By the Rev. Mr William McKenzie, and the Rev. Mr Hugh Ross
Hills, Lakes, and Rivers:
A semicircular chain of mountains passes nearly through the middle of the parish, the principal of which are Knoc - Rheacadan, (The Watchman's Hill), Ben Laoghal *, and Ben Hope. Ben Laoghal is almost a perpendicular rock, deeply furrowed, and about half a mile high. As it declines towards the west, it is broken into several craggy points, on one of which are seen the remains of a building, called by the country people Caistal nan Druidhich, the druids castle. About 300 yards below Caistal Nan Druidhich, the eye is relieved by a wood of birch, which seems gradually to descend to a lake, one mile in length, that lies at the bottom of the mountain. The north side is covered with heath, and the east with very fine grass, which affords pasture to a number of cattle, horses, sheep and goats. On this side lies Loch Laoghal, a lake 4 miles long, and one broad. The River Torrisdale takes its rise from this lake, and discharges itself into the sea at Torrisdale, where the channel is about 20 yards wide, and the water 13 feet deep at spring tides.
Ben Hope is more than a mile high from the level of the sea, and, except at spots which are rocky, is wholly covered with heath. Its appearance, in a calm summer evening, when partly obscured by mist, is wonderfully grand, and infuses into the mind a sublime kind of melancholy. Ben Laoghal, and Ben Hope make a part of Lord Reay's forest, in which there are supposed to be about 2000 deer. From the foot of Ben Hope to Whiting head on the west, and as far as Tongue Bay on the east, the Moine, a long tract of hilly desert, covered with dark heath, and interspersed with greyish rocks, impassable bogs, and stagnant pools of brownish water, presents a prospect uniformly rugged and dreary. At tongue Bay, the prospect varies. An arm of the sea, skirted on each side with corn fields, inclosed pastures, and farm houses, stretches itself 5 miles into the land. On the west side is Melness, an excellent situation for a fishing village, or a woollen manufactory, either of which would be of vast advantage to this part of the country.
* Ben Laoghal is famed, in the songs of the bards, as the scene of the death of Dermid, a young man of such extraordinary beauty, that no female heart, of that age, could resist; and withal of such prowess, that even Fingal, whose wife he had seduced, would not himself attack him, but found means to get him slain by a boar. He and the lady, or the boar, (it is not determined which), lie buried at the foot of the mountain.
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