The scenery of the less cultivated parts of our native Scotland may,
generally speaking, be said to be checkered, as human life is with its
events; for as, during our pilgrimage here on earth, evil continually
succeeds good, and good evil, so are beauty and deformity seen to
alternate with each other on the simple face of Caledonia. A long
stretch of dreary and uninteresting hill country is often found to
extend between two rich or romantic valleys, so that the lover of
nature has to plod his weary way from the one to the other over many
a mile of sterile desert; and, if he be a pedestrian, through many
a burn, and many a slough too, with little to disturb him, save the
sudden whirr of the grouse, as he bounds off through the air with
the velocity of a cricket-ball,--or the sharp frisp of the snipe,
as he rises like the cork from a brisk bottle of champagne,--or the
wailing teeweet of the green plover, who, like some endless seccatore,
most perseveringly follows his track, unceasingly boring him with
his dull flapping and his tiresome cry.
When not broken in upon by any such incidents, these wildernesses
are sometimes rather valuable to a solitary traveller. They afford
him time for rumination whilst he is traversing them. They give him
leisure to chew the cud of reflection, and he is thus enabled to
digest the beauties of the valley which he has last devoured, before
he proceeds to feast upon the charms about to be presented to him by
that to which he is hastening. But whatever may be the advantages to
be derived from journeying in any such single state of blessedness,
I am disposed to think that the man who has a cheerful companion or
two associated with him in his pilgrimage, will not be much inclined
to wish them absent in such parts of the way; and as I do not think
that either his moral or his physical digestion will be in any degree
impaired by society, I am quite sure that his intellectual enjoyment
will be thereby much increased.
My own experience convinced me of the truth of this one fine autumnal
morning, when, in company with two friends, I left the romantic
valley of the Findhorn, to cross the moorlands towards Grantown, a
village which may be called the capital of Strathspey. The sun that
rose upon us, as we took our staves in hand to begin that day's walk,
had continued to display a brighter and merrier countenance than any,
perhaps, which I had ever seen showing face within the precincts of
this vapour-girt island of ours. Yet vain were his friendly efforts to
throw a glow of cheerfulness over the brown heaths and the black plashy
bogs almost entirely covering the tame unmeaning undulations of the
country before us. A scene apparently less calculated to furnish food
for remark or conversation, can hardly well be conceived. But when the
imagination is not altogether asleep, a very trifling hint will set it
a working; and so it was, that the innumerable grey, ghastly-looking
pine stocks of other years, that were everywhere seen pointing out
of the peat-mosses, from amidst tufts of the waving cotton grass,
and wiry rushes, and gaudy ranunculuses, quickly carried our minds
back to former ages by a natural chain of connection, filled them
with magnificent ideal pictures of those interminable forests which
completely covered Scotland during the earlier periods of its history,
and immediately furnished us with a subject for talk.
Author.--You see yonder hill, called the Aitnoch. Although it is,
as you may easily perceive, the highest in all this neighbourhood,
yet an extensive plain on its summit, almost entirely peat-moss, is
so thickly set with the stocks and roots of pine trees, such as these
you are now looking at, and all fixed, too, like these, in the growing
position, that, if the boles and branches were still standing on them,
it would absolutely be a difficult matter for a deer, or even for a
dog, to force a passage through among them.
Grant.--I should like much to mount the hill to examine the plain you
speak of. Well as I am acquainted with this north country, I never
heard of it before.
Author.--It will cost us little more than the additional fatigue
created by its rather rough and steep ascent to do so, for it is not
quite an hundred miles out of our way.
Clifford.--Phoo! we are not to be tied to ways of any kind. Let us
climb the hill, then, by all means. But, to return to what you were
talking about, can you tell us how, and for what purpose, these vast
forests were annihilated?
Author.--The charred surfaces which most of these stocks and roots
still exhibit sufficiently prove that fire must have been the grand
instrument of their destruction. The logs which originally grew upon
them, but which are now found lying horizontally under the present
surface, all bear testimony to the same fact in a greater or lesser
degree. Many of these, indeed, when dug up, present a very curious
appearance, the nether part being left almost entire, whilst the upper
side has been hollowed like a spout. This must have been effected by
the flames, which naturally continue to smoulder on the upper surfaces
of the fallen trunks, whilst the moisture of the ground where they
fell extinguished them below.
Clifford.--Come, that is all very well as to the how; now, let us
have your wherefore.
Author.--As to the causes of the devouring element being let loose
among these aboriginal forests we might speculate long enough, for
they were probably many and various. Accidental fires may have been
kindled by the rude inhabitants, which afterwards spread destruction
far and wide, as they often do now in the forests of America. Or
they may have been raised with the intention of driving away wild
beasts, or of aiding in their destruction, of annoying enemies,
or even for the more simple purpose of clearing spots of ground for
hunting or for pasture. The causes may have been trivial enough in
themselves. You, Grant, who have travelled so much in Switzerland,
must be aware of the practice which still prevails there, of burning
down large patches of gigantic pine timber on the sides of the Alps,
for no other reason than to allow the sun and the moisture to reach
the surface of the ground, so as thereby to increase the quantity
and value of the pasture growing beneath.
Grant.--Yes, I can vouch for what you say with regard to the practice
in Switzerland, and I am much inclined to think with you, that instead
of attributing the fall of these mighty Caledonian forests, as many
are disposed to do, to some one great and general catastrophe, we
ought rather to place their ruin to the account of a combination and
reiteration of fortuitous causes, by the increasing frequency of the
repetition of which they were rapidly extirpated in detail. Indeed, in
support of what I now say, I remember having heard a well authenticated
tradition of exactly such an accidental conflagration, which is said
to have taken place so late as the year 1640.
Author.--I should be glad to hear the particulars of it. Do you think
you can recall them?
Grant.--I think I can, but you will perhaps find the story rather a
long one.
Clifford.--Long or short, let us have it by all means. And let me tell
you for your comfort, my good fellow, none of Chaucer's pilgrims could
have begun a story under circumstances so favourable. A parliamentary
speech itself might have some chance of being listened to if uttered
to one whilst passing through so dull a country as this--that is to
say, without one's gun and pointers.