HIGHLAND BEAUTIES
Oban, September 17, 1889.--Seen in the twilight, as I first saw it,
Oban is a pretty and picturesque seaside village, gay with glancing
lights and busy with the movements of rapid vehicles and expeditious
travellers. It is called the capital of the Western Highlands, and no
doubt it deserves the name, for it is the common centre of all the
trade and enterprise of this region, and all the threads of travel
radiate from it. Built in a semicircle, along the margin of a lovely
sheltered bay, it looks forth upon the wild waters of the Firth of
Lorn, visible, southwesterly, through the sable sound of Kerrera,
while behind and around it rises a bold range of rocky and sparsely
wooded hills. On these are placed a few villas, and on a point toward
the north stand the venerable, ivy-clad ruins of Dunolly Castle, in
the ancestral domain of the ancient Highland family of Macdougall. The
houses of Oban are built of gray stone and are mostly modern. There
are many hotels fronting upon the Parade, which extends for a long
distance upon the verge of the sea. The opposite shore is Kerrera, an
island about a mile distant, and beyond that island, and beyond Lorn
water, extends the beautiful island of Mull, confronting iron-ribbed
Morven. In many ways Oban is suggestive of an American seaport upon the
New England coast. Various characteristics mark it that may be seen
at Gloucester, Massachusetts [although that once romantic place has
been spoiled by the Irish peasantry], and at Mount Desert in Maine.
The surroundings, indeed, are different; for the Scottish hills have
a delicious colour and a wildness all their own; while the skies,
unlike those of blue and brilliant America, lower, gloom, threaten,
and tinge the whole world beneath them,--the moors, the mountains, the
clustered gray villages, the lonely ruins, and the tumbling plains of
the desolate sea,--with a melancholy, romantic, shadowy darkness, the
perfect twilight of poetic vision. No place could be more practical
than Oban is, in its everyday life, nor any place more sweet and
dreamlike to the pensive mood of contemplation and the roving gaze of
fancy. Viewed, as I viewed it, under the starlight and the drifting
cloud, between two and three o'clock this morning, it was a picture
of beauty, never to be forgotten. A few lights were twinkling here
and there among the dwellings, or momentarily flaring on the deserted
Parade. No sound was heard but the moaning of the night-wind and the
plash of waters softly surging on the beach. Now and then a belated
passenger came wandering along the pavement and disappeared in a turn
of the road. The air was sweet with the mingled fragrance of the
heathery hills and the salt odours of the sea. Upon the glassy bosom of
the bay, dark, clear, and gently undulating with the pressure of the
ocean tide, more than seventy small boats, each moored at a buoy and
all veered in one direction, swung careless on the water; and mingled
with them were upward of twenty schooners and little steamboats, all
idle and all at peace. Many an hour of toil and sorrow is yet to come,
before the long, strange journey of life is ended; but the memory of
that wonderful midnight moment, alone with the majesty of Nature, will
be a solace in the darkest of them.
[Illustration: _Oban._]
The Highland journey, from first to last, is an experience altogether
novel and precious, and it is remembered with gratitude and delight.
Before coming to Oban I gave two nights and days to Loch Awe,--a
place so beautiful and so fraught with the means of happiness that
time stands still in it, and even "the ceaseless vulture" of care
and regret ceases for a while to vex the spirit with remembrance of
anything that is sad. Looking down from the summit of one of the great
mountains that are the rich and rugged setting of this jewel, I saw the
crumbling ruin of Kilchurn upon its little island, gray relic first of
the Macgregors and then of the Campbells, who dispossessed them and
occupied their realm. It must have been an imperial residence once.
Its situation,--cut off from the mainland and commanding a clear view,
up the lake and down the valleys, southward and northward,--is superb.
No enemy could approach it unawares, and doubtless the followers of
the Macgregor occupied every adjacent pass and were ambushed in every
thicket on the heights. Seen from the neighbouring mountain-side the
waters of Loch Awe are of such crystal clearness that near some parts
of the shore the white sands are visible in perfect outline beneath
them, while all the glorious engirdling hills are reflected in their
still and shining depth. Sometimes the sun flashed out and changed the
waters to liquid silver, lighting up the gray ruin and flooding the
mountain slopes with gold; but more often the skies kept their sombre
hue, darkening all beneath them with a lovely gloom. All around were
the beautiful hills of Glen Orchy, and far to the eastward great waves
of white and leaden mist, slowly drifting in the upper ether, now hid
and now disclosed the Olympian head of Ben Lui and the tangled hills
of Glen Shirra and Glen Fyne. Close by, in its sweet vale of Sabbath
stillness, was couched the little town of Dalmally, sole reminder of
the presence of man in these remote solitudes, where Nature keeps
the temple of her worship, and where words are needless to utter her
glory and her praise. All day long the peaceful lake slumbered in
placid beauty under the solemn sky,--a few tiny boats and two little
steamers swinging at anchor on its bosom. All day long the shadows of
the clouds, commingled with flecks of sunshine, went drifting over
the mountain. At nightfall two great flocks of sheep, each attended
by the pensive shepherd in his plaid, and each guided and managed by
those wonderfully intelligent collies that are a never-failing delight
in these mountain lands, came slowly along the vale and presently
vanished in Glen Strae. Nothing then broke the stillness but the
sharp cry of the shepherd's dog and the sound of many cataracts, some
hidden and some seen, that lapse in music and fall in many a mass of
shattered silver and flying spray, through deep, rocky rifts down the
mountain-side. After sunset a cold wind came on to blow, and soon the
heavens were clear and "all the number of the stars" were mirrored in
beautiful Loch Awe.
They speak of the southwestern extremity of this lake as the head of
it. Loch Awe station, accordingly, is at its foot, near Kilchurn.
Nevertheless, "where Macgregor sits is the head of the table," for
the foot of the loch is lovelier than its head. And yet its head also
is lovely, although in a less positive way. From Loch Awe station to
Ford, a distance of twenty-six miles, you sail in a toy steamboat,
sitting either on the open deck or in a cabin of glass and gazing at
the panorama of the hills on either hand, some wooded and some bare,
and all magnificent. A little after passing the mouth of the river
Awe, which flows through the black Pass of Brander and unites with
Loch Etive, I saw the double crest of great Ben Cruachan towering
into the clouds and visible at intervals above them,--the higher
peak magnificently bold. It is a wild country all about this region,
but here and there you see a little hamlet or a lone farm-house, and
among the moorlands the occasional figure of a sportsman, with his
dog and gun. As the boat sped onward into the moorland district the
mountains became great shapes of snowy crystal, under the sullen sky,
and presently resolved into vast cloud-shadows, dimly outlined against
the northern heavens, and seemingly based upon a sea of rolling vapour.
The sail is past Inisdrynich, the island of the Druids, past Inishail
and Inisfraoch, and presently past the lovely ruin of Inischonnel
Castle, called also Ardchonnel, facing southward, at the end of an
island promontory, and covered thick with ivy. The landing is at Ford
Pier, and about one mile from that point you may see a little inn, a
few cottages crumbling in picturesque decay, and a diminutive kirk,
that constitute the village of Ford. My purpose here was to view an
estate close by this village, now owned by Henry Bruce, Esq., but
many years ago the domain of Alexander Campbell, Esq., an ancestor of
my children, being their mother's grandsire; and not in all Scotland
could be found a more romantic spot than the glen by the lochside that
shelters the melancholy, decaying, haunted fabric of the old house
of Ederline. Such a poet as Edgar Poe would have revelled in that
place,--and well he might! There is a new and grand mansion, on higher
ground, in the park; but the ancient house, almost abandoned now, is a
thousand times more characteristic and interesting than the new one.
Both are approached through a long, winding avenue, overhung with great
trees that interlace their branches above it and make a cathedral
aisle; but soon the pathway to the older house turns aside into a
grove of chestnuts, birches, and yews,--winding under vast dark boughs
that bend like serpents completely to the earth and then ascend once
more,--and so goes onward, through sombre glades and through groves
of rhododendron, to the levels of Loch Ederline and the front of the
mansion, now desolate and half in ruins. It was an old house a hundred
years ago. It is covered with ivy and buried among the trees, and on
its surface and on the tree-trunks around it the lichen and the yellow
moss have gathered, in rank luxuriance. The waters of the lake ripple
upon a rocky landing almost at its door. Here once lived as proud a
Campbell as ever breathed in Scotland, and here his haughty spirit
wrought out for itself the doom of a lonely age and a broken heart. His
grave is on a little island in the lake,--a family burying-ground,[49]
such as may often be found on ancient, sequestered estates in the
Highlands,--where the tall trees wave above it and the weeds are
growing thick upon its surface, while over it the rooks caw and clamour
and the idle winds career, in heedless indifference that is sadder even
than neglect. So destiny vindicates its inexorable edict and the great
law of retribution is fulfilled. A stranger sits in his seat and rules
in his hall, and of all the followers that once waited on his lightest
word there remains but a single one,--aged, infirm, and nearing the end
of the long journey,--to scrape the moss from his forgotten gravestone
and to think sometimes of his ancient greatness and splendour, forever
passed away. We rowed around Loch Ederline and looked down into its
black waters, that in some parts have never been sounded, and are
fabled to reach through to the other side of the world, and, as our
oars dipped and plashed, the timid moor-fowl scurried into the bushes
and the white swans sailed away in haughty wrath, while, warned by
gathering storm-clouds, multitudes of old rooks, that long have haunted
the place, came flying overhead, with many a querulous croak, toward
their nests in Ederline grove.
[Illustration: LOCH AWE]
Back to Loch Awe station, and presently onward past the Falls of
Cruachan and through the grim Pass of Brander,--down which the waters
of the Awe rush in a sable flood between jagged and precipitous cliffs
for miles and miles,--and soon we see the bright waves of Loch Etive
smiling under a sunset sky, and the many bleak, brown hills that fringe
Glen Lonan and range along to Oban and the verge of the sea. There
will be an hour for rest and thought. It seems wild and idle to write
about these things. Life in Scotland is deeper, richer, stronger, and
sweeter than any words could possibly be that any man could possibly
expend upon it. The place is the natural home of imagination, romance,
and poetry. Thought is grander here, and passion is wilder and more
exuberant than on the velvet plains and among the chaste and stately
elms of the South. The blood flows in a stormier torrent and the mind
takes on something of the gloomy and savage majesty of those gaunt,
barren, lonely hills. Even Sir Walter Scott, speaking of his own great
works,--which are precious beyond words, and must always be loved
and cherished by readers who know what beauty is,--said that all he
had ever done was to polish the brasses that already were made. This
is the soul of excellence in British literature, and this, likewise,
is the basis of stability in British civilisation,--that the country
is lovelier than the loveliest poetry that ever was written about
it, or ever could be written about it, and that the land and the life
possess an inherent fascination for the inhabitants, that nothing
else could supply, and that no influence can ever destroy or even
seriously disturb. Democracy is rife all over the world, but it will
as soon impede the eternal courses of the stars as it will change the
constitution or shake the social fabric of this realm. "Once more upon
the waters--yet once more!" Soon upon the stormy billows of Lorn I
shall see these lovely shores fade in the distance. Soon, merged again
in the strife and tumult of the commonplace world, I shall murmur, with
as deep a sorrow as the sad strain itself expresses, the tender words
of Scott:
"Glenorchy's proud mountains,
Kilchurn and her towers,
Glenstrae and Glenlyon
No longer are ours."
[Illustration: _Corbel from "St. Giles."_]