narrow road; we are still close to the Garry. Beyond it are heath-clad
banks, rising up into a braeland, a hill, or mountain, while the river
is far down at the bottom of a cutting, which its own waters have worn
in their rush of ages.
The road gets narrower now.
It cannot be more than nine feet at its widest. But the hills and the
mountains are very beautiful; those nearest us are crimsoned over with
blooming heather; afar off they are half hidden in the purple mist of
distance.
All my old favourite flowers have disappeared. I cannot see even a
Scottish bluebell, nor a red, nodding foxglove, only on mossy banks the
pink and odorous wild thyme-blooms grow among the rocks, tiny lichens
paint the boulders, and wherever the water, from some rill which has
trickled down the mountain side, stops, and spreads out and forms a
patch of green bog land, there grow the wild sweet-scented myrtle, and
many sweetly pretty ferns. [The sweet gall, or candleberry myrtle.]
In some places the hills are so covered with huge boulders as to suggest
the idea that Titans of old must have fought their battles here,--those
rocks their weapons of warfare.
We must now be far over a thousand feet above the sea-level, and for the
first time we catch sight of snow-posts, sometimes singly, sometimes in
pairs.
The English tourist would in all probability imagine that these were
dilapidated telegraph poles. They serve a far different purpose, for
were it not for them in winter, when the ground is covered with snow,
and the hollows, and even the ravines, are filled up,--were it not for
these guiding posts, the traveller, whether on foot or horseback, might
get off the path, and never be heard of or seen any more, until the
summer's sun melted the snow and revealed his corpse.
Toiling on and on through these mountain fastnesses, we cannot help
wondering somewhat anxiously where we can rest to-night. Dalwhinnie, that
sweetest spot in this highland wilderness, is still seventeen miles
away. We cannot reach there to-night. A fall moon will rise and shine
shortly after sunset--this is true, but to attempt so long a journey
with tired horses, with so great a weight behind them, and in so rugged
a country, would be to court an accident, if not destruction.
There is, about four miles ahead of us, a shooting lodge at
Dalnacardoch. Yes, but they who live there may not consider hospitality
and religion to be nearly akin. We'll try.
"Pull up, Corn-flower."
"Pull up, Pea-blossom."
Pea-blossom is tired herself. If you but shake the whip over her she
angrily nibbles at Corn-flower's nose.
"He," she says as plain as horse can speak, "is in the fault. I am
pulling all I can, but _he_ is not doing half the work."
Dalnacardoch at long last.
Dalnacardoch! Why, the name is big enough for a good-sized town, or a
village at the very least, but here is but a single house. In the good
old coaching days it had been a coaching inn.
I go to the door and knock.
The butler appears.
"Who lives here?"
"A Mr Whitely, sir, from Yorkshire has the shooting."
"Ha," I think, "from Yorkshire? Then am I sure of a welcome."
Nor was I mistaken. On a green flat grass plot, near to this Highland
shooting-box lies the Wanderer; the horses are in a comfortable stable,
knee-deep in straw, with corn and hay to eat in abundance, and I am
happy and duly thankful.
It is now past nine o'clock; I have dined, and Hurricane Bob and I go
out for a stroll in the sweet moonlight, which is flooding mountain,
moor, and dell.
The day has been fiercely hot, but the night is still and starry, and
before morning there will be ice on every pool.
How black and bare the hills are, and how lonesome and wild! but what
must they be in winter, when the storm winds sweep over them, and when
neither fur nor feather can find food and shelter anywhere near them?
"Bob, my boy, we will go to bed."
The stillness of the night is sublime, unbroken save by the distant
murmur of the Garry, a sound so soothing that I verily believe it would
have lulled even Maecenas himself to sleep.
On August 20th, as fresh as larks, cold though it had been all night, we
started on our route for Dalwhinnie. What an appetite the Highland air
gives one! I felt somewhat ashamed of myself this morning, as rasher
after rasher of bacon, and egg after egg, disappeared as if by
legerdemain; and after all, the probability is that a biscuit and cheese
at eleven o'clock may be deemed a necessity of existence.
It is a bright sunny morning, but the road is rough and stony; on some
parts the _debris_ has been washed from the mountain sides, and left to
lie across the road, in others some faint attempts at repairs have been
undertaken. The plan is primitive in the extreme. A hole is dug in the
hillside, and the earth and shingle spaded on to the road.
Plenty of sheep are grazing on the boulder-covered mountains, plenty of
snakes and lizards basking in the morning sunshine. Some of the snakes
are very large and singularly beautiful, and glitter in the sunlight as
if they had been dipped in glycerine.
This is a land of purple heath, but not of shaggy wood. It would be
impossible for any one to hang himself here, unless he requisitioned one
of the snow-posts. It is the land of the curlew, the grouse, and the
blackcock,--the land mayhap of the eagle, though as yet we have not seen
the bird of Jove. The road now gets narrower and still more narrow,
while we ride close to the cliffs, with--far below us--the turbulent
Garry. Were we to meet a carriage now, passing it would be impossible,
and there is no room to draw off.
Never before perhaps did a two-ton caravan attempt to cross the
Grampians. There are heath-clad braelands rising around us at all
sides. Some of the banks near Dalnaspiddal are a sight to behold. The
heather that clothes them is of all shades, from pink to the deepest,
richest red. So too are the heaths. These last rest in great sheets,
folded over the edge of cliffs, clinging to rocks, or lying in splendid
patches on the bare yellow earth. Here, too, are ferns of many kinds,
the dark-green of dwarf-broom, and the crimson of foxglove bells.
When we stop for a few minutes, in order that I may gather wild flowers,
the silence is very striking, only the distant treble of the bleating
lamb far up the mountain side, and the answering cry of the dam.
Here we drive now, close under the shadow of a mountain cliff about two
thousand feet high; and from the top cascades of white water are
flowing.
My coachman marvels. Where on earth, he asks, do these streams come
from? He knows not that still higher hills lie behind these.
Owing to our great height above the sea-level, the horses pant much in
climbing. But the wind has got up, and blows keen and cold among these
bleak mountains.
Shortly after leaving Dalnaspiddal, the road begins to ascend a mountain
side, amidst a scene of such wild and desolate grandeur, as no pen or
pencil could do justice to.
It was a fearful climb, with Bob running behind, for even his weight,
120 pounds, lightens the carriage appreciably; with the roller down
behind an after wheel, and my valet and I pushing behind with all our
might, the horses at long last managed to clamber to the highest point.
I threw myself on a bank, pumped and almost dead. So were the horses,
especially poor Corn-flower, who shook and trembled like an aspen leaf.
On looking back it seemed marvellous how we had surmounted the steep
ascent. To have failed would have meant ruin. The huge caravan would
have effectually blocked the road, and only gangs of men--where in this
dreary, houseless wilderness would they have come from?--could have
taken us out of the difficulty.
Dalwhinnie Hotel is indeed an oasis in the wilderness. It is a hospice,
and in railway snow-blocks has more than once saved valuable lives.
Both master and mistress are kindness personified.
Here, near the hotel, is a broad but shallow river; there is a clump of
trees near it too. Fact! I do not mean to say that an athlete could
not vault over most of them, but they are trees nevertheless. The house
lies in what might be called a wide moorland, 1,200 feet above the
sea-level, with mountains on all sides, many of them covered with snow
all the year round.
I started next day for Kingussie, six hundred feet below the level of
Dalwhinnie, where we encamped for the night behind the chief hotel.
My dear cousin, Mrs McDonald, of Dalwhinnie, had come with me as far as
this town, accompanied by some of her sweet wee children, and what a
happy party we were, to be sure! We sang songs and told fairy tales,
and made love--I and the children--all the way.
Honest John, my cousin's husband, came in the dogcart, and showed me all
the beauties of this charming village, which is situated among some of
the finest and wildest scenery in the Scottish Highlands. Beauties of
nature, I mean, but we met some pretty people too. Among the latter is
old Mrs Cameron, who keeps a highland dram-shop at the other end of the
village, and talked to John as she would to a child. She is far over
seventy, but _so_ pleasant, and _so_ stout, and _so_ nice.
I promised to stop at her door next day as I drove past, and though we
started before the hills had thrown off their nightcaps, our old lady
was up and about. She entered and admired the caravan, then went
straight away and brought out her bottle. Oh! dear reader, she would
take no denial.
The lady loved to talk, and did not mind chaff. I tried to make it a
match between herself and my young valet. But--
"'Deed, indeed, no, sir," she replied, "it is your coachman I'm for, and
when he comes back I'll be all ready to marry him."
So we drove away laughing.
Though frosty dews fell last night, the morning is delightful. So also
is the scenery on all sides. Hills there are in abundance to climb and
descend, but we surmount every difficulty, and reach the romantic
village of Carrbridge long before dusk.
Here we are to spend the Sunday, and the caravan is trotted on to a high
bit of tableland, which is in reality a stackyard, but overlooks the
whole village.
Narrow Escape of "Wanderer."
This happened to-day, and our adventure very nearly led to a dark ending
of our expedition. On our road to Carrbridge, and just at the top of a
hill, with a ravine close to our near wheel, the horse in a dogcart,
which we met, refused to pass, shied, and backed right against our pole
end.
For a moment or two we seemed all locked together. The danger was
extreme; our horses plunged, and tried to haul us over, and for a few
brief seconds it seemed that the Wanderer, the dogcart, plunging horses,
and all, would be hurled off the road and over the brae. Had this
happened, our destruction would have been swift and certain; so steep
and deep was it that the Wanderer must have turned over several times
before reaching the bottom.
_Monday, August 24th_.--I am this morning _en route_ for Inverness,
five-and-twenty miles, which we may, or may not, accomplish. We have
now to cross the very loftiest spurs of the Grampian range.
We are now 800 feet above the level of the sea. We have to rise to
1,300, and then descend to Inverness. Were it all one rise, and all one
descent, it would simplify matters considerably, but it is hill and
dale, and just at the moment when you are congratulating yourself on
being as high as you have to go, behold, the road takes a dip into a
glen, and all the climbing has to be repeated on the other side.
My last Sunday among the mountains! Yes! And a quiet and peaceful one
it was; and right pleasant are the memories I bear away with me from
Carrbridge; of the sweet little village itself, and the pleasant
_natural_ people whom I met; of the old romantic bridge; of the hills,
clad in dark waving pine-trees; of the great deer forests; of moorlands
clad in purple heather; of the far-off range of lofty mountains--among
them, Cairngorm--their sides covered with snow, a veritable Sierra
Nevada; of the still night and the glorious moonlight, and of the
murmuring river that sang me to sleep, with a lullaby sweeter even than
the sound of waves breaking on a pebbly beach.
We are off at 8:15 am, and the climb begins. After a mile of hard toil,
we find ourselves in the centre of a heather-clad moor. Before and
around us hills o'er hills successive rise, and mountain over mountain.
Their heads are buried in the clouds. This gives to the scene a kind of
gloomy grandeur.
A deep ravine, a stream in the midst, roaring over its pebbly bed.
A dark forest beyond.
Six miles more to climb ere we reach our highest altitude.
Three miles of scenery bleaker and wilder than any we have yet come to.
A dark and gloomy peat moss, with the roots of ancient forest trees
appearing here and there.
It gets colder and colder, and I am fain to wrap myself in my Highland
plaid.
We meet some horses and carts; the horses start or shy, and remembering
our adventure of yesterday we feel nervous till they pass.
On and on, and up and up. We are among the clouds, and the air is cold
and damp.
We now near the gloomy mountains and deep ravines of Slochmuichk.
We stop and have a peep ahead. Must the Wanderer, indeed, climb that
terrible hill? Down beneath that narrow mountain path the ravine is 500
feet deep at the least. There is a sharp corner to turn, too, up
yonder, and what is beyond?
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CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
WILD FLOWERS--A HEDGEROW IN JULY--HEDGEROWS IN GENERAL--IN WOODLAND AND
COPSE--IN FIELDS AND IN MOORLANDS.
"Ye wildlings of Nature, I doat upon you,
For ye waft me to summers of old,
When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight.
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold."
Campbell.
"Fair, my own darling, are the flowers in spring...
Rathe primrose, violet, and eglantine,
Anemone and golden celandine.
Not less delicious all the birds that sing
Carols of joy upon the amorous wing,
Earine, in these sweet hours of thine."
Mortimer Collinz (to his wife).
From the day we started from the tree-clad plains of bird-haunted Berks
till that on which, after crossing the wild Grampian range, we rolled
into the capital of the Scottish Highlands, the Wanderer was gay
interiorly with wild and garden flowers.
Did we purchase these flowers? Never once, for, strange as it may seem,
I do not think that I ever left a town or village or humblest hamlet
without having a bouquet or two presented to me.
Nor were the persons who brought those flowers always such as one would
feel inclined to associate with the poetry that floated around their
floral gifts.
A rosebud or a lily, in the fair fingers of a beautiful girl, is
idyllic; it is in keeping with nature. But what say you to a bunch of
sweet-scented carnations, pinks, and lilac pea-blooms trailing over the
toil-tinted fingers of some rustic dame of forty?
Would you not accept the latter almost as readily as the former? Yes,
you would, especially if she said,--
"Have a few flowers, sir? I know you are fond of them."
Especially if you knew that a great kindly lump of a heart was beating
under a probably not over-fashionable corset, and a real living soul
peeping out through a pair of merry laughing eyes.
But rough-looking men, ay, even miners, also brought me flowers.
And children never failed me. Their wee bits of bouquets were oft-times
sadly untidy, but their wee bits of hearts were warm, so I never refused
them.
Some bairnies were too shy to come right round to the back door of the
Wanderer with their floral offerings; they would watch a chance when
they imagined I was not looking, lay them on the _coupe_, and run.
Which of the wild flowers, I now wonder, did I love the best? I can
hardly say. Perhaps the wild roses that trailed for ever over the
hedgerows. But have they not their rivals in the climbing honeysuckle
and in the bright-eyed creeping convolvulus? Yes, and in a hundred
other sweet gems.
Not a flower can I think of, indeed, that does not recall to my mind
some pleasant scene.
"Even now what affections the violet awakes;
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water-lily restore;
What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbles and minnowy brooks,
In the vetches that tangle the shore."
If any proof were needed that I had derived the most intense pleasure
from the constant companionship of the wild flowers in my caravan
rambles, it is surely to be found in the fact that I am writing this
chapter, on a bitter winter's morning in the month of March, sitting in
my garden wigwam. When I essayed to commence work to-day I found my
writing fluid was frozen, and I could not coax even a dip from the
bottle until I had set it over the stove.
And yet it is a morning in March.
Last year at this time the sun was warm, the air was balmy, the
crocuses, primroses, snowdrops, and even the tulips were in bloom, and
the brown earth was soft and dry. Now it is as hard as adamant. But
there is beauty even in this wintry scene. If I take a walk into the
garden I find that the hoarfrost brightens everything, and that the
tiniest object, even a blade of grass or a withered leaf, is worthy of
being admired.
That tall row of spectre-like poplar trees--whether it be winter or
summer--is a study in itself. But last night those trees were pointing
at the stars with dark skeleton fingers. Those fingers are pointing now
at the blue, blue sky, but they seem changed to whitest coral. Those
elm trees along the side of yonder field are clothed with a winter
foliage of hoarfrost. Seems as though in a single night they had come
again into full leaf, and those leaves had been changed by enchantment
into snow. As the sunlight streams athwart them they are beautiful
beyond compare.
My wild-birds are here in the garden and on the lawns in dozens, huddled
in under the dwarf spruces, firs, and laurels, and even cock-robin looks
all of a heap.
Hey presto! I have but to shut my eyes and think back, and the scene is
changed. I see before me--
A Hedgerow in July.
Where am I? Away up north on a Yorkshire wold. The horses are out and
grazing on the clovery sward by the roadside.
How silent it is!
As I lie here on my rugs on the _coupe_, I can hear a mole rustling
through the grass at the hedge-foot. But the hedgerow itself, and all
about it, how refreshing to look upon!
Surely no billhook or axe of woodsman has ever come near it since first
it began to grow. Its very irregularity gives it additional charm. The
hedge itself is really of blackthorn, but its white or pink-ticked
blossoms have faded and given place to haws. Here and there, as far as
you can see, up through it grow wild dwarf oak bushes, their foliage
crimson or carmine tipped, dwarf plane-trees, with broad sienna leaves,
that glitter in the sunshine as if they had been varnished; and
elder-trees with big white stars of blossom, and rougher leaves of
darkest green. Young elms, too, are yonder, and infant ash trees with
stems as black as ink and strangely tinted leaves.
[Plane-trees, so-called, but in reality the Sycamore: the Acer
pseudo-platanus of naturalists.]
"The sycamore, capricious in attire,
Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet
Has changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright."
Here and there wild roses, pale pink or deepest crimson, blush out; here
and there are patches of honeysuckle, and here and there waves of the
white flowery bryony roll foaming over the green.
In some places the light and tender-leaved woody nightshade, whose
berries in bunches of crimson and green are so pretty in autumn, impart
a spring-like appearance to this hedgerow.
Nor does the beauty of my hedgerow end here for all along beneath grow
rare and lovely grasses, interspersed with star-eyed silenes and
gorgeous spikes of the purple stachys, while the adjoining sward is
carpeted over with beds of brilliant clover, red and white, with golden
bird's-foot trefoil, and patches of pale blue speedwells.
Bees are very busy all over this glory of colour, humming as they fly
from flower to flower, but becoming abruptly silent as soon as their
feet touch the silken blossoms. And birds there are too, though now
they have for the most part ceased to sing, except the robin and a
yellow-hammer, and these birds will continue lilting long after even the
autumn tints are on the trees.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hedgerows in General.
These were almost ever with us--one long-drawn delight. For five
hundred miles, indeed, they accompanied the Wanderer on her journey.
When, at any time, they left us for a space, and stone fences or wooden
palings took their place, we were never happy until they again appeared.
From memory I jot down the names of a few of the plants and flowers that
mingled with them, or trailed over or through them, constituting their
chief charm and beauty.
First on the list, naturally enough, come the rose gems, including the
sweetbriar or eglantine, with its deep pink flowers and sweetly-scented
leaves; the field-rose, the _Rosa arvensis_, with pale pink blossoms,
and the charming _Rosa canina_, or dog-rose, with petals of a darker
red.
As I have already said, these roses grew everywhere among the hedges, in
garlands, in wreaths, and in canopies, and always looked their best
where the blackthorns had not been disfigured by touch of billhook or
pruning shears.
In the earlier spring the hedges had a beauty of their own, being snowed
over with clustering blossoms.
The bryony and the honeysuckle I have already mentioned. The green and
crimson berries on the former, when the summer begins to wane, are
rivalled only by those of the charming woody nightshade.
Regarding the honeysuckle, a naturalist in a London magazine wrote the
other day as follows:--
"In the ordinary way, the branches grow out from the parent stem and
twine round the first support they meet _front right to left_;"--the
italics are mine--"but should they fail to find that support, two
branches will mutually support each other, one twining from left to
right, the other from right to left."
Now the fact is that the honeysuckle twines from left to right, and if
two or three branches are together, as we often find them, it is the
weaker who twine round the stronger,--still from left to right.
The wild convolvulus, with its great white bell-like blossoms, that so
often stars the hedgerows with a singular beauty, twines always to meet
the sun.
The _Vicia cracca_, or purple climbing vetch, is an object of rare
loveliness in July and August. It is a species of clustering-blossomed
tare or sweet-pea, with neat, wee green leaves, and flowers of a bluish
purple. It is not content with creeping up through the hedge, but it
must go crawling along over the top to woo the sunshine.
Later on in summer and early autumn blooms the well-known bramble--the
black-fruited _rubus_.
No poet, as far as I am aware, has yet celebrated the purple trailing
vetch in song, but the bramble has not been forgotten.
Hear Elliott's exquisite lines:--
"Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow
O'er all the fragrant bowers,
Thou needst not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers.
For dull the eye, the heart is dull,
That cannot feel how fair,
Amid all beauty, beautiful,
Thy tender blossoms are.
* * * * *.
"While silent showers are falling slow,
And 'mid the general hush,
A sweet air lifts the little bough,
Low whispering through the bush.
The primrose to the grave has gone;
The hawthorn flower is dead;
The violet by the moss'd grey stone
Hath laid her weary head;
But thou, wild bramble, back dost bring,
In all their beauteous power,
The fresh green days of life's fair spring,
And boyhood's blossoming hour."
Nestling down by the hedgerow foot, among tall reeds and grey or brown
seedling grasses, is many and many a charming wild flower, such as the
stachys, the crimson ragged-robbin, with flowers like coral, and the
snow-white silene.
Woodland and Copse.
Far away in bonnie Scotland, where the woods are mostly composed of
dark, waving, brown-stemmed pine-trees, feathery larches--
crimson-tasselled in early spring--or gloomy spruces, there is often an
absence of any undergrowth, unless it be heather. But English copses
are often one wild tanglement of trailing flowering shrubs, with banks
of bracken or ferns.
I have often stopped to admire the marvellous beauty of these
copse-lands; their wealth of silent loveliness has more than once
brought the tears to my eyes.