Inverness was the last place which had a regular communication by high
roads with the southern counties. All the ways beyond it have, I
believe, been made by the soldiers in this century. At Inverness
therefore Cromwell, when he subdued Scotland, stationed a garrison, as at
the boundary of the Highlands. The soldiers seem to have incorporated
afterwards with the inhabitants, and to have peopled the place with an
English race; for the language of this town has been long considered as
peculiarly elegant.
Here is a castle, called the castle of Macbeth, the walls of which are
yet standing. It was no very capacious edifice, but stands upon a rock
so high and steep, that I think it was once not accessible, but by the
help of ladders, or a bridge. Over against it, on another hill, was a
fort built by Cromwell, now totally demolished; for no faction of
Scotland loved the name of Cromwell, or had any desire to continue his
memory.
Yet what the Romans did to other nations, was in a great degree done by
Cromwell to the Scots; he civilized them by conquest, and introduced by
useful violence the arts of peace. I was told at Aberdeen that the
people learned from Cromwell's soldiers to make shoes and to plant kail.
How they lived without kail, it is not easy to guess: They cultivate
hardly any other plant for common tables, and when they had not kail they
probably had nothing. The numbers that go barefoot are still sufficient
to shew that shoes may be spared: They are not yet considered as
necessaries of life; for tall boys, not otherwise meanly dressed, run
without them in the streets; and in the islands the sons of gentlemen
pass several of their first years with naked feet.
I know not whether it be not peculiar to the Scots to have attained the
liberal, without the manual arts, to have excelled in ornamental
knowledge, and to have wanted not only the elegancies, but the
conveniences of common life. Literature soon after its revival found its
way to Scotland, and from the middle of the sixteenth century, almost to
the middle of the seventeenth, the politer studies were very diligently
pursued. The Latin poetry of _Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum_ would have
done honour to any nation, at least till the publication of _May's
Supplement_ the English had very little to oppose.
Yet men thus ingenious and inquisitive were content to live in total
ignorance of the trades by which human wants are supplied, and to supply
them by the grossest means. Till the Union made them acquainted with
English manners, the culture of their lands was unskilful, and their
domestick life unformed; their tables were coarse as the feasts of
Eskimeaux, and their houses filthy as the cottages of Hottentots.
Since they have known that their condition was capable of improvement,
their progress in useful knowledge has been rapid and uniform. What
remains to be done they will quickly do, and then wonder, like me, why
that which was so necessary and so easy was so long delayed. But they
must be for ever content to owe to the English that elegance and culture,
which, if they had been vigilant and active, perhaps the English might
have owed to them.
Here the appearance of life began to alter. I had seen a few women with
plaids at Aberdeen; but at Inverness the Highland manners are common.
There is I think a kirk, in which only the Erse language is used. There
is likewise an English chapel, but meanly built, where on Sunday we saw a
very decent congregation.
We were now to bid farewel to the luxury of travelling, and to enter a
country upon which perhaps no wheel has ever rolled. We could indeed
have used our post-chaise one day longer, along the military road to Fort
Augustus, but we could have hired no horses beyond Inverness, and we were
not so sparing of ourselves, as to lead them, merely that we might have
one day longer the indulgence of a carriage.
At Inverness therefore we procured three horses for ourselves and a
servant, and one more for our baggage, which was no very heavy load. We
found in the course of our journey the convenience of having
disencumbered ourselves, by laying aside whatever we could spare; for it
is not to be imagined without experience, how in climbing crags, and
treading bogs, and winding through narrow and obstructed passages, a
little bulk will hinder, and a little weight will burthen; or how often a
man that has pleased himself at home with his own resolution, will, in
the hour of darkness and fatigue, be content to leave behind him every
thing but himself.