INTO THE HIGHLANDS
Loch Awe, September 14, 1889.--Under a soft gray sky and through
fields that still are slumbering in the early morning mist, the train
rolls out of Edinburgh, bound for the north. The wind blows gently;
the air is cool; strips of thin, fleecy cloud are driving over the
distant hill-tops, and the birds are flying low. The track is by
Queensferry, and in that region many little low stone cottages are
seen, surrounded with simple gardens of flowers. For a long time the
train runs through a deep ravine, with rocky banks on either hand,
but presently it emerges into pastures where the sheep are grazing,
and into fields in which the late harvest stands garnered in many
graceful sheaves. Tall chimneys, vigorously smoking, are visible here
and there in the distant landscape. The fat, black rooks are taking
their morning flight, clamouring as they go. Stone houses with red
roofs glide into the picture, and a graceful church-spire rises on a
remote hill-top. In all directions there are trees, but they seem of
recent growth, for no one of them is large. Soon the old cattle-market
town of Falkirk springs up in the prospect, girt with fine hills and
crested with masses of white and black smoke that is poured upward
from the many tall chimneys of its busy ironworks. The houses here
are made of gray stone and of red brick, and many of them are large,
square buildings, seemingly commodious and opulent. A huge cemetery,
hemmed in with trees and shrubs, is seen to skirt the city. Carron
River, with its tiny but sounding cataract, is presently passed, and
at Larbert your glance rests lovingly upon "the little gray church
on the windy hill." North of this place, beyond the Forth, the
country in the distance is mountainous, while all the intermediate
region is rich with harvest-fields. Kinnaird lies to the eastward,
while northward a little way is the famous field of Bannockburn. Two
miles more and the train pauses in "gray Stirling," glorious with
associations of historic splendour and ancient romance. The Castle
of Stirling is not as ruggedly grand as that of Edinburgh, but it is
a noble architectural pile, and it is nobly placed on a great crag
fronting the vast mountains and the gloomy heavens of the north. The
best view of it is obtained looking at it southward, and as I gazed
upon it, under a cold and frowning sky, the air was populous with many
birds that circled around its cone-shaped turrets, and hovered over the
plain below, while across the distant mountain-tops, east, west, and
north, dark and ragged masses of mist were driven, in wild, tempestuous
flight. Speeding onward now, along the southern bank of the Forth,
the traveller takes a westerly course, past Gargunnock and Kippen,
seeing little villages of gray stone cottages nestled in the hill-gaps,
distant mountain-sides, clad with furze, dark patches of woodland, and
moors of purple heather commingled with meadows of brilliant green.
The sun breaks out, for a few moments, and the sombre hue of the gray
sky is lightened with streaks of gold. At Bucklyvie there is a second
pause, and then the course is northwest, through banks and braes of
heather, to peaceful Aberfoyle and the mountains of Menteith.
[Illustration: _Stirling Castle._]
The characteristic glory of the Scottish hills is the infinite variety
and beauty of their shapes and the loveliness of their colour. The
English mountains and lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland possess a
sweeter and softer grace, and are more calmly and wooingly beautiful;
but the Scottish mountains and lakes excel them in grandeur, majesty,
and romance. It would be presumption to undertake to describe the
solemn austerity, the lofty and lonely magnificence, the bleak, weird,
haunted isolation, and the fairy-like fantasy of this poetic realm;
but a lover of it may declare his passion and speak his sense of its
enthralling and bewitching charm. Sir Walter Scott's spirited and
trenchant lines on the emotion of the patriot sang themselves over
and over in my thought, and were wholly and grandly ratified, as the
coach rolled up the mountain road, ever climbing height after height,
while new and ever new prospects continually unrolled themselves
before delighted eyes, on the familiar but always novel journey from
Aberfoyle to the Trosachs. That mountain road, on its upward course,
and during most part of the way, winds through treeless pastureland,
and in every direction, as your vision ranges, you behold other
mountains equally bleak, save for the bracken and the heather, among
which the sheep wander, and the grouse nestle in concealment or whir
away on frightened wings. Ben Lomond, wrapt in straggling mists, was
dimly visible far to the west; Ben A'an towered conspicuous in the
foreground; and further north Ben Ledi heaved its broad mass and rugged
sides to heaven. Loch Vennacher, seen for a few moments, shone like a
diamond set in emeralds, and as we gazed we seemed to see the bannered
barges of Roderick Dhu and to hear the martial echoes of "Hail to the
Chief." Loch Achray glimmered forth for an instant under the gray sky,
as when "the small birds would not sing aloud" and the wrath equally
of tempest and of war hung silently above it, in one awful moment of
suspense. There was a sudden and dazzling vision of Loch Katrine, and
then all prospect was broken, and, rolling down among the thickly
wooded dwarf hills that give the name of Trosachs to this place, we
were lost in the masses of fragrant foliage that girdle and adorn, in
perennial verdure the hallowed scene of _The Lady of the Lake_.
[Illustration: _Loch Achray._]
[Illustration: _Loch Katrine._]
Loch Katrine is another Lake Horicon, with a grander environment,
and this, like all the Scottish lakes, has the advantage of a more
evenly sharp and vigorous air and of leaden and frowning skies [in
which, nevertheless, there is a peculiar, penetrating light,] that
darken their waters and impart to them a dangerous aspect that yet is
strangely beautiful. As we swept past Ellen's island and Fitz-James's
silver strand I was grateful to see them in the mystery of this gray
light and not in the garish sunshine. All around this sweet lake are
the sentinel mountains,--Ben Venue rising in the south, Ben A'an in
the east, and all the castellated ramparts that girdle Glen Finglas in
the north. The eye dwells enraptured upon the circle of the hills; but
by this time the imagination is so acutely stimulated, and the mind is
so filled with glorious sights and exciting and ennobling reflections,
that the sense of awe is tempered with a pensive sadness, and you feel
yourself rebuked and humbled by the final and effectual lesson of man's
insignificance that is taught by the implacable vitality of these
eternal mountains. It is a relief to be brought back for a little to
common life, and this relief you find in the landing at Stronachlachar
and the ensuing drive,--across the narrow strip of the shire of
Stirling that intervenes between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond,--to
the port of Inversnaid. That drive is through a wild and picturesque
country, but after the mountain road from Aberfoyle to the Trosachs
it could not well seem otherwise than calm,--at least till the final
descent into the vale of Inversnaid. From Inversnaid there is a short
sail upon the northern waters of Loch Lomond,--forever haunted by the
shaggy presence of Rob Roy and the fierce and terrible image of Helen
Macgregor,--and then, landing at Ardlui, you drive past Inverarnan
and hold a northern course to Crianlarich, traversing the vale of the
Falloch and skirting along the western slope of the grim and gloomy
Grampians, on which for miles and miles no human habitation is seen,
nor any living creature save the vacant, abject sheep. The mountains
are everywhere now, brown with bracken and purple with heather, stony,
rugged, endless, desolate, and still with a stillness that is awful in
its pitiless sense of inhumanity and utter isolation. At Crianlarich
the railway is found again, and thence you whirl onward through lands
of Breadalbane and Argyle to the proud mountains of Glen Orchy and the
foot of that loveliest of all the lovely waters of Scotland,--the ebony
crystal of Loch Awe. The night is deepening over it as I write these
words. The dark and solemn mountains that guard it stretch away into
the mysterious distance and are lost in the shuddering gloom. The gray
clouds have drifted by, and the cold, clear stars of autumnal heaven
are reflected in its crystal depth, unmarred by even the faintest
ripple upon its surface. A few small boats, moored to anchored buoys,
float motionless upon it, a little way from shore. There, on its lonely
island, dimly visible in the fading light, stands the gray ruin of
Kilchurn. A faint whisper comes from the black woods that fringe the
mountain base, and floating from far across this lonely, haunted water
there is a drowsy bird-note that calls to silence and to sleep.
[Illustration]