LOCH LEVEN-ITS ISLANDCASTLE--STRATHS--PERTH--SALMON-BREEDING--
THOUGHTS ON FISH-FARMING--DUNKELD--BLAIR ATHOLL--DUCAL TREE-PLANTER-
-STRATHSPEY AND ITS SCENERY--THE ROADS--SCOTCH CATTLE AND SHEEP--
NIGHT IN A WAYSIDE COTTAGE--ARRIVAL AT INVERNESS.
On Friday, Sept. 11th, I left for the north the morning after my
arrival in Edinburgh, hoping to finish my long walk before the rainy
season commenced. My old friend and host accompanied me across the
Forth, by the Granton Ferry, and walked with me for some distance on
the other side; then bidding me God-speed, he returned to the city.
The weather was fine, and the farmers were very busy at work. A
vast quantity of grain, especially of oats, was cut and ready for
carting; but little of it had been ricked in consequence of frequent
showers. I noticed that they used a different snath for their
scythes here from that common in England. It is in two parts, like
the handles of a plough, joining a foot or two above the blade. One
is shorter than the other, each having a thole. It is a singular
contrivance, but seems to be preferred here to the old English pole.
I have never seen yet an American scythe-snath in England or
Scotland, although so much of our implemental machinery has been
introduced. American manure-forks and hay-forks, axes and augurs
you will now find exposed for sale in nearly every considerable
town, but one of our beautifully mounted scythes would be a great
novelty here.
The scenery varies, but retains the peculiarly Scotch features.
Hills which we should call mountains are frequently planted with
trees as far up as the soil will lie upon the precipitous sides. On
passing one of great height, bald at the top, but bearded to the
eyebrows with fir and larch, I asked an elderly man, a blacksmith,
standing in his shop-door, if they were a natural growth. He said
that he and his two boys planted them all about forty-eight years
ago. They were now worth, on an average, twelve English shillings,
or about three dollars a-piece.
I lodged in Kinross, a pleasant-faced, quiet and comfortable little
town, done up with historical associations of special interest.
Here is Loch Leven, serene and placid, like a mirror framed with
wooded hills, looking at their faces in it. It is a beautiful sheet
of water, taking the history out of it. But putting that in and
around it, you see a picture before you that you will remember.
Here is more of Mary the Unfortunate. You see reflected in the
silver sheen of the lake that face which looks at you with its soft
appeal for sympathy in all the galleries of Christendom. Out there,
on that little islet, green and low, stands the black castle in
which they prisoned her. There they made her trembling, indignant
fingers write herself "a queen without a crown." Southward there,
where amateurs now fish for trout, young Douglas rowed her ashore
with muffled oars so softly that they stirred no ripple at the bow.
The keys of the castle they threw into the lake to bar pursuit, lay
in the mud for nearly three centuries, when they were found by a lad
of the village, and presented to the Earl of Morton, a
representative of the Douglas family.
The next day I walked on to Perth, passing through a very
interesting section, which nature and history have enriched with
landscapes and manscapes manifold. It is truly a romantic region
for both these qualities, with delightful views in sudden and
frequent alternation. Glens deep, winding and dark, with steep
mountain walls folding their tree-hands over the road; lofty hills
in full Scotch uniform, in tartan heather and yellow grain plaided
in various figures; chippering streams, now hidden, now coming to
the light, in white flashing foam in a rocky glade of the dell;
straths or savannas, like great prairie gardens, threaded by
meandering rivers and studded with wheat in sheaves, shocks and
ricks, seen over long reaches of unreapt harvests; villages,
hamlets, white cottages nestling in the niches and green gorges of
the mountains,--and all these sceneries set in romantic histories
dating back to the Danes and their doings in Scotland, make up a
prevista for the eye and a revista for the mind that keep both in
exhilarating occupation every rod of the distance from Kinross to
Perth.
The road via Glenfarg would be a luxury of the first enjoyment to
any tourist with an eye to the wild, romantic and picturesque.
Debouching from this long, winding, tree-arched dell, you come out
upon Strathearn, or the bottom-land of the river Earn, which joins
the Tay a few miles below. The term strath is peculiarly a Scottish
designation which many American readers may not have fully
comprehended, although it is so blended with the history and romance
of this country. It is not a valley proper, as we use that term; as
the Valley of the Mississippi or the Valley of the Connecticut. If
the word were admissible, it might be called most descriptively the
land-bay of a river, at a certain distance between its source and
mouth, such for instance as the German Flats on the Mohawk, or the
Oxbow on the Connecticut, at Wethersfield, in Vermont, or the great
onion-growing flat on the same river at Wethersfield in Connecticut.
These straths are numerous in Scotland, and constitute the great
productive centres of the mountain sections. They are generally
cultivated to the highest perfection of agricultural science and
economy and are devoted mostly to grain. As they are always walled
in by bald-headed mountains and lofty hills, cropped as high as man
and horse can climb with a plough and planted with firs and larches
beyond, they show beautifully to the eye, and constitute, with these
surroundings, the peculiar charm of Scotch scenery. The term is
always prefixed to the name of the river, as Strathearn, Strathspey,
etc.
I noticed on this day's walk the same singular habit that struck me
in the north part of Yorkshire; that is, of cutting inward upon the
standing grain. Several persons, frequently women and boys, follow
the mowers, and pick up the swath and bind it into sheaves, using no
rake at all in the process. So pertinaciously they seem to adhere
to this remarkable and awkward custom, that I saw two mowers walk
down a hill, a distance of full a hundred rods, with their scythes
under their arms, in order to begin a new swath in the same way;
four or five men and women running after them full tilt to bind the
grain as it fell! Here was a loss of at least five minutes each to
half a dozen hands, amounting to half an hour to a single man at the
end of each swath or work. Supposing the mowers made twenty in ten
hours from bottom to top of the field, here is the loss of one whole
day for one man, or one sixth of the whole aggregate time applied to
the harvesting of the crop, given to the mere running down that hill
of six pairs of legs for no earthly purpose but to cut inward
instead of outward, as we do. The grain-ricks in Scotland are
nearly all round and quite small. Every one of them is rounded up
at the top and fitted with a Mandarin-looking hat of straw, which
sheds the rain well. A good-sized farm-house is flanked with quite
a village of these little round stacks, looking like a comfortable
colony of large, yellow tea-caddies in the distance.
Reached Perth a little after dark, having made a walk of nearly
twenty miles after 11 a.m. Here I remained over the Sabbath, and
greatly enjoyed both its rest and the devotional exercises in some
of the churches of the city.
The Fair City of Perth is truly most beautifully situated at the
head of navigation on the Tay, as Stirling is on the Forth. It has
no mountainous eminence in its midst, castle-crowned, like Stirling,
from which to look off upon such a scene as the latter commands.
But Nature has erected grand and lofty observatories near by in the
Moncrieffe and Kinnoull Hills, from which a splendid prospect is
unrolled to the eye. There is some historical or legendary
authority for the idea that the Romans contemplated this view from
Moncrieffe Hill; and, as the German army, returning homeward from
France, shouted with wild enthusiasm, at its first sight, Der Rhein!
Der Rhein! so these soldiers of the Caesars shouted at the view of
the Tay and the Corse of Gowrie, Ecce Tiber! Ecce Compus Martius!
There was more patriotism than parity in the comparison. The
Italian river is a Rhine in history, but a mere Goose Creek within
its actual banks compared with the Tay. In history, Perth has its
full share of "love and murder," rhyme and romance, sieges,
battering and burning, royals and rebels. In the practical life of
to-day, it is a progressive, thriving town, busy, intelligent,
respected and honorable. The two natural features which would
attract, perhaps, the most special attention of the traveller are
the two Inches, North and South, divided by the city. This is a
peculiar Scotch term which an untravelled American will hardly
understand. It has no relation to measurement of any kind; but
signifies what we should call a low, level green or common in or
adjoining a town. The Inches of Perth are, to my eye, the finest in
Scotland, each having about a mile and a half in circumference, and
making delightful and healthy playgrounds and promenades for the
whole population.
On Monday, Sept. 14th, I took staff and set out for another week-
stage of my walk, or from Perth to Inverness. Crossed the Tay and
proceeded northward up the east side of that fertile river. Fertile
may sound at first a singular qualification for a broad, rapid
stream running down out of the mountains and widening into a bay or
firth at its mouth. But it may be applied in the best sense of
production to the Tay; and not only that, but other terms known to
practical agriculture. Up to the present moment, no river in the
world has been cultivated with more science and success. None has
been sown so thickly with seed-vitalities or produced more valuable
crops of aquatic life. Here salmon are hatched by hand and folded
and herded with a shepherd's care. Here pisciculture, or, to use a
far better and more euphonious word, fish-farming, is carried to the
highest perfection in Great Britain. It is a tillage that must
hereafter take its place with agriculture as a great and honored
industry. If the cold, bald-headed mountains, the wild, stony
reaches of poverty-stricken regions, moor, morass, steppe and
prairie are made the pasturage of sheep innumerable, the thousands
of rivers in both hemispheres will not be suffered to run to waste
through another century. The utilitarian genius of the present age
will turn them into pasturage worth more per acre than the value of
the richest land on their banks. Just think of the pasturage of the
Tay. It rents for 14,000 pounds a year; and those who hire it must
make it produce at least 50,000 pounds, or $240,000 annually. Let
us assume that the whole length of this salmon-pasturage is fifty
miles, and its average width one-eighth of a mile. Then the whole
distance would contain the space of 4,000 square acres, and the
annual rent for fishing would amount to over 3 pounds 13s. per acre.
This would make every fish-bearing acre of the river worth 100
pounds, calculated on the land basis of interest or rent.
Having heard of the Stormontfields' Ponds for breeding salmon, I had
a great desire to see them. They are situated on the Tay, a few
miles above Perth, and are well worthy of the inspection and
admiration of the scientific as well as the utilitarian world. The
process is as simple as it is successful and valuable. A race or
canal, filled with a clear, mountain stream, and constructed many
years ago to supply motive power to a corn-mill, runs parallel with
the river, at the distance from it of about twenty rods. At right
angles with this stream, there are twenty-five wooden boxes side by
side, about fifty feet in length, placed on a slight decline. These
boxes or troughs, each about two feet wide and one foot deep, are
divided into partitions by cross-boards, which do not reach, within
a few inches, the top of the siding, so that the water shall make a
continuous surface the whole length of the trough. Each trough is
filled with round river stones or pebbles washed clean, on which the
spawn is laid. The water is let out of the mill-race upon these
troughs through a wire-cloth filter, covering them about two inches
deep above the stones. At the bottom, a lateral channel or race,
running at right angles to the troughs, conducts the waste water in
a rapid, bubbling stream down into the feeding-pond, which covers
the space of about one-fifth of an acre, close to the river, with
which it is connected by a narrow race gated also with a wire-cloth,
to prevent the little living mites from being carried off before
their time.
This may serve to give the reader some approximate idea of the
construction of the fish-fold. The next process is the stocking it
with the breeding ewes of the sea and river. The female salmon is
caught in the spawning season with a net, and the ova are expressed
from her by passing the hand gently down the body, when she is again
put into the river to go on her way. The manager told me that they
generally reckoned upon a thousand eggs to a pound of the salmon
caught. Thus fourteen good-sized fish would stock the twenty-five
troughs. When hatched, the little things run down into the race-
way, which carries them into the feeding-pond. Here they are fed
twice daily, with five pounds of beef's liver pulverised. They
remain in this water-yard from April to autumn, when the gate is
raised and they are let out into the river. And it is a very
singular and interesting fact that those only go which have got
their sea-coats on them, or have reached the "smolt" character. The
smaller fry remain in the pond until, as it has been said in higher
circles of society, their beards are grown, or, in their case, until
their scales are grown, to fit them for the rough and tumble of
salt-water life.
The growth of the little bull-headed mites, after being turned into
the river-pasture, is wonderful--more rapid than that of lambs of
the Southdown breed. The keeper had marked some of them, on letting
them out, by clipping the dorsal fin. On being caught six or eight
months afterward, they weighed from five to seven pounds against
half a pound each when sent forth to take care of themselves. The
proprietors of the fisheries defray the expense of this breeding
establishment, being taxed only twopence in the pound of their
rental. This, of course, they get back with large interest and
profit from the tenant-farmers of the river. As a proof of the
enhanced production of the Tay fisheries under this cultivation the
fact will suffice, that they now rent for 14,000 pounds a year
against 11,000 pounds under the old system.
Salmon-breeding is doubtless destined to rank with sheep-culture and
cattle-culture in the future. The remotest colonies of Great
Britain are moving in the matter with vigor and almost enthusiasm.
Vessels have been constructed on purpose to convey this fair and
mottled stock of British rivers to those of Australia and New
Zealand. In France, fish-farming has become a large and lucrative
occupation. I hope our own countrymen, who plume themselves on
going ahead in utilitarian enterprises, will show the world what
they can do in this. Surely our New England men, who claim to lead
in American industries and ingenuities, will not suffer half a
million acres of river-pasturage to run to waste for another half
century, when it would fold and feed millions of salmon. Once they
herded in the Connecticut in such multitudes that a special
stipulation was inserted in the indentures of apprentices in the
vicinity of the river, that they should not be obliged to eat salmon
more than a certain number of times in a week. Now, if a salmon is
caught between the mouth and source of the river, it is blazoned
forth in the newspapers as a very extraordinary and unnatural event.
There is no earthly reason why the Connecticut should not breed and
supply as great a number of these excellent and beautiful fish as
the Tay. Its waters are equally pure and quiet as those of the
Scotch river. Every acre of the Connecticut, from the northernmost
bridge that spans it in Vermont to its debouchment at Saybrook,
might be made productive of as great a value as any onion-garden
acre at Wethersfield.
The salmon-shepherd at Stormontfields, having fully explained the
labors and duties of his charge, rowed me across the Tay, and I
continued my walk highly gratified in having seen one of the new
industries which this age is adding to the different cultures
provided for the sustentation and comfort of human life. The whole
way to Dunkeld was full of interest, nature and history making every
mile a scene to delight the eye and exhilarate the mind. The first
considerable village I passed through was Stanley, which gives the
name to that old family of British peers known in history by the
battle-cry of a badly-pressed sovereign, "On, Stanley, on!"
Murthley Castle, the seat of Sir William Stewart, and the beautiful
grounds which front and surround it, will excite the admiration of
the traveller and pay him well for a moment's pause to peruse its
illuminated pages opened to his view. The baronet is regarded as an
eccentric man, perhaps chiefly because he has built a splendid Roman
Catholic chapel quite near to his mansion and supports a priest of
that order mostly for his own spiritual good. Near Dunkeld, Birnam
Hill lifts its round, dark, bushy head to the height of over 1,500
feet, grand and grim, as if it wore the bonnet of Macbeth and hid
his dagger beneath its tartan cloak of firs. "Birnam Wood," which
Shakespeare's genius has made one of the immortals among earthly
localities, was the setting of that hill in his day, and perhaps
centuries before it. Crossing the Tay by a magnificent bridge, you
are in the famous old city and capital of ancient Caledonia,
Dunkeld. Here centre some of the richest rivulets of Scotch
history, ecclesiastical and military, of church and state, cowl and
crown. Walled in here, on the upper waters of the Tay, by dark and
heavily-wooded mountains, it was just the place for the earliest
monks to select as the site of one of their cloistered communities.
The two best saints ever produced by these islands, St. Columba and
St. Cuthbert, are said to have been connected with the religious
foundations of this little sequestered city. The old cathedral,
having been knocked about like other Roman Catholic edifices in the
sledge-hammer crusades of the Reformation, was _ruined_ very
picturesquely, as a tourist, with one of Murray's red-book guides in
his hand, would be likely to say. But the choir was rebuilt and
fitted up for worship by the late Duke of Atholl at the expense of
about 5,000 pounds.
Of this duke I must say a few words, for he has left the greenest
monument to his memory that a man ever planted over his grave. He
did something more and better than roofing the choir of a ruined
cathedral. He roofed a hundred hills and valleys with a larch-and-
fir work that will make them as glorious and beautiful as Lebanon
forever. One of the most illustrious and eloquent of the Iroquois
aristocracy was a chief called Corn-planter. This Duke of Atholl
should be named and known for evermore as the great Tree-planter of
Christendom. We have already dwelt upon the benefaction that such a
man leaves to coming generations. This Scotch nobleman virtually
founded a new order of knighthood far more useful and honorable than
the Order of the Garter. To talk of _garters_!--why, he not only
put the cold, ragged shivering hills of Scotland into garters, but
into stockings waist high, and doublets and bonnets and shoes of
beautifully green and thick fir-plaid. He planted 11,000 square
acres with the larch alone; and thousands of these acres stood up
edgewise against mountains and hills so steep that the planters must
have spaded the holes with ropes around their waists to keep them
from falling down the precipice. It is stated that he had twenty-
seven millions of the larch alone planted on his mountainous
estates, besides several millions of other trees. Now, it is
doubtful if the whole region thus dibbled with this tree-crop
yielded an average rental of one English shilling per acre as a
pasturage for sheep. On passing through miles and miles of this
magnificent wood-grain and taking an estimate of its value, I put it
at 10s., or $2 40c. per tree. Of the twenty-seven millions of
larches thus planted, ten must be worth that sum; making alone,
without counting the rest, 5,000,000 pounds, or $24,000,000. It is
quite probable that the larches, firs and other trees now covering
the Atholl estates, would sell for 10,000,000 pounds if brought to
the hammer. But he was not only the greatest arboriculturist in the
world, but the founder of tree-farming as a productive industry as
well as a decorative art. Already it has transformed the Highlands
of Scotland and trebled their value, as well as clothed them with a
new and beautiful scenery. What we call the Scotch larch was not
originally a native of that country. Close to the cathedral in
Dunkeld stand the two patriarchs of the family, first introduced
into Scotland from Switzerland in 1737.
Having remained the best part of two days in Dunkeld, I held on
northward, through heavily-shaded and winding glen and valley to
Blair Atholl. For the whole distance of twenty miles the country is
quite Alpine, wild and grand, with mountains larched or firred to
the utmost reach and tenure of soil for roots; deep, dark gorges
pouring down into the narrowing river their foamy, dashing streams;
mansions planted here and there on sloping lawns showing sunnily
through groves and parks; now a hamlet of cottages set in the side
of a lofty hill, now a larger village opening suddenly upon you at
the turning of the turnpike road. I reached Blair Atholl at about
dark, and lodged at the largest hotel I slept in between London and
John O'Groat's. It is virtually the tourist's inn; for this is the
centre of some of the most interesting and striking sceneries and
localities in Scotland. Glens, waterfalls, stream, torrent,
mountain and valley, with their romantic histories, make this a very
attractive region to thousands of summer travellers from England and
other countries. The railway from Perth to Inverness via Dunkeld
and Blair Atholl, has just opened up this secluded Scotch
Switzerland to multitudes who never would have seen it without the
help of the Iron Horse. A month previous, this point had been the
most distant in Scotland from steam-routes of transportation and
travel. Now southern sportsmen were hiring up "the shooting" for
many miles on both sides of the line, making the hills and glens
echo with their fusillades. Blair Castle, the duke's mansion, is a
very ordinary building in appearance, looking from the public road
like a large four-story factory painted white, with small, old-
fashioned windows. He himself was lying in a very painful and
precarious condition, with a cancer in the throat, from which it was
the general impression that he never would recover. The day
preceding, the Queen had visited him, while en route for Balmoral,
having gone sixty miles out of her way to comfort him with such an
expression of her sympathy.
The next day I reached the northern boundary of the Duke of Atholl's
estates, having walked for full forty miles continuously through it.
Passed over a very bleak, treeless, barren waste of mountain and
moorland, most of it too rocky or soilless for even heather. The
dashing, flashing, little Garry, which I had followed for a day or
two, thinned and narrowed down to a noisy brook as I ascended
towards its source. For a long distance the country was exceedingly
wild and desolate. Terrible must be the condition of a man
benighted therein, especially in winter. There were standing
beacons all along the road for miles, to indicate the track when it
was buried in drifting snow. These were painted posts, about six or
eight feet high, planted on the rocky, river side of the road, at a
few rods interval, to guide the traveller and keep him from dashing
over the concealed precipices. About the middle of the afternoon I
reached the summit of the two watersheds, where a horse's hoof might
so dam a balancing stream as to send it southward into the Tay or
northward into the Moray Firth. Soon a rivulet welled out in the
latter direction with a decided current. It was the Spey. A few
miles brought me suddenly into a little, glorious world of beauty.
The change of theatrical sceneries could hardly have produced a more
sudden and striking contrast than this presented to the wild, cold,
dark waste through which I had been travelling for a day. It was
Strathspey; and I doubt if there is another view in Scotland, of the
same dimensions, to equal it. It was indescribably grand and
beautiful, if you could blend the meaning of these two commonly-
coupled adjectives into one qualification, as you can blend two
colors on the easel. To get the full enjoyment of the scene at one
draught, you should enter it first from the south, after having
travelled for twenty miles without seeing a sheaf of wheat or patch
of vegetation tilled by the hand of man. I know nothing in America
to compare it with or to help the American reader to an approximate
idea of it. Imagine a land-lake, apparently shut in completely by a
circular wall of mountains of every stature, the tallest looking
over the shoulders of the lower hills, like grand giants standing in
steel helmets and green doublets and gilded corselets, to see the
soft and quiet beauty of the valley sleeping under their watch and
ward. As the sun-bursts from the strath-skies above darted out of
their shifting cloud-walls and flashed a flush of light upon the
solemn brows of these majestic apostles of nature one by one, they
stood haloed, like the favored saints in Scripture in the overflow
of the Transfiguration. It was just the kind of day to make the
scene glorious indescribably. The clouds and sky were in the
happiest disposition for the brilliant plays and pictures of light
and shade, and dissolving views of fascinating splendor succeeded
and surpassed each other at a minute's interval. Now, the great
land-lake, on whose bosom floated in the sunlight a thousand islands
oat-and-barley-gilded, and rimmed with the green and purple verdure
of the turnip and rutabaga, was all set a-glow by a luminous flood
from the opening clouds above. The next moment they closed this
disparted seam in their drapery, and opened a side one upon the
still, grave faces of the surrounding mountains; and, for a few
minutes, the smile went round from one to the other, and the great
centurions of the hills looked happy and almost human in the gleam.
Then shade's turn came in the play, and it played its part as
perfectly as light. It put in the touch of the old Italian masters,
giving an everchanging background to all the sublime pictures of the
panorama.
I was not alone in the enjoyment of this scenery. For the first
time in this Walk I had a companion for a day. A clergyman from
near Edinburgh joined me at Kingussie, with whom I shared the luxury
of one of the most splendid views to be found in Scotland. Indeed,
few minds are so constituted as to prefer to see such natural
pictures alone. After a day's walk among these sceneries, we came
to the small village of Aviemore in the dusk of the evening. Here
we found that the only inn had been closed and turned into a private
residence, and that it was doubtful if a bed could be had for love
or money in the place. The railway through it to Inverness had just
been opened, and the navvies seemed still to constitute the largest
portion of the population. Neither of us had eaten any dinner, and
we were hungry as well as tired. Seeing a little, low cottage near
the railroad, with the sign of something for the public good over
the door, we went to it, and found that it had two rooms, one a kind
of rough, stone-floored shed, the other an apartment full ten feet
square, with two beds in it, which occupied half the entire space.
But, small as it was, the good man and woman made the most of it in
the way of entertainment, getting up a tea occasionally for persons
stopping over in the village at a meal-time, also selling small
articles of grocery to the laborers. Everything was brought from a
distance, even their bread, bacon and butter. Their stock of these
fundamentals was exhausted, so that they could not give us anything
with our tea until the arrival of the train from the north, which we
all watched with common interest. In the course of half an hour it
came, and soon our cabin-landlord brought in a large basket full of
the simplest necessaries of life, which we were quite prepared to
enjoy as its best luxuries. Soon a wood fire blazed for us in the
double-bedded parlor, and the unpainted deal table was spread in the
fire-light with a repast we relished with a pleasant appreciation.
My companion was bound northward by the next train in that
direction, and was sure to find good quarters for the night; but as
there was not an inn for ten miles on the route I was to travel, and
as it was now quite night and the road mostly houseless and lonely,
I felt some anxiety about my own lodging. But on inquiry I was very
glad to find that one of the two beds in the room was unoccupied and
at my disposal. So, having accompanied my fellow-traveller to the
station and seen him off with mutual good wishes, I returned to the
cottage, and the mistress replenished the fire with a new supply of
chips and faggots, and I had two or three hours of rare enjoyment,
enhanced by some interesting books I found on a shelf by the window.
And this is a fact worthy of note and full of good meaning. You
will seldom find a cottage in Scotland, however poor and small,
without a shelf of books in it. I retired rather earlier than
usual; but before I fell asleep, the two regular lodgers, who
occupied the other bed, came in softly, and spoke in a suppressed
tone, as if reluctant to awaken me. And here I was much impressed
with another fact affiliated with the one I have mentioned--that of
praying as well as reading in the Scotch cottage. After a little
conversation just above a whisper, the elder of the two--and he not
twenty, while the other was apparently only sixteen--first read,
with full Scotch accent, one of the hard-rhymed psalms used in the
Scotch service. Then, after a short pause, he read with a low,
solemn voice a chapter in the Bible. A few minutes of silence
succeeded, as if a wordless prayer was going upward upon the still
wings of thought, which made no audible beating in their flight. It
was very impressive; an incident that I shall ever hold among the
most interesting of all I met with on my walk. They were not
brothers evidently, but most likely strangers thrown together on the
railroad. They doubtless came from different directions, but, from
Highlands or Lowlands, they came from Bible-lighted homes, whose
"voices of the night" were blended with the breathings of religious
life and instruction. Separated from such homes, they had agreed to
make this one after the same spiritual pattern, barring the parental
presence and teaching.
The next day after breakfast, took leave of my kind cottage hosts,
exchanging good wishes for mutual happiness. Went out of the
amphitheatre of Strathspey by a gateway into another, surrounded by
mountains less lofty and entirely covered with heather. For several
miles beyond Carr Bridge I passed over the wildest moorland. The
road was marked by posts about ten feet high, painted white within
two feet of the top and black above. These are planted about
fifteen rods apart, to guide the traveller in the drifting and
blinding snows of winter. The road over this cold, desolate waste
exceeded anything I ever saw in America, even in the most
fashionable suburbs of New York and Boston. It was as smooth and
hard as a cement floor. Here on this treeless wild, I met several
men at work trimming the edges of the road by a line, with as much
precision and care as if they were laying out an aisle in a flower
garden. After a walk of about seventeen miles, I reached Freeburn
Inn about the middle of the afternoon, and as it began to rain and
to threaten bad weather for walking, I concluded to stop there for
the night, and found good quarters.
The rain continued in showers, and I feared I should be unable to
reach Inverness to spend the Sabbath. There was a cattle fair at
the inn, and a considerable number of farmers and dealers came
together notwithstanding the weather. Indeed, there were nearly as
many men and boys as animals on the ground. A score or more had
come in, each leading or driving a single cow or calf. The cattle
generally were evidently of the Gaelic origin and antecedents--
little, chubby, scraggy creatures, of all colors, but mostly black,
with wide-branching horns longer than their fore-legs. Their hair
is long and as coarse as a polar seal's, and they look as if they
knew no more of housing against snow, rain and wintry winds, or of a
littered bed, than the buffaloes beyond the upper waters of the
Missouri. One would be inclined to think they had lived from calf-
hood on nothing but heather or gorse, and that the prickly fodder
had penetrated through their hides and covered them with a growth
midway between hair and bristles. They will not average over 350
lbs. when dressed; still they seem to hold their own among other
breeds which have attracted so much attention. This is probably
because they can browse out a living where the Durham and Devon
would starve.
The sheep in this region are chiefly the old Scotch breed, with
curling horns and crocked faces and legs, such as are represented in
old pictures. The black seems to be spattered upon them, and looks
as if the heather would rub it off. The wool is long and coarse,
giving them a goat-like appearance. They seem to predominate over
any other breed in this part of Scotland, yet not necessarily nor
advantageously. A large sheep farmer from England was staying at
the inn, with whom I had much conversation on the subject. He said
the Cheviots were equally adapted to the Highlands, and thought they
would ultimately supplant the black faces. Although he lived in
Northumberland, full two hundred miles to the south, he had rented a
large sheep-walk, or mountain farm, in the Western Highlands, and
had come to this section to buy or hire another tract. He kept
about 4,000 sheep, and intended to introduce the Cheviots upon these
Scotch holdings, as their bodies were much heavier and their wool
worth nearly double that of the old black-faced breed. Sheep are
the principal source of wealth in the whole of the North and West of
Scotland. I was told that sometimes a flock of 20,000 is owned by
one man. The lands on which they are pastured will not rent above
one or two English shillings per acre; and a flock even of 1,000
requires a vast range, as may be indicated by the reply of a Scotch
farmer to an English one, on being asked by the latter, "How many
sheep do you allow to the acre?" "Ah, mon," was the answer, "that's
nae the way we count in the Highlands; it's how monie acres to the
sheep."
At about two p.m., the showers becoming less frequent, I set out
with the hope of reaching Inverness before night. The wind was
high, the road muddy, or _dirty_, as the English call that
condition; and the rain frequently compelled me to seek shelter in
some wayside cottage, or under the fir-trees that were planted in
groves at narrow intervals. The walking was heavy and slow in face
of the frequent showers, and a strong gale from the north-east; so
that I was exceedingly glad to reach an inn within four miles of
Inverness, where I promised myself comfortable lodgings for the
night. It was a rather large, but comfortless-looking house,
evidently concentrating all its entertainment for travellers in the
tap-room. After considerable hesitation, the landlady consented to
give me bed and board; and directed "the lassie" to make a fire for
me in a large and very respectable room on the second floor. I soon
began to feel quite at home by its side. My boots had leaked on the
way and my feet were very wet and cold; and it was with a pleasant
sense of comfort that I changed stockings, and warmed myself at the
ruddy grate, while the storm seemed to increase without. After
waiting about an hour for tea, I heard the lassie's heavy footstep
on the stairs; a knock--the door opens--now for the tray and the
steaming tea-pot, and happy vision of bread, oatcake and Scotch
_scones_! Alas! what a falling-off was there from this delicious
expectation! The lassie had brought a severe and peremptory message
from the master, who had just returned home. And she delivered it
commiseratingly but decidedly. She was to tell me from him that
there was nothing in the house to set before me; that the fair the
day before had eaten out the whole stock of his provisions; in
short, that I was to take my staff and walk on to Inverness. It was
in vain that I remonstrated, pleaded and urged wet feet, the
darkness, the wind and rain. "It is so," said the lassie, "and
can't be otherwise." She tried to encourage me to the journey by
shortening the distance by half its actual miles, saying it was only
two, when it was full four, and they of the longest kind. So I went
out into the night in my wet clothes, and put the best face and foot
to the head-wind and rain that I could bring to bear against them.
Both were strong, beating and drenching; and it was so dark that I
could hardly see the road. In the course of half an hour, I made
the lassie's two miles, and in another, the whole of the actual
distance, and found comfortable quarters in one of the temperance
inns of Inverness, reaching it between nine and ten at night. Here
I spent a quiet Sabbath, which I greatly enjoyed.