THE CIRCLE ROUND
The iron road from Aberdeen to Inverness must follow somewhat the road
which gallant Mary took on her way to punish Huntley. There is a bleak
stern look about this country as a whole, but here and there stand
castles, or lie low the ruins of castles, in many a chosen place of
beauty; for harsh as were these lords, and devastating as were their
deeds, life must have had its moments of wonder and of delight. If
Malcolm Canmore destroyed Inverness before the Twelve Hundreds, and the
fat Georges destroyed Inverugie late in the Seventeen Hundreds, and all
through the centuries that stretched between strong men built
strongholds and stronger men took them and made mock of them, still
there must have been gentleness and beauty. There were women, other than
Lady Macbeth; there were young men and maidens noble or common; and I
suppose the glamour of romance, the reality or the illusion of love,
was invented before peace and commerce became the occupations of men.
_Peterhead_
One brief journey I made along the bleak coast up to the town of
Peterhead, which looks nearest to Norroway across the foam, and has a
most uncompromising aspect. Peterhead is a penal town to-day; and it is
one of a string of fishing villages, picturesque as fishing villages
are, except to the nose, "that despised poet of the senses"; and not
picturesque to the people, who lack the colour of fisherfolk in
Brittany. But I wished to see with mine own eyes the ruins of Inverugie.
It is one of the castles belonging to the Lords Marischal. It came to
them in a curious way of forfeiture, an abbot dispossessed or some such
thing, like Dunnottar, but without the appeal to Rome. And one of the
stones of the castle carried the promise, and the threat--
"As lang's this stane stands on this croft
The name o' Keith shall be abaft,
But when this stane begins to fa'
The name o' Keith shall wear awa'."
The last Lord Marischal came hither, late, late, in the Seventeen
Hundreds. He had seen a century move through strife to peace. In person
he had taken part in the Rising of the Fifteen, a young man, but still
hereditary Lord Marischal, and loyal to the Stewart cause. He had taken
no part in the Rising of the Forty Five; he was not "out" on that dark
night. But the sweeping revenge of those English times made the Keiths
attaint and--the stone dropped from its croft. The Lord Marischal and
his brother made the continent their refuge, Paris in particular,
although the activities of the proposed restoration took their Lordships
to Madrid and Rome and Berlin and St. Petersburg.
The younger brother, James, was made a Field Marshal by Catherine of
Russia, and that amorous termagant making love to him in the natural
course of proximity, he discreetly fled, became Field Marshal for
Frederick the Great, and not marrying--whatever the romance of the
Swedish lady--he fell at the battle of Hochkirch in 1758, and lies
buried in the _Garison Kirche_ of Berlin. A statue stands in the
Hochkirch kirche, and in 1868 the King of Prussia presented a replica to
Peterhead. And even so late as 1889, the Kaiser, remembering the Great
King's Field Marshal, named one of the Silesian war units, the Keith
regiment.
There is no statue to the Lord Marischal--_Maréschal d'Ecosse_, always
he signed himself. He was the friend of the wittiest and wisest and
wickedest men of his time, of David Hume, and Voltaire, and Rousseau,
and Frederick the Great. Neither did he marry. Dying at the age of
ninety-two, he was buried in Potsdam. There is no statue to him, there
or here. And Inverugie lies in low ruins.
Hither he came, when attaint was lifted, late in those tottering years.
He drove out to the castle, remembering all it had meant, the long
splendid records of the Earls Marischal, and how the King, James III and
VIII--Banquo saw him also--
"And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass
Which shows me many more."
James, not pretending but claiming, landed at Peterhead, lodged at
Inverugie, summoned the loyal and they came. The Standard was lifted for
a moment, and then fell.
Breaking into tears the old Lord Marischal realized all, an epoch
closed, a Scotland no longer requiring a Marischal. He left Inverugie,
even this ruin.
All this Northeast territory, no larger than a county in Dakota, bears
these scars of the past.
At Elgin there are the ruins of a cathedral; ruined, not by the English
but by the Wolf of Badenoch, because my Lord Bishop had given a judgment
which did not please my Lord of Badenoch. And the Wolf, his fangs drawn,
was compelled to stand barefooted three days before the great west gate.
At Canossa! Lands and seas and centuries divide--but there is slight
difference.
A scant mile or two to the north of Elgin lies the ruined Spynie Castle
of the Lord Bishop, a great place for strength, with massive keep--and
fallen. "A mighty fortress is our God." Cathedrals, castles, bishops and
lords, all pass away.
_Cawdor_
As we neared one of the last of the Northern stations, we turned to each
other and asked, "How far is't called to Forres?" And suddenly all was
night and witch dance and omen and foretelling. For it is here in the
palace that Banquo's ghost appeared and foretold all that history we
have been meeting as we came northward. And next is the town of
Nairn, which has become something of a city since Boswell found it "a
miserable place"; it is still long and narrow, stretching to the sea
with its fisherfolk cottages and bonneted women like the fisher wives of
Brittany; and stretching to the Highlands at the other end, as King
James said.
[Illustration: SPYNIE CASTLE.]
It was here that Wordsworth heard
"Yon solitary Highland lass,
Reaping and singing by herself; ...
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago....
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more."
But one leaves the train with a curious feeling. Of course one may be a
little tired. Arm chair travel and arm chair tragedy have their
advantages. But--Nairn is the nearest point to the blasted heath.
"Where's the place?
Upon the heath,
There to meet Macbeth."
It is not entirely necessary that one should make Nairn and walk out to
The Heath. Any of these northern silent Scottish blasted heaths will
serve. It is as though the witches had made their mysterious
incantations anywhere, everywhere. And if Shakespeare was in Scotland in
1589--as I like to think he was--it is doubtful if he saw The Heath.
Johnson told Hannah More, so she reports, that when he and Boswell
stopped for a night at a spot where the Weird Sisters appeared to
Macbeth, they could not sleep the night for thinking of it. Next day
they found it was not The Heath. This one is, in all faith, apocryphal.
Still, if you come hither toward evening, when
"Good things of day begin to droop and drowse"
it is fearsome enough. Such heaths demand their legend.
"The thane of Cawdor lives
A prosperous gentleman."
Not so prosperous now as when he lived in the life. Shakespeare took
liberties with the Thane. He immortalized him into Macbeth! And Cawdor
Castle, out from Nairn a few paces on the burn of Cawdor, might have
been the very home of Macbeth. It is pleasant, flowery, lovely. But
also, it is stern and looks like a castle for tragedy. But not for
mystery. I did not hear a bird of prey, as some travelers report--
"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements."
[Illustration: _Cawdor Castle_]
There are iron girded doors and secret apartments; not for Macbeth, but
for Lovat. This Lord of the Last Rising lived secretly for many months
in Cawdor while the Prince was moving restlessly to and fro in the
Islands. But the Prince was only twenty-five, and Lord Lovat was over
eighty. I like to think he was as young and keen to adventure as the
Prince. And I do not like to think of that beheading in the Tower--
"I must become a borrower of the night."
_Inverness_
The four chief cities of Scotland are arranged like a diamond for
excursion and for history. Always Scotland, unlike Gaul, has been
divided into four parts. Places of pilgrimage were Scone, Dundee,
Paisley, Melrose. Places for the quartering of Montrose were Glasgow,
Perth, Aberdeen, Stirling. And now four places are rivals; in trade
somewhat, but Glasgow leads in beauty, but Edinburgh, after all, is
unique in dignity, but Aberdeen is unbending; in the picturesque there
remains Inverness.
The city deserves its honours. (William Black has painted it in "Wild
Eelin.") It has a life of its own. For when I first came to Inverness
there was a cattle fair on, and sheep from all over the kingdom, from
Shropshire and from the Cheviots, came to be judged in Inverness; and
men came with them who looked very modern and capable and worldly and
commercial. It was all like a county fair of Iowa, only more dignified,
with no touch of sideshow. And, of course, there is the Highland
gathering in September, which has become too much like the sideshow, too
much a show, to attract the groundlings, and not a gathering of the
clans. Still--if one must take Scotland in a gulp--this is a very good
chance at Highland colour and sound and remnants of valour.
The town itself is full of pictures. It does not announce itself. There
is a close-built part, looking like a French provincial town, with
gabled houses, and down on the banks of the Ness the women spread their
clothes to dry as they do on a French river bank. There is a new
cathedral, very new, with an angel at the font we remembered William
Winter had liked, so we paid it respectful attention. There is a park
on the Ness to the west, where many islands and many bridges form a spot
of beauty.
And there is Tomnahurich--The Hill of the Fairies--a sudden steep
hill-mound, where Inverness carries its dead--like the Indians who
carried them to Indian mounds high above the rivers of the American
West. The dark yews make it even more solemn; one wonders if the fairies
dare play in these shades. But it is a sweetly solemn place, and we
decided to care not what Invernessians lay buried here if we might sit
on its convenient park benches and look at far rolling Scotland and
think of fairies and of Thomas the Rimer, who, it seems, came hither all
the way from Ercildoune from Melrose to heap this mound for his burial!
The errant Scots!
There remains no stone of Macbeth's Castle to which the gentle Duncan
came--"And when goes hence?" The county buildings--and a jail!--stand on
its site, a most modern pile. Malcolm razed that castle after he had
returned from England, and after Birnam wood had come to Dunsinane. It
was builded again; Inverness was a vantage point. Perhaps that one was
burned by the Lord of the Isles who afterward came to repentance and to
Holyrood. And builded again so that Huntley could defy Mary, and she
could take the castle and order it razed. And builded again so that
Cromwell could destroy it. And builded again as one of the five
fortresses whereby he sought to hold Scotland "Protected." And destroyed
at the Restoration which sought to destroy all the Protectorate had
built. But builded again so it might be destroyed by Prince Charles
Edward. No, I scarce think there is even the dust of the castle of
Macbeth left in Inverness, or incorporated into modern Fort George. The
"knock, knock, knock," which the porter heard at the gate, has battered
down a score of ominous strongholds.
But still
"The castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses."
For all the north of Scotland, away from the east winds, is pleasant and
lovely, with the mean climate that of London, and possible in winter and
summer.
In the grounds there stands a statue of Flora Macdonald looking out to
the West, and carrying the legend--
"On hills that are by right his ain
He roams a lanely stranger."
Could legend be better chosen to compress and carry all that story of
loyalty and courage and devotion?
And so we moved out to Culloden.
It was on a gray wind-swept afternoon that we made our pilgrimage. There
was no sense of rain. It was a hard sky. It spread leaden to the world.
We chose to walk the six mile stretch. Not with comfort or any show of
splendour, not even with a one-horse carriage, would we approach
Culloden.
The road leads over lonely Drumossie moor through a plantation of firs,
to a wild and naked spot--where all that was Scotland and nothing else
was burned out of the world by the withering fire of Cumberland, and the
remnant that would not save itself but fought to the last was cut to
pieces by his order.
I do not suppose that even on a hot sweet afternoon could any one with a
drop of Scotch blood come hither and not feel in his face the rain and
sleet of that seventeenth of April day, 1746. If one comes on that day
the cairn is hung with flowers, white roses of course, for there are
still Jacobites left in the world who have given to no other king their
allegiance. "Pretender!" cried Lady Strange to one who had mis-spoken
in her presence, "Pretender and be dawmned to ye!"
No, it was not the Pass of Thermopylæ, nor a Pickett's charge. Nor was
it even war.
Nevertheless it was one of the brave moments in human history. If
hopeless and even meaningless, does not bravery give it meaning? The
Highlanders--they were the last Jacobites left, as the army of the
Butcher, Cumberland, George Second's fat son swept northward and stopped
for their larder to be well-filled before they went on--had had only a
biscuit, the day before! They were five thousand to the English ten
thousand.
At eleven in the morning the Highlanders moved forward, the pipers
playing brave music, and they recked not that the English had the chosen
ground; theirs was not even a forlorn hope. Not if the Macdonalds, sulky
because they were on the left when since Bannockburn they had been on
the right, had fired a shot would the end have been different.
[Illustration: BATTLEFIELD OF CULLODEN.]
On the battlefield, looking at these mounds, the long trench of the
dead, one realizes that Scotland lies buried here. M'Gillivray, M'Lean,
M'Laughlin, Cameron, Mackintosh, Stuart of Appin--so many brave names.
"The lovely lass of Inverness,
Nae joy nor pleasure can she see,
For e'en and morn she cries, alas!
And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e--
"Drumossie muir, Drumossie day!
A waefu' day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear, and brothers three.
"Their winding sheet the bluidy clay--
Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman's e'e.
"Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord!
A bluidy man I trow thou be;
For mony a heart thou hast made sair
That ne'er did wrong to them or thee."
The small remnant that was left, and was not butchered by Cumberland,
fled to the West. Sometimes one could wish Prince Charles had died at
Culloden! and yet one would not spare the wanderings, or Flora
Macdonald. Thousands of the men fled to America; thousands of Scots in
America to-day can say, "My great grandfather fought at Culloden."
Hundreds of Scots to-day are sent "home" from America to be educated. I
have met in the magnificent Highlands of Montana, Scotchmen, true
Highlanders, who had been sent to Edinburgh university that they might
be Scots, even though they carried "American" blood in their veins.
When Boswell and Johnson came here in 1773, twenty-seven years after the
Forty Five, they found that many of the Highlanders were going to
America, leaving the lairds and the land. One M'Queen of Glenmorison was
about to go.
"Dr. Johnson said he wished M'Queen laird of Glenmorison, and the laird
to go to America. M'Queen very generously answered he should be sorry
for it; for the laird could not shift for himself in America as he could
do."
Small wonder that Prince Charles, knowing of this exodus, and believing
life still held for him its chances, its glories, away from Rome and
even if he was fifty-five, looked longingly over the sea, in 1776,
thinking that he might lead these rebellious colonists, so many of them
of his rebellious people, and reëstablish the House of Stewart in the
New World. Surely Burr, coming with Blennerhasset, thirty years after,
had something of the Stewart in him.
_The Orkneys_
Scotland is divided by a deep geologic cleft. Glenmore, the Great Glen,
runs southwesterly from Inverness to Fort William and Oban, cutting the
country into two parts. One is Scotland; the other is the West, the
Highlands and the Islands. One is known, the other unknown. One has been
prosperous, royal, noble; the other has been wild, independent, chief
and clans holding together. To-day, if the East is strangely quiet, the
West is strangely silent.
In the East you know things have happened; remnants remain, ruined
castles testify; in the West it is as though they had not happened,
those far historic things; castles are heaps of blackened or crumbled
stone; or, if they stand, they stand like prehistoric remnants, and the
clachans are emptied; the Risings, the migrations, the evictions, the
extensions of deer forests and sheep pastures and grouse preserves, the
poverty, yes, and the wandering spirit of the people leading them ever
afar--where always they are Scottish down to the last drop, always
looking toward Home, but ever leaving it empty of their presence.
It is a stranger land, though so lovingly familiar, than any I have ever
been in. I have been in valleys of the Rockies which were not so lonely
as glens in Scotland. When Hood wrote his sonnet on "Silence," beginning
"There is a silence where hath been no sound,"
He went on to a correction--
"But in the antique palaces where man hath been."
He missed the note of glens and valleys where man has been and is not.
From the Great Glen, a series of lochs lying in a geologic "fault," and
connected more than a century ago by a series of locks, excursion may be
had into remote places, so very remote even if they lie but a half dozen
miles in the backward; the farther ones, to the Orkneys, to John o'
Groat's, to Skye, the island of mist and of Prince Charlie and Dr.
Johnson and Fiona McLeod, and vast numbers of places known to those who
seek beauty only.
Three forts were built in the rebellious Seventeen Hundreds to hold this
far country. The forts rather betray history. And they form convenient
places of departure for those who would conquer the Highlands and the
Islands for themselves.
Fort George, near Inverness, is still used as a depot for military
stores and for soldiers. Fort Augustus has been surrendered to the
Benedictines who are gradually developing here a great monastery which
in these silences should rival the monasteries of old--if that may be.
Fort William, most strategic of all, is also strategic for traveler's
descent. Thus is the iron hand that succeeded the bloody hand at
Culloden become rust.
[Illustration: THE OLD MAN OF HOY.]
To the men of old the Orkneys seemed at the back of beyond and a little
farther. Yet, I cannot think how it has reduced the distance to a
comprehensible length if farther ends of the world and endless waters
have been reached; distance is three parts imagination in any event. As
a man thinketh so is distance.
The run up the coast to Scrabster, the port of Thurso, is very much on
the coast, with wild barren land on one side, and wild waste water on
the other; with here and there a resting-place for the eye or mind, like
Skibo Castle for our American Laird of Skibo, Dunrobin Castle for the
magnificent Sutherlands, and on a branch line leading out to the sea the
house of John o'Groat, perhaps the best known citizen above Land's End.
From Scrabster the Old Man of Hoy lifts his hoary head over the seas,
and invites to Ultima Thule, if this be Ultima Thule. And I suppose that
ever since Agricola came up this way the Old Man has sent forth his
invitation. The Romans did not answer it, although Tacitus wrote about
it; and it was left for much later folk to dispute the Picts and take
the islands for themselves.
An archipelago of fifty-six islands lies scattered over the water, with
only half of them inhabited, but not all the rest habitable; if, like
Sancho Panza, you are looking for an island, you will not find the isle
of heart's desire here. The scant inhabited twenty odd are not over
filled with population; these islands are not hospitable to large
numbers, not even of their own. They came to us through Margaret of
Denmark, queen to James III, and were confirmed when Anne of Denmark
came to be queen to James VI.
The sail over the Pentland Firth may be taken on a still day when the
historic waters, as vexed as those of the Bermoothes, lie like glass.
The rage of water, of any water, is not the frequent mood; but always it
is the memorable. Blue above and blue below was the day of our going,
twenty miles past high "continental" shores, like Dunnet's head, and
between the outliers of the Orcadian group, at the end of a summer day
that never ends in this North.
Yet I cannot think how I should ever again approach "Mainland" and the
port of Kirkwall with such indifference to everything except the
exquisite cool softness of this Northern air of mid-summer, with an
indolent interest in the land ahead, hardly quickened into active
interest which is the traveler's right, when we approached Scapa in the
twilight.
I did remember that the Vikings were once here as kings. And when King
Haakon of Norway was returning from the defeat at Largs in the west
where his fleet suffered the blow repeated later against the Spanish
armada, one ship was sucked down into a whirlpool near Stroma. And
Haakon died here of a broken heart. All these seemed like old, far-off
things that are not unhappy. Yet there was a suggestion of fate in the
place; perhaps there always is in a Northern twilight. To approach
Kirkwall after this, will always be to remember the Hampshire, going to
its death in a water more dangerous than that of whirling Stroma, and
Lord Kitchener going with it.
Kirkwall is a pleasant old town; or was, till war made it busy and new.
It lies inland a mile or two across the isthmus, but no doubt stretching
actively down to the south pier at Scapa during the years of the great
war, when all the British fleet hovered about.
The town is gray, like all Scottish towns; nature does these things with
perfect taste. And, in the midst, man has builded for his worship a
church of red sandstone, the Cathedral of St. Magnus, older and in
better condition than churches of Scotland more exposed to the change of
faith; with a long dim interior that speaks the North, with massive
Norman arches; one wonders how the reformed faith can conduct itself in
this dim religious light.
But the Earl's Palace remains a thing of beauty. Earl Patrick builded
it, the son of Robert who was half brother to Mary. If the palace had
been built in Mary's day I should, in truth, have lamented that she did
not come hither after the escape from Loch Leven, instead of going to
defeat at Langside. Mary was valiant, and the stern North was, after
all, in her blood.
But Patrick as "jarl" came a generation later, and he taxed the islands
mercilessly to build this very beautiful palace. The roof is gone, but
the beauty remains, oriel windows, fireplaces, and towers and turrets.
No doubt when "the wind is blowing in turret and tree," Patrick's palace
can be ruined enough. But on a day when the blue sky is sufficient
vaulting, the palace is a place to dream in.
[Illustration: EARL'S PALACE, KIRKWALL.]
Over at Birsay, twenty miles across the Mainland--there are twenty mile
stretches in this Mainland--there is another palace, built by Robert,
himself, who was, incidentally, Abbot of Holyrood as well as Earl of the
Orkneys. The motto-stone declares--
"Dominus Robertus Stuartus
Filius Jacobi Quinti Rex Scotorum
Hoc Opus Instruxit."
"Rex" said Robert, not "regis"; perhaps his Latin knew no better, but
his spirit knew this was right. The nominative agreed with Robertus, not
with Jacobi. Still, the ruler of the Orkneys was a supreme lord at this
remove from king and counselors.
Here and there, but only here and there through the islands, lies
traveler's lure. Motor boats make the run for tourist pleasure, and many
of the "points of interest" can be seen from the waters; particularly
the "brochs," the cairn-like towers of perhaps Pictish building; and the
round tower of St. Magnus on Egilsay, which must date back very far,
perhaps to the time when Columba came hither from Ireland and converted
these people and gave them hints of Irish building.
There are remnants of life earlier than Columba, of faith earlier,
though we know not the faith. The Circle of Bogar, old gray pillar-like
stones, set in purple heather, are comparable with Stonehenge and
Locmariaqueur. Scott found them equal; Scott who had such an admirable
way of finding in Scotland the equal of the world. In "The Pirate" he
describes these stones, indeed he describes these Orkneys in this
accurate guide book which is still "up to date."
To the blood shed and violence of old days has succeeded the quiet
pursuit of agriculture; and instead of the boats that used to sail to
the New World, H. B. C. boats and those to the Plantations, and to
Russia for the Northwest Passage, and to the Arctic for the Pole, are
the quiet boats of the fisherfolk. Except--when war fleets ride at
anchor.
_The Caledonian Canal_
The Great Glen itself is a necessary journey, even though no side trips
be made. I must believe that every one who has ever taken it and written
account, journeyed down this waterway in a Scotch mist; which, of
course, is not a mist at all, but something finite and tangible.
I, myself, went my ways that way. And, of course, those who had come
north the day before me, and those who came south the day after, came
through magnificent clearness, and marvels of marvels, Ben Nevis cleared
of mists to his very crest and beyond, shining splendid and majestic and
out-topping all Scotland, against the brilliant cloud-swept northern
sky! Frankly, I am always tempted to be suspicious when any one tells me
he has traveled the Great Glen and seen it all.
The scenery on both sides is wild, desolate, mountainous, a daring of
nature. There are sheer hillsides where all is revealed; again, there
are wooded hills where the men of the Forty Five might be still lurking.
Dochfour, Ness, Oich, Lochy, are the names of these "great lakes" that
make the chain. There is quality to their names, like Superior, Huron,
Erie, Ontario. But the Scottish chain is sixty miles long and can be
made from morning to evening, with enough of the day left to go through
Loch Linnhe and so to Oban; as one should add, through the St. Lawrence
and so to Quebec. Yet when one has passed from Inverness to Oban the
mind is as full, it has come through as much contact, nay, more, as in
the journey from Duluth to Quebec.
There are ruined castles by the way. Urquhart, looking very picturesque,
especially if the mist is but half come down over the world and the
purple of the distances is of that deep royal purple so characteristic
of the water and mountain distances of this wild west country. Yet the
sunny distances are as much a marvel of colour in their pale blue that
has so much intensity, so much real vivacity. Purple one has learned to
associate with distance; or, since some painter has shown us the
truthful trick. But blue, this particular Scottish blue, I have never
seen elsewhere. It is woven of mists and sunlight in equal proportions.
And so, Urquhart in its ruin, standing romantically on a fir clad
promontory, is most alluring as the boat rounds it on its early way. I
do not know anything of Urquhart. The name rather suggests the middle
name carried by a once famous actress. Somehow I half believe that in
that castle Charlotte Corday may have stabbed Marat. But then, facetious
and unromantic, I wonder at the baths in Urquhart in the old days when
skene dhus served in the place of daggers.
There are other romantic lures in the names which seem to have dropped
so carelessly anywhere. Inverarigaig--which sounds more musical than it
looks on the page--stands at the head of the pass through which The
Prince came after that day at Culloden on his way to the West as
wanderer. Far down the stretch of water rises Mealfourvournie, a rounded
naked hill overlooking the ravine where once the church of Cilles Christ
stood; and once, full of Mackenzies, was set on fire by the Macdonalds,
and all the Mackenzies burned. The act is not singular among the clans.
McLeod of Dare gives it to the Macdonalds and McLeods. And so one comes
to believe the story of a traveler coming on a Highland cottage and
asking if there were any Christians within, got back the reply,--"no,
we're all Macdonalds." Surely Saint Columba was needed in later
centuries than the Sixth.
The Falls of Foyers are across the lake, surrendered now to aluminum
works. And yet Burns wrote of them
"Among the heathery hills and rugged woods
The roaring Foyers pours his moving floods."
Christopher North wrote a better, a prose poem, which sounds somewhat
curiously in American ears. "What a world of waters now comes tumbling
into the abyss! Niagara! hast thou a fiercer roar? Listen--and you think
there are momentary pauses of 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!"
Fort Augustus closes the end of the loch, and here the Benedictines,
black-robed, move in somber file where once the red-coated soldiers
marched.
Five locks raise the steamer fifty feet, into the Highlands. And while
the boat is waiting the rise, here, as at any of the locks, there is
entertainment. Fellow travelers get out to stretch their legs, and that
is amusing enough, tolerantly considered. There are tea houses at every
lock, many of them, sometimes charmingly rose-embowered like the houses
along the Thames. There are pipers who march majestically up and down,
swinging their sporrans, swaying their kilts; one is almost afraid to
give a penny.
And I remember at one of these pausing places where the passengers
remained on the boat, that a very pleasing gentleman who looked as
George Washington may have looked on gala occasions did sing for my
entertainment and that of my fellow passengers; except one fellow
American who expressed her disapproval. Perhaps George Washington did
not dress so gaily; it was just the hat. There was a black coat, white
breeches, crimson waistcoat, blue stockings, silver buckled shoes, and
a cocked hat. And this pleasing gentleman sang to a tune that was no
tune but very cheering, about "the hat me faither wore." And he was so
doing his best, which was very good indeed, that I was forced to get
change for a sixpence--it cannot be ethical, and certainly is not fun to
throw a little silver disk when six large coppers may be thrown. And the
American female fellow passenger said, "Doesn't it seem as though he
could get something nearer a man's job?" Yet he was such a pleasant
person. And they're not common to be met on the highway.
From Fort Augustus on there are memories of the Risings, chiefly of
Prince Charlie, in the glorious before, in the tragic aftermath. He came
hither as conqueror, that mere stripling, belted and plaided as a Royal
Stewart, and retook his kingdom. The coat skirts of Johnny Cope you can
still see in retreat to Inverness, if you look well. From Gairlochy the
way leads to Glenfinnan where he raised his Standard, and the Castle of
Lochiel, ruined because of him. And hither he came, after Culloden. At
Fort Augustus the head of Roderick Mackenzie was presented to the
Butcher as that of Prince Charles, and near Gairlochy, and near
Lochiel--"beware of the day"--is the "cage" of Cluny MacPherson where
he harboured during those days of red pursuit. And the thirty thousand
pounds are yet to be paid for betrayal.
Loch Oich, littlest and highest, with wooded islands and heavily wooded
shores, larches and delicate silver birches, is the exquisite bit of the
way. And here stands Invergarry Castle, which saw Prince Charles when
first he came gallant from the West and Moidart, and saw him when last
he came defeated to the West.
Laggan Avenue runs between Loch Oich and Loch Lochy, a narrow waterway
with soft fir-trees lining the way in a most formal fashion; it has a
peculiar magic when the mist has shut out the rounded hills of the
higher background.
Banavie--to move according to the schedule--is at the top of the locks,
three miles of them, Neptune's staircase, leading down to Fort William
and to the sea. The railroad is the swifter way and breaks the journey,
and passes the ruins of Inverlochy. It is a place to which French and
Spanish merchants came in far days of the Seven Hundreds. But better, a
place where Montrose won a victory.
[Illustration: INVERGARRY CASTLE.]
Here took place (1645) the battle between the Marquis of Montrose and
the Marquis of Argyle, and so splendidly that Montrose and Charles
thought the kingdom was coming back to its own. Montrose had started
through the Great Glen for Inverness, but hearing that the Campbells
were massing at Inverlochy, he turned back, and gave battle. The victory
was so tremendously with the royal Montrose that he wrote a letter to
Charles, then negotiating with the parliamentarians, and Charles
believed so that he broke off the parleying--
"Give me leave, after I have reduced this country, and conquered from
Dan to Beersheba, to say to Your Majesty, as David's general to his
master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.'"
In five years, the two were both beheaded, one at Whitehall in London,
the other at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, the Marquis sixteen months later
than the King. "To carry honour and fidelity to the grave."
At Inverlochy looks down the mountain of them all, Ben Nevis, taller
than Ben Muich Dhui, taller than Snowdon or Helvellyn. And from its
vantage point, the Observatory Tower, one may look over all the
territory in many directions whither one proposes to go; the routes can
be planned from this top of Scotland. As Sir Archibald Geikie mapped it
in his glorified geography--
"While no sound falls upon his ears, save now and then a fitful moaning
of the wind among the snow-rifts of the dark precipice below, let him
try to analyze some of the chief elements of the landscape. It is easy
to recognize 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 northwest the blue range of the Coolin Hills rises along the
skyline, and then, sweeping over all the intermediate ground, through
Arisaig and Knoydart and the Clanranald country mountain rises after
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 locks. Then 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 gray 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 again to the blue waters of
Loch Linnhe."
This may not be "the roof of the world," but it is a very high gable.