetual separation.  Near this bridge is the fall of Fiers, a famous cataract, of which, by clambering over the rocks, we obtained a view.  The water was low, and, therefore, we had only the pleasure of knowing that rain would make it, at once, pleasing and formidable; there will then be a mighty flood, foaming along a rocky channel, frequently obstructed by protuberances, and exasperated by reverberation, at last precipitated with a sudden descent, and lost in the depth of a gloomy chasm.

We came, somewhat late, to Fort Augustus, where the lieutenant-governour met us beyond the gates, and apologized that, at that hour, he could not, by the rules of a garrison, admit us, otherwise than at a narrow door, which only one can enter at a time.  We were well entertained and well lodged, and, next morning, after having viewed the fort, we pursued our journey.

Our way now lay over the mountains, which are not to be passed by climbing them directly, but by traversing; so that, as we went forward, we saw our baggage following us below, in a direction exactly contrary.  There is, in these ways, much labour, but little danger, and, perhaps, other places, of which very terrifick representations are made, are not, in themselves, more formidable.  These roads have all been made by hewing the rock away with pickaxes, or bursting it with gunpowder.  The stones, so separated, are often piled loose, as a wall by the wayside.  We saw an inscription, importing the year in which one of the regiments made two thousand yards of the road eastward.