THE CALEDONIAN CANAL--SCOTTISH SPORTS
The long inland waterway, of which the “Caledonian Canal” is the main
portion, unites the waters of the German Ocean, at Moray Firth, with
those of the Atlantic, which wash the shores of the Island of Mull.
Considered as one highway, this trough, which forms also the eastern
boundary of “the Highlands,” was made in part by nature and in part
by art. In easy and safe passage, it saves the shipmasters about four
hundred miles of coasting voyage around the north of Great Britain,
through the stormy Pentland Firth which divides Caithness from the
Orkney Islands. The total length of the canal proper is about sixty
miles; the part made by man’s work covering twenty-two miles. A chain
of fresh-water lakes, four in number, on various levels, stretching
along the line of the great glen of Scotland, has been united by water
ladders, up which ships are lifted and by which time is saved.
The route of the canal was surveyed in 1773 by James Watt, the famous
engineer, better known in the annals of steam. Following an Act of
Parliament in 1803, the canal, constructed under the supervision
of Thomas Telford, was opened to navigation in 1822. There are
twenty-eight locks, each having the standard dimension of one hundred
and sixty feet length, so that steamers of comfortable length can go
through. It was on one of these, the Fusileer, that we travelled from
Oban to Inverness, on another we moved in reverse order, and great
were these days. One was sunny and warm. The other was so cloudy and
cold that a grate fire at the hotel at Fort William felt thoroughly
delightful.
On the second of these inland voyages we were on the steamer Gondolier.
From Oban we cross Loch Linnhe, which forms the southern end of the
great canal, and call at Ardgour. At the head of the loch we stop at
Fort William, formerly called “the Key of the Highlands.” It is now a
town consisting chiefly of a long, narrow street, full of hotels. The
fort was originally erected in 1655 by Cromwell’s General Monk and
called “Kilmallie.” Under the reign of King William, in 1690, General
Hugh McKay enlarged the work and named it after the Dutch king, the
town being called “Maryburgh,” in honor of the queen. It was to this
place that the perpetrators of the massacre at Glencoe came to divide
their spoil.
In 1715 and again in 1746, the followers of “Bonnie Prince Charlie,”
the Jacobites, besieged the place, but unsuccessfully. No remnants
of the fort, which was dismantled in 1860, now remain, for in 1890
the ruins were wholly removed to provide room for the iron rails and
railway station; for, since the hills come down close together, there
is not much level real-estate room. It illustrates the sadness of
things to find here great distilleries which are large enough to mar
the landscape.
The town produced a poet, and near the railway station is an obelisk
to the memory of Ewen MacLachlin, who wrote verses in Gaelic. Four
miles away is Ben Nevis, 4406 feet high, the loftiest mountain in the
British Islands. Later, at Inverness, I met a Scottish artist who had
painted the mountain from many points of view, but he seemed more
impressed with its ugliness and shaggy character than with its beauty.
In fact, in comparing the artistic work of this painter with that of
Mr. Robert Allan, who transfers to canvas the ideal loveliness of the
ocean,--both Scottish and both masterly,--we recalled that inimitable
passage of Ruskin, contrasting the form and functions of the mountains
and the sea, which furnishes so illuminating a commentary on the
passage written by an ancient admirer of nature and its Creator,--“Thy
righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great
deep.”
We noted, in our summer travels, not a few men of the easel. A mile and
a half from the town is the grand old ruin of Inverlochie, to which
many landscape painters resort. Other places of interest are the site
of the battlefield of 1645 and the castle of Lord Abinger, built in the
Scottish baronial style.
Yet at all these attractions we did not much more than glance,
despite the importunities of local guides, who sounded their praises
unremittingly. The reason for which we stopped for a day or two in this
mountain stronghold was not to study military fortification, or to see
the town, which, apart from its summer life, has little allurement for
the tourist who values time. We were there to see the Highland games,
for this day in August was the date set for “the gathering of the
clans” of the shire. They came not for battle as in the old times, but
for the Lochaber Highland games, such as the hammer-throwing, putting
the stone, pole-vaulting, leaping, and jumping; besides the various
Scottish dances, such as prancing and stepping over swords and the
Highland fling.
Heavy rain came down in the early part of the morning, and during the
whole day there was a drizzle, making the air heavy with dampness and
the ground meadows miry. We supposed of course that there would be no
exhibition.
Vain thought! What does a Highlander care about moisture? To him rain
is but an old friend, whom he would no more think of speaking against
than of reviling his mother. Indeed, it is his native element. So in
the afternoon, our lady, donning her mackintosh, which she had just
purchased at Oban, and I with umbrella and overcoat splashed over the
fields to the hillside and meadows, where thousands of people were
gathered together. There may have been other umbrellas in use, but
they were not conspicuous, and certainly not numerous. Some of the
athletic performances were admirable and the achievements of manly
strength were worthy of the applause which they so generously received.
Yet an alien, one not of the heather, cannot be rapturous in honest
praise of the dances, at least those which were prolonged to the full
and apparently appropriate time, and which the spectators seemed
greatly to enjoy. It was something, no doubt, to behold an able-bodied
man in a dress that quite equalled that of the peacock, jumping about
among the crossed lines of naked steel without getting his toes cut
off. There was undoubtedly some grace also in the way he curved his
arms above his head. Doubtless the very swish of his kilts and the
sight of his bare and hairy legs filled some bosoms with emotions of
envy, accompanied, as they were, with what seemed blood-curdling cries,
the relics of old savagery. Probably my education had been neglected,
for I should not wish to attend these exhibitions too frequently,
unless paid handsomely for the labor incurred.
Indeed, my feelings of appreciation were very much on the same par
with those experiences when, in Japan, we were expected to sit on
the mats with our lower limbs doubled up, or tied in a knot, during
hours of personal agony. These classic performances were manifestly
full of delight to the cultured admirers of pose and motion, in the
“No” dances, though insufferably tedious to those whose legs had
fallen asleep. Even in later times, when chairs were provided and the
accessories were suggestive of comfort, there was not enough in the
dancing of the “No” operatic performers or in the antics of the geisha,
to serve as magnets.
It was easy to explain, however, why and wherefore Scottish cheeks are
so suggestive of rose gardens, and also why consumption is so common.
The rain did indeed redden the complexions, but as to the number of
cases of pneumonia, or tuberculosis, which ensued after exposure
on this chilly day, we cannot inform our readers, not having the
statistics at hand. To this, however, we can testify, that when we got
back to Room No. 6, of the Waverley Hotel, we were the subjects of a
sort of telepathy that enabled us to feel profound sympathy with Peary
when in search of the North Pole. Never did a grate full of live coals
seem more welcome. We almost literally hung up ourselves, or at least
what had been our outward semblance, to dry. When properly desiccated,
we retired early, in order the more to enjoy the glorious island voyage
among the Highlands which we knew awaited us next morning.
It was genuine Scotch weather when we woke up and looked out upon a
landscape dominated by Ben Nevis, of whose towering form we could catch
glimpses now and then through the cloud rifts, while on the hills
around us lay patches and lines of snow. At times we were in that
“Scotch mist,” in which, as hostile critics declare, the metaphysicians
who live north of the Tweed do at times get lost. Just when it began or
left off raining might have puzzled a weather bureau man to tell. As
for ourselves, we could have taken oath as to our own inability if we
had been called upon in court. If a jury had been empanelled, then and
there, to determine whether it was or was not raining, the verdict in
either case would undoubtedly have been, as became the country, “Not
proven.”
Nevertheless, after we had crossed the gangway of the boat, a sister
ship to the Gondolier of yesterday, and looked over the landscape,
from both starboard and port side, we began to think it was true,
as Professor Blaikie once said, that “Scotland is like a pebble, it
requires rain to bring out its colors.” It is certain that many spots
in this charming glen did look like the water lines, waves, and layers
of varied tints which we have seen on the surfaces of chalcedony.
When at the lapidary’s I used to watch the process of cutting in half
a stone, rolled for many ages mayhap and ground daily on the outside
by glacial or stream action, it seemed for a few seconds as if the
diamond saw, revolving with its irresistible edge, was to cut in vain
and reveal nothing. From an outward view all beauty was hidden and the
pebble seemed thoroughly ugly and uninteresting. Nor could I guess
that treasures were hidden in the interior; but when the hemispheres
were in our hands, emerging from their baptism in clean water, there
was revealed, if the stone were hollow, a grotto of crystals, rich in
Nature’s heraldry of color, telling the story of its fiery past. It
seemed a more wonderful story, in fact, than that of Ali Baba and Open
Sesame in fiction. Or, if solid, and, like Venus, born from water, and
formed in slow deposit of liquid instead of from the cosmic flames, the
curvilinear strata white, ruby red, black, yellow, and brown, seemed to
excel in splendor.
Even so, to-day Scotland revealed herself as a new wonderland. The
Caledonian pebble seemed a sapphire. For when, toward noon, something
like dry weather arrived and sunbursts were occasional, Scotland looked
as fresh as her maidens and almost as beautiful. We passed cataracts in
full activity. One, which we did not see, ninety feet high and probably
the finest on the great island, was near Fort Augustus. Beyond this,
called “Foyers,” was another fall thirty feet high. To one, however,
who has seen Niagara a hundred times, and who dwells near Taughannock
Falls, which are thirty feet higher, and near Lake Cayuga, with two
hundred waterfalls within a radius of twenty miles, a cataract must
be out of the ordinary to be visited at the expenditure of time and
money, when both these assets are limited and things more novel are to
be seen. In our home town of Ithaca, as we two Americans mused, in
that conceit and love of business peculiar to our nationals, we have a
“local Niagara” over eighty feet high. Why visit Foyers?
At one of the lochs, we saw an Irishman, with the popular and
traditional face, shape, and garb; that is, of the kind we read about
in novels and see on the stage. He had on brogans, short breeches split
in the end at the knees, woollen stockings, a small and short-tailed
coat, a stumpy shillaly, a narrow-brimmed high hat, with pipe stuck
in the front band and a shamrock set in another place. Besides
bog-trotters’ capers and the dancing of an Irish jig, he sang songs
which recalled boyhood’s memories in Philadelphia. After the potato
famine in Ireland, the Emerald Isle was semi-depopulated, and the
emigrant ships, despite the Know-Nothings, set their prows in fleets
to the Land of Hope. I often saw seven ships a day bringing over the
raw material of citizenship. Some of the girls, as we learned from our
household experience in employing domestics, had never gone up--though
on ship and with us, at first, they came backwards down--a pair of
stairs. Such green but promising maids had never dwelt in a house built
with more than one story, or touched a faucet, or lighted a gas jet.
The Irishman’s song, in which his mention of Philadelphia was mnemonic,
was delightful to hear. Another song, which as a child I heard my
father’s coal-drivers and coal-heavers sing, told of travels nearer
home, and of this I caught the words. They ran thus:--
“I cut my stick and greased my brogues--
’T was in the month of May, sir:
And off to England I did go
To mow the corn and hay, sir.”
With this son of Erin was a dirty and very skinny Highland lad, in
kilts and other checkered woollen garments much the worse for wear.
He also danced what was probably a Highland fling, though an almost
vicious desire possessed some of us to fling him into the bathtub.
It is a good sign for the future of a noble race that the manufacture
of soap occupies many people in Scotland. Though the glens are full
of distilleries, which are sure to create poverty and dirt, perhaps
we must consider soap-boiling as a very honorable occupation and the
manufacture of this cleansing material as an antidote to some of the
mischief done by John Barleycorn. How terrible is the scourge of
alcohol in Great Britain was revealed, as never before, during the
war crisis of 1915, when even an appeal to patriotism could not make
the sodden workmen give up their cups. My kinsman, the United States
Consul at Dundee, showed me the statistics of the liquor traffic in
Scotland alone, which were appalling. Even Christians, supposed to be
devout in worship and genuine in faith, invest their money, and some
of them exclusively, in the distilleries, thus upsetting at one end
what the gospel agencies are doing at the other. The British Empire is
thus handicapped in the race for progress. Yet who from the glorious
Yankee nation can throw a stone, especially when he sees the “American
bar,” “American long drinks,” and “American mixed drinks” flauntingly
advertised in Europe? We have heard, however, that the “long drinks”
are soft and harmless.
While propelled along Loch Ness, an earth-cleft, narrow, deep, and
twenty-four miles in length, we are again reminded of our home near
Lake Cayuga, fairest in the Iroquois chain of “finger lakes” in the
Empire State, and one of the deepest; for on either side of the
Caledonian Canal are metamorphic rocks rising out of crystal clear
water, and beneath, in the Byronic profundity of “a thousand feet in
depth below,” the rocky bottom. Grander and more rugged, however, is
the scenery, for the mountains are here higher, even as the water is
deeper, than in Iroquois land. The Scottish Highlands are the fragments
of the earliest land that emerged above the prehistoric oceans. For
centuries they formed a boundary in ethnology, politics, and religion,
even as in the æons of geology they form a frontier of chronology.
When our voyage ends, we find that it is some distance between the
stopping-place of the steamer at Muirtown and Inverness. Since
names and sounds are continually playing tricks, summoning from the
privacy of memory forms long ago forgotten and ever retreating in
the perspective of the past, I recall my old Scotch professor at the
Central High School in Philadelphia. That good man MacMurtrie--with
a name meaning, I suppose, of, or from, or son of the Muirtrie,
or Moor-tree clan--first introduced thousands of youth, through
his lexicon, his fascinating lectures, and his choice cabinets, to
the great world of nature and science, and to the rapturous joy of
discovery of order and beauty in the mathematics of the universe.
From Muirtown, we take the hotel omnibus and soon enter “Rose-red
Inverness,” the bright and lively town, which in August bursts into the
full bloom of its summer activities.