THE GREAT GLEN
The Highland Line is an oblique one, in the main facing south-east; and
in much the same direction, between the head of deep inlets, extends the
cleft of some threescore miles that cuts the Highlands into near and off
halves, the former far the harder worked as a tourist ground, the latter
retaining more of its Celtic poverty, while not less richly endowed by
nature. From either side smaller glens and straths, each the “country”
of some clan, debouch into Glenmore, bed of a chain of lochs and streams
linked together as the Caledonian Canal, their varying levels made
navigable by the locks that come easier to a Sassenach tongue. This
canal is now nearly a century old. In the century before its trenches
were opened, King George’s soldiers had islanded the farther Highlands
by a road between three fortified posts, in the centre and at either end
of this Great Glen, thus used as a base for dominating and civilising a
region over which the fiery cross ran more freely than the king’s writ.
The northernmost of the three, Fort-George, above Inverness, is still a
military station, serving as depot for the Seaforth and Cameron
Highlanders.
Inverness is called the capital of the Highlands, though it lies on an
edge of Celtic Scotland, at the north end of the Great Glen, and near
the head of the Moray Firth. This is not a Gaelic city, whose
inhabitants had at one time the fame of speaking the best English in
Scotland, or, for the matter of that, in England, a merit sometimes
traced back to a colony of Cromwell’s soldiers. Of late years, to tell
the truth, the speech of Inverness has hardened and vulgarised somewhat
in the mouths of a very mixed population; yet still in some of the
secluded glens of the county may be heard a tongue not their own used
with a melodious refinement unknown within the sound of Bow Bells.
Smart, cheerful, and regularly built, Inverness has the air of a lowland
town, spread out on a river plain, across which fragments of the
Highlands have drifted from the grand mountains in view, as the Alps
from Berne. The Ness has the distinction of being the shortest river in
Britain, shorter even than London’s New River; but its course of only a
few miles, from Loch Ness to the Moray Firth’s inner recess, is enough
to make it a resort for big salmon and small shipping. Hector Boece
records a former great “plenty and take of herring,” which vanished “for
offence made against some Saint.” Sheltered from the winds of the east
and the “weather” of the west, the district has a genial climate where,
indeed, the air often “nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our
gentle senses.” Shakespeare, not having the advantage of _Black’s
Guide_, says little about the scenery around, which has been much
described in _Wild Eelin_, William Black’s last and not his worst novel,
though it has the deplorable fault of
[Illustration: INVERNESS FROM NEAR THE ISLANDS]
bringing in real personages not less thinly disguised than Inverness is
as Invernish.
The famous Castle still stands by the river-side, in its modern form
serving as a court-house and prison for ungracious Duncans made both
drunk and bold; while the grounds of its “pleasant seat” are a lounge
for honest inhabitants, kept in memory, by a statue of Flora Macdonald,
how Prince Charles Edward’s men blew up the old blood-stained walls.
Opposite, across the river, is the modern Cathedral of the Episcopal
Church, here a considerable body which once had a soul of Jacobite
sentiment. Inverness shows several fragments of antiquity, most revered
of them that palladium Clach-na-Cudain--“stone of the tubs,” now built
into the base of the restored Town Cross. A little way up the river its
“Islands” have been adapted as a unique “combination of public park and
natural wilderness, of clear brown swirls and eddies under the
overhanging hazels and alders, and open and foaming white cataracts
where artificial barriers divert the broad rush of the river.” This
beauty-spot of wood and water no stranger should fail to seek out; then
not far beyond he may gain Tom-na-hurich, “hill of the fairies,” which
makes a picturesque cemetery, commanding what a pre-Wordsworthian writer
describes as “a boundless view of gentlemen’s seats, seated generally
under the shelter of eminences, and surrounded by wooded plantations.”
Another fine prospect can be had a mile or so behind the station from
the heights called “Hut of Health,” on which have been built extensive
barracks.
The hotels of Inverness are not too many to accommodate the crowds that
flit through it in the tourist and shooting season. It has two annual
galas, when accommodation may be hardest to find for love or money. The
first is the “Character Fair” in July, so called because then some half
a million changes hands over dealings in wool on the security of the
dealer’s character, not a fleece being brought to market, nor even a
sample, unless of human brawn and beards well displayed in the brightest
of tartan and the roughest of homespun. The second is the Northern
Meeting in September, gayest and smartest of those gatherings by which
the old Highland games, dress, and music are kept up. But ah! this touch
of local colour is too like the artificial bloom on a faded cheek. The
glow of tartans here revived by what a German might call “Sunday
Highlanders,” is but a Vanity Fair. The stalwart athletes, some of them
“professionals,” who exert themselves to make a London holiday, have
little more of Arcadian simplicity than the fine folk who look on. The
clansmen forget old feuds; the chiefs no longer command the old loyalty;
the greyness and greed of our practical world are settling down over the
Highlands, conquered by gold, as hardly by southron steel.
If the pensive tourist seek a purer vision of the past, let him go out
to the lonely station of Culloden Moor, some half a dozen miles from
Inverness. From the great viaduct that here typifies modern enterprise,
he may hold up the Nairn to the roughly overgrown field on which are
half buried those pre-historic stones of Clava, monuments of a past
beyond Scott’s ken. Then, crossing the river and mounting the heights,
he comes on the commonplace road that will lead him over Drumossie,
where the romantic cause fell hopelessly when Cumberland’s red-coats
mowed down and bayoneted its jealous, sullen, and weary champions, more
than a tenth of them dying here for the Prince who, according to one
story, fled basely, but others report him as forced from the field. Fir
plantations and fields have now clad the wild nakedness of this
tableland; but by the roadside are seen the mounds beneath which lie
each clan together, still shoulder to shoulder, and the monumental cairn
that is yearly hung with votive wreaths by a certain perfervid Jacobite.
If these men gave way before disciplined valour and artillery, if their
own martial spirit was marred by quarrelsome ill-temper, let us remember
how many of them joined or rejoined the cause when it was as good as
lost, after the Jacobite squires of the south had held back from its
first flush of success. The next time the Cockney be moved to his sneer
about bawbees, let him consider how neither bribes, nor threats, nor
torture could tempt these poor Highlanders to betray their prince in his
desperate wanderings with a price set on his head. And let us all
forget, if we can, the cruelty with which the victors followed up that
last rout of sentimental devotion. One poor fellow took hundreds of
lashes on an English ship of war, without opening his mouth to confess
how he had ferried the fugitive to a safer isle. Such stories of humble
fidelity are too much forgotten by historians who bear in mind how the
heads of certain houses--father and son--ranked themselves on opposite
sides with a politic eye to escape forfeiture, whether James or George
were king. The most romantic case, if true, is that of the Macintosh in
the royal ranks, said to have yielded himself prisoner to his own wife,
who had taken his place at the head of the rebellious clansmen. Another
family manœuvre turned out luckily for a Lowland peer who, as
preparation for taking the field with the Pretender, treated himself to
a foot-bath which his prudent wife made so hot that her valorous spouse
could not boot nor spur for many a day, and thus was kept out of
political hot water. The same story, indeed, is told of another couple,
whose sympathies were divided the opposite way on.
Where are the sons of the scattered clans? Many of them peacefully
settled among law-abiding Lowlanders, many of them gone to America,
where among other mountains, on fruitfuller straths and by mightier
streams, they often cherish their Gaelic and their kilts, sometimes
against sore pricks of climate and mosquitoes, sharper than the
ancestral itch of dirt and poverty. In one district of Nova Scotia
alone, there are said to thrive three thousand of those Macdonalds whose
offended pride hung back from the clash of Culloden. Before the ’45,
emigration to America had already begun with the colony settled in
Georgia by General Oglethorpe; even earlier indeed hardy Highlanders and
Orkneymen were in demand for service in the wilds of Hudson’s Bay; but
after Culloden the exodus became considerable, increasing as the
chieftains, turned into lairds, found idle and prejudiced dependants
only in the way of improving their estates; and “another for Hector!”
came to mean a fresh clansman shipped across the Atlantic to see
Lochaber no more. Harsh as it was, the wrench proved often a blessing in
disguise, when the last look at those misty Hebrides had softened into a
tender memory with the farmers of New Glengarry or ice-bound Antigonish.
Our day saw two Prime Ministers of Canada who, if kept at home, might
have
[Illustration: TOMDOUN, GLEN GARRY, INVERNESS-SHIRE]
been carrying the southron’s game-bag, as one of them perhaps did in his
bare-legged youth.
Perhaps the most remarkable Highland-American has never been duly
brought into the light of history, as neither has that mysterious
soldier of fortune Gregor MacGregor, “Cacique of Poyais,” who made such
a stir in two worlds, but is now hardly remembered unless by the mention
of him in the _Ingoldsby Legends_, and the banknotes of his bankrupt
kingdom, treasured by collectors of curiosities. Did the general reader
ever hear of Alexander MacGillivray, who was born at once a Highland
gentleman and a Red Indian chief? His career, which I hope to write some
day, if once able to bridge over certain gaps in my information, makes
an extraordinary mixture of romance with very opposite features, better
fitting the vulgar idea of a Scot.
Some time during the Jacobite disturbances, one Lachlan MacGillivray
emigrated from Inverness to the Southern States, where he became a
prosperous Indian trader, and, perhaps in the way of business, married a
“princess” of the great Creek Confederacy. Alexander, the son of this
mésalliance, was well educated and brought up to trade, but early in
life betook himself to his mother’s people, among whom his attainments
as well as his birth gave him influence. Rank, by Indian law, as by
“Lycian custom,” being inherited on the spindle side, before he was
thirty he had been recognised as chief of the Creeks, and for many years
played a leading part in their fitful politics. Little is known of his
rule beyond the main facts, our clearest accounts of him being derived
from a rare book written by another young adventurer, the Frenchman
Leclerc Milfort, whose story, in plain English, seems not to be always
trusted.
According to himself, Milfort, having also wandered among the Creeks,
was chosen by them as their war chief, an office separate from the civil
headship of an Indian tribe. Then the Scotsman and the Frenchman appear
to have governed the Creeks for years, making a congenial disposition of
power, the one the head, the other the hand, of a powerful though
somewhat unstable body politic. MacGillivray had no stomach for
fighting, was even a coward, if Milfort is to be believed; but he was
crafty, resourceful, and of a clear Caledonian eye to the main chance.
Milfort found him living in a good house, with herds of cattle and
dozens of negro slaves. Another source of profit he had in a secret
partnership with a firm of brother Scots at Pensacola, to which he
directed the trade of the Creek nation, jealously intrigued for by their
British and Spanish neighbours. The Revolutionary War had nearly caused
a rupture between these Creek consuls. MacGillivray’s sympathies were
with the British; Milfort had no scruple in fighting against the
Americans, but when French troops came to take part in the struggle, he
was disposed to side with his compatriots. His colleague, however,
persuaded him to remain neutral; and by this Scotsman’s influence, the
Creeks seem to have been kept from throwing into the scale the weight of
their war parties. The canny chief entered into a maze of tricky
negotiations with the various bordering Powers, pretending to each to be
in its special interest, receiving bribes from all, throughout, as far
as his dealings can be traced, “true to one party, and that is
himself.”
The States having secured their independence, the eagerness of American
settlers to press over the Creek bounds had almost brought about an
Indian war with the great republic. Scenes of bloodshed took place on
the frontier; and if MacGillivray was cunning and not warlike, he showed
the civilised virtue of humanity in sparing and rescuing captives. Peace
was negotiated by an Indian deputation which he led to New York. A
secret article provided for his being appointed a general in the U.S.
service, with a pension of $1200. At the same time, or soon afterwards,
the wily chief accepted similar distinctions and payments from the
British and the Spanish Governments, and between them he must have
enjoyed a considerable income for steadily promoting his own interests,
while impartially betraying all his rival employers in turn.
But the arrangement which he brought about with young Uncle Sam roused
the Indians against him. A rebel leader appeared in one “General”
Bowles, who, originally a private soldier, in the course of many dubious
adventures more than once played the pretender among the Creeks. A civil
war raged in the Confederacy; MacGillivray at one time was driven to
flight; but, still backed up by Milfort, he succeeded in partly
restoring his power, though not with the same firmness. In the middle of
his tortuous policies, he died at the age of fifty, leaving a son, who
was sent home to Scotland, where old Lachlan is said to have been still
alive in Inverness-shire. It was his half-breed nephew, William
Weatherford, who, later on, led the last struggle of the Creeks against
American encroachment.
As for Leclerc Milfort, he was left for a time struggling against Bowles
and other rivals for authority. According to his own story, the French
Revolution brought him back to France, where he laboured to persuade
Buonaparte how easily an empire might be won in America. It is said that
the First Consul was taken by the idea, and that in 1801 a small French
expedition had even been prepared to conquer the Creek country under
Milfort’s guidance. But vaster plans interfered with any such scheme,
and in 1803, Louisiana and the great South-West were sold by France to
the United States. The ex-chief had a chance to gratify his taste for
fighting at home, when France was invaded in 1814; but he did not return
to resume the authority of which he boasts in his book, so rare that I
have never seen a copy except my own. If one only had all the truth
about these two white adventurers, what a strange romance it would make!
The Highlands may be all the more prosperous for the new husbandry that
drove so many of their sons to seek fortune in distant lands, often to
find fame. It might be well for the people to have such enterprise
roughly forced on a conservative spirit which scowled at the
introduction of potatoes, turnips, and other improvements to their
backward culture. What their good old days were in truth may be guessed
in the smoky huts where they still love to pig together, stubbornly
refusing to adapt themselves to an order in which sheep are found more
profitable than men, and deer than sheep. The big sheep-farmer from the
south makes more of the land than the easy-going crofter; yet the
smallest drop of Celtic blood cannot but stir to see a clansman touching
his hat for tips from
[Illustration: A SHEPHERD’S COT IN GLEN NEVIS, INVERNESS-SHIRE]
southron stockbrokers, and serving as obsequious attendant to the
American millionaires who enclose his native heath. Naturally the
Highlander is a gentleman, for all his faults, with instinctive courtesy
to soften his somewhat sullen pride. More than once I have had a tip
refused by a Highland servant, as nowhere else in the world unless in
the United States before their social independence, too, began to be
demoralised by the largesses of successful speculators, who, after
piling up dollars by “rings” and “corners,” find they can buy less
observance for their money at home than by corrupting a race declared by
Mrs. Grant of Laggan, herself reared in America, “to resemble the French
in being poor with a better grace than other people.”
The Highlander was a born sportsman as well as a gentleman, who by his
paternal chiefs would not be called closely to account for every deer
and salmon that went to eke out his frugal fare. Now he can shoot or
fish only in the way of business, the very laird making two ends meet by
letting out his moors and streams to a stranger, in whose service the
sons of warriors play the gamekeeper and gillie, with more or less good
will, loading the gun and carrying the well-stocked luncheon basket,
perhaps not always very hearty in hunting down those Ishmaelite brethren
who do a little grouse-netting on their own account for the supply of
London tables by the 12th of August. Sometimes the Gael takes revenge by
being able to hint his scorn for the sportsmanship of these new masters;
but as often, to do them justice, they will not give him this poor
satisfaction. A well-known southron humorist tells a story which needs
his voice to bring out the point, how he missed a deer, to the disgust
of the keeper, and how, trying to conciliate this worthy by admiration
of a fine head, he got the dry answer--“It’s no near so fine as the one
ye shot this morning--a-a-at!”
Deer-stalking is a sport that still demands manly skill and hardihood,
however many menials can be hired to mark down and circumvent the great
game. So much cannot always be said of other shooting, when the noble
sportsman entrenches himself behind fortifications to which the fierce
wild fowl are driven to be shot down by gun after gun placed in his
hands. Sport, that was once a bond between classes, becomes more and
more a monopoly of the rich. The very meaning of the word suffers a
change in our day from the doing of something oneself to a performance
where most of the activity is by paid assistants or “professionals.” One
good feature of Highland sport is in not lending itself to the
collection of gate-money from a mob of lookers-on; but the
dollar-hunting and _coup_-landing chieftain need not expect to be loved
by those whom he would fain bar out of his solitary playground.
I, too, have lived in Arcadia, and was duly entered at this craft, not
that I ever took very heartily to it, or that a big capercailzie, then a
_rara avis_ in Highland woods, ran much more risk from me than from Mr.
Winkle. But I know the free joy of tramping over wet moors behind dogs,
shooting for sport and not for slaughter, lunching off bread and cheese,
or a cold grouse, with fingers for forks, and coming home to a dinner
won by one’s own hands. That old-fashioned muzzle-loading work is
scorned by the present generation who, indeed, pay such rents for moors
and coverts that they have some reason to be keen after a big bag. Well
I remember a true Nimrod’s scorn for the first great noble in our part
of the world who _sold his game_! We children in the nursery would be
fed on grouse and salmon to use up what could not be sent away as
presents; and, for my part, I have never quite got over a stickjaw
conception of these expensive dainties.
There was a Highland shooting which in those days seemed a paradise of
schoolboy holiday. It belonged to a well-known Scottish peeress married
to a French nobleman, on whom it was thrown away, though their son grew
to be of a different mind. Thus it came on a long lease into the
occupation of keen sportsmen of my family, who naturally did not care to
build for their inevitable successors. The “lodge” was a short row of
white cottages, the centre one turned into a parlour, the others into
bedrooms; and as youngsters grew up, extra accommodations were provided
in the shape of a tent and iron shanties, the whole group backed by a
thin clump of wind-blown firs visible some dozen miles away on the bare
mountain side. All through the summer months it made an encampment for a
band of kilted youngsters, “hardy, bold, and wild,” taking in the
Highland air at every pore, with miles of moor and burn for their
playground, which they knew not to be haunted by the victims of Druid
rites. Not that more sophisticated guests were unknown at this eyry of
eyases. The great little Earl Russell, at that time, if I am not
mistaken, Prime Minister, was tenant of a neighbouring moor. One day he
had come over for a sociable beat, broken in on by a messenger, hot foot
across the heather, bearing a huge official envelope superscribed with
the name of a ducal colleague. The statesman requested a private
apartment in which to examine this communication, but the only closet
available was a bedroom, where he opened the cover to find--a caricature
of himself from _Punch_!
I have been led away by a grumble at the self-indulgent and
well-appointed sportsmen who in this generation invade my native heath.
But, however much they make themselves at home here, we chuckle to think
that they at least cannot tune their ears to the native music. For what
says the poet--
A Sassenach chief may be bonnily built,
He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt;
Stick a skean in his hose--wear an acre of stripes--
But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.
Another comfort taken by the dispossessed son of the mist is in hearing
the weather abused by strangers, who may as well stay at home under
shelter of their Twopenny Tubes and Burlington Arcades if they are
afraid of rain. Dr. Johnson was not, and a gentler critic of his time
observed that the Highlanders minded snow “no more than hair powder.” In
the warm south of England, I once caught a cold which stuck to me all
summer and seemed like to settle on my lungs. Late in autumn, in a kill
or cure mood, I went down to the dampest side of the Highlands, got wet
from morning to night, and in a week my cough had gone like dew from the
heather. But nature’s hydropathy does not always work so well, even on
seasoned constitutions. The severest loss of our Volunteer force, as
yet, on British soil, has been from that soaking royal review at
Edinburgh, when Highlanders were killed and crippled by a long railway
journey in drenched clothes, even though at the way-stations matron
[Illustration: RIVER AWE FLOWING TO LOCH ETIVE, ARGYLLSHIRE]
and maid brought them patriotic offerings of dry hose, with which at
least to “change their feet.”
Now let us turn to the tourist, who has neither lust nor license to
ruffle the least feather of grouse or gull, but calls forth angry
passions when his red guide-book or her sunshade come scaring the prey
stalked by lords of Cockaigne and Porkopolis. He and she, by coveys,
swarm in various directions from Inverness, but chiefly by the
Caledonian Canal, that highroad of pleasure, as once of business,
between the North and the South Highlands. Had we seen this road “before
it was made,” we should find little difference to-day, unless for a few
more modern mansions that have swallowed up many a lowly home, still,
perhaps, marked by patches of green about the ruined mountain shielings
where, as on Alpine pastures, Highland _Sennerin_ made butter and cheese
through the long summer days. A steamboat carries one right through the
Great Glen, beneath mountain giants, clad in nature’s own tartan of
green and purple chequered by brown and grey, with bare knees of crag,
and streaming sporrans of cascade, and feathers of fir-wood, too often
wrapped in a plaid of mist, or hidden by a mackintosh of drenching rain.
Else, against the clear sky-line, one may catch sight of a noble stag on
the hill head, displayed like its crest, sniffing motionless at the
steamer far below, unconscious of an unseen enemy stealing up the
rearward corrie with heart athrob for his blood, which, at the pull of a
trigger, may or may not stain the heath.
From its port below Craig Phadric, believed to have been the stronghold
of a king older than Duncan, then past the hill bearing his name, the
Canal soon takes us through the fertile strath into the wilder
Highlands. The first stage of that grand panorama is through deep Loch
Ness, where on one side Mealfourvonie towers like a hayrick, round which
goes the way to those remote Falls of Glomach, called the noblest in
Britain, and on the other are more easily reached the Falls of Foyers,
chained and set to work by an Aluminium Company that did not tremble at
the rhapsody of Christopher North:--
“Here is solitude with a vengeance--stern, grim, dungeon solitude!
How ghostlike those white, skeleton pines, stripped of their rind
by tempest and lightning, and dead to the din of the raging
cauldron! That cataract, if descending on a cathedral, would
shatter down the pile into a million of fragments. But it meets the
black foundations of the cliff, and flies up to the starless heaven
in a storm of spray. We are drenched, as if leaning in a hurricane
over the gunwale of a ship, rolling under bare poles through a
heavy sea. The very solid globe of earth quakes through her
entrails. The eye, reconciled to the darkness, now sees a
glimmering and gloomy light--and lo, a bridge of a single arch hung
across the chasm, just high enough to let through the triumphant
torrent. Has some hill-loch burst its barriers? For what a world of
waters come now tumbling into the abyss! Niagara! hast thou a
fiercer roar? Listen--and you think there are momentary pauses of
the thunder, filled up with goblin groans! All the military
music-bands of the army of Britain would here be dumb as
mutes--Trumpet, Cymbal, and the Great Drum! There is a desperate
temptation in the hubbub to leap into destruction. Water-horses and
kelpies, keep stabled in your rock-stalls--for if you issue forth
the river will sweep you down, before you have finished one neigh,
to Castle Urquhart, and dash you, in a sheet of foam, to the top of
her rocking battlements.... We emerge, like a gay creature of the
element, from the chasm, and wing our way up the glen towards the
source of the cataract. In a few miles all is silent. A more
peaceful place is not among all the mountains. The water-spout that
had fallen during night has found its way into Loch Ness, and the
torrent has subsided into a burn. What the trouts did with
themselves in the ‘red jawing speat’ we are not naturalist enough
to affirm, but we must suppose they have galleries running far into
the banks, and corridors cut in the rocks, where they swim about in
water without a gurgle, safe as golden and silver fishes in a
glass-globe, on the table of my lady’s boudoir. Not a fin on their
backs has been injured--not a scale struck from their starry sides.
There they leap in the sunshine among the burnished clouds of
insects, that come floating along on the morning air from bush and
bracken, the licheny cliff-stones, and the hollow-rinded woods.”
At the head of Loch Ness our boat takes to locks again at Fort-Augustus,
now turned into a Catholic monastery, arms yielding to the gown. Hence,
if the rain persistently blot out all prospect, we might hasten on by
branch railway to the West Highland Line, passing near those geological
lions called the “parallel roads” of Glenroy. Else we thread the water
between the heights of Keppoch and Glengarry, marked by the cairns of
many a forgotten feud, and through Loch Oich and Loch Lochy come to
cross the West Highland Railway at Banavie, where the Canal descends to
sea level by a staircase of locks like that at Trollhatta on the not
less famous waterway from Gothenburg to Stockholm.
Loch Oich, the smallest of the chain into which the Garry comes down
from its basin, has an authentic legend as retreat of Ewen Macphee,
perhaps the last British outlaw above the rank of a lurking poacher or
illicit distiller. Early in the nineteenth century he enlisted in a
Highland regiment, from which he deserted, and though captured and
handcuffed, made a romantic escape to his native wilds of Glengarry.
After camping in the woods till the hue and cry after him had died out,
he settled on an islet of Loch Oich, where he took to himself a wife and
reared a sturdy brood. For long he played Rob Roy on a small scale,
“lifting” sheep and helping himself to game, while he enjoyed the
sanctity of a seer’s reputation. When a southern landlord bought the
property, he established a not unfriendly _modus vivendi_ with this
tackless tenant, who introduced himself to the new owner by sticking his
dirk into the table as title-deed to his island--“By this right I hold
it!” But by and by the minions of the law pressed upon his retreat; and
in spite of a resolute defence, in which his wife handled a gun like a
modern Helen Macgregor, he was arrested for sheep stealing, and taken to
prison, where he pined away after a long life of lawless freedom. Bales
of sheep skins and tallow, found hidden about his fastness, were
evidence of how he had lived at the expense of his neighbours, a feature
too much left out of sight in modern regret for the picturesque old
times.
Banavie--that seems to be a kilted cousin of Banff, and forebear of the
Rocky Mountain paradise an American geographer presumes to spell
_Bamf_--is close to Fort-William, the southernmost of the three military
posts that bridled the Great Glen. In Stuart days this was Inverlochy,
scene of that battle between Montrose and Argyle. It is now a town of
snug hotels, over which rises the proclaimed monarch of British
mountains, his gloomy brow often crowned with mist and his precipitous
shoulders ermined with snow at any season. But if the weather favour,
from the Observatory Tower at the top,
[Illustration: A CROFT NEAR TAYNUILT, LOCH ETIVE, ARGYLLSHIRE]
one has the far-spread prospect masterly laid out by Sir Archibald
Geikie:--
“While no sound falls upon his ear, save now and then a fitful
moaning of the wind among the snow-rifts of the dark precipice
below, let him try to analyse some of the chief elements of the
landscape. It is easy to recognise the more marked heights and
hollows. To the south, away down Loch Linnhe, he can see the hills
of Mull and the Paps of Jura closing the horizon. Westward, Loch
Eil seems to lie at his feet, winding up into the lonely mountains,
yet filled twice a day with the tides of the salt sea. Far over the
hills, beyond the head of the loch, he looks across Arisaig, and
can see the cliffs of the Isle of Eigg and the dark peaks of Rum,
with the Atlantic gleaming below them. Farther to the north-west
the blue range of the Coolin Hills rises along the sky-line, and
then, sweeping over all the intermediate ground, through Arisaig
and Knoydart and the Clanranald country, mountain rises beyond
mountain, ridge beyond ridge, cut through by dark glens, and varied
here and there with the sheen of lake and tarn. Northward runs the
mysterious straight line of the Great Glen, with its chain of
lochs. Thence to east and south the same billowy sea of
mountain-tops stretches out as far as eye can follow it--the hills
and glens of Lochaber, the wide green strath of Spean, the grey
corries of Glen Treig and Glen Nevis, the distant sweep of the
moors and mountains of Brae Lyon and the Perthshire Highlands, the
spires of Glencoe, and thence round again to the blue waters of
Loch Linnhe.”
Hitherto the drenched tourist has been too ready to hasten away towards
drier Saxondom by steamboat or rail from the end of the Caledonian
Canal, ignorant what choice spots may hereabouts be lingered among, such
as that “Dark Mile,” which some have found better worth seeing than the
Trossachs, and Glen Nevis that, opening as a lush valley, mounts by
rushing falls into recesses of wild magnificence. Now the West Highland
Railway takes one on through Glenfinnan and the Lochiel country, where
Charles Edward raised that last standard of rebellion, against the
prudent judgment of the Cameron chief whose loyal pride yet followed it
to Culloden, and where a tall column records how a later Cameron fell as
gallantly in the service of the established dynasty. Thus we come to
Arisaig on the west coast, and to Mallaig opposite Skye, in which a book
that draws to its end must not venture to enter upon the most gloomily
grand aspects of Highland scenery. All this, like the country above the
Moray Firth, comes under the head of “counsels of perfection”; but every
conscientious Highland tour takes in Inverness, on the round made by the
Highland Railway and the Caledonian Canal, the most perfunctory minimum
being the Trossachs trip, which might be extended to pass by Oban and
the Clyde.