The sides and bottom were clothed with
magnificent oaks. It was a grand sight, he said, to stand on the jutting
spurs of this great ravine, and look down upon the tops of the trees that
lay below, tossing their rounded heads like the waves of a big sea. There
were many lovely flowers, vetches of several kinds, blue, white, and
pencilled, twining among the grass. A beautiful white-belled flower, that
was like the "Morning glory," (_Convolvulus major,_) and scarlet-cups
[Footnote: _Erichroma,_ or painted cup] in abundance, with roses in
profusion. The bottom of this ravine was strewed in places with huge blocks
of black granite, cushioned with thick green moss; it opened out into a
wide flat, similar to the one at the mouth of the valley of the Big Stone.
[Footnote: The mouth of this ravine is now under the plough, and waving
fields of golden grain and verdant pastures have taken place of the wild
shrubs and flowers that formerly adorned it. The lot belongs to G. Ley,
Esq.]
These children were not insensible to the beauties of nature, and both
Hector and his sister had insensibly imbibed a love of the grand and the
picturesque, by listening with untiring interest to their father's
animated and enthusiastic descriptions of his Highland home, and the wild
mountainous scenery that surrounded it.
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