[Sidenote: WANT OF ROADS.]
At Inverness Johnson bade farewell to post-chaises, which had brought
him in comfort all the way from London. “This day,” writes Boswell,
“we were to begin our _equitation_, as I said; for I would needs make
a word too. We might have taken a chaise to Fort Augustus, but had we
not hired horses at Inverness we should not have found them afterwards.
We had three horses for Dr. Johnson, myself, and Joseph, and one which
carried our portmanteaus, and two Highlanders who walked along with
us.” They took but little baggage, and soon found the advantage of
their moderation “in climbing crags and treading bogs. How often,”
continues Johnson, “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 everything but himself.” After leaving the Fort they
were “to enter upon a country upon which perhaps no wheel had ever
rolled.” In the Commercial Map of Scotland, published by J. Knox in
1784, there is not a single road marked in any one of the Hebrides.
After long wanderings, and the lapse of almost seven weeks, “Johnson’s
heart was cheered by the sight of a road marked with cart-wheels as
on the mainland, a thing which we had not seen for a long time. It
gave us a pleasure similar to that which a traveller feels when,
whilst wandering on what he fears is a desert island, he perceives
the print of human feet.” It was in pleasant weather that they began
their ride. [Sidenote: THE SHORES OF LOCH NESS.] “The day though
bright was not hot. On the left were high and steep rocks shaded
with birch and covered with fern or heath. On the right the limpid
waters of Loch Ness were beating their bank and waving their surface
by a gentle agitation.” In one part of the way, adds Johnson, “we had
trees on both sides for perhaps half a mile. Such a length of shade,
perhaps, Scotland cannot show in any other place.” Boswell, though he
thought Fleet Street more delightful than Tempe, nevertheless felt
the cheering powers of this delightful day. “The scene” he found “as
sequestered and agreeably wild as could be desired.” Pennant, who had
been there four years earlier, describes the scenery as “most romantic
and beautiful.”[588] Wesley thought the neighbourhood of Inverness
one of the pleasantest countries he had ever seen.[589] In striking
contrast with the enjoyment of these four travellers are the feelings
of those who a few years before had seen the spot when the alarms of
war were still fresh. “On each side of Loch Ness,” writes Ray, “is a
ridge of most terrible barren woody mountains. You travel along the
banks through a road made by blowing up monstrous rocks, which in
many places hang declining over passengers and higher than houses, so
that ’tis frightful to pass by them.”[590] _A Volunteer_ describes
the mountains “as high and frightful as the Alps in Spain; so we had
nothing pleasant to behold but the sky.”[591]
[Illustration: LOCH NESS.]
[Illustration: MAP OF FOYERS.]
[Sidenote: THE GENERAL’S HUT.]
Our travellers halted for dinner at the General’s Hut, a small
public-house nearly eighteen miles from Inverness.[592] Here, says
Johnson, Wade had lodged “while he superintended the works upon the
road.” I have seen it stated in a guide-book that on its site is built
the Foyer’s Hotel, but this is a mistake. In the _Map of the King’s
Roads made by General Wade_, dated 1746, “the General Hutt” (_sic_) is
marked just where the road takes a sudden bend to the south, a short
distance after which it passes the church of Burlassig. Dr. Garnett,
who travelled through the Highlands at the end of the century, says
that “the present public-house, which is still called the General’s
Hut, is very near the place where Wade had a small house, which was
afterwards used as an inn. It commands a delightful view up the
lake.” The change of site must have been made, it would seem, between
his visit and Johnson’s. The old inn was on the north-east or
Inverness side of the church, whereas the Foyers Hotel is a little
distance beyond it to the south-west. It is a pity that the ambition
of landlords has not allowed the old name to remain. It was the only
thing I found wanting in this comfortable hotel. Sir Walter Scott was
surprised that “when these roads were made there was no care taken for
inns. The King’s House and the General’s Hut are miserable places,” he
adds, “but the project and plans were purely military.”[593] Johnson,
however, was not dissatisfied with his entertainment. “We found,” he
says, “the house not ill-stocked with provisions. We had eggs and
bacon, and mutton, with wine, rum, and whisky. I had water.” The little
church hard by Boswell describes as “the meanest parish kirk I ever
saw. It is a shame it should be on a high road.” It might have been
pleaded, perhaps, as an alleviation of its disgrace, that the high road
had come to it and that it had not come to the high road. His reproach
seems to have had some effect, for it has been removed to another
place. The ruins, however, still remain. A middle-aged woman who dwells
in the neighbourhood told me that “there was an old man living when
she first came, who said he did not mind when it was a church, but his
father did.”
[Illustration: FOYERS
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]
[Sidenote: THE FALLS OF FOYERS.]
While Boswell mentions the mean kirk, with his indifference to natural
objects he passes over in silence the celebrated Falls of Fiers or
Foyers. He does not even mention the bridge over the river, or the
rocks which on three sides of it rise to a great height. Here Johnson’s
imagination was deeply impressed, for he describes them as “exhibiting
a kind of dreadful magnificence; standing like the barriers of nature
placed to keep different orders of being in perpetual separation.”
Dismounting from their horses, “we clambered,” he writes, “over very
rugged crags, till we came at last to a place where we could overlook
the river, and saw a channel torn, as it seems, through black piles of
stone, by which the stream is obstructed and broken, till it comes to
a very steep descent, of such dreadful depth, that we were naturally
inclined to turn aside our eyes. But we visited the place at an
unseasonable time, and found it divested of its dignity and terror.
Nature never gives everything at once. A long continuance of dry
weather, which made the rest of the way easy and delightful, deprived
us of the pleasure expected from the Falls of Fiers.” This same month
Mason, the poet, was complaining that the cascades at Lodore had been
“reduced by the dry season to a scanty rill, which took away more than
half the beauties of the scene.”[594]
[Illustration: INVERMORISTON.]
[Sidenote: FORT AUGUSTUS.]
It was dark when our travellers reached “the wretched inn” at Fort
Augustus. Happily it was not in it that they were to lodge, for the
governor invited them to sleep in his house. Of the fort, the rebels
had made a bonfire on April 15, 1746, the day before Culloden, “to
celebrate the Duke of Cumberland’s birthday.”[595] It had since
been rebuilt and greatly strengthened, “being surrounded by two
trenches filled with water, and having draw-bridges, strong walls,
and bastions.”[596] Nothing is left of it. Where rough soldiers once
carried things with a high hand, now smooth priests rule. On the site
of the old fortifications which bore the second name of the butcher
duke has been raised a college and monastery dedicated to St. Benedict.
Johnson long remembered the rest which he enjoyed in the governor’s
hospitable home. Nearly four years later he recorded in his diary:
“I passed the night in such sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not
known since I slept at Fort Augustus.” The following year, writing to
Boswell, he said, “The best night that I have had these twenty years
was at Fort Augustus.” From this spot to the sea-shore opposite
Skye they had about forty-four miles of highland paths to traverse.
This part of their journey they were forced to divide very unequally,
as Anoch, the only place where they could find entertainment, was
scarcely a third of the way. [Sidenote: GLENMORISON.] Crossing the
mountains by a road which had been made “with labour that might have
broken the perseverance of a Roman legion,” early in the afternoon
they came “through a wild country” to Glenmorison.[597] They did
not, as the guide-book says, follow the course of the river Moriston
from Invermoriston, but joined it some miles higher up, above the
fine scenery and the wild tumble of water which are shown in the
accompanying sketch. This fact I did not discover till too late.
Anoch Johnson describes as “standing in a glen or valley pleasantly
watered by a winding river. It consists of three huts, one of which is
distinguished by a chimney.” It was in the house thus distinguished
that they lodged. When I visited this spot last summer, we halted at
a farmhouse hard by to rest our horses and take some lunch. We sat on
the bank of a dried-up brook, beneath a row of witch-elms. A cuckoo was
flying about, resting now and then on the garden wall. “Its two-fold
shout” it scarcely uttered, thinking, perhaps, that as it was the month
of June, it would be “heard, not regarded.” The wind rustled in the
leaves, the river, blue beneath a blue sky, ran swiftly by, now under
a shady bank, and now round a stony foreland, till it lost itself at
last from our sight behind a bend. To the west rose lofty mountains; on
the other side of the valley were sloping hills. We lunched on frothing
milk, oat-cakes, scones, and butter; the sheep dogs playing around us,
and with wistful gaze asking for their share of the feast. We lay on
the ground and looked across the little ravine at an old hut that was
“distinguished by a chimney.” This we all voted, and very likely with
truth on our side, was the very place where our travellers had lodged.
Talking of “far-off things,” of Johnson and the copy of Cocker’s
Arithmetic which he gave to his landlord’s “gentle and pleasing
daughter,” of her father’s library of odd volumes, and of the old hut
and the old life, an hour slipped quickly and pleasantly by.
[Illustration: THE MORISTON RIVER
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]
[Sidenote: ENGLISH SOLDIERS.]
As our travellers “passed on through the dreariness of solitude” on
their way hither, they had come upon a party of soldiers working on
the road, to whom they gave a couple of shillings to spend in drink.
“With the true military impatience of coin in their pockets,” these
men had followed them to the inn, “having marched at least six miles
to find the first place where liquor could be bought.” There they made
merry in the barn. “We went and paid them a visit,” writes Boswell;
“Dr. Johnson saying, ‘Come, let’s go and give ’em another shilling
a-piece.’ We did so, and he was saluted ‘My Lord’ by all of them.”
Johnson avows that one cause of his generosity was regard to his and
Boswell’s safety. “Having never been before in a place so wild and
unfrequented, I was glad of their arrival, because I knew that we had
made them friends; and to gain still more of their good-will, we went
to them when they were carousing in the barn, and added something to
our former gift.” The money was ill-bestowed. “The poor soldiers got
too much liquor. Some of them fought and left blood upon the spot, and
cursed whisky next morning.” Perhaps Johnson had them in his mind when,
a few years later, he said, “Why, sir, a common soldier is usually a
very gross man.” To the degradation of one of the English regiments
which had been stationed in the Highlands, testimony is borne by Wolfe,
who on his return from Scotland in 1753, wrote: “If I stay much longer
with the regiment I shall be perfectly corrupt; the officers are
loose and profligate, and the soldiers are very devils.”[598] Johnson
soon found that he had no need of a guard. His host had indeed fought
in the Highland army at Culloden, but he was a quiet honest fellow.
The account which he gave of the campaign moved Boswell to tears. If
he told them the following story which I have found in Henderson’s
_History of the Rebellion_, he would have moved also Johnson to anger.
[Sidenote: THE GRANTS OF GLENMORISON.] A party of the Grants of
Glenmorison had joined the Pretender’s army at Edinburgh. The laird,
who had remained loyal, came, after the battle of Culloden, “with about
five hundred of his vassals to Inverness, whence they were sent into
the country of the Macintoshes. Hereupon the Grants in the rebellion
begged his intercession. He repaired to the Duke of Cumberland, and
said, ‘Here are a number of men come in with their arms, who would
have submitted to none in Britain but to me.’ ‘No!’ answered the duke;
‘I’ll let them know that they are my father’s subjects, and must
likewise submit to me.’ So he gave orders to embark them with the other
prisoners, and they were shipped off to Tilbury Fort.”[599] Smollett
tells how great numbers of the miserable captives who were sent to
London by sea, being crowded in the holds of the vessels, “perished
in the most deplorable manner for want of necessaries, air, and
exercise.”[600] If the Grants escaped this fate, very likely they were
transported to America.
[Illustration: THE RUINS OF THE HOUSE AT ANOCH.]
[Illustration: THATCHED HOUSE.]