From the position of the glen itself, a little within which it stood, it enjoyed only a very limited portion of the sun's cheering beams.

As the glen was deep and precipitous, so was the morning light excluded from it by the northeastern hills, as was that of evening by those which rose between it and the west.

Indeed, it would be difficult to find a spot marked by a character of such utter solitude and gloom.

Naturally barren, it bore not a single shrub on which a bird could sit or a beast browse, and little, of course, was to be seen in it but the bare gigantic projections of rock which shot out of its steep sides in wild and uncouth shapes, or the grey, rugged expanses of which it was principally composed.

Indeed, we feel it difficult to say whether the gloom of winter or the summer's heat fell upon it with an air of lonelier desolation.