FROM OBAN TO GLENCOE.
A couple of days' heavy rain quite exhausted the gaieties of Oban, and it
was with no little pleasure that I heard the orders given to weigh the
anchor and get up steam. I shed no tears as I saw the last of the long
line of monster hotels, which rejoice when the Englishman, who has,
perhaps, never been up St. Paul's, and who certainly has never visited
Stratford-on-Avon, makes up his mind to turn his face northwards and do
the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I believe the hotels are
excellent. I am sure one of them is--that kept by Mr. McArthur, who is
an artist, and whose son, a little lad of ten years, paints in a way to
remind one of similar achievements by Sir Thomas Lawrence; but it is much
to be regretted that so many of the best spots for pleasant views above
the town are marked off as private, and so shut out from the tourist
altogether. As possibly these brief notes may be read in Oban, I refer
to the fact, in order that the authorities of the place, ere it be too
late, may be reminded of the impolicy of killing the goose for the sake
of the eggs. There ought to be an abundance of pleasant walks and seats
around Oban to tempt the tourist to linger there. It is related of
Norman Macleod, as he stood on the esplanade, pointing to the town, the
bay crowded with yachts, the Kerrera reflected on the sea as in a mirror,
with the distant hills of Morven and Mull behind, that he exclaimed,
"Where will you find in the whole world a scene so lovely as this?" and
this was said after he had visited America, and India, and Palestine, and
the whole continent of Europe. I am not prepared exactly to endorse that
statement, but the language is natural to a Scotchman, who can see
nowhere a land so romantic as his own. Oban, with its fine hotels on the
front, with its beautiful bay, with its wooded or bare hills behind,
looks well from the water; but nevertheless I had tired of it, after
spending a couple of days contemplating its features from the deckhouse
of the yacht, bathed as they were in what in London we should call
unmitigated rain, but which here poetically is termed Scottish mist.
Well, as I have said, there was a shaking amongst the dry bones when it
became known that the morning was bright and fine, or, in other words,
that it did not rain. A noble peer, who had been shut up in his yacht
two whole days, came up on deck and looked out. A great Birmingham man,
anchored on the other side of us, hoisted his sails and cleared off.
With the aid of the glass I could see the tourists turn out of the
hotels, without mackintoshes and with umbrellas furled. Away flew the
_Elena_ past the ancient Castle of Dunollie, the seat in former ages of
the powerful Lords of Lorn, and still the property of their lineal
descendant, Colonel Macdougall. Rounding Dunollie Point, and passing the
Maiden Island, the steamer enters on the broad waters of Loch Linnie, and
here a magnificent scene opens on us. To the left are seen the lofty
mountains of Mull, the Sound of Mull, the green hills of Morven, the
rugged peaks of Kingairloch, and the low island of Lismore, where MacLean
of Duart left his wife, a sister of the Earl of Argyll, to perish on a
rock, whilst he pretended to solemnise her funeral with a coffin filled
with stones. Fortunately, the lady was rescued, and the rest of the
story may be read in Joanna Baillie's "Tragedy of Revenge." On our right
stretches the picturesque coast of the mainland, revealing fresh beauties
at every turn, with a splendid back-ground of towering mountains, such as
the noble Ben Cruachan, who only a week since had his head covered with
snow, and the rugged hills of Glen Etive and Glencreran. Lismore itself
is well worthy of a short stay, as one of the earliest spots visited by
the missionary, St. Maluag, from Iona, whose chair and well are yet
shown. There are also in the island the remains of an ancient
Scandinavian fortress, and many other objects of interest. We pass
another old castle, that of Stalker, on a small island, a stronghold of
the ancient and powerful Stewarts of Appin, who, though now extinct,
anciently ruled over this region, and, connected with the royal family of
that name, occupied a distinguished place in Scottish story. In the
sunlight our trip is immensely enjoyable. The air has healing in its
wings. You feel younger and lighter every mile. On the left are the
splendid mountains of Kingairloch and Ardour, and on the right those of
Appin and Glencoe. The view of the pass is very fine, and to enjoy it
more we land at Ballachulish, and take such a drive as I may never hope
to enjoy again. Ballachulish itself is an interesting place. Here a son
of a King of Denmark was drowned, and at the adjacent slate quarry some
six hundred men are employed at wages averaging about three pounds
a-week. It is their dinner hour as we pass, and I am struck with the
fineness of their _physique_. Though they speak mostly Gaelic, and are
shut out from English literature, they must, from their appearance, be a
decent set. In an English mining village of the same size I should see a
Wesleyan and a Primitive Methodist Chapel, and a goodly array of
public-houses and beer-shops. Here I see neither the one nor the other.
At this end of the village is an Episcopalian place of worship, with its
graveyard filled with slate stones. At the other end is the Free Church,
and then, separated from it by a rocky stream, are the Established Church
and the Roman Catholic Chapel. The village street is, I fancy, nearly a
mile long, and the cottages, which are well built and whitewashed, seem
to me crammed with children and poultry--the former, especially, very
fine, with their unclad feet, and with hair streaming like that of Mr.
Gray's bard. How they rush after our carriage like London arabs! I am
sorry I don't carry coppers. Late as the season is, a few women are
hay-making. What sunburnt, weather-beaten, wrinkled faces they have!
Plump and buxom at eighteen, they are old women when they have reached
twice that age.
As to Glencoe, what can I say of it that is not already recorded in the
guide-books, and familiar to the reader of English history? The road is
carried along the edge of Loch Leven, and is really romantic, with the
rocks on one side, the winding glen in front, and the loch beneath. It
is very narrow, and as we meet two four-horse cars returning with
tourists we have scarce room to pass. Another inch would send us howling
over into the loch below, but our steeds and our driver are trustworthy,
and no such accident is to be feared. In the loch beneath we see St.
Mungo's Isle, marked by the ruins of a chapel, and long used as a
burial-place, the Lochaber people at one end, the Glencoe people at the
other, as their dust may no more intermingle than may that of Churchmen
and Dissenters in some parts of England. A little further on is the
gable wall, still standing, of the house of M'Ian, the unfortunate chief,
who was shot down by his own fireside on that memorable morning of
February, 1690. Is it for this the Glasgow people erected a statue to
William III.? Further on we see the stones still remaining of what were
once houses in which lived and loved fair women and brave men. One
sickens now as we read the story of that atrocious massacre. A little
more on our right is a rocky knoll, from which, it is said, the signal
pistol-shot was fired. Happily, such atrocities are now out of date, but
the blot remains to sully the fair fame of our great Protestant hero, and
to stain to all eternity the memories of such men as Argyll and Stairs.
Independently of the massacre, the spot is well worthy of a visit. There
is no more rocky and weird a glen in all Scotland, and when the sun is
hidden the aspect of the place is sombre in the extreme, and the further
you advance the more does it become such. The larch and fir disappear
from the sides of the hills, the river Coe dashes angrily and noisily at
their feet, and before us is the waterfall which, here they tell us, was
Ossian's shower-bath. Close by, Ossian himself is reported to have been
born, and what more natural than that he should thus have utilised the
stream? On the south is the mountain of Malmor, and to the north is the
celebrated Car Fion, or the hill of Fingal. I gather a thistle as a
souvenir of the place. Of course it is a Scotch thistle, therefore to be
honoured, but for the credit of my native land, I must say it is a pigmy
to such as I have seen within a dozen miles of St. Paul's. As a Saxon, I
am especially interested in the horned sheep in these parts, which at
first sight naturally you take for goats; with the Highland cattle,
though by no means the fine specimens you see at the Agricultural Hall,
and with the exquisite aroma (when taken in moderation) of the Ben Nevis
"mountain dew." Returning, we pass the entrance to the Caledonian
Canal--called by the natives the cana_w_l--along which we were to have
made our way to Nairn; but the _Elena_ scorns the narrow confines of the
canal, and claims to be a free rover of the sea.