IMPERIAL RUINS
[Illustration: _Loch Lomond._]
Oban, September 4, 1890.--Going westward from Stronachlacher, a drive
of several delicious miles, through the country of Rob Roy, ends at
Inversnaid and the shore of Loch Lomond. The rain had passed, but
under a dusky, lowering sky the dense white mists, driven by a fresh
morning wind, were drifting along the heath-clad hills, like a pageant
of angels trailing robes of light. Loch Arklet and the little shieling
where was born Helen, the wife of the Macgregor, were soon passed,--a
peaceful region smiling in the vale; and presently, along the northern
bank of the Arklet, whose copious, dark, and rapid waters, broken
into foam upon their rocky bed, make music all the way, I descended
that precipitous road to Loch Lomond which, through many a devious
turning and sudden peril in the fragrant coppice, reaches safety at
last, in one of the wildest of Highland glens. This drive is a chief
delight of Highland travel, and it appears to be one that "the march of
improvement,"--meaning the extension of railways,--can never abolish;
for, besides being solitary and beautiful, the way is difficult. You
easily divine what a sanctuary that region must have been to the bandit
chieftain, when no road traversed it save perhaps a sheep-track or a
path for horses, and when it was darkly covered with the thick pines of
the Caledonian forest. Scarce a living creature was anywhere visible.
A few hardy sheep, indeed, were grazing on the mountain slopes; a few
cattle were here and there couched among the tall ferns; and sometimes
a sable company of rooks flitted by, cawing drearily overhead. Once I
saw the slow-stepping, black-faced, puissant Highland bull, with his
menacing head and his dark air of suspended hostility and inevitable
predominance. All the cataracts in those mountain glens were at the
flood, because of the continuous heavy rains of an uncommonly wet
season, and at Inversnaid the magnificent waterfall,--sister to Lodore
and Aira Force,--came down in great floods of black and silver, and
with a long resounding roar that seemed to shake the forest. Soon the
welcome sun began to pierce the mists; patches of soft blue sky became
visible through rifts in the gray; and a glorious rainbow, suddenly
cast upon a mountain-side of opposite Inveruglas, spanned the whole
glittering fairy realm with its great arch of incommunicable splendour.
The place of Rob Roy's cavern was seen, as the boat glided down Loch
Lomond,--a snug nest in the wooded crag,--and, after all too brief a
sail upon those placid ebon waters, I mounted the coach that plies
between Ardlui and Crianlarich. Not much time will now elapse before
this coach is displaced,--for they are building a railroad through
Glen Falloch, which, running southerly from Crianlarich, will skirt
the western shore of Loch Lomond and reach to Balloch and Helensburgh,
and thus will make the railway communication complete, continuous, and
direct between Glasgow and Oban. At intervals all along the glen were
visible the railway embankments, the piles of "sleepers," the heaps
of steel rails, the sheds of the builders, and the red flag of the
dynamite blast. The new road will be a popular line of travel. No land
"that the eye of heaven visits" is lovelier than this one. But it may
perhaps be questioned whether the exquisite loveliness of the Scottish
Highlands will not become vulgarised by over-easiness of accessibility.
Sequestration is one of the elements of the beautiful, and numbers
of people invariably make common everything upon which they swarm.
But nothing can debase the unconquerable majesty of those encircling
mountains. I saw "the skyish head" of Ben More, at one angle, and of
Ben Lui at another, and the lonely slopes of the Grampian hills; and
over the surrounding pasture-land, for miles and miles of solitary
waste, the thick, ripe heather burnished the earth with brown and
purple bloom and filled the air with dewy fragrance.
[Illustration: _Loch Lomond._]
This day proved capricious, and by the time the railway train from
Crianlarich had sped a little way into Glen Lochy the landscape
was once more drenched with wild blasts of rain. Loch-an-Beach,
always gloomy, seemed black with desolation. Vast mists hung over
the mountain-tops and partly hid them; yet down their fern-clad and
heather-mantled sides the many snowy rivulets, seeming motionless in
the impetuosity of their motion, streamed in countless ribands of
silver lace. The mountain ash, which is in perfect bloom in September,
bearing great pendent clusters of scarlet berries, gave a frequent
touch of brilliant colour to this wild scenery. A numerous herd of
little Highland steers, mostly brown and black, swept suddenly into
the picture, as the express flashed along Glen Lochy, and at beautiful
Dalmally the sun again came out, with sudden transient gleams of
intermittent splendour; so that gray Kilchurn and the jewelled waters
of sweet Loch Awe, and even the cold and grim grandeur of the rugged
Pass of Brander, were momentarily clothed with tender, golden haze.
It was afternoon when I alighted in the seaside haven of Oban; yet
soon, beneath the solemn light of the waning day, I once more stood
amid the ruins of Dunstaffnage Castle and looked upon one of the most
representative, even as it is one of the most picturesque, relics of
the feudal times of Scottish history. You have to journey about three
miles out of the town in order to reach that place, which is upon
a promontory where Loch Etive joins Loch Linnhe. The carriage was
driven to it through a shallow water and across some sands which soon
a returning tide would deeply submerge. The castle is so placed that,
when it was fortified, it must have been well-nigh impregnable. It
stands upon a broad, high, massive, precipitous rock, looking seaward
toward Lismore island. Nothing of that old fortress now remains except
the battlemented walls, upon the top of which there is a walk, and
portions of its towers, of which originally there were but three. The
roof and the floors are gone. The courtyard is turfed, and over the
surface within its enclosure the grass grows thick and green, while
weeds and wild-flowers fringe its slowly mouldering walls, upon which
indeed several small trees have rooted themselves, in crevices stuffed
with earth. One superb ivy-tree, of great age and size, covers much
of the venerable ruin, upon its inner surface, with a wild luxuriance
of brilliant foliage. There are the usual indications in the masonry,
showing how the area of this castle was once subdivided into rooms
of various shapes and sizes, some of them large, in which were ample
fireplaces and deeply recessed embrasures, and no doubt arched
casements opening on the inner court. Here dwelt the early kings of
Scotland. Here the national story of Scotland began. Here for a long
time was treasured the Stone of Destiny, Lia Fail, before it was taken
to Scone Abbey, thence to be borne to London by Edward the First, in
1296, and placed where it has ever since remained, and is visible now,
in the old coronation chair in the chapel of Edward the Confessor,
at Westminster. Here through the slow-moving centuries many a story
of love, ambition, sorrow, and death has had its course and left its
record. Here, in the stormy romantic period that followed 1745, was
imprisoned for a while the beautiful, intrepid, constant, and noble
Flora Macdonald, who had saved the person and the life of the fugitive
Pretender, after the fatal defeat and hideous carnage of Culloden. What
pageants, what festivals, what glories, and what horrors have those
old walls beheld! Their stones seem agonised with ghastly memories
and weary with the intolerable burden of hopeless age; and as I stood
and pondered amid their gray decrepitude and arid desolation,--while
the light grew dim and the evening wind sighed in the ivy and shook
the tremulous wall-flowers and the rustling grass,--the ancient,
worn-out pile seemed to have a voice, and to plead for the merciful
death that should put an end to its long, consuming misery and dumb
decay. Often before, when standing alone among ruins, have I felt this
spirit of supplication, and seen this strange, beseechful look, in the
silent, patient stones: never before had it appealed to my heart with
such eloquence and such pathos. Truly nature passes through all the
experience and all the moods of man, even as man passes through all the
experience and all the moods of nature.
[Illustration: _Dunstaffnage._]
On the western side of the courtyard of Dunstaffnage stands a small
stone building, accessible by a low flight of steps, which bears upon
its front the sculptured date 1725, intertwined with the letters AE.
C. and LC., and the words Laus Deo. This was the residence of the
ancient family of Dunstaffnage, prior to 1810. From the battlements I
had a wonderful view of adjacent lakes and engirdling mountains,--the
jewels and their giant guardians of the lonely land of Lorn,--and saw
the red sun go down over a great inland sea of purple heather and upon
the wide waste of the desolate ocean. These and such as these are the
scenes that make this country distinctive, and that have stamped their
impress of stately thought and romantic sentiment upon its people. Amid
such scenes the Scottish national character has been developed, and
under their influence have naturally been created the exquisite poetry,
the enchanting music, the noble art and architecture, and the austere
civilisation of imperial Scotland.
After dark the rain again came on, and all night long, through light
and troubled slumber, I heard it beating on the window-panes. The
morning dawned in gloom and drizzle, and there was no prophetic voice
to speak a word of cheer. One of the expeditions that may be made from
Oban comprises a visit to Fingal's Cave, on the island of Staffa,
and to the ruined cathedral on Saint Columba's island of Iona, and,
incidentally, a voyage around the great island of Mull. It is the most
beautiful, romantic, diversified, and impressive sail that can be made
in these waters. The expeditious itinerant in Scotland waits not upon
the weather, and at an early hour this day I was speeding out of Oban,
with the course set for Lismore Light and the Sound of Mull.[51]