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Transcriber’s note:
This is Volume I of a two-volume set. The second volume can
be found at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59469.
This 1875 edition originally was published in eight separate
books as a subscription publication. The Preface, Title
pages, Tables of Contents and Lists of Illustrations (the
Front Matter) were published in the final eighth book, and
referenced books 1-4 as Volume I, and books 5-8 as Volume II.
This etext follows the same two-volume structure. The
relevant Front Matter has been moved to the front of each
volume, and some illustrations have been moved to where the
two Lists of Illustrations indicate they should be. No text
was added or changed when the books were seamlessly joined
to make Volume I and Volume II.
The Index, at the end of Volume II in the original books, has
been copied and placed at the end of this first volume as well.
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes
have been placed at the end of each chapter.
A caret character is used to denote superscription. A
single character following the caret is superscripted
(example: 93^D). Multiple superscripted characters are
enclosed by curly brackets (example: 71^{ST}).
Some tables in the original book had } or { bracketing in
some cells. These brackets are not helpful in the etext
tables and in most cases have been removed to improve
readability and save table space.
Many minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the
book.
SUPPLIED TO SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
PROSPECTUS.
A HISTORY OF
THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS,
HIGHLAND CLANS, AND HIGHLAND REGIMENTS;
ON THE BASIS OF BROWNE’S “HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS AND CLANS,” BUT
ENTIRELY RE-MODELLED AND TO A LARGE EXTENT RE-WRITTEN.
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE GAELIC LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
WRITTEN FOR THE WORK,
BY THE REV. THOMAS MACLAUCHLAN, LL.D., F.S.A.S.,
One of the Editors of the “Dean of Lismore’s Book,” Author of
“The Early Scottish Church,” &c.;
AND AN ESSAY ON HIGHLAND SCENERY,
BY THE LATE PROFESSOR JOHN WILSON.
EDITED BY JOHN S. KELTIE, F.S.A.S.
During the last thirty years, the patriotic labours of the various
Scottish book-clubs,--The Abbotsford, The Bannatyne, The Iona, The
Maitland, The Spalding Clubs--the works of the various eminent
Scottish antiquaries and historians, not to mention many valuable
papers and pamphlets, have not only subjected everything connected
with the history of the Highlands to an unsparing and searching
criticism, but have also brought to light many new facts, and opened
up formerly unthought-of tracks of inquiry. Such a flood of light
has thus been thrown on all matters connected with the Highlands,
that the publishers feel BROWNE’S _History of the Highlands and
Clans_,--the work on which this publication is to a certain extent
based,--has fallen behind the age, and that, to keep pace with the
advanced state of historical research, a NEW WORK IS DEMANDED.
Therefore, in preparing the work now presented to the public, it
has been found necessary to make such extensive alterations and
additions, that the publishers feel justified in calling it a NEW
WORK.
The work is divided into three sections:--
I. THE GENERAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS, including RELIGION,
LITERATURE, and ANTIQUITIES.
II. THE HISTORY OF THE HIGHLAND CLANS.
III. THE HISTORY OF THE HIGHLAND REGIMENTS.
PART I.--THE GENERAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
The whole of this part has been THOROUGHLY REVISED, RE-MODELLED,
and to a great extent RE-WRITTEN. All the introductory chapters
relating to the PRIMITIVE HISTORY of the Highlands, are NEW, and in
them are treated the much controverted questions as to the PICTS
and SCOTS, their RACE and LANGUAGE--the EARLY RACES OF KINGS, all
points connected with the early SOCIAL and POLITICAL CONDITION of the
Highlanders, their ORIGINAL RELIGION and the SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.
The most RECENT INVESTIGATIONS bearing on the ANTIQUITIES of
the Highlands, the ANCIENT MANNERS and CUSTOMS of their people,
their PECULIAR DRESS, their SOCIAL and POLITICAL RELATIONS, their
SUPERSTITIONS, and other interesting antiquarian matters, have been
taken advantage of.
As to the rest of this portion of the work, while whatever had no
connection with Highland history has been expunged, much new matter
has been added in order to make the general narrative COMPLETE and
AUTHENTIC. When, at a later period of their history, the Highlanders
become a potent element in the settlement of many great disputes,
it has been sought to make the reader understand clearly the part
they thus took in the stirring and momentous transactions of the
times. As examples of these we need only mention here the CIVIL WARS
in which MONTROSE so often led on the Highland army to victory: the
Revolution disputes, culminating in KILLIECRANKIE: the unfortunate
insurrections of ’15 and ’45, which, but for the romantic enthusiasm
of the Highlanders, would never have been even commenced.
In writing these chapters ample use has been made of the various
club-publications above referred to, the latest of which, THE BOOK OF
DEER, issued by the Spalding Club, edited by Dr. Stuart, has proved
of great service in throwing light on the EARLY SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
CONDITION of the Highlands, as well as on the STATE and CONSTITUTION
of the EARLY SCOTTISH CHURCH. Among modern Scottish historians and
antiquarians whose labours have been taken advantage of in this
part of the work, we may mention the names of George Chalmers, W.
F. Skene, Joseph Robertson, Daniel Wilson, Mr. Gregory, John Hill
Burton, E. W. Robertson, James Logan, Cosmo Innes, George Grub, Dr.
Maclauchlan, and Colonel Forbes-Leslie: this last gentleman has been
kind enough to place at our disposal some of the cuts which adorn his
valuable work, _The Early Races of Scotland_. Besides these, books
and documents, ancient and modern, too numerous to detail here, have
been consulted.
To the GAELIC LANGUAGE and LITERATURE, which, in the old work,
possibly from lack of material, were treated in rather a summary
manner, a prominent place has been given. Since the publication of
_The Dean of Lismore’s Book_, and other works on this interesting
subject, there can be no complaint of lack of material; and so
much importance do the publishers attach to the literature of the
Highlands, that they have entered into an arrangement with the Rev.
Thomas Maclauchlan, LL.D., F.S.A.S.--one of the editors of _The
Dean of Lismore’s Book_, and one of the most eminent living Gaelic
scholars--to write an entirely new account of this subject, into
which will be introduced copious examples of genuine old GAELIC
POETRY.
In the course of the work will be given the late PROFESSOR WILSON’S
celebrated ESSAY ON HIGHLAND SCENERY, of which the copyright belongs
to the publishers.
PART II.--THE HISTORY OF THE HIGHLAND CLANS.
In any history of the Highlands, an account of the CLANS ought to
occupy a place of the first importance, and in the present work,
the GREATER PART OF THE SECOND VOLUME is devoted to this part of
the subject. Every point of interest connected with this peculiar
social system has been noticed:--the ORIGIN OF THE CLAN-SYSTEM, the
relation of the chief to the general body of the clan, the various
CLAN-DIGNITIES and OFFICES and the duties which belonged to each,
the PECULIAR CUSTOMS to which the system gave rise, the difference
between CLANSHIP and the FEUDAL SYSTEM, and the influence it had
on the progress of the Highlands and on the rest of Scotland. In
short, no pains have been spared to enable the reader to form a clear
idea of all the ‘outs and ins’ of this primitive system of social
government.
After this introductory matter, a DETAILED ACCOUNT is given of EACH
SEPARATE CLAN which has any claim to be considered Highland. THE
ORIGIN OF EACH CLAN, as far as possible, has been traced back to its
FOUNDER, and its claim to be considered purely Gaelic discussed; its
history is traced through all its branches and offshoots down to the
present day; the part it took in the various clan strifes, in the
disputes between the Highlands and Lowlands, and in the general wars
of Scotland, is set forth. Every link in the genealogical chain has
been carefully traced, and those chiefs and other members of a clan
who took a more prominent part in the affairs of the time, have their
lives given in considerable detail. Appended to the account of each
clan are its ARMORIAL BEARINGS, a description of its CLAN-TARTAN,
the name of its BADGE, its peculiar war-cry or SLOGAN, its estimated
STRENGTH, and its PRINCIPAL SEAT. In addition to the authorities
above referred to, the works of Smibert, Logan, Stewart, and others,
as well as the separate histories of those clans that are fortunate
enough to have such, this division of the work is greatly indebted
to the original researches of the late Mr. Anderson, author of the
_Scottish Nation_, whose examination of many ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS and
FAMILY RECORDS brought to light many facts connected with the history
of the Highland clans, never before made public.
PART III.--HISTORY OF THE HIGHLAND REGIMENTS.
The HISTORY OF THESE REGIMENTS is to a great extent the HISTORY
OF BRITAIN’S BATTLES for more than a century past; and the great
military glory which our country has acquired, has been owing, in no
small degree, to their UNSURPASSED BRAVERY, PERFECT DISCIPLINE, and
HIGH MORALE. In the part of the work devoted to this subject, it has
been sought faithfully to record not only the noble services rendered
to its country in past times by each regiment in every engagement
in which it took part, but also the brave deeds performed by many
individual Highland soldiers.
With regard to the later history of the Highland regiments, it
has been sought to render this complete and perfectly reliable by
applying, for direct information, to the COLONEL OF EACH EXISTING
REGIMENT; and in every case the publishers have met with the greatest
courtesy and willingness to lend all assistance. In addition to
this, of course, every accessible published work on the subject
has been consulted, including the host of books called forth by the
Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny.
* * * * *
From the above statements it will be seen that in no other single
publication is it possible to obtain SUCH VARIED and VALUABLE
INFORMATION on ALL POINTS OF INTEREST connected with the Scottish
Highlands--their HISTORY, their ANTIQUITIES, their CLANS, their
LITERATURE, their MILITARY ANNALS. No pains have been spared to make
the work ACCURATE, EXHAUSTIVE, INTERESTING, and CONSISTENT with the
MOST RECENT INVESTIGATIONS.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Besides clan-tartans, the work will be richly embellished with
autographs, seals, armorial bearings, objects of antiquarian
interest, and many views and portraits on wood and steel, all taken
from original or other authentic sources, and executed in the first
style of art.
The publishers have spared no pains to obtain original and genuine
portraits, and to have them faithfully and beautifully reproduced;
and they owe their sincere thanks to those noblemen and gentlemen
connected with the Highlands who have allowed them access to their
valuable family collections, in order to obtain copies of such
original portraits as were required for the work. Many of these
portraits have never before been engraved. The publishers would
especially mention here the valuable miniature portrait of Prince
Charles Edward Stuart in Highland costume, which has been in
possession of the Lochiel family for generations, and which has been
kindly placed at their disposal by the present representative of the
family, Donald Cameron, Esq., M.P. for Inverness-shire. It has the
merit of being a faithful likeness, and will be engraved by Holl of
London.
Many of the views, illustrative both of the events narrated in the
history and of the rich and romantic Highland scenery, are from
photographs and drawings taken specially for the work. Others,
consisting chiefly of views of towns and fortresses taken at or
near the time of the events they are intended to illustrate, are
copied from the rare and valuable work of John Slezer, entitled
_Theatrum Scotiæ_, published at the end of the 17th century. The
facts that Slezer was a military engineer, and that he was appointed
by government to survey the chief towns and strongholds of Scotland,
are sufficient guarantees of the faithfulness of these views.
CONDITIONS.
This work will be published in Twenty-five parts, price Two
Shillings each, size super-imperial 8vo. It will also be issued
in Eight Divisions, rich cloth, price 7s. 6d. each. It will form,
when completed, Two handsome Volumes, with Thirty specimens of
authentic Clan-Tartans, beautifully executed in colour, and
Twenty other page plates, including Map of Clan Territories,
besides about Two Hundred illustrative wood engravings.
A. FULLARTON & Co.,
STEAD’S PLACE, LEITH WALK, EDINBURGH; AND 18 NEWGATE STREET, LONDON.
[Illustration: PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART.
COPIED BY PERMISSION FROM THE MINIATURE IN POSSESSION OF DONALD
CAMERON, ESQR. OF LOCHIEL.]
A
HISTORY
OF THE
SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS
HIGHLAND CLANS
AND
HIGHLAND REGIMENTS
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF
THE GAELIC LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND MUSIC
BY THE REV. THOMAS MACLAUCHLAN, LL.D., F.S.A. SCOT.
AND AN ESSAY ON HIGHLAND SCENERY
BY THE LATE PROFESSOR JOHN WILSON
EDITED BY
JOHN S. KELTIE, F.S.A. SCOT.
Illustrated
WITH A SERIES OF PORTRAITS, VIEWS, MAPS, ETC., ENGRAVED ON STEEL,
CLAN TARTANS, AND UPWARDS OF TWO HUNDRED WOODCUTS,
INCLUDING ARMORIAL BEARINGS
VOL. I.
A. FULLARTON & CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
1875
PREFACE.
No apology is deemed necessary for bringing this History of the
Scottish Highlands before the public. A work under a similar title
was brought out by the present publishers upwards of thirty years
ago, under the care of Dr. James Browne, and met with a sale so
extensive and sustained as to prove that it supplied a real want.
Since the publication of Browne’s History, which it is only the
simple truth to say had no rival, research has brought to light
so much that is new connected both with the general history of
the Highlands and the history of the various clans, and so many
new laurels have been added to those already won by the Highland
regiments during the past century, and the early part of the present,
that the publishers believed the time had come for the preparation
and issue of a new work.
In preparing it, the editor has done all in his power to make it
complete and accurate. The object of Dr. Browne’s work was to
present in one book all that is interesting and valuable concerning
the Highlands and Highlanders, a great deal of information on this
subject having lain scattered in various quarters inaccessible to
the general public. In the preparation of the present work this
object has been kept steadily in view; and it may be said of it,
with even more force than of Browne’s, that it is a _collectanea_ of
information concerning the Scottish Highlands of an extent and kind
to be met with in no other single publication.
The general plan of Dr. Browne’s work has been adhered to. In the
First Part, that dealing with the General History of the Highlands,
which, from the nature of the case, is more a chronicle of clan
battles than a homogeneous history, it has been found possible, as
might have been expected, to retain much of Browne’s text. This,
however, has been subjected to a careful revision and comparison with
the original authorities, as well as with the many new ones that
have been brought to light during the past thirty years. Moreover,
many portions throughout this section have been rewritten, and
considerable additions made. One of the largest and most important
of these is the continuation of the General History from 1745 down
to the present day. The editor felt that, so far as the social
history of the Highlands is concerned, the period embraced in the
past hundred years was of even more importance than any previous
time; he has therefore attempted to do what, so far as he knows, has
not been done before, to present a sketch of the progress of the
Highlands during that period. For this purpose he has had to consult
a multitude of sources, and weigh many conflicting statements, his
aim being simply to discover and tell the truth. Such matters have
been gone into as Depopulation, Emigration, Agriculture, Large and
Small Farms, Sheep and Deer, Fishing, Manufactures, Education, &c. It
is hoped, therefore, that the First Part of the work will be found to
contain a complete account of the Highlands, historical, antiquarian,
and social.
An original and important feature of this part of the work is a
history of the Gaelic Language and Literature, by the well known
Celtic scholar, the Rev. T. Maclauchlan, LL.D., F.S.A. Scot.
In the Second Part, relating to the History of the Highland Clans,
it will be found that, in the case of every clan, modifications and
additions have been made. In some instances the histories have been
entirely rewritten, and several border clans have been included that
were not noticed in Browne’s work. The history of each clan, has,
as far as possible, been traced from its founder through all the
branches and offshoots down to the present day; the part it took in
the various clan strifes, in the disputes between the Highlands and
Lowlands, and in the general wars of Scotland, being set forth. In
the case of most of the clans, gentlemen who have made a special
study of particular clan histories have kindly revised the proofs.
The Third Part, the History of the Highland Regiments, occupies a
prominent place in the present work. Of these regiments one-half have
had their complete history published now for the first time, and in
the case of the others so many changes and additions have been made,
that this part of the work may be considered as entirely new. The
history of each of the nine regiments which now rank as Highland
has been gone into from its embodiment, and the trustworthiness of
this unique body of military history may be inferred from the fact,
that, in the case of every regiment, it is founded upon the original
Regimental Record, supplemented in many instances by the diaries
and recollections of officers; and in two cases, at least, as will
be seen, by materials collected by officers who have made a special
study of their regimental histories. The general reader will find
this part of the work of very great interest.
With regard to the Illustrations, the publishers feel justified in
alluding to them with considerable pride. No attempt has been made
to make the present work a mere picture-book; it will be invariably
found that the numerous plates, woodcuts, and clan-tartans either
add interest to the text, or throw light upon it. Every effort has
been made to secure authentic portraits and original views, and to
have every illustration executed in a thoroughly artistic style; and
it is hoped that, in these respects, the exertions of the editor
and publishers have been crowned with success. The specimens of
clan-tartans represent in every case those recognised by the heads of
the various clans. The illustrations, therefore, will be found both
historically and artistically valuable.
Throughout this work the editor has endeavoured to acknowledge the
authorities which he has in any way made use of. Were he to mention
the names of the numerous individuals to whom he has been indebted
for assistance during its preparation, it would add very considerably
to the length of this preface; in his own name and that of the
publishers, he expresses sincere gratitude to all who have in any
way lent a helping hand. Special thanks, however, are due to the
Duke of Athole for assistance in various ways, and particularly for
permission to engrave the portrait of Lord George Murray; to Lady
Elizabeth Pringle for the portrait of the first Earl of Breadalbane,
and to Mrs. Campbell of Monzie for that of the “Gentle Lochiel,”--all
published in this work for the first time. As mentioned in the text,
the beautiful miniature of “Prince Charlie” is copied from the
original in possession of Donald Cameron, Esq. of Lochiel, who has
also lent assistance in other ways. The originals of other valuable
illustrations, as will be seen, have been kindly placed at the
publishers’ service by the Duke of Sutherland, the Duke of Richmond,
the Earl of Strathmore, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, The
Mackintosh, The Chisholm, Duncan Forbes, Esq. of Culloden, David
Laing, Esq., LL.D., James Drummond, Esq., R.S.A., and many others.
The editor has in the proper place in the text referred to the
assistance given him in connection with the important history of
“Clan Chattan” by Alexander Mackintosh Shaw, Esq., whose own history
of the clan is nearly completed; the narrative in the present work
owes its value almost entirely to his kindness. For assistance in the
history of this clan the editor was also indebted to the late Rev. W.
G. Shaw of Forfar.
To the Colonels-commanding of all the Highland regiments special
thanks are due for hearty co-operation in procuring material for the
Third Part of the work. Many other officers have, with the greatest
readiness, either volunteered assistance or given it when asked. In
this connection special mention must be made of Lieutenant-Colonels
Wheatley, Clephane, and Sprot, Captain Colin Mackenzie, and Captain
Thackeray.
The large and increasing demand for this work during its publication,
and the extremely favourable notices of the press, afford good
grounds for believing that it will be found to fulfil the purpose for
which it has been compiled. May it ever meet with a kindly welcome
from all who are in any way interested in the romantic Highlands of
Scotland.
JOHN S. KELTIE.
LONDON, FEBRUARY 1875.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
PAGE
REMARKS ON THE SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS. By Professor WILSON, xiii
PART FIRST.--GENERAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS, 1
CHAPTER
I. B.C. 55.-A.D. 446.--Highlands defined--Ancient
Scotland--Transactions of the Romans in the North of
Scotland--Roman Remains--Roads--Camps, 1
II. B.C. 55.-A.D. 446.--Early Inhabitants--Roman
Writers--Aristotle--Tacitus--Internal History of the
Highlands during the Time of the Romans, 16
III. A.D. 446-843.--Early History--Settlement of the Scots
in Scotland--Conversion of Picts--Druidism--St Columba
--Iona--Spread of Christianity, 32
IV. A.D. 843-1107.--Norse Invasions--Danes--Effect of
Norwegian Conquest--Influx of Anglo-Saxons--Table of
Scottish Kings, A.D. 843 to 1097, 48
V. A.D. 1107-1411.--Insurrections--Intestine Feuds
--Expedition of Haco--Battle of Largs--Robert Bruce
--Lord of the Isles invades Scotland--Battle of Harlaw, 59
VI. A.D. 1424-1512.--Policy of James I. to the Highland
Chiefs--Disturbances in Sutherland and Caithness--Wise
Policy of James IV.--Battle of Flodden, 71
VII. A.D. 1516-1588.--Doings in Sutherland--Dissensions
among the Clan Chattan--The “Field of Shirts”--The
Queen-Regent visits the Highlands--Queen Mary’s
Expedition against Huntly--Unruly State of North, &c., 80
VIII. A.D. 1588-1601.--Strife between Earls of Caithness
and Sutherland--Clan Feuds, 102
IX. A.D. 1602-1613.--Feud between the Colquhouns and
Macgregors--Lawless Proceedings in Sutherland--Other
Clan Feuds, 113
X. A.D. 1613-1623.--Clan Feuds--Reduction and Pacification
of Caithness, 128
XI. A.D. 1624-1636.--Insurrections--Disputes--Feuds--First
Marquis of Huntly, 148
XII. A.D. 1636-1644.--Charles I. attempts to introduce
Episcopacy into Scotland--Doings in the North--Earl of
Montrose--Covenanters--Battle of Tippermuir, 165
XIII. A.D. 1644 (September)-1645 (February).--Montrose
crosses the Tay, and his movements in the North, till
Battle of Inverlochy, 186
XIV. A.D. 1645 (February-September).--Montrose’s movements
in the North--at Inverness, Elgin, Banff, Aberdeen,
Stonehaven, Perth, Dundee, &c.--Montrose enters Glasgow
--Submission of Edinburgh--Battle of Philiphaugh, 200
XV. A.D. 1645-1649.--Huntly refuses to join Montrose
--Executions by the Covenanters--Meeting of the
Covenanting Parliament--Montrose disbands his Army
--Proceedings of General Leslie--Leslie in the Western
Isles--Cromwell arrives in Edinburgh--Execution of
Charles I., 234
XVI. A.D. 1649-1650.--Negotiations with Charles II.
--Proceedings of Montrose--Pluscardine’s Insurrection
--Montrose defeated at Carbisdale--Captured, and sent
to Edinburgh--Trial and Execution, 260
XVII. A.D. 1650-1660.--Charles II. in Scotland--Cromwell
invades Scotland--Battle of Dunbar--Flight of the
King--Insurrections in the Highlands--Proceedings of
Cromwell--Battle of Worcester--Operations of Monk in
Scotland--Cameron of Lochiel--State of the Country
--Restoration of Charles II, 278
XVIII. Character of Ancient Highlanders, Manners, Customs, &c.
Appendix to Chapter XVIII.--Highland Dress and Arms, 298
XIX. A.D. 1660-1689.--Execution of the Marquis of Argyll
--Argyll and Monmouth’s Invasion--Execution of Earl
of Argyll--Designs of the Prince of Orange--Proceedings
of King James--State of feeling in Scotland--Viscount
Dundee, 331
XX. A.D. 1689 (March-July).--General Hugh Mackay--Details
of Dundee’s Insurrection till his Death at
Killiecrankie--His Character, 350
XXI. A.D. 1689-1691.--General Mackay’s movements--Colonel
Cannon--The Cameronians at Dunkeld--Erection of
Fort-William--Cessation of Hostilities, 378
XXII. A.D. 1691-1702.--Negotiations with the Highland Chiefs
--Massacre of Glencoe--Master of Stair--King William III.
--Subsequent enquiry--State of Highlands during
William’s reign--Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, 394
XXIII. A.D. 1695-1714.--The Darien Bubble--Death of James II.
--Death of King William--The Union--Proceedings of the
Jacobites--Death of Queen Anne, 407
XXIV. A.D. 1714-1715.--Proceedings of the Whigs--The Chevalier
de St George--Arrival of George I. in England--Jacobite
Intrigues--The Earl of Mar, 420
XXV. A.D. 1715.--Measures of the Government--Attempt to
surprise Edinburgh Castle--Duke of Argyll appointed to
the command of the Government forces--Proceedings of
Mar--Rebels march into England--Battle of Preston, 431
XXVI. A.D. 1715-1716.--Earl of Mar--Battle of Sheriffmuir
--Dispersion of the Insurgents, 456
XXVII. A.D. 1716-1737.--Trial and Execution of Rebels
--Proceedings of General Cadogan in the Highlands--Act
of Grace--Disarming of the Highlanders--New Jacobite
Conspiracy--Bolingbroke--The Disarming Act--Disgrace
of the Earl of Mar--The Chevalier’s Domestic affairs
--Death of George I., 476
XXVIII. A.D. 1739-1745.--Foreign Intrigues--Edinburgh
Association--Jacobite Intrigues--Prince Charles Edward
resolves to invade Scotland, 502
XXIX. A.D. 1745.--Prince Charles’ landing--He raises his
standard--Manifesto, 511
XXX. A.D. 1745.--Conduct of the Government--Sir John Cope
--Prince Charles at Perth--The Prince marches South
--Alarm in Edinburgh--Municipal Intrigues, 527
XXXI. A.D. 1745.--Highlanders Capture Edinburgh--Prince
Charles at Holyrood--The Chevalier de St George
proclaimed--Battle of Prestonpans, 540
XXXII. A.D. 1745.--Prince Charles’ proceedings at Edinburgh
--Resolves to invade England, 566
XXXIII. A.D. 1745.--Plan of the march of the Rebels into
England--Composition of the Highland Army--March of
Prince Charles into England--Proceedings there
--Consternation at London--Retreat into Scotland, 584
XXXIV. A.D. 1745-1746.--Highland Army returns to Scotland
--Proceedings of the Jacobites in the North
--Proceedings till Battle of Falkirk, 611
XXXV. A.D. 1746.--Duke of Cumberland sent to Scotland
--Highland Army’s Retreat to the North--Expedition of
Lord George Murray into Athole, 630
XXXVI. A.D. 1746.--Duke of Cumberland marches North--Battle
of Culloden--Apprehension of Lord Lovat and others
--Suppression of the Rebellion, 648
XXXVII. A.D. 1746.--Prince Charles’ Wanderings and Narrow
Escapes--Arrives in France, 683
XXXVIII. A.D. 1746-1747.--Trial of Prisoners--Execution of
Lords Kilmarnock, Cromarty, Balmerino, and Lovat--Act
of Indemnity, 722
XXXIX. A.D. 1747-1748.--Prince Charles’ arrival in Paris--His
Treatment of Lord George Murray--His Advisers,
Difficulties, and Plans, 738
XL. A.D. 1748-PRESENT TIME.--Charles visits London--Arrest
and Execution of Dr Cameron--Death of the Chevalier
--Marriage of Charles--His death--Death of Cardinal
York--Descendants of the Stewarts, 753
XLI. Proceedings which followed Culloden--Influence of Clan
feeling--Disarming Act--The Old Jacobites--Queen
Victoria--Jacobitism at the Present Day, 762
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOLUME I.
Subject. Painted by
Engraved by Page
PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART, From Lochiel’s Original Miniature,
W. Holl, To face title.
THE GREAT MARQUIS OF MONTROSE, From a Rare Contemporary Print,
W. Holl, 271
VIEW OF KILLIECRANKIE, D. O. Hill,
W. Forrest, 369
ARMOUR WORN BY VISCOUNT DUNDEE }
AT KILLIECRANKIE, } Original Drawing,
J. R. Collie, 376
VIEW OF THE BATTLEFIELD OF }
SHERIFFMUIR, } J. C. Brown,
John Smith, 464
JAMES STUART, “THE CHEVALIER,” From an Original Painting,
W. Holl, 469
JOHN ERSKINE, 11TH EARL OF MAR, Sir G. Kneller,
S. Freeman, 498
VIEW OF LOCH SHIEL, with Monument }
on the spot where Prince }
Charles Edward first raised his }
Standard, 19th August 1745, } John Fleming,
W. Forrest, 523
WILLIAM, DUKE OF CUMBERLAND, Sir Joshua Reynolds,
J. Le Conte, 631
VIEW OF BALMORAL, Sam Bough,
W. Forrest, 775
TARTANS.
MACINTYRE, 58
MACNEILL, see page 162 Vol. II., 74
ROSS, ” 235 ” 78
MACLEAN, ” 223 ” 99
MACLEOD, }
MACKENZIE,} ” 191 ” 112
STUART, ” 297 ” 186
MUNRO, ” 232 ” 258
SUTHERLAND, see page 272 Vol. II., 266
CAMERON OF LOCHIEL, ” 217 ” 296
MACPHERSON (full dress), ” 210 ” 380
ROBERTSON, ” 169 ” 411
MACFARLANE, ” 173 ” 527
FRASER, ” 302 ” 606
MACKINNON, ” 256 ” 702
CHISHOLM, ” 307 ” 713
WOODCUTS IN THE LETTERPRESS.
1. Representation of an ancient Caledonian on Sculptured Stone
in the Church of Meigle, 4
2. Representation of an ancient Caledonian on Sculptured Stone
found at St Andrews, 4
3. Ancient British War-chariot, 6
4. Map and Profile of Antonine’s Wall, 10
5. Sculptured Stone, with inscription, from Antonine’s Wall, 11
6. Sketch Plan of the Roman Camp at Ardoch in 1755, 15
7. Stonehenge, 36
8. Circle of Callernish in Lewis, 37
9. Ruins of Ancient Monastery, Iona, 38
10. Seal of King Edgar (1097-1107), 56
11. Alexander III., 62
12. Effigy of the “Wolf of Badenoch” in Dunkeld Cathedral, 68
13. James I. (of Scotland), 73
14. Old Castle of Dunrobin, as in 1712, 83
15. Castle Duart, 98
16. Dornoch, showing the Cathedral, &c., 117
17. Stornoway Castle, 120
18. Castles Sinclair and Girnigo, 125
19. Dunyveg Castle, Islay, 130
20. Frendraught House, 156
21. First Marquis of Huntly, 163
22. First Marchioness of Huntly, 163
23. First Marquis of Argyll, 178
24. Inverlochy Castle, 199
25. Dunnottar Castle in the 17th Century, 205
26. Perth in the 17th Century, 220
27. Old Aberdeen in the 17th Century, 246
28. Second Marquis of Huntly, 254
29. General David Leslie, 264
30. Castle of Ardvraick, 269
31. William, Ninth Earl of Glencairn, 292
32. Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, 296
33. The Scottish “Maiden,” devised by Regent Morton, 333
34. Ninth Earl of Argyle, 339
35. John Graham, Viscount Dundee, 351
36. General Hugh Mackay of Scourie, 361
37. Pass of Killiecrankie in the 18th Century, 375
38. Dunkeld in the 17th Century, 384
39. First Earl of Breadalbane, 394
40. View of Glencoe, 400
41. Edinburgh Castle in 1715, 432
42. Inverness in the 17th Century, 456
43. Dunblane about 1715, 460
44. Second Duke of Argyll, 472
45. Fort Augustus, 485
46. Lieutenant General Wade, 491
47. Donald Cameron of Lochiel, “The Gentle Chief,” 1745, 519
48. Autograph of Sir John Cope, 531
49. Holyrood House in 1745, 550
50. Plan of the Battle of Prestonpans, 21st Sept. 1745, 561
51. Colonel James Gardiner, 563
52. Colonel Gardiner’s House, near Prestonpans, 566
53. The Duke of Perth, 586
54. Carlisle in 1745, 604
55. Stirling about A.D. 1700, 616
56. Plan of the Battle of Falkirk, 17th January 1746, 624
57. Lady Anne Mackintosh, 1745, 637
58. Blair Castle, as it stood in 1745-6 before being dismantled, 643
59. Old Culloden House as in 1746, 657
60. Plan of the Battle of Culloden, 16th April 1746, 661
61. Lord George Murray, 672
62. Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President, 679
63. Flora Macdonald (with her autograph), 1747, 690
64. Loch Arkaig, with view of Achnacarry, the seat of Cameron
of Lochiel, 709
65. Dr. Archibald Cameron, 1745, 718
66. Simon, Lord Lovat, 1747, 734
67. A Representation of the Execution of Lord Lovat, 737
68. Henry, Cardinal Duke of York, 745
69,}
70.} Medal, Prince Charles and his Wife Louisa, 753
71. Prince Charles Edward Stuart as in 1776, 758
72,}
73.} Medal of Henry, Cardinal Duke of York, 760
REMARKS
ON THE
SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
BY
PROFESSOR WILSON.
In no other country does Nature exhibit herself in more various
forms of beauty and sublimity than in the north of England and the
Highlands of Scotland. This is acknowledged by all who, having
studied their character, and become familiar with the feelings it
inspires, have compared the effects produced on their minds by our
own mountainous regions, with what they have experienced among the
scenery of the Alps. There, indeed, all objects are on so vast a
scale, that we are for a while astonished as we gaze on the gigantic;
and all other emotions are sunk in an overwhelming sense of awe that
prostrates the imagination. But on recovering from its subjection to
the prodigious, that faculty everywhere recognises in those mighty
mountains of dark forests, glittering glaciers, and regions of
eternal snow--infinite all--the power and dominion of the sublime.
True that all these are but materials for the mind to work on, and
that to its creative energy Nature owes much of that grandeur which
seems to be inherent in her own forms; yet surely she in herself is
great, and there is a regality belonging of divine right to such a
monarch as Mont Blanc.
Those are the very regions of sublimity, and if brought into
immediate comparison with them in their immense magnitude, the most
magnificent scenery of our own country would no doubt seem to lose
its character of greatness. But such is not the process of the
imagination in her intercourse with Nature. To her, sufficient for
the day is the good thereof; and on each new glorious sight being
shown to her eyes, she employs her God-given power to magnify or
irradiate what she beholds, without diminishing or obscuring what
she remembers. Thus, to her all things in nature hold their own due
place, and retain for ever their own due impressions, aggrandized and
beautified by mutual reaction in those visionary worlds, which by a
thought she can create, and which, as they arise, are all shadowy
representations of realities--new compositions in which the image of
the earth we tread is reflected fairer or greater than any realities,
but not therefore less, but more true to the spirit of nature. It
is thus that poets and painters at once obey and control their own
inspirations. They visit all the regions of the earth, but to love,
admire, and adore; and the greatest of them all, native to our soil,
from their travel or sojourn in foreign lands, have always brought
home a clearer insight into the character of the scenery of their
own, a profounder affection for it all, and a higher power of imaging
its attributes in colours or in words. In our poetry, more than in
any other, Nature sees herself reflected in a magic mirror; and
though many a various show passes processionally along its lustre,
displaying the scenery of “lands and seas, whatever clime the sun’s
bright circle warms,” among them all there are none more delightful
or elevating to behold than those which genius, inspired by love, has
framed of the imagery, which, in all her pomp and prodigality, Heaven
has been pleased to shower, through all seasons, on our own beautiful
island. It is not for us to say whether our native painters, or the
“old masters,” have shown the greatest genius in landscape; but if
the palm must be yielded to them whose works have been consecrated
by a reverence, as often, perhaps, superstitious as religious, we do
not fear to say, that their superiority is not to be attributed in
any degree to the scenery on which they exercised the art its beauty
had inspired. Whatever may be the associations connected with the
subjects of their landscapes--and we know not why they should be
higher or holier than those belonging to innumerable places in our
own land--assuredly in themselves they are not more interesting or
impressive; nay, though none who have shared with us the spirit of
the few imperfect sentences we have now written, will for a moment
suppose us capable of instituting an invidious comparison between our
own scenery and that of any other country, why should we hesitate to
assert that our own storm-loving Northern Isle is equally rich in all
kinds of beauty as the Sunny South, and richer far in all kinds of
grandeur, whether we regard the forms or colouring of nature--earth,
sea, or air--
“Or all the dread magnificence of heaven.”
What other region in all the world like that of the Lakes in the
north of England! And yet how the true lover of nature, while he
carries along with him its delightful character in his heart, and
can so revive any spot of especial beauty in his imagination, as
that it shall seem in an instant to be again before his very eyes,
can deliver himself up, after the lapse of a day, to the genius of
some savage scene in the Highlands of Scotland, rent and riven by
the fury of some wild sea-loch! Not that the regions do not resemble
one another, but surely the prevailing spirit of the one--not so of
the other--is a spirit of joy and of peace. Her mountains, invested,
though they often be, in gloom--and we have been more than once
benighted during day, as a thunder-cloud thickened the shadows that
for ever sleep in the deepest dungeons of Helvellyn--are yet--so it
seems to us--such mountains as in nature ought to belong to “merry
England.” They boldly meet the storms, and seen in storms you might
think they loved the trouble; but pitch your tent among them, and
you will feel that theirs is a grandeur that is congenial with the
sunshine, and that their spirit fully rejoices in the brightness of
light. In clear weather, verdant from base to summit, how majestic
their repose! And as mists slowly withdraw themselves in thickening
folds up along their sides, the revelation made is still of more
and more of the beautiful--arable fields below, then coppice woods
studded with standard trees--enclosed pastures above and among the
woods--broad breasts of close-nibbled herbage here and there adorned
by rich dyed rocks, that do not break the expanse--till the whole
veil has disappeared; and, lo! the long lofty range, with its wavy
line, rising and sinking so softly in the blue serenity, perhaps,
of an almost cloudless sky. Yet though we have thus characterised
the mountains by what we have always felt to be the pervading spirit
of the region, chasms and ravines, and cliffs and precipices, are
there; in some places you see such assemblages as inspire the fear
that quakes at the heart, when suddenly struck in the solitude with
a sense of the sublime; and though we have called the mountains
green--and during Spring and Summer, in spite of frost or drought,
they are green as emerald--yet in Autumn they are many-coloured, and
are girdled with a glow of variegated light, that at sunset sometimes
seems like fire kindled in the woods.
The larger Vales are all serene and cheerful; and among the sylvan
knolls with which their wide levels, highly cultivated, are
interspersed, cottages, single or in groups, are frequent, of an
architecture always admirably suited to the scenery, because in a
style suggested not by taste or fancy, which so often disfigure
nature to produce the picturesque, but resorted to for sake of the
uses and conveniences of in-door life, to weather-fend it in storms,
and in calm to give it the enjoyment of sunshine. Many of these
dwellings are not what are properly called cottages, but statesmen’s
houses, of ample front, with their many roofs, over-shadowed by a
stately grove, and inhabited by the same race for many generations.
All alike have their suitable gardens, and the porches of the poorest
are often clustered with roses; for everywhere among these hills,
even in minds the most rude and uncultivated, there is a natural love
of flowers. The villages, though somewhat too much modernised in
those days of improvement--and indeed not a few of them with hardly
any remains now of their original architecture--nothing old about
them but the church tower, perhaps the parsonage--are nevertheless
generally of a pleasing character, and accordant, if not with the
great features of nature, which are unchanged and unchangeable, with
the increased cultivation of the country, and the many villas and
ornamented cottages that have risen and are rising by every lake and
river side. Rivers indeed, properly so called, there are none among
these mountains; but every vale, great and small, has at all times
its pure and undefiled stream or rivulet; every hill has its hundreds
of evanescent rills, almost every one its own perennial torrent
flowing from spring, marsh, or tarn; and the whole region is often
alive with waterfalls, of many of which, in its exquisite loveliness,
the scenery is fit for fairy festivals--and of many, in its horrid
gloom, for gatherings of gnomes revisiting “the glimpses of the
moon” from their subterraneous prisons. One lake there is, which
has been called “wooded Winandermere, the river lake;” and there is
another--Ulswater--which you might imagine to be a river too, and to
have come flowing from afar; the one excelling in isles, and bays,
and promontories, serene and gentle all, and perfectly beautiful; the
other, matchless in its majesty of cliff and mountain, and in its old
forests, among whose hoary gloom is for ever breaking out the green
light of young generations, and perpetual renovation triumphing over
perpetual decay. Of the other lakes--not river-like--the character
may be imagined even from that we have faintly described of the
mountains; almost every vale has its lake, or a series of lakes; and
though some of them have at times a stern aspect, and have scenes
to show almost of desolation, descending sheer to the water’s edge,
or overhanging the depth that looks profounder in the gloom, yet
even these, to eyes and hearts familiar with their spirit, wear a
sweet smile which seldom passes away. Witness Wastwater, with its
huge single mountains, and hugest of all the mountains of England,
Scawfell, with its terrific precipices--which, in the accidents of
storm, gloom, or mist, has seemed, to the lonely passer-by, savage
in the extreme--a howling or dreary wilderness--but in its enduring
character, is surrounded with all quiet pastoral imagery, the deep
glen in which it is embedded being, in good truth, the abode of
Sabbath peace. That hugest mountain is indeed the centre from which
all the vales irregularly diverge; the whole circumjacent region may
be traversed in a week; and though no other district of equal extent
contains such variety of the sublime and beautiful, yet the beautiful
is so prevalent that we feel its presence, even in places where it is
overpowered; and on leaving “The Lakes,” our imagination is haunted
and possessed with images, not of dread, but of delight.
We have sometimes been asked, whether the north of England or the
Highlands of Scotland should be visited first; but, simple as the
question seems, it is really one which it is impossible to answer,
though we suspect it would equally puzzle Scotchman or Englishman
to give a sufficient reason for his wishing to see any part of any
other country, before he had seen what was best worth seeing in his
own. His own country ought to be, and generally is, dearest to every
man. There, if nothing forbid, he should not only begin his study of
nature, but continue his education in her school, wherever it may
happen to be situated, till he has taken his first degree. We believe
that the love of nature is strong in the hearts of the inhabitants of
our island. And how wide and profound may that knowledge of nature
be, which the loving heart has acquired, without having studied her
anywhere but within the Four Seas! The impulses that make us desire
to widen the circle of our observation, are all impulses of delight
and love; and it would be strange indeed, did they not move us, first
of all, towards whatever is most beautiful belonging to our own land.
Were it otherwise, it would seem as if the heart were faithless to
the home affections, out of which, in their strength, spring all
others that are good; and it is essential, we do not doubt, to the
full growth of the love of country, that we should all have our
earliest imaginative delights associated with our native soil. Such
associations will for ever keep it loveliest to our eyes; nor is
it possible that we can ever as perfectly understand the character
of any other; but we can afterwards transfer and transfuse our
feelings in imagination kindled by our own will; and the beauty, born
before our eyes, among the banks and braes of our childhood, and
then believed to be but there, and nothing like it anywhere else in
all the world, becomes a golden light, “whose home is everywhere,”
which if we do not darken it, will shine unshadowed in the dreariest
places, till “the desert blossom like the rose.”
For our own parts, before we beheld one of “the beautiful fields of
England,” we had walked all Scotland thorough, and had seen many a
secret place, which now, in the confusion of our crowded memory,
seem often to shift their uncertain ground; but still, wherever
they glimmeringly re-appear, invested with the same heavenly light
in which long ago they took possession of our soul. And now that
we are almost as familiar with the fair sister-land, and love her
almost as well as Scotland’s self, not all the charms in which she is
arrayed--and they are at once graceful and glorious--have ever for a
day withdrawn our deeper dreams from the regions where,
“In life’s morning march when our spirit was young,”
unaccompanied but by our own shadow in the wilderness, we first heard
the belling of the red deer and the eagle’s cry.
In those days there was some difficulty, if not a little danger,
in getting in among some of the noblest regions of our Alps. They
could not be traversed without strong personal exertion; and a
solitary pedestrian excursion through the Grampians was seldom
achieved without a few incidents that might almost have been called
adventures. It is very different now; yet the _Genius Loci_, though
tamed, is not subdued; and they who would become acquainted with the
heart of the Highlands, will have need of some endurance still, and
must care nothing about the condition of earth or sky. Formerly, it
was not possible to survey more than a district or division in a
single season, except to those unenviable persons who had no other
pursuit but that of amusement, and waged a weary war with time. The
industrious dwellers in cities, who sought these solitudes for a
while to relieve their hearts from worldly anxieties, and gratify
that love of nature which is inextinguishable in every bosom that
in youth has beat with its noble inspirations, were contented with a
week or two of such intercommunion with the spirit of the mountains,
and thus continued to extend their acquaintance with the glorious
wildernesses, visit after visit, for years. Now the whole Highlands,
western and northern, may be commanded in a month. Not that any one
who knows what they are will imagine that they can be exhausted in a
lifetime. The man does not live who knows all worth knowing there;
and were they who made the trigonometrical survey to be questioned
on their experiences, they would be found ignorant of thousands of
sights, any one of which would be worth a journey for its own sake.
But now steam has bridged the Great Glen, and connected the two seas.
Salt water lochs the most remote and inaccessible, it has brought
within reach of a summer day’s voyage. In a week a joyous company
can gather all the mainland shores, leaving not one magnificent bay
uncircled; and, having rounded St Kilda and
“the Hebride Isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main,”
and heard the pealing anthem of waves in the cave-cathedral of
Staffa, may bless the bells of St Mungo’s tolling on the first
Sabbath. Thousands and tens of thousands, who but for those smoking
sea-horses, had never been beyond view of the city spires, have seen
sights which, though passing by almost like dreams, are not like
dreams forgotten, but revive of themselves in memory and imagination;
and, when the heart is weary with the work of the hand, quicken its
pulses with a sudden pleasure that is felt like a renovation of youth.
All through the interior, too, how many hundreds of miles of roads
now intersect regions not long ago deemed impracticable!--firm on the
fen, in safety flung across the chasm--and winding smoothly amidst
shatterings of rocks, round the huge mountain bases, and down the
glens once felt as if interminable, now travelled almost with the
speed of the raven’s wing!
In the Highlands now, there is no _terra incognita_. But there are
many places yet well worth seeing, which it is not easy for all men
to find, and to which every man must be his own guide. It is somewhat
of a selfish feeling, indeed, but the pride is not a mean one, with
which the solitary pedestrian sits down to contemplate some strange,
or wild, or savage scene, or some view of surpassing sweetness and
serenity, so far removed from the track of men, that he can well
believe for a time that his eyes have been the first to behold it,
and that for them alone it has now become a visible revelation.
The memory of such places is sometimes kept as a secret which we
would not communicate but to a congenial friend. They are hallowed
by those mysterious “thoughts that, like phantoms, trackless come
and go;” no words can tell another how to find his way thither; and
were we ourselves to seek to return, we should have to trust to some
consciousness mysterious as the instinct of a bird that carries it
through the blind night to the place of its desire.
It is well to have in our mind the conception of a route; but without
being utterly departed from--nay, without ceasing to control us
within certain bounds--it admits of almost any degrees of deviation.
We have known persons apparently travelling for pleasure who were
afraid to turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of
subjecting themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for
infirmity of purpose. They had “chalked out a route,” and acted as
if they had sworn a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave
among the boundless dominions of nature, where all are free. As the
wind bloweth wherever it listeth, so move the moods of men’s minds,
when there is nought to shackle them, and when the burden of their
cares has been dropt, that for a while they may walk on air, and feel
that they too have wings.
“A voice calls on me from the mountain depths,
And it must be obeyed.”
The voice was our own--and yet though but a whisper from the heart,
it seemed to come from the front of yon distant precipice--sweet and
wild as an echo.
On rising at dawn in the shieling, why think, much less determine,
where at night we are to lay down our head? Let this be our thought:
“Among the hills a hundred homes have I:
My table in the wilderness is spread:
In these lone spots one honest smile can buy
Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed.”
If we obey any powers external to our own minds, let them be the
powers of Nature--the rains, the winds, the atmosphere, sun, moon and
stars. We must keep a look out--
“To see the deep, fermenting tempest brewed,
In the grim evening sky;”
that next day we may cross the red rivers by bridges, not by fords;
and if they roll along unbridged, that we may set our face to the
mountain, and wind our way round his shoulder by sheep-tracks, unwet
with the heather, till we behold some great strath, which we had not
visited but for that storm, with its dark blue river streaked with
golden light,--for its source is in a loch among the Eastern Range;
and there, during the silent hours, heather, bracken, and greensward
rejoiced in the trembling dews.
There is no such climate for all kinds of beauty and grandeur as
the climate of the Highlands. Here and there you meet with an old
shepherd or herdsman, who has beguiled himself into a belief, in
spite of many a night’s unforeseen imprisonment in the mists, that he
can presage its changes from fair to foul, and can tell the hour when
the long-threatening thunder will begin to mutter. The weather-wise
have often perished in their plaids. Yet among a thousand uncertain
symptoms, there are a few certain, which the ranger will do well
to study, and he will often exult on the mountain to feel that
“knowledge is power.” Many a glorious hour has been won from the
tempest by him before whose instructed eye--beyond the gloom that
wide around blackened all the purple heather--“far off its coming
shone.” Leagues of continuous magnificence have gradually unveiled
themselves on either side to him, as he has slowly paced, midway
between, along the banks of the River of Waterfalls; having been
assured by the light struggling through the mist, that it would not
be long till there was a break-up of all that ghastly dreariment,
and that the sun would call on him to come forth from his cave of
shelter, and behold in all its pride the Glen affronting the Sea.
Some Tourists--as they call themselves--are provided with map and
compass; and we hope they find them of avail in extremities, though
we fear few such understand their use. No map can tell--except very
vaguely--how the aspect of the localities, looked at on its lines, is
likely to be affected by sunrise, meridian, or sunset. Yet, true it
is, that every region has its own happy hours, which the fortunate
often find unawares, and know them at once to be so the moment they
lift up their eyes. At such times, while “our hearts rejoice in
Nature’s joy,” we feel the presence of a spirit that brings out the
essential character of the place, be it of beauty or of grandeur.
Harmonious as music is then the composition of colours and of forms.
It becomes a perfect picture in memory, more and more idealised by
imagination, every moment the veil is withdrawn before it; its aërial
lineaments never fade; yet they too, though their being be but in the
soul, are mellowed by the touch of time--and every glimpse of such a
vision, the longer we live, and the more we suffer, seems suffused
with a mournful light, as if seen through tears.
It would serve no good purpose, supposing we had the power, to
analyse the composition of that scenery, which in the aggregate so
moves even the most sluggish faculties, as to make “the dullest wight
a poet.” It rises before the mind in imagination, as it does before
the eyes in nature; and we can no more speak of it than look at it,
but as a whole. We can indeed fix our mental or our visual gaze on
scene after scene to the exclusion of all beside, and picture it
even in words that shall be more than shadows. But how shall any
succession of such pictures, however clear and complete, give an idea
of that picture which comprehends them all, and infinite as are its
manifestations, nevertheless is imbued with one spirit?
Try to forget that in the Highlands there are any Lochs. Then the
sole power is that of the Mountains. We speak of a sea of mountains;
but that image has never more than momentary possession of us,
because, but for a moment, in nature it has no truth. Tumultuary
movements envelope them; but they themselves are for ever steadfast
and for ever still. Their power is that of an enduring calm no
storms can disturb--and is often felt to be more majestical, the more
furious are the storms. As the tempest-driven clouds are franticly
hurrying to and fro, how serene the summits in the sky! Or if they be
hidden, how peaceful the glimpses of some great mountain’s breast!
They disregard the hurricane that goes crashing through their old
woods; the cloud-thunder disturbs not them any more than that of
their own cataracts, and the lightnings play for their pastime.
All minds under any excitation more or less personify mountains.
When much moved, that natural process affects all our feelings, as
the language of passion awakened by such objects vividly declares;
and then we do assuredly conceive of mountains as indued with
life--however dim and vague the conception may be--and feel their
character in their very names. Utterly strip our ideas of them of all
that is attached to them as impersonations, and their power is gone.
But while we are creatures of imagination as well as of reason, will
those monarchs remain invested with the purple and seated on thrones.
In such imaginative moods as these must every one be, far more
frequently than he is conscious of, and in far higher degrees,
who, with a cultivated mind and a heart open to the influences of
nature, finds himself, it matters not whether for the first or the
hundredth time, in the Highlands. We fancy the Neophyte wandering,
all by himself, on the “longest day;” rejoicing to think that the
light will not fail him, when at last the sun must go down, for
that a starry gloaming will continue its gentle reign till morn. He
thinks but of what he sees, and that is--the mountains. All memories
of any other world but that which encloses him with its still
sublimities, are not excluded merely, but obliterated: his whole
being is there! And now he stands on table-land, and with his eyes
sweeps the horizon, bewildered for a while, for it seems chaos all.
But soon the mighty masses begin arranging themselves into order;
the confusion insensibly subsides as he comprehends more and more of
their magnificent combinations; he discovers centres round which are
associated altitudes towering afar off; and finally, he feels, and
blesses himself on his felicity, that his good genius has placed him
on the very centre of those wondrous assemblages altogether, from
which alone he could command an empire of realities, more glorious
far than was ever empire of dreams.
It is a cloudy, but not a stormy day; the clouds occupy but portions
of the sky,--and are they all in slow motion together, or are they
all at rest? Huge shadows stalking along the earth, tell that there
are changes going on in heaven; but to the upward gaze, all seems
hanging there in the same repose; and with the same soft illumination
the sun to continue shining, a concentration rather than an orb of
light. All above is beautiful, and the clouds themselves are like
celestial mountains; but the eye forsakes them, though it sees them
still, and more quietly now it moves along the pageantry below that
endures for ever--till chained on a sudden by that range of cliffs.
’Tis along them that the giant shadows are stalking--but now they
have passed by--and the long line of precipice seems to come forward
in the light. To look down from the brink might be terrible--to look
up from the base would be sublime--but fronting the eye thus, horrid
though it be, the sight is most beautiful;--for weather-stains, and
mosses, and lichens, and flowering-plants--conspicuous most the
broom and the heather--and shrubs that, among their leaves of light,
have no need of flowers--and hollies, and birks, and hazels, and
many a slender tree besides with pensile tresses, besprinkle all the
cliffs, that in no gloom could ever lose their lustre; but now the
day though not bright is fair, and brings out the whole beauty of the
precipice--call it the hanging garden of the wilderness.
The Highlands have been said to be a gloomy region, and worse gloom
than theirs might well be borne, if not unfrequently illumined
with such sights as these; but that is not the character of the
mountains, though the purple light in which, for usual, they are so
richly steeped, is often for a season tamed, or for a short while
extinguished, while a strange night-like day lets fall over them all
a something like a shroud. Such days we have seen--but now in fancy
we are with the pilgrim, and see preparation making for a sunset. It
is drawing towards evening, and the clouds that have all this time
been moving, though we knew it not, have assuredly settled now, and
taken up their rest. The sun has gone down, and all that unspeakable
glory has left the sky. Evening has come and gone without our knowing
that she had been here; but there is no gloom on any place in the
whole of this vast wilderness, and the mountains, as they wax dimmer
and dimmer, look as if they were surrendering themselves to a repose
like sleep. Day had no voice here audible to human ear--but night
is murmuring--and gentle though the murmur be, it filleth the great
void, and we imagine that ever and anon it awakens echoes. And now it
is darker than we thought, for lo! one soft-burning star! And we see
that there are many stars; but not theirs the light that begins again
to reveal object after object as gradually as they had disappeared;
the moon is about to rise--is rising--has arisen--has taken her
place high in heaven; and as the glorious world again expands around
us, faintly tinged, clearly illumined, softly shadowed, and deeply
begloomed, we say within our hearts,
“How beautiful is night!”
There are many such table-lands as the one we have now been
imagining, and it requires but a slight acquaintance with the country
to conjecture rightly where they lie. Independently of the panoramas
they display, they are in themselves always impressive; perhaps a
bare level that shows but bleached bent, and scatterings of stones,
with here and there an unaccountable rock; or hundreds of fairy
greensward knolls, fringed with tiny forests of fern that have almost
displaced the heather; or a wild withered moor or moss intersected
with pits dug not by men’s hands; and, strange to see! a huge log
lying half exposed, and as if blackened by fire. High as such places
are, on one of them a young gorcock was stricken down by a hawk close
to our feet. Indeed, hawks seem to haunt such places, and we have
rarely crossed one of them, without either seeing the creature’s
stealthy flight, or hearing, whether he be alarmed or preying, his
ever-angry cry.
From a few such stations, you get an insight into the configuration
of the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you
discover at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into
other regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead;
and if the blue aërial haze that hangs over a pass winding eastward,
tempt you from your line of march due north, forthwith descend in
that direction, and haply an omen will confirm you--an eagle rising
on the left, and sailing away before you into that very spot of sky.
No man, however well read, should travel by book. In books you find
descriptions, and often good ones, of the most celebrated scenes,
but seldom a word about the vast tracts between; and it would seem
as if many Tourists had used their eyes only in those places where
they had been told by common fame there was something greatly to
admire. Travel in the faith, that go where you will, the cravings
of your heart will be satisfied, and you will find it so, if you be
a true lover of nature. You hope to be inspired by her spirit, that
you may read aright her works. But such inspiration comes not from
one object or another, however great or fair, but from the whole
“mighty world of eye and ear,” and it must be supported continuously,
or it perishes. You may see a thousand sights never before seen by
human eye, at every step you take, wherever be your path; for no
steps but yours have ever walked along that same level; and moreover,
never on the same spot twice rested the same lights or shadows. Then
there may be something in the air, and more in your own heart, that
invests every ordinary object with extraordinary beauty; old images
affect you with a new delight; a grandeur grows upon your eyes in the
undulations of the simplest hills; and you feel there is sublimity
in the common skies. It is thus that all the stores of imagery are
insensibly gathered, with which the minds of men are filled, who
from youth have communed with Nature. And it is thus that all those
feelings have flowed into their hearts by which that imagery is
sanctified; and these are the poets.
It is in this way that we all become familiar with the Mountains. Far
more than we were aware of have we trusted to the strong spirit of
delight within us, to prompt and to guide. And in such a country as
the Highlands, thus led, we cannot err. Therefore, if your desire be
for the summits, set your face thitherwards, and wind a way of your
own, still ascending and ascending, along some vast brow, that seems
almost a whole day’s journey, and where it is lost from your sight,
not to end, but to go sweeping round, with undiminished grandeur,
into another region. You are not yet half-way up the mountain, but
you care not for the summit now; for you find yourself among a number
of green knolls--all of them sprinkled, and some of them crowned,
with trees--as large almost as our lowland hills--surrounded close
to the brink with the purple heather--and without impairing the
majesty of the immense expanse, embuing it with pastoral and sylvan
beauty;--and there, lying in a small forest glade of the lady-fern,
ambitious no longer of a throne on Benlomond or Bennevis, you dream
away the still hours till sunset, yet then have no reason to weep
that you have lost a day.
But the best way to view the mountains is to trace the Glens. To find
out the glens you must often scale the shoulders of mountains; and in
such journeys of discovery, you have for ever going on before your
eyes glorious transfigurations. Sometimes for a whole day one mighty
mass lowers before you unchanged; look at it after the interval of
hours, and still the giant is one and the same. It rules the region,
subjecting all other altitudes to its sway, though many of them
range away to a great distance; and at sunset retains its supremacy,
blazing almost like a volcano with fiery clouds. Your line of journey
lies, perhaps, some two thousand feet above the level of the sea,
and seldom dips down to one thousand; and these are the heights from
which all above and all below you look most magnificent, for both
regions have their full power over you--the unscaleable cliffs, the
unfathomable abysses--and you know not which is the more sublime. The
sublimity indeed is one. It is then that you may do well to ascend to
the very mountain top. For it may happen to be one of those heavenly
days indeed, when the whole Highlands seem to be reposing in the
cloudless sky.
But we were about to speak of the Glens. And some of them are best
entered by such descents as these--perhaps at their very head--where
all at once you are in another world, how still, how gloomy, how
profound! An hour ago and the eye of the eagle had not wider command
of earth, sea, and sky than yours--almost blinded now by the
superincumbent precipices that imprison you, and seem to shut you out
from life.
“Such the grim desolation, where Ben-Hun
And Craig-na-Torr, by earthquake shatterings
Disjoined with horrid chasms prerupt, enclose
What superstition calls the Glen of Ghosts.”
Or you may enter some great glen from the foot, where it widens into
vale, or strath--and there are many such--and some into which you can
sail up an arm of the sea. For a while it partakes of the cultivated
beauty of the lowlands, and glen and vale seem almost one and the
same; but gradually it undergoes a strange wild change of character,
and in a few miles that similitude is lost. There is little or
no arable ground here; but the pasture is rich on the unenclosed
plain--and here and there are enclosures near the few houses or huts
standing, some of them in the middle of the glen, quite exposed, on
eminences above reach of the floods--some more happily placed on the
edge of the coppices, that sprinkle the steep sides of the hills,
yet barely mountains. But mountains they soon become; and leaving
behind you those few barren habitations, you see before you a wide
black moor. Beautiful hitherto had been the river, for a river you
had inclined to think it, long after it had narrowed into a stream,
with many a waterfall, and in one chasm a cataract. But the torrent
now has a wild mountain-cry, and though there is still beauty on its
banks, they are bare of all trees, now swelling into multitudes of
low green knolls among the heather, now composed but of heather and
rocks. Through the very middle of the black moor it flows, yet are
its waters clear, for all is not moss, and it seems to wind its way
where there is nothing to pollute its purity, or tame its lustre.
’Tis a solitary scene, but still sweet; the mountains are of great
magnitude, but they are not precipitous; vast herds of cattle are
browsing there, on heights from which fire has cleared the heather,
and wide ranges of greensward upon the lofty gloom seem to lie in
perpetual light.
The moor is crossed, and you prepare to scale the mountain in front,
for you imagine the torrent by your side flows from a tarn in yonder
cove, and forms that series of waterfalls. You have been all along
well pleased with the glen, and here at the head, though there is a
want of cliffs of the highest class, you feel nevertheless that it
has a character of grandeur. Looking westward, you are astounded to
see them ranging away on either side of another reach of the glen,
terrific in their height, but in their formation beautiful, for
like the walls of some vast temple they stand, roofed with sky. Yet
are they but as a portal or gateway of the glen. For entering in
with awe, that deepens as you advance almost into dread, you behold
beyond mountains that carry their cliffs up into the clouds, seamed
with chasms, and hollowed out into coves, where night dwells visibly
by the side of day; and still the glen seems winding on beneath a
purple light, that almost looks like gloom; such vast forms and such
prodigious colours, and such utter stillness, become oppressive
to your very life, and you wish that some human being were by, to
relieve by his mere presence the insupportable weight of such a
solitude.
But we should never have done were we to attempt to sketch, however
slightly, the character of all the different kinds of glens. Some
are sublime in their prodigious depth and vast extent, and would
be felt to be so, even were the mountains that enclose them of no
great majesty; but these are all of the highest order, and sometimes
are seen from below to the very cairns on their summits. Now we
walk along a reach, between astonishing ranges of cliffs, among
large heaps of rocks--not a tree--scarcely a shrub--no herbage--the
very heather blasted--all lifelessness and desolation. The glen
gradually grows less and less horrid, and though its sides are
seamed with clefts and chasms, in the gloom there are places for
the sunshine, and there is felt to be even beauty in the repose.
Descends suddenly on either side a steep slope of hanging wood, and
we find ourselves among verdant mounds, and knolls, and waterfalls.
We come then into what seems of old to have been a forest. Here and
there a stately pine survives, but the rest are all skeletons; and
now the glen widens, and widens, yet ceases not to be profound,
for several high mountains enclose a plain on which armies might
encamp, and castellated clouds hang round the heights of the glorious
amphitheatre, while the sky-roof is clear, and, as if in its centre,
the refulgent sun. ’Tis the plain called “The Meeting of the Glens.”
From the east and the west, the north and the south, they come like
rivers into the sea.
Other glens there are as long, but not so profound, nor so grandly
composed; yet they too conduct us nobly in among the mountains, and
up their sides, and on even to their very summits. Such are the
glens of Athole, in the neighbourhood of Ben-y-gloe. From them the
heather is not wholly banished, and the fire has left a green light
without quenching the purple colour native to the hills. We think
that we almost remember the time when those glens were in many places
sprinkled with huts, and all animated with human life. Now they are
solitary; and you may walk from sunrise till sunset without seeing
a single soul. For a hundred thousand acres have there been changed
into a forest, for sake of the pastime, indeed, which was dear of old
to chieftains and kings. Vast herds of red deer are there, for they
herd in thousands; yet may you wander for days over the boundless
waste, nor once be startled by one stag bounding by. Yet may a herd,
a thousand strong, be drawn up, as in battle array, on the cliffs
above your head. For they will long stand motionless, at gaze, when
danger is in the wind; and then their antlers to unpractised eyes
seem but boughs grotesque, or are invisible; and when all at once,
with one accord, at signal from the stag, whom they obey, they wheel
off towards the corries, you think it but thunder, and look up to the
clouds. Fortunate if you see such a sight once in your life. Once
only have we seen it; and it was, of a sudden, all by ourselves,
“Ere yet the hunter’s startling horn was heard
Upon the golden hills.”
Almost within rifle-shot, the herd occupied a position, high up
indeed, but below several ridges of rocks, running parallel for a
long distance, with slopes between of sward and heather. Standing
still, they seemed to extend about a quarter of a mile; and, as with
a loud clattering of hoofs and antlers they took more open order,
the line at least doubled its length, and the whole mountain side
seemed alive. They might not be going at full speed, but the pace was
equal to that of any charge of cavalry; and once and again the flight
passed before us, till it overcame the ridges, and then deploying
round the shoulder of the mountain, disappeared, without dust or
noise, into the blue light of another glen.
We question if there be in the Highlands any one glen comparable with
Borrowdale in Cumberland. But there are several that approach it,
in that combination of beauty and grandeur, which perhaps no other
scene equals in all the world. The “Gorge” of that Dale exhibits the
finest imaginable assemblage of rocks and rocky hills, all wildly
wooded; beyond them, yet before we have entered into the Dale, the
Pass widens, with noble cliffs on one side, and on the other a sylvan
stream, not without its abysses; and we see before us some lovely
hills, on which--
“The smiling power of cultivation lies,”
yet leaves, with lines defined by the steeps that defy the
ploughshare, copses and groves; and thus we are brought into
the Dale itself, and soon have a vision of the whole--green
and golden fields--for though most are in pasture, almost all
seem arable--sprinkled with fine single trees, and lying in
flats and levels, or swelling into mounds and knolls, and all
diversified with every kind of woods; single cottages, with their
out-buildings, standing everywhere they should stand, and coloured
like the rocks from which in some lights they are hardly to be
distinguished--strong-roofed and undilapidated, though many of them
very old; villages, apart from one another a mile--and there are
three--yet on their sites, distant and different in much though
they be, all associated together by the same spirit of beauty that
pervades all the Dale. Half way up, and in some places more, the
enclosing hills and even mountains are sylvan indeed, and though
there be a few inoffensive aliens, they are all adorned with their
native trees. The mountains are not so high as in our Highlands,
but they are very majestic; and the passes over into Langdale, and
Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, are magnificent, and show precipices in
which the Golden Eagle himself might rejoice.
No--there is no glen in all the Highlands comparable with Borrowdale.
Yet we know of some that are felt to be kindred places, and their
beauty, though less, almost as much affects us, because though
contending, as it were, with the darker spirit of the mountain, it
is not overcome, but prevails; and their beauty will increase with
years. For while the rocks continue to frown aloft for ever, and the
cliffs to range along the corries, unbroken by trees, which there
the tempests will not suffer to rise, the woods and groves below,
preserved from the axe, for sake of their needful shelter, shall
become statelier till the birch equal the pine; reclaimed from the
waste, shall many a fresh field recline among the heather, tempering
the gloom; and houses arise where now there are but huts, and every
house have its garden:--such changes are now going on, and we have
been glad to observe their progress, even though sometimes they had
removed, or were removing, objects dear from old associations, and
which, had it been possible, but it was not, we should have loved to
see preserved.
And one word on those sweet pastoral seclusions into which one
often drops unexpectedly, it may be at the close of day, and finds
a night’s lodging in the lonely hut. Yet they lie, sometimes,
embosomed, in their own green hills, among the most rugged mountains,
and even among the wildest moors. They have no features by which you
can describe them: it is their serenity that charms you, and their
cheerful peace; perhaps it is wrong to call them glens, and they are
but dells. Yet one thinks of a dell as deep, however small it may be;
but these are not deep, for the hills slope down gently upon them,
and leave room perhaps between for a little shallow loch. Often they
have not any visible water at all, only a few springs and rivulets,
and you wonder to see them so very green; there is no herbage like
theirs; and to such spots of old, and sometimes yet, the kine are
led in summer, and there the lonely family live in their shieling
till the harvest moon.
We have all along used the same word, and called the places we have
spoken of--glens. A fine observer--the editor of _Gilpin’s Forest
Scenery_--has said: “The gradation from extreme width downwards
should be thus arranged--strath, vale, dale, valley, glen, dell,
ravine, chasm. In the strath, vale, and dale, we may expect to
find the large, majestic, gently flowing river, or even the deeper
or smaller lake. In the glen, if the river be large, it flows
more rapidly, and with greater variety. In the dell, the stream
is smaller. In the ravine, we find the mountain torrent and the
waterfall. In the chasm, we find the roaring cataract, or the rill,
bursting from its haunted fountain. The chasm discharges its small
tribute into the ravine, while the ravine is tributary to the dell,
and thence to the glen; and the glen to the dale.”
These distinctions are admirably expressed, and perfectly true to
nature; yet we doubt if it would be possible to preserve them in
describing a country, and assuredly they are very often indeed
confused by common use in the naming of places. We have said nothing
about straths--nor shall we try to describe one--but suggest to your
own imagination as specimens, Strath-Spey, Strath-Tay, Strath-Earn.
The dominion claimed by each of those rivers, within the mountain
ranges that environ their courses, is a strath; and three noble
straths they are, from source to sea.
And now we are brought to speak of the Highland rivers, streams,
and torrents; but we shall let them rush or flow, murmur or
thunder, in your own ears, for you cannot fail to imagine what
the waters must be in a land of such glens, and such mountains.
The chief rivers possess all the attributes essential to
greatness--width--depth--clearness--rapidity--in one word, power.
And some of them have long courses--rising in the central heights,
and winding round many a huge projection, against which in flood we
have seen them dashing like the sea. Highland droughts are not of
long duration; the supplies are seldom withheld at once by all the
tributaries; and one wild night among the mountains converts a calm
into a commotion--the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood
they are terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems a place of
torment. Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there
is something to our ears more appalling in that of the fall of
waters. Let them be united--and add thunder from the clouds--and we
have heard in the Highlands all three in one--and the auditor need
not care that he has never stood by Niagara. But when “though not
o’er-flowing full,” a Highland river is in perfection; far better do
we love to see and hear him rejoicing than raging; his attributes
appear more his own in calm and majestic manifestations, and as he
glides or rolls on, without any disturbance, we behold in him an
image at once of power and peace.
Of rivers--comparatively speaking, of the second and third order--the
Highlands are full--and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyond
compare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds of
them--some tiny indeed, but others tall--are for ever dinning in the
woods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is
the sound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat’s voice;
clear amidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain;
and all other sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the hark
of the eagle--rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as
you thread the “glimmer or the gloom” of the umbrage overhanging
the Garry or the Tummel--for he used to build in the cliffs of
Ben-Brackie, and if he has shifted his eyrie, a few minutes’ waftage
will bear him to Cairn-Gower.
In speaking of the glens, we but alluded to the rivers or streams,
and some of them, indeed, even the great ones, have but rivulets;
while in the greatest, the waters often flow on without a single
tree, shadowed but by rocks and clouds. Wade them, and you find they
are larger than they seem to be; for looked at along the bottom of
those profound hollows, they are but mere slips of sinuous light
in the sunshine, and in the gloom you see them not at all. We do
not remember any very impressive glen, without a stream, that would
not suffer some diminution of its power by our fancying it to have
one; we may not be aware, at the time, that the conformation of the
glen prevents its having any waterflow, if but we feel its character
aright, that want is among the causes of our feeling; just as there
are some scenes of which the beauty would not be so touching were
there a single tree.
Thousands and tens of thousands there are of nameless perennial
torrents, and “in number without number numberless” those that seldom
live a week--perhaps not a day. Up among the loftiest regions you
hear nothing, even when they are all aflow; yet, there is music in
the sight, and the thought of the “general dance and minstrelsy”
enlivens the air, where no insect hums. As on your descent you come
within hearing of the “liquid lapses,” your heart leaps within you,
so merrily do they sing; the first torrent-rill you meet with you
take for your guide, and it leads you perhaps into some fairy dell,
where it wantons awhile in waterfalls, and then, gliding along a
little dale of its own with “banks of green bracken,” finishes its
short course in a stream--one of many that meet and mingle before
the current takes the name of river, which in a mile or less becomes
a small woodland lake. There are many such of rememberable beauty;
living lakes indeed, for they are but pausings of expanded rivers,
which again soon pursue their way, and the water-lilies have ever a
gentle motion there as if touched by a tide.
It used, not very long ago, to be pretty generally believed by our
southern brethren, that there were few trees in the Lowlands of
Scotland, and none at all in the Highlands. They had an obscure
notion that trees either could not or would not grow in such a soil
and climate--cold and bleak enough at times and places, heaven
knows--yet not altogether unproductive of diverse stately plants.
They know better now; nor were we ever angry with their ignorance,
which was nothing more than what was to be expected in persons living
perpetually at home so far remote. They rejoice now to visit, and
sojourn, and travel here among us, foreigners and a foreign land
no more; and we rejoice to see and receive them not as strangers,
but friends, and are proud to know they are well pleased to behold
our habitation. They do us and our country justice now, and we
have sometimes thought even more than justice; for they are lost in
admiration of our cities--above all, of Edinburgh--and speak with
such raptures of our scenery, that they would appear to prefer it
even to their own. They are charmed with our bare green hills, with
our shaggy brown mountains they are astonished, our lochs are their
delight, our woods their wonder, and they hold up their hands and
clap them at our cliffs. This is generous, for we are not blind to
the fact of England being the most beautiful land on all the earth.
What are our woods to hers! To hers, what are our single trees!
We have no such glorious standards to show as her indomitable and
everlasting oaks. She is all over sylvan--Scotland but here and
there; look on England from any point in any place, and you see she
is rich, from almost any point in any place in Scotland, and you
feel that comparatively she is poor. Yet our Lowlands have long
been beautifying themselves into a resemblance of hers; as for our
Highlands, though many changes have been going on there too, and most
we believe for good, they are in their great features, and in their
spirit unalterable by art, stamped and inspired by enduring Nature.
We have spoken, slightly, of the sylvan scenery of the Highlands. In
Perthshire, especially, it is of rare and extraordinary beauty, and
we are always glad to hear of Englishmen travelling up the Tay and
the Earn. We desire that eyes familiar with all that is umbrageous
should receive their first impressions of our Scottish trees at
Duneira and Dunkeld. Nor will those impressions be weakened as they
proceed towards Blair Athole. In that famous Pass they will feel
the power possessed by the sweet wild monotony of the universal
birch woods--broken but by grey crags in every shape--grotesque,
fantastical, majestic, magnificent, and sublime--on the many-ridged
mountains, that are loth to lose the green light of their beloved
forests, retain it as long as they can, and on the masses of living
lustre seem to look down with pride from their skies.
An English forest, meaning thereby any one wide continuous scene of
all kinds of old English trees, with glades of pasture, and it may
be of heath between, with dells dipping down into the gloom, and
hillocks undulating in the light--ravines and chasms too, rills,
and rivulets, and a haunted stream, and not without some melancholy
old ruins, and here and there a cheerful cottage that feels not the
touch of time--such a forest there is not, and hardly can be imagined
to be in Scotland. But in the Highlands, there once were, and are
still, other forests of quite a different character, and of equal
grandeur. In his _Forest Scenery_, Gilpin shows that he understood
it well; all the knowledge, which as a stranger, almost of necessity
he wanted, Lauder has supplied in his annotations; and the book
should now be in the hands of every one who cares about the woods.
“The English forest,” says Gilpin, “is commonly composed of woodland
views, interspersed with extensive heaths and lawns. Its trees are
oak and beech, whose lively green corresponds better than the gloomy
pine with the nature of the scene, which seldom assumes the dignity
of a mountain one, but generally exhibits a cheerful landscape. It
aspires, indeed, to grandeur; but its grandeur does not depend,
like that of the Scottish forest, on the sublimity of the objects,
but on the vastness of the whole--the extent of its woods and the
wildness of its plains. In its inhabitants also the English forest
differs from the Scottish; instead of the stag and the roebuck, it
is frequented by cattle and fallow-deer, and exchanges the scream of
the eagle and the falcon for the crowing of pheasants and the melody
of the nightingale. The Scottish forest, no doubt, is the sublimer
scene, and speaks to the imagination in a loftier language than
the English forest can reach. The latter, indeed, often rouses the
imagination, but seldom in so great a degree, being generally content
with captivating the eye. The scenery, too, of the Scottish forest
is better calculated to last through ages than that of the English.
The woods of both are almost destroyed. But while the English forest
hath lost all its beauty with its oaks, and becomes only a desolate
waste, the rocks and the mountains, the lakes and the torrents, of
the Scottish forest make it still an interesting scene.”
The tree of the Highlands is the pine. There are Scotch firs,
indeed, well worth looking at, in the Lowlands, and in England; but
to learn their true character you must see them in the glen, among
rocks, by the river side, and on the mountain. “We, for our parts,”
says Lauder, very finely, “confess that when we have seen it towering
in full majesty in the midst of some appropriate Highland scene,
and sending its limbs abroad with all unrestrained freedom of a
hardy mountaineer, as if it claimed dominion over the savage region
round it, we have looked upon it as a very sublime object. People
who have not seen it in native climate and soil, and who judge of
it from the wretched abortions which are swaddled and suffocated in
English plantations, among dark, heavy, and eternally wet clays, may
well be called a wretched tree; but when its foot is among its own
Highland heather, and when it stands freely in its native knoll of
dry gravel, or thinly-covered rock, over which its roots wander afar
in the wildest reticulation, whilst its tall, furrowed, and often
gracefully-sweeping red and grey trunk, of enormous circumference,
rears aloft its high umbrageous canopy, then would the greatest
sceptic on this point be compelled to prostrate his mind before it
with a veneration which perhaps was never before excited in him by
any other tree.” The colour of the pine has been objected to as
murky, and murky it often is, or seems to be; and so then is the
colour of the heather, and of the river, and of the loch, and of the
sky itself thunder-laden, and murkiest of all are the clouds. But a
stream of sunshine is let loose, and the gloom is confounded with
glory; over all that night-like reign the jocund day goes dancing,
and the forest revels in green or in golden light. Thousands and
tens of thousands of trees are there; and as you gaze upon the whole
mighty array, you fear lest it might break the spell, to fix your
gaze on any one single tree. But there are trees there that will
force you to look on themselves alone, and they grow before your
eyes into the kings of the forest. Straight stand their stems in
the sunshine, and you feel that as straight have they stood in the
storm. As yet you look not up, for your heart is awed, and you see
but the stately columns reddening away into the gloom. But all the
while you feel the power of the umbrage aloft, and when thitherwards
you lift your eyes, what a roof to such a cathedral! A cone drops at
your feet--nor other sound nor other stir--but afar off you think you
hear a cataract. Inaudible your footsteps on the soft yellow floor,
composed of the autumnal sheddings of countless years. Then it is
true that you can indeed hear the beating of your own heart; you
fear, but know not what you fear; and being the only living creature
there, you are impressed with a thought of death. But soon to that
severe silence you are more than reconciled; the solitude, without
ceasing to be sublime, is felt to be solemn and not awful, and ere
long, utter as it is, serene. Seen from afar, the forest was one
black mass; but as you advance, it opens up into spacious glades,
beautiful as gardens, with appropriate trees of gentler tribes, and
ground-flowering in the sun. But there is no murmur of bee--no song
of bird. In the air a thin whisper of insects--intermittent--and
wafted quite away by a breath. For we are now in the very centre of
the forest, and even the cushat haunts not here. Hither the red deer
may come--but not now--for at this season they love the hill. To such
places the stricken stag might steal to lie down and die.
And thus for hours may you be lost in the forest, nor all the
while have wasted one thought on the outer world, till with no
other warning but an uncertain glimmer and a strange noise, you
all at once issue forth into the open day, and are standing on the
brink of a precipice above a flood. It comes tumbling down with a
succession of falls, in a mile-long course, right opposite your
stance--rocks, cliffs, and trees, all the way up on either side,
majestically retiring back to afford ample channel, and showing an
unobstructed vista, closed up by the purple mountain, that seems to
send forth the river from a cavern in its breast. ’Tis the Glen of
Pines. Nor ash nor oak is suffered to intrude on their dominion.
Since the earthquake first shattered it out, this great chasm, with
all its chasms, has been held by one race of trees. No other seed
could there spring to life; for from the rocks has all soil, ages
ago, been washed and swept by the tempests. But there they stand
with glossy boles, spreading arms, and glittering crest; and those
two by themselves on the summit, known all over Badenoch as “the
Giants”--“their statures reach the sky.”
We have been indulging in a dream of old. Before our day the
immemorial gloom of Glenmore had perished, and it ceased to be a
forest. But there bordered on it another region of night or twilight,
and in its vast depths we first felt the sublimity of lonesome
fear. Rothiemurchus! The very word blackens before our eyes with
necromantic characters--again we plunge into its gulphs desirous of
what we dread--again “in pleasure high and turbulent,” we climb the
cliffs of Cairngorm.
Would you wish to know what is now the look of Glenmore? One now
dead and gone--a man of wayward temper, but of genius--shall tell
you--and think not the picture exaggerated--for you would not, if you
were _there_. “It is the wreck of the ancient forest which arrests
all the attention, and which renders Glenmore a melancholy--more
than a melancholy--a terrific spectacle. Trees of enormous height,
which have escaped alike the axe and the tempest, are still standing,
stripped by the winds even of the bark, and like gigantic skeletons,
throwing far and wide their white and bleached bones to the storms
and rains of heaven; while others, broken by the violence of the
gales, lift up their split and fractured trunks in a thousand shapes
of resistance and of destruction, or still display some knotted and
tortuous branches, stretched out, in sturdy and fantastic forms of
defiance, to the whirlwind and the winter. Noble trunks also, which
had long resisted, but resisted in vain, strew the ground; some
lying on the declivity where they have fallen, others still adhering
to the precipice where they were rooted, many upturned, with their
twisted and entangled roots high in air; while not a few astonish us
by the space which they cover, and by dimensions which we could not
otherwise have estimated. It is one wide image of death, as if the
angel of destruction had passed over the valley. The sight, even of
a felled tree, is painful: still more is that of the fallen forest,
with all its green branches on the ground, withering, silent, and at
rest, where once they glittered in the dew and the sun, and trembled
in the breeze. Yet this is but an image of vegetable death. It is
familiar, and the impression passes away. It is the naked skeleton
bleaching in the winds, the gigantic bones of the forest still erect,
the speaking records of former life and of strength still unsubdued,
vigorous even in death, which renders Glenmore one enormous charnel
house.”
What happened of old to the aboriginal forests of Scotland, that
long before these later destructions they had almost all perished,
leaving to bear witness what they were, such survivors? They were
chiefly destroyed by fire. What power could extinguish chance-kindled
conflagrations when sailing before the wind? And no doubt fire
was set to clear the country at once of Scotch firs, wolves, wild
boars, and outlaws. Tradition yet tells of such burnings; and, if we
mistake not, the pines found in the Scottish mosses, the logs and the
stocks, all show that they were destroyed by Vulcan, though Neptune
buried them in the quagmires. Storms no doubt often levelled them by
thousands; but had millions so fallen they had never been missed, and
one element only--which has been often fearfully commissioned--could
achieve the work. In our own day the axe has indeed done wonders--and
sixteen square miles of the forest of Rothiemurchus “went to the
ground.” John of Ghent, Gilpin tells us, to avenge an inroad, set
twenty-four thousand axes at work in the Caledonian Forest.
Yet Scotland has perhaps sufficient forest at this day. For more has
been planted than cut down; Glenmore will soon be populous as ever
with self-sown pines, and Rothiemurchus may revive; the shades are
yet deeper of Loch Arkaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, Strathglass,
Glen Strathfarrar, and Loch-Shiel; deeper still on the Findhorn--and
deepest of all on the Dee rejoicing in the magnificent pine woods of
Invercauld and Braemar.
We feel that we have spoken feebly of our Highland forests. Some
perhaps, who have never been off the high roads, may accuse us of
exaggeration too; but they contain wondrous beauties of which we have
said not a word; and no imagination can conceive what they may be in
another hundred years. But, apparently far apart from the forests,
though still belonging to them--for they hold in fancy by the tenure
of the olden time--how many woods, and groves, and sprinklings of
fair trees, rise up during a day’s journey, in almost every region of
the North! And among them all, it may be, scarcely a pine. For the
oak, and the ash, and the elm, are also all native trees; nowhere
else does the rowan flush with more dazzling lustre; in spring, the
alder with its vivid green stands well beside the birk--the yew was
not neglected of yore, though the bow of the Celt was weak to that of
the Saxon; and the holly, in winter emulating the brightness of the
pine, flourished, and still flourishes on many a mountain side. There
is sufficient sylvan scenery for beauty in a land of mountains. More
may be needed for shelter--but let the young plants and seedlings
have time to grow--and as for the old trees, may they live for ever.
Too many millions of larches are perhaps growing now behind the Tay
and the Tilt; yet why should the hills of Perthshire be thought to be
disfigured by what ennobles the Alps and the Apennines?
Hitherto we have hardly said a word about Lochs, and have been doing
our best to forget them, while imagining scenes that were chiefly
characterised by other great features of Highland Landscape. A
country thus constituted, and with such an aspect, even if we could
suppose it without lochs, would still be a glorious region; but its
lochs are indeed its greatest glory; by them its glens, its mountains
and its woods are all illumined, and its rivers made to sing aloud
for joy. In the pure element, overflowing so many spacious vales
and glens profound, the great and stern objects of nature look even
more sublime or more beautiful, in their reflected shadows, which
appear in that stillness to belong rather to heaven than earth. Or
the evanescence of all that imagery at a breath may touch us with the
thought that all it represents, steadfast as seems its endurance,
will as utterly pass away. Such visions, when gazed on in that
wondrous depth and purity they are sometimes seen to assume, on a
still summer day, always inspire some such faint feeling as this; and
we sigh to think how transitory must be all things, when the setting
sun is seen to sink beneath the mountain, and all its golden pomp at
the same instant to evanish from the lake.
The first that takes possession of the imagination, dreaming of the
Highlands as the region of lochs, is the Queen of them all, Loch
Lomond. Wordsworth has said, that “in Scotland, the proportion of
diffused water is often too great, as at the Lake of Geneva, for
instance, and in most of the Scottish lakes. No doubt it sounds
magnificent, and flatters the imagination, to hear at a distance of
masses of water so many leagues in length and miles in width; and
such ample room may be delightful to the fresh-water sailor, scudding
with a lively breeze amid the rapidly shifting scenery. But who ever
travelled along the banks of Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower
part is by islands, without feeling that a speedier termination
of the long vista of blank water would be acceptable, and without
wishing for an interposition of green meadows, trees, and cottages,
and a sparkling stream to run by his side. In fact, a notion of
grandeur as connected with magnitude has seduced persons of taste
into a general mistake upon this subject. It is much more desirable
for the purposes of pleasure, that lakes should be numerous and small
or middle-sized than large, not only for communication by walks and
rides, but for variety and for recurrence of similar appearances. To
illustrate this by one instance: how pleasing is it to have a ready
and frequent opportunity of watching, at the outlet of a lake, the
stream, pushing its way among the rocks, in lively contrast with
the stillness from which it has escaped; and how amusing to compare
its noisy and turbulent motions with the gentle playfulness of the
breezes that may be starting up, or wandering here and there over the
faintly-rippled surface of the broad water! I may add, as a general
remark, that in lakes of great width, the shores cannot be distinctly
seen at the same time; and therefore contribute little to mutual
illustration and ornament; and if the opposite shores are out of
sight of each other, like those of the American and Asiatic lakes,
then unfortunately the traveller is reminded of a nobler object;
he has the blankness of a sea prospect without the grandeur and
accompanying sense of power.”
We shall not be suspected of an inclination to dissent, on light
grounds, from any sentiments of Wordsworth. But finely felt and
expressed as all this is, we do not hesitate to say that it is
not applicable to Loch Lomond. Far be it from us to criticise
this passage sentence by sentence; for we have quoted it not in a
captious, but in a reverent spirit, as we have ever done with the
works of this illustrious man. He has studied nature more widely and
profoundly than we have; but it is out of our power to look on Loch
Lomond without a feeling of perfection. The “diffusion of water”
is indeed great; but in what a world it floats! At first sight of
it, how our soul expands! The sudden revelation of such majestic
beauty, wide as it is and extending afar, inspires us with a power
of comprehending it all. Sea-like, indeed, it is--a Mediterranean
Sea--enclosed with lofty hills and as lofty mountains--and these,
indeed, are the Fortunate Isles! We shall not dwell on the feeling
which all must have experienced on the first sight of such a
vision--the feeling of a lovely and a mighty calm; it is manifest
that the spacious “diffusion of water” more than conspires with the
other components of such a scene to produce the feeling; that to it
belongs the spell that makes our spirit serene, still, and bright as
its own. Nor when such feeling ceases so entirely to possess, and so
deeply to affect us, does the softened and subdued charm of the scene
before us depend less on the expanse of the “diffusion of water.” The
islands, that before had lain we knew not how--or we had only felt
that they were all most lovely--begin to show themselves in the order
of their relation to one another and to the shores. The eye rests on
the largest, and with them the lesser combine; or we look at one or
two of the least, away by themselves, or remote from all a tufted
rock; and many as they are, they break not the breadth of the liquid
plain, for it is ample as the sky. They show its amplitude; as masses
and sprinklings of clouds, and single clouds, show the amplitude of
the cerulean vault. And then the long promontories--stretching out
from opposite mainlands, and enclosing bays that in themselves are
lakes--they too magnify the empire of water; for long as they are,
they seem so only as our eye attends them with their cliffs and woods
from the retiring shores, and far distant are their shadows from
the central light. Then what shores! On one side, where the lake
is widest, low-lying they seem and therefore lovelier--undulating
with fields and groves, where many a pleasant dwelling is embowered,
into lines of hills that gradually soften away into another land. On
the other side, sloping back, or overhanging, mounts beautiful in
their barrenness, for they are green as emerald; others, scarcely
more beautiful, studded with fair trees--some altogether woods. They
soon form into mountains--and the mountains become more and more
majestical, yet beauty never deserts them, and her spirit continues
to tame that of the frowning cliffs. Far off as they are, Benlomond
and Benvoirlich are seen to be giants; magnificent is their retinue,
but the two are supreme, each in his own dominion; and clear as the
day is here, they are diademed with clouds.
It cannot be that the “proportion of diffused water is here too
great;” and is it then true that no one “ever travelled along the
banks of Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands,
without feeling that a speedier termination to the long vista
of blank water would be acceptable, and without wishing for an
interposition of green meadows, trees and cottages, and a sparkling
stream to run by his side?” We have travelled along them in all
weathers, and never felt such a wish. For there they all are--all
but the “sparkling stream to run by our side,” and we see not how
that well could be in nature. “Streams that sparkle as they run,”
cross our path on their own; and brighter never issued from the
woods. Along the margin of the water, as far as Luss--ay, and much
farther--the variations of the foreground are incessant; “had it no
other beauties,” it has been truly said, “but those of its shores,
it would still be an object of prime attraction; whether from the
bright green meadows sprinkled with luxuriant ash-trees, that
sometimes skirt its margin, or its white pebbled shores on which its
gentle billows murmur, like a miniature ocean, or its bold rocky
promontories rising from the dark water rich in wild-flowers and
ferns, and tangled with wild roses and honey-suckles, or its retired
bays where the waves dash, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees
which hang over them, an inverted landscape.” The islands are for
ever arranging themselves into new forms, every one more and more
beautiful; at least so they seem to be, perpetually occurring, yet
always unexpected, and there is a pleasure even in such a series
of slight surprises that enhances the delight of admiration. And
alongside, or behind us, all the while, are the sylvan mountains,
“laden with beauty;” and ever and anon open glens widen down upon us
from chasms; or forest glades lead our hearts away into the inner
gloom--perhaps our feet; and there, in a field that looks not as if
it had been cleared by his own hands, but left clear by nature, a
woodsman’s hut.
Half-way between Luss and Tarbet the water narrows, but it is still
wide; the new road, we believe, winds round the point of Firkin, the
old road boldly scaled the height, as all old roads loved to do;
ascend it, and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory,
farewell. Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The
lake is felt to belong to them--to be subjected to their will--and
that is capricious; for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when
at its brightest, and sometimes when its gloom is like that of
the grave, as if at their bidding, all is light. We cannot help
attributing the “skiey influences” which occasion such wonderful
effects on the water, to prodigious mountains; for we cannot look on
them without feeling that they reign over the solitude they compose;
the lights and shadows flung by the sun and the clouds imagination
assuredly regards as put forth by the vast objects which they colour;
and we are inclined to think some such belief is essential in the
profound awe, often amounting to dread, with which we are inspired
by the presences of mere material forms. But be this as it may, the
upper portion of Loch Lomond is felt by all to be most sublime. Near
the head, all the manifold impressions of the beautiful which for
hours our mind had been receiving, begin to fade; if some gloomy
change has taken place in the air, there is a total obliteration, and
the mighty scene before us is felt to possess not the hour merely,
but the day. Yet should sunshine come, and abide a while, beauty will
glimpse upon us even here, for green pastures will smile vividly,
high up among the rocks; the sylvan spirit is serene the moment it
is touched with light, and here there is not only many a fair tree
by the water-side, but yon old oak wood will look joyful on the
mountain, and the gloom become glimmer in the profound abyss.
Wordsworth says, that “it must be more desirable, for the purposes of
pleasure, that lakes should be numerous, and small or middle-sized,
than large, not only for communication by walks and rides, but for
variety, and for recurrence of similar appearances.” The Highlands
have them of all sizes--and that surely is best. But here is one
which, it has been truly said, is not only “incomparable in its
beauty as in its dimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it
does in extent and splendour, but unites in itself every style of
scenery which is found in the other lakes of the Highlands.” He
who has studied, and understood, and felt all Loch Lomond, will be
prepared at once to enjoy any other fine lake he looks on; nor will
he admire nor love it the less, though its chief character should
consist in what forms but one part of that of the Wonder in which all
kinds of beauty and sublimity are combined.
We feel that it would be idle, and worse than idle, to describe any
number of the Highland lochs, for so many of the finest have been
seen by so many eyes, that few persons probably will ever read these
pages to whom such descriptions would be, at the best, more than
shadowings of scenery that their own imaginations can more vividly
recreate.
We may be allowed, however, to say, that there cannot be a greater
mistake than to think, as many we believe do who have only heard of
the Highland lochs, that, with the exception of those famous for
their beauty as well as their grandeur, beauty is not only not the
quality by which they are distinguished, but that it is rarely found
in them at all. There are few, possessing any very marked character,
in which beauty is not either an ingredient or an accompaniment; and
there are many “beautiful exceedingly” which, lying out of the way
even of somewhat adventurous travellers, or very remote, are known,
if even by that, only by name. It does not, indeed, require much,
in some situations, to give a very touching beauty to water. A few
trees, a few knolls, a few tufted rocks, will do it, where all around
and above is stern or sterile; and how strong may be the gentle
charm, if the torrent that feeds the little loch chance to flow into
it from a lucid pool formed by a waterfall, and to flow out of it
in a rivulet that enlivens the dark heather with a vale of verdure
over which a stag might bound--and more especially if there be two or
three huts in which it is perceived there is human life! We believe
we slightly touched before on such scenes; but any little repetition
will be excused for the sake of a very picturesque passage, which
we have much pleasure in quoting from the very valuable _Guide to
the Highlands and Islands of Scotland_, by the brothers Anderson. We
well remember walking into the scene here so well painted, many long
years ago, and have indeed, somewhere or other, described it. The
Fall of Foyers is the most magnificent cataract, out of all sight
and hearing, in Britain. The din is quite loud enough in ordinary
weather--and it is only in ordinary weather that you can approach
the place, from which you have a full view of all its grandeur.
When the Fall is in flood--to say nothing of being drenched to the
skin--you are so blinded by the sharp spray smoke, and so deafened
by the dashing and clashing, and tumbling and rumbling thunder, that
your condition is far from enviable, as you cling, “lonely lover of
nature,” to a shelf by no means eminent for safety, above the horrid
gulf. Nor in former times was there any likelihood of your being
comforted by the accommodations of the General’s Hut. In ordinary
Highland weather--meaning thereby weather neither very wet nor very
dry--it is worth walking a thousand miles for one hour to behold
the Fall of Foyers. The spacious cavity is enclosed by “complicated
cliffs and perpendicular precipices” of immense height; and though
for a while it wears to the eye a savage aspect, yet beauty fears
not to dwell even there, and the horror is softened by what appears
to be masses of tall shrubs, or single shrubs almost like trees. And
they are trees, which on the level plain would look even stately; but
as they ascend ledge above ledge the walls of that awful chasm, it
takes the eye time to see them as they really are, while on our first
discernment of their character, serenely standing among the tumult,
they are felt on such sites to be sublime.
“Between the Falls and the Strath of Stratherrik,” says the book
we were about to quote, “a space of three or four miles, the river
Foyers flows through a series of low rocky hills clothed with birch.
They present various quiet glades and open spaces, where little
patches of cultivated ground are encircled by wooded hillocks, whose
surface is pleasingly diversified by nodding trees, bare rocks,
empurpled heath, and bracken bearing herbage.” It was the excessive
loveliness of some of the scenery there that suggested to us the
thought of going to look what kind of a stream the Foyers was above
the Fall. We went, and in the quiet of a summer evening, found it
“Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.”
But here is the promised description of it:--“Before pursuing our
way westward, we would wish to direct the traveller’s attention to
a sequestered spot of peculiar beauty on the river Foyers. This
is a secluded vale, called Killean, which, besides its natural
attractions, and these are many, is distinguished as one of the few
places where the old practice of resorting to the ‘shieling’ for
summer grazing of cattle is still observed. It is encompassed on
all sides by steep mountains; but at the north end there is a small
lake, about a mile and a half in length, and from one-third to half
a mile in breadth. The remainder of the bottom of the glen is a
perfectly level tract, of the same width with the lake, and about
two miles and a half in length, covered with the richest herbage,
and traversed by a small meandering river flowing through it into
the lake. The surface of this flat is bedecked with the little huts
or bothies, which afford temporary accommodation to the herdsmen and
others in charge of the cattle. This portion of the glen is bordered
on the west by continuous hills rising abruptly in a uniformly
steep acclivity, and passing above into a perpendicular range of
precipices, the whole covered with a scanty verdure sprouted with
heath. At the bend of the lake near its middle, where it inclines
from a northernly course towards the west, a magnificent rounded
precipice, which, like the continuous ranges, may be about 1200 feet
in height, rises immediately out of the water; and a few narrow
and inclined verdant stripes alone preserve it from exhibiting a
perfectly mural character. To this noble rock succeeds, along the
rest of the lake, a beautiful, lofty, and nearly vertical hill-side,
clothed with birch, intermingled with hanging mossy banks, shaded
over with the deeper tinted bracken. The eastern side of the plain,
and the adjoining portion of the lake, are lined by mountains
corresponding in height with those opposed to them; but their lower
extremities are, to a considerable extent, strewed with broken
fragments of rock, to which succeeds an uninterrupted zone of birch
and alder, which is again overtopped in its turn by naked cliffs. An
elevated terrace occupies the remainder of this side of the lake;
above the wooded face of which is seen a sloping expanse of mingled
heath and herbage. About half a mile from the south end, Mr. Fraser
of Lovat, the proprietor, has erected a shooting lodge; viewed from
which, or from either end, or from the top of the platform on the
north-east side of the lake, fancy could scarcely picture a more
attractive and fairy landscape than is unfolded by this sequestered
vale, to which Dr. Johnson’s description of the ‘Happy Valley’ not
inaptly applies. The milch cows, to the number of several hundreds,
are generally kept here from the beginning of June to the middle of
August, when they are replaced by the yeld cattle. The river sweeps
to the northward from Loch Killean through richly birch-clad hills,
which rise in swelling slopes from its banks. A large tarn which
immediately joins it from the east is crossed at its mouth by a
rustic bridge, from which a single footpath conducts across the brow
of the hill to Whitebridge, a small public-house or inn, four miles
distant.”
There is a loch of a very different character from Killean, almost
as little known (a view of it is given at page 708), equal to
anything in the Highlands, only two miles distant from Loch Lochy, in
the great glen--Loch Arkaig. We first visited it many years since,
having been induced to do so by a passage in John Stoddard’s _Remarks
on the Local Scenery and Manners of Scotland_; and it was then a
very noble oak and pine forest loch. The axe went to work and kept
steadily at it; and a great change was wrought; but it is still a
grand scene, with a larger infusion of beauty than it possessed of
old. The scenery of the valley separating it from Loch Lochy is very
similar to that of the Trossachs; through it there are two approaches
to the loch, and the _Mile-Dubh_, or the dark mile, according to
our feeling, is more impressive than any part of the approach to
Loch Katrine. The woods and rocks are very solemn, and yet very
sweet; for though many old pines, and oaks and ashes are there,
and the wall of rocks is immense, young trees prevail now on many
places, as well along the heights as among the knolls and hillocks
below, where alders and hawthorns are thick; almost everywhere the
young are intermingled with the old, and look cheerful under their
protection, without danger of being chilled by their shade. The loch,
more or less sylvan from end to end, shows on its nearer shores some
magnificent remains of the ancient forest, and makes a noble sweep
like some great river. There may be more, but we remember but one
island--not large, but wooded as it should be--the burying-place of
the family of Lochiel. What rest! It is a long journey from Loch
Lochy to Kinloch Arkaig--and by the silent waters we walked or sat
all a summer’s day. There was nothing like a road that we observed,
but the shores are easily travelled, and there it is you may be
almost sure of seeing some red deer. They are no better worth looking
at from a window than Fallow--no offence to Fallow, who are fine
creatures; indeed, we had rather not see them so at all; but on the
shores or steeps of Loch Arkaig, with hardly a human habitation
within many, many miles, and these few rather known than seen to
be there, the huts of Highlanders contented to cultivate here and
there some spot that seems cultivatable, but probably is found not
to be so after some laborious years--there they are at home; and
you, if young, looking on them feel at home too, and go bounding,
like one of themselves, over what, did you choose, were an evitable
steep. Roe, too, frequent the copses, but to be seen they must be
started; grouse spring up before you oftener than you might expect
in a deer forest; but, to be sure, it is a rough and shaggy one,
though lovelier lines of verdure never lay in the sunshine than we
think we see now lying for miles along the margin of that loch. The
numerous mountains towards the head of the loch are very lofty, and
glens diverge in grand style into opposite and distant regions. Glen
Dessary, with its beautiful pastures, opens on the Loch, and leads
to Loch Nevish on the coast of Knoidart--Glen Pæan to Oban-a-Cave on
Loch Morer, Glen Canagorie into Glenfinnan and Loch Shiel; and Glen
Kingie to Glengarry and Loch Quoich. There is a choice! We chose Glen
Kingie, and after a long climb found a torrent that took us down to
Glengarry before sunset. It is a loch little known, and in grandeur
not equal to Loch Arkaig; but at the close of such a day’s journey,
the mind, elevated by the long contemplation of the great objects of
nature, cannot fail to feel aright, whatever it may be, the spirit of
the scene, that seems to usher in the grateful hour of rest. It is
surpassing fair--and having lain all night long on its gentle banks,
sleeping or waking we know not, we have never remembered it since but
as the Land of Dreams.
Which is the dreariest, most desolate and dismal of the Highland
lochs? We should say Loch Ericht. It lies in a prodigious wilderness
with which perhaps no man alive is conversant, and in which you may
travel for days without seeing even any symptoms of human life. We
speak of the regions comprehended between the Forest of Athole,
and Bennevis, the Moor of Rannoch, and Glen Spean. There are many
Lochs--and Loch Ericht is their grisly Queen. Herdsmen, shepherds,
hunters, fowlers, anglers, traverse its borders, but few have been
far in the interior, and we never knew anybody who had crossed it
from south to north, from east to west. We have ourselves seen
more of it, perhaps than any other Lowlander; and had traversed
many of its vast glens and moors before we found our way to the
southern solitude of Loch Ericht. We came into the western gloom of
Ben Alder from Loch Ouchan, and up and down for hours dismal but
not dangerous precipices that opened out into what might almost
be called passes--but we have frequently to go back for they were
blind--contrived to clamber to the edge of one of the mountains
that rose from the water a few miles down the Loch. All was vast,
shapeless, savage, black, and wrathfully grim; for it was one of
those days that keep frowning and lowering, yet will not thunder;
such as one conceives of on the eve of an earthquake. At first the
sight was dreadful, but there was no reason for dread; imagination
remains not longer than she chooses the slave of her own eyes, and
we soon began to enjoy the gloom, and to feel how congenial it was
in nature with the character of all those lifeless cliffs. Silence
and darkness suit well together in solitude at noonday; and settled
on huge objects make them sublime. And they were huge; all ranged
together, and stretching away to a great distance, with the pitchy
water, still as if frozen, covering their feet.
Loch Ericht is many miles long--nearly twenty; but there is a loch
among the Grampians not more than two miles round--if so much, which
is sublimer far--Loch Aven. You come upon the sight of it at once,
a short way down from the summit of Cairngorm, and then it is some
two thousand feet below you, itself being as many above the level
of the sea. But to come upon it so as to feel best its transcendent
grandeur, you should approach it up Glenaven--and from as far down
as Inch-Rouran, which is about half-way between Loch Aven and
Tomantoul. Between Inch-Rouran and Tomantoul the glen is wild, but
it is inhabited; above that house there is but one other--and for
about a dozen miles--we have heard it called far more--there is
utter solitude. But never was there a solitude at once so wild--so
solemn--so serene--so sweet! The glen is narrow; but on one side
there are openings into several wider glens, that show you mighty
coves as you pass on; on the other side the mountains are without a
break, and the only variation with them is from smooth to shaggy,
from dark to bright; but their prevailing character is that of
pastoral or of forest peace. The mountains that show the coves belong
to the bases of Ben-Aven and Ben-y-buird. The heads of those giants
are not seen--but it sublimes the long glen to know that it belongs
to their dominion, and that it is leading us on to an elevation that
erelong will be on a level with the roots of their topmost cliffs.
The Aven is so clear--on account of the nature of its channel--that
you see the fishes hanging in every pool; and ’tis not possible to
imagine how beautiful in such transparencies are the reflections of
its green ferny banks. For miles they are composed of knolls, seldom
interspersed with rocks, and there cease to be any trees. But ever
and anon, we walk for a while on a level floor, and the voice of the
stream is mute. Hitherto sheep have been noticed on the hill, but
not many, and red and black cattle grazing on the lower pastures;
but they disappear, and we find ourselves all at once in a desert.
So it is felt to be, coming so suddenly with its black heather on
that greenest grass; but ’tis such a desert as the red-deer love.
We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears to
be Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till
we again see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still
in the glen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different
mountains, for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly
arise, forming themselves more and more regularly into circular
order, as we near; and now we have sight of the whole magnificence;
yet vast as it is, we know not yet how vast; it grows as we gaze,
till in a while we feel that sublimer it may not be; and then so
quiet in all its terrific grandeur we feel too that it is beautiful,
and think of the Maker.
This is Loch Aven. How different the whole regions round from
that enclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than
melancholy moors--huge hollows hating their own gloom that keep them
herbless--disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without any
sign of life--cliffs that frown back the sunshine--and mountains, as
if they were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mere
imagination--or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call a
desert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances
of outward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring
faith, the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have
chosen to make them emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem
to lie in a region as happy as it is high; for the bases of the
mountains are all such as the soul has chosen to make sublime--the
colouring of the mountains all such as the soul has chosen to make
beautiful; and the whole region, thus imbued with a power to inspire
elevation and delight, is felt to be indeed one of the very noblest
in nature.
We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our _Remarks on
the Character of the Scenery of the Highlands_; and we feel that
the sketches we have drawn of its component qualities--occasionally
filled up with some details--must be very imperfect indeed, without
comprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms that
stretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do
not think we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we
have sailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its
sounds, and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches,
yet they contain such an endless variety of all the fairest and
greatest objects of nature, that we feel it would be far beyond our
powers to give anything like an adequate idea of the beauty and the
grandeur that for ever kept unfolding themselves around our summer
voyagings in calm or storm. Who can say that he knows a thousandth
part of the wonders of “the marine” between the Mull of Cantire and
Cape Wrath? He may have gathered many an extensive shore--threaded
many a mazy multitude of isles--sailed up many a spacious bay--and
cast anchor at the head of many a haven land-locked so as no more to
seem to belong to the sea--yet other voyagers shall speak to him of
innumerable sights which he has never witnessed; and they who are
most conversant with those coasts, best know how much they have left
and must leave for ever unexplored.
Look now only at the Linnhe Loch--how it gladdens Argyle! Without
it and the sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morven!
Eclipsed the splendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin,
and as the waves roll in light, you will feel how the mountains are
beautified by the sea. There is a majestic rolling onwards there
that belongs to no land-loch--only to the world of waves. There is
no nobler image of ordered power than the tide, whether in flow or
in ebb; and on all now it is felt to be beneficent, coming and going
daily, to enrich and adorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the
“Amethyst” bound away “at her own sweet will,” accordant with yours,
till she reach the distant and long-desired loch.
“Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar,
Comes in among these mountains from the main,
’Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan’s rocky cape
And Ardmore’s shingly beach of hissing spray;
And, while his thunders bid the sound of Mull
Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays
Hill-sheltered from the wrath that foams along
The mad mid-channel,--All as quiet they
As little separate worlds of summer dreams,--
And by storm-loving birds attended up
The mountain-hollow, white in their career
As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles
Of craggy Carnich, and Green Oronsay
Drench’d in that sea-born shower o’er tree-tops driven
And ivied stones of what was once a tower
Now hardly known from rocks--and gathering might
In the long reach between Dungallan caves
And point of Arderinis ever fair
With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait
Into another ampler inland sea;
Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,--
And potent is she though so meek the Eve,--
Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean
Insensibly into a solemn calm,--
And all along that ancient burial-ground,
(Its kirk is gone,) that seemeth now to lend
Its own eternal quiet to the waves,
Restless no more, into a perfect peace
Lulling and lull’d at last, while drop the airs
Away as they were dead, the first risen star
Beholds that lovely Archipelago,
All shadow’d there as in a spiritual world,
Where time’s mutations shall come never more!”
These lines describe but one of innumerable lochs that owe their
greatest charm to the sea. It is indeed one of those on which
nature has lavished all her infinite varieties of loveliness; but
Loch Leven is scarcely less fair, and perhaps grander; and there is
matchless magnificence about Loch Etive. All round about Ballachulish
and Invercoe the scenery of Loch Leven is the sweetest ever seen
overshadowed by such mountains; the deeper their gloom, the brighter
its lustre; in all weathers it wears a cheerful smile; and often
while up among the rocks the tall trees are tossing in the storm, the
heart of the woods beneath is calm, and the vivid fields they shelter
look as if they still enjoyed the sun. Nor closes the beauty there,
but even animates the entrance into that dreadful glen--Glencoe. All
the way up its river, Loch Leven would be fair, were it only for her
hanging woods. But though the glen narrows, it still continues broad,
and there are green plains between her waters and the mountains, on
which stately trees stand single, and there is ample room for groves.
The returning tide tells us, should we forget it, that this is no
inland loch, for it hurries away back to the sea, not turbulent, but
fast as a river in flood. The river Leven is one of the finest in the
Highlands, and there is no other such series of waterfalls, all seen
at once, one above the other, along an immense vista; and all the
way up to the farthest there are noble assemblages of rocks--nowhere
any want of wood--and in places, trees that seem to have belonged to
some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems to lead into
another region, and it does so; for we have gone that way, past some
small lochs, across a wide wilderness, with mountains on all sides,
and descended on Loch Treag,
“A loch whom there are none to praise
And very few to love,”
but overflowing in our memory with all pleasantest images of pastoral
contentment and peace.
Loch Etive, between the ferries of Connel and Bunawe, has been seen
by almost all who have visited the Highlands but very imperfectly;
to know what it is you must row or sail up it, for the banks on
both sides are often richly wooded, assume many fine forms, and are
frequently well embayed, while the expanse of water is sufficiently
wide to allow you from its centre to command a view of many of the
distant heights. But above Bunawe it is not like the same loch. For
a couple of miles it is not wide, and it is so darkened by enormous
shadows that it looks even less like a strait than a gulf--huge
overhanging rocks on both sides ascending high, and yet felt to
belong but to the bases of mountains that sloping far back have
their summits among clouds of their own in another region of the sky.
Yet are they not all horrid; for nowhere else is there such lofty
heather--it seems a wild sort of brushwood; tall trees flourish,
single or in groves, chiefly birches, with now and then an oak--and
they are in their youth or their prime--and even the prodigious
trunks, some of which have been dead for centuries, are not all dead,
but shoot from their knotted rhind symptoms of life inextinguishable
by time and tempest. Out of this gulf we emerge into the Upper
Loch, and its amplitude sustains the majesty of the mountains, all
of the highest order, and seen from their feet to their crests.
Cruachan wears the crown, and reigns over them all--king at once of
Loch Etive and of Loch Awe. But Buachaille Etive, though afar off,
is still a giant, and in some lights comes forwards, bringing with
him the Black Mount and its dependents, so that they all seem to
belong to this most magnificent of all Highland lochs. “I know not,”
says Macculloch, “that Loch Etive could bear an ornament without an
infringement on that aspect of solitary vastness which it presents
throughout. Nor is there one. The rocks and bays on the shore, which
might elsewhere attract attention, are here swallowed up in the
enormous dimensions of the surrounding mountains, and the wide and
ample expanse of the lake. A solitary house, here fearfully solitary,
situated far up in Glen Etive, is only visible when at the upper
extremity; and if there be a tree, as there are in a few places on
the shore, it is unseen; extinguished as if it were a humble mountain
flower, by the universal magnitude around.” This is finely felt and
expressed; but even on the shores of Loch Etive there is much of the
beautiful; Ardmatty smiles with its meadows, and woods, and bay,
and sylvan stream; other sunny nooks repose among the grey granite
masses; the colouring of the banks and braes is often bright; several
houses or huts become visible no long way up the glen; and though
that long hollow--half a day’s journey--till you reach the wild
road between Inveruran and King’s House--lies in gloom, yet the
hillsides are cheerful, and you delight in the greensward, wide and
rock-broken, should you ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran
or Glencoe. But to feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk
up it till it ceases to be a glen. When in the middle of the moor,
you see far off a solitary dwelling indeed--perhaps the loneliest
house in all the Highlands--and the solitude is made profounder, as
you pass by, by the voice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm,
bridged by two or three stems of trees, along which the red-deer
might fear to venture--but we have seen them and the deer-hounds
glide over it, followed by other fearless feet, when far and wide the
Forest of Dalness was echoing to the hunter’s horn.
* * * * *
We have now brought our Remarks on the _Scenery of the Highlands_ to
a close, and would fain have said a few words on the character and
life of the people; but are precluded from even touching on that most
interesting subject. It is impossible that the minds of travellers
through those wonderful regions can be so occupied with the
contemplation of mere inanimate nature, as not to give many a thought
to their inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without
such thoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren
wildernesses in which the heart would languish, and imagination
itself recoil; but they cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as
are many extensive tracts, and at times felt to be too dreary even
for moods that for a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell
of human life, yet symptoms and traces of human life are noticeable
to the instructed eye almost every where, and in them often lies
the spell that charms us, even while we think that we are wholly
delivered up to the influence of “dead insensate things.” None will
visit the Highlands without having some knowledge of their history;
and the changes that have long been taking place in the condition
of the people will be affectingly recognised wherever they go, in
spite even of what might have appeared the insuperable barriers of
nature.
PART FIRST.
GENERAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
CHAPTER I.
B.C. 55--A.D. 446.
Highlands defined--Ancient Scotland--Roman Transactions--Agricola
--Caledonians--Contest at Loch Ore--Galgacus--Mons Grampius--Battle
--Agricola superseded--Lollius Urbicus--Antonine’s Wall--Ulpius
Marcellus--Severus--Constantius Chlorus--Picts--Scots--Attacots
--Attack Roman Provinces--Romans abandon Britain--Influence of
Romans--Roman Remains--Roads--Camps--Ardoch.
As it is generally acknowledged that the physical character of
a country influences in a great degree the moral and physical
character of its inhabitants, and thus to a certain extent determines
their history, it may not be deemed out of place to define here
the application of the term _Highlands_, so far as Scotland is
concerned, and briefly to describe the general physical aspect of
that part of our native land. If it hold good at all that there
subsists a relation between a people and the country which they have
inhabited for centuries, the following history will show that this is
peculiarly the case with the Scottish Highlanders.
Most of those who have thought of the matter at all, have doubtless
formed to themselves a general notion of the northern half of
Scotland as a
“Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,”
and of its inhabitants as a brawny, rugged, indomitable, impulsive
race, steadfast in their friendship and loyalty, and relentless but
generous in their enmity. Although the popular and poetic notion of
the country is on the whole correct, and although the above epithets
may express the main features of the character of the people, still
it requires a close acquaintance with this interesting race, both
historically and by personal intercourse, to form an adequate notion
of their character in all its aspects.
To speak roughly, nearly the whole of the country north of a line
connecting the heads of the estuaries of the Clyde, Forth, and Tay,
may be included under the designation of the Highlands, and, in fact,
popularly is so. Indeed, at the time at which the northern half of
Scotland--the ancient and proper Caledonia--emerges from its pristine
gloom, and for the first time glimmers in the light of history, the
line indicated by the forts of Agricola, and afterwards by the wall
of Antonine, marked the southern boundary of the region which was
then, and for centuries afterwards, regarded by the Romans, and also,
probably, by the southern Britons, as occupying the same position
in relation to the rest of the country as the Highlands proper did
at a subsequent period. In course of time the events which fall to
be recorded in the following pages gradually altered this easily
perceived boundary, so that for centuries before the present day, a
much more intricate but still distinct line has marked the limits
of what is now strictly and correctly regarded as the Highlands of
Scotland.
The definition of this territory which best suits the purposes of
history, and in all respects most nearly accords with those of
political and social geography, is one which makes it commensurate
with the country or locations of the ancient Highland clans. This
definition assigns to the Highlands all the continental territory
north of the Moray frith, and all the territory, both insular and
continental, westward of an easily traceable line from that frith
to the frith of Clyde. The line commences at the mouth of the river
Nairn: thence, with the exception of a slight north-eastward or
outward curve, the central point of which is on the river Spey, it
runs due south-east till it strikes the river Dee at Tullach, nearly
on the third degree of longitude west of Greenwich; it then runs
generally south till it falls upon Westwater, or the southern large
head-water of the North Esk; thence, over a long stretch, it runs
almost due south-west, and with scarcely a deviation, till it falls
upon the Clyde at Ardmore in the parish of Cardross; and now onward
to the Atlantic ocean, it moves along the frith of Clyde, keeping
near to the continent, and excluding none of the Clyde islands except
the comparatively unimportant Cumbraes. All the Scottish territory
west and north-west of this line is properly the Highlands. Yet
both for the convenience of topographical description, and because,
altogether down to the middle of the 13th century, and partially down
to the middle of the 16th, the Highlands and the Western Islands were
politically and historically distinct regions, the latter are usually
viewed apart under the name of the Hebrides. The mainland Highlands,
or the Highlands after the Hebrides are deducted, extend in extreme
length from Duncansby Head, or John o’ Groat’s on the north, to the
Mull of Kintyre on the south, about 250 miles; but over a distance of
90 miles at the northern end, they have an average breadth of only
about 45 miles,--over a distance of 50 or 55 miles at the southern
end, they consist mainly of the Clyde islands, and the very narrow
peninsula of Kintyre,--and even at their broadest part, from the
eastern base of the Grampians to Ardnamurchan Point on the west,
they do not extend to more than 120 miles. The district comprehends
the whole of the counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Cromarty,
Inverness, and Argyle, large parts of Nairn, Perth, Dumbarton, and
Bute, and considerable portions of Elgin, Banff, Aberdeen, Forfar,
and Stirling. Considerable parts of this district, however, such as
Caithness-shire, the island of Bute, and some large tracts of moor or
valley or flanking plain, do not exhibit the physical features which
are strictly Highland.
A district so extensive can be but faintly pictured in a general and
rapid description. Mountains, chiefly covered with heath or ling,
but occasionally, on the one hand, displaying sides and summits
of naked rock, and on the other, exhibiting a dress of verdure,
everywhere rise, at short intervals, in chains, ridges, groups,
and even solitary heights. Their forms are of every variety, from
the precipitous and pinnacled acclivity, to the broad-based and
round-backed ascent; but, in general, are sharp in outline, and wild
or savagely grand in feature. Both elongated ridges, and chains or
series of short parallel ridges, have a prevailing direction from
north-east to south-west, and send up summits from 1,000 to upwards
of 4,000 feet above the level of the sea. Glens, valleys, and
expanses of lowland stretch in all directions among the mountains,
and abound in voluminous streams, and large elongated lakes of
picturesque appearance,--nearly all the inland lakes extending in
stripes either north-eastward and south-westward, or eastward and
westward. Along the whole west coast, at remarkably brief intervals,
arms of the sea, long, narrow, and sometimes exceedingly rugged in
outline, run north-eastward or south-eastward into the interior, and
assist the inland fresh water lakes in cleaving it into sections.
The rivers of the region are chiefly impetuous torrents, careering
for a while along mountain-gorges, and afterwards either expanding
themselves into beautiful lakes and flowing athwart delightful
meadows, or ploughing long narrow valleys, green and ornate with
grasses, trefoils, daisies, ranunculi, and a profuse variety of
other herbage and flowers. Native woods, principally of pine and
birch, and occasionally clumps and expanses of plantation, climb the
acclivities of the gentler heights, or crowd down upon the valley,
and embosom the inland lakes. On the east side, along the coast to
the Moray frith, and towards the frontier in the counties of Nairn,
Elgin, and Perth, gentle slopes and broad belts of lowland, fertile
in soil and favourable in position, are carpeted with agricultural
luxuriance, and thickly dotted with human dwellings, and successfully
vie with the south of Scotland in towns and population, and in the
pursuit and display of wealth. But almost everywhere else, except in
the fairyland of Loch Fyne, and the southern shore of Loch Etive, the
Highlands are sequestered,--sinless of a town,--a semi-wilderness,
where a square mile is a more convenient unit of measurement than an
acre.
A district characterized by such features as we have named
necessarily exhibits, within very circumscribed limits, varieties
of scenery of the most opposite descriptions; enabling the admirer
of nature to pass abruptly from dwelling on the loveliness of an
extensive marine or champaign landscape into the deep solitude of an
ancient forest, or the dark craggy fastnesses of an alpine ravine;
or from lingering amid the quiet grassy meadows of a pastoral strath
or valley, watered by its softly-flowing stream, to the open heathy
mountain-side, whence ‘alps o’er alps arise,’ whose summits are often
shrouded with mists and almost perennial snows, and their overhanging
precipices furrowed by foaming cataracts. Lakes and long arms of
the sea, either fringed with woods or surrounded with rocky barren
shores, now studded with islands, and anon extending their silvery
arms into distant receding mountains, are met in every district;
while the extreme steepness, ruggedness, and sterility of many of the
mountain-chains impart to them as imposing and magnificent characters
as are to be seen in the much higher and more inaccessible elevations
of Switzerland. No wonder, then, that this ‘land of mountain and of
flood’ should have given birth to the song of the bard, and afforded
material for the theme of the sage, in all ages; and that its
inhabitants should be tinctured with deep romantic feelings, at once
tender, melancholy, and wild; and that the recollection of their own
picturesque native dwellings should haunt them to their latest hours.
Neither, amid such profusion and diversity of all that is beautiful
and sublime in nature, can the unqualified admiration of strangers,
from every part of Europe, of the scenery of the Highlands fail of
being easily accounted for; nor can any hesitate in recommending them
to visit the more remote or unknown solitudes.[1]
Such are the main features of the Highlands of Scotland at the
present day, and, to a considerable extent, the description might
have applied to the country at the time of the Roman invasion.
Still, in the graphic words of Stuart,[2] “To form an idea of the
general aspect of Scotland, as it was some eighteen hundred years
ago, we must, in imagination, restore to its now varied surface the
almost unbroken gloom of the primeval forest; her waving mantle of
sombre hue, within which the _genius loci_ may be supposed to have
brooded over the seclusion and the poverty of ‘ancient Caledon.’ In
a bird’s-eye view, if such a thought may be indulged, the greatest
part of the country presented, in all probability, the appearance of
one continuous wood; a mass of cheerless verdure resting on hill and
dale--the sameness of its dark extent broken only where some lake
or green-clad morass met the view, or where the higher mountains
lifted their summits above the line of vegetation. In some districts,
considerable tracks of open moorland might, doubtless, be seen clad
in the indigenous heather of the North; while, in others, occasional
spots of pasture-land would here and there appear;--but, on the
whole, these must have formed a striking contrast to the wide expanse
of the prevailing forest.”
As the present work is concerned only with the Highlands of Scotland,
it would of course be out of place to give any minute account of the
transactions of the Romans in the other parts of the island. Suffice
it to say that from the time, B.C. 55, when Julius Cæsar first
landed on the coast of South Britain, until A.D. 78, when, under
the Emperor Vespasian, Cnæus Julius Agricola assumed the command in
Great Britain, the greater part of midland and south England had been
brought under the sway of the Romans. This able commander set himself
with vigour and earnestness to confirm the conquests which had been
already made, to reduce the rest of the country to subjection, to
conciliate the Britons by mild measures, and to attach them to the
Roman power by introducing among them Roman manners, literature,
luxuries, and dress.
Agricola was appointed to the command in Britain in the year 78 A.D.,
but appears not to have entered Scotland till his third campaign
in the year 80. He employed himself in the years 80, 81, and 82, in
subduing the country south of the friths of Forth and Clyde,--the
_Bodotria_ and _Glotta_ of Tacitus,--erecting, in 81, a series of
forts between these two estuaries. Having accomplished this, Agricola
made preparations for his next campaign, which he was to open beyond
the friths in the summer of 83, he in the meantime having heard that
the Caledonians--as Tacitus calls the people north of the Forth--had
formed a confederacy to resist the invader.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Sculptured Stone in the Church of Meigle.
Fig. 2. From a Sculptured Stone found at St. Andrews.]
These Caledonians appear to have been divided into a number of tribes
or clans, having little or no political connection, and almost
constantly at war among themselves. It was only when a foreign foe
threatened their much-prized freedom that a sense of danger forced
them to unite for a time under the command of a military leader.
Some writers, on the authority of Ptolemy of Alexandria, but chiefly
on that of the pseudo-Richard of Cirencester,[3] give a list of
the various tribes which, during the Roman period, inhabited North
Britain, and define the locality which each occupied with as much
exactness as they might do a modern English county. “There was one
thing,” says Tacitus, “which gave us an advantage over these powerful
nations, that they never consulted together for the advantage of the
whole. It was rare that even two or three of them united against the
common enemy.” Their whole means of subsistence consisted in the milk
and flesh of their flocks and the produce of the chase. They lived in
a state almost approaching to nudity; but whether from necessity or
from choice cannot be satisfactorily determined. Dio represents the
Caledonians as being naked, but Herodian speaks of them as wearing a
partial covering. They appear, at all events, if the stone dug up at
Blackness in the year 1868 (see p. 11), be taken as an authority, to
have gone naked into battle. Their towns, which were few, consisted
of huts covered with turf or skins, and for better security they were
erected in the centre of some wood or morass. “What the Britons call
a town,” says Cæsar, “is a tract of woody country surrounded by a
vallum and ditch, for the security of themselves and cattle against
the incursions of an enemy; for, when they have enclosed a very
large circuit with felled trees, they build within it houses for
themselves, and hovels for their cattle.”[4] Notwithstanding, perhaps
owing to the scantiness of their covering, which left their bodies
exposed to the rigour of a cold and variable climate, the Caledonians
were a remarkably hardy race, capable of enduring fatigue, cold, and
hunger to an extent which their descendants of the present day could
not encounter without risk of life. They were decidedly a warlike
people, and are said, like the heroes of more ancient times, to have
been addicted to robbery. The weapons of their warfare consisted of
small spears, long broadswords, and hand daggers; and they defended
their bodies in combat by a small target or shield,--all much of
the same form and construction as those afterwards used by their
posterity in more modern times. It would appear from the stone above
referred to that the shields of the Caledonians were oblong, with a
boss in the centre, and their swords short and pointed,--not long
and blunt, as represented by Tacitus. The use of cavalry appears not
to have been so well understood among the Caledonians as among the
more southern tribes; but in battle they often made use of cars, or
chariots, which were drawn by small, swift, and spirited horses; and
it is conjectured that, like those used by the southern Britons,
they had iron scythes projecting from the axle. It is impossible to
say what form of government obtained among these warlike tribes.
When history is silent, historians should either maintain a cautious
reserve or be sparing in their conjectures; but analogy may supply
materials for well-grounded speculations, and it may therefore be
asserted, without any great stretch of imagination, that, like most
of the other uncivilized tribes we read of in history, the Northern
Britons or Caledonians were under the government of a leader or chief
to whom they yielded a certain degree of obedience. Dio, indeed,
insinuates that the governments of these tribes were democratic; but
he should have been aware that it is only when bodies of men assume,
in an advanced state of civilization, a compact and united form that
democracy can prevail; and the state of barbarism in which he says
the inhabitants of North Britain existed at the period in question
seems to exclude such a supposition. We have no certain information
from any contemporary, and conjecture is therefore groundless. Later
fable-loving historians and chroniclers, indeed, give lists of Kings
of Scotland--or, rather, of Pictland--extending back for centuries
before the Christian era, but these by general consent are now
banished to the realm of myths. It is probable, as we have already
said, that the Caledonians were divided into a number of independent
tribes, and that each tribe was presided over by a chief, but how
he obtained his supremacy it is impossible to say. We have one
instance, at least, of a number of tribes uniting under one leader,
viz., at the battle of _Mons Grampius_, when the Caledonians were
commanded by a chief or leader called by Tacitus, Galgacus, “inter
plures duces virtute et genere præstans.”[5] “The earliest bond of
union may probably be traced to the time when they united under one
common leader to resist or assail the Roman legionaries; and out
of the _Dux_ or _Toshach_ elected for the occasion, like Galgacus,
and exercising a paramount though temporary authority, arose the
_Ardrigh_ or supreme king, after some popular or ambitious chieftain
had prolonged his power by successful wars, or procured his election
to this prominent station for life.”[6]
Whatever may have been the relation of the members of the different
tribes, and the relation of the tribes to each other, it is certain,
from the general tone of the works of Tacitus and other Roman
historians in which those early inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands
are mentioned, that they offered a far more formidable resistance
to the Roman arms than had hitherto been done by any other of the
British tribes.
In personal stature, the natives of Caledonia, like those of other
parts of Britain, appear to have excelled their Roman invaders, and
from Tacitus we learn that those with whom his father-in-law came
into contact were distinguished by ruddy locks and lusty limbs. It
is also certain that for the sake of ornament, or for the purpose of
making their appearance more terrible in war, they resorted to the
barbarous practice of tattooing their bodies. Indeed it may be taken
as a proof of their never having to any great extent come under the
power and influence of Rome and Roman customs, that they retained
this practice for long after the other Britons had abandoned it, and
on this account, in all probability, afterwards acquired the name of
_Picts_.
[Illustration: British War-Chariot.]
The people whom Agricola encountered in Scotland cannot have been
otherwise than tolerable proficients in the common branches of art;
how else can we suppose them to have been supplied with all that
_matériel_ of war with which they are said to have appeared before
him? Indolent and uninformed as were the bulk of the people, they
must have had among them artificers both in wood and in iron, not
unskilled in their respective trades--able to construct the body of
a car--to provide for it axles of great strength--above all, able to
construct the wheels and arm them with those sharp-edged instruments
that were destined to cut down whatever opposed their course.[7]
Agricola, in the summer of 83, after having obtained information
as to the nature of the country and the aspect of its inhabitants
from exploring parties and prisoners, transported his army across
the Frith of Forth to the shores of Fife by means of his fleet,
and marched along the coast eastwards, keeping the fleet in sight.
It cannot with certainty be ascertained at what part of the Forth
this transportation of the forces took place, although some bold
antiquarians assert that it must have been not far from Queensferry.
The fleet, Tacitus tells us,[8] now acting, for the first time,
in concert with the land-forces, proceeded in sight of the army,
forming a magnificent spectacle, and adding terror to the war. It
frequently happened that in the same camp were seen the infantry and
cavalry intermixed with the marines, all indulging their joy, full of
their adventures, and magnifying the history of their exploits; the
soldier describing, in the usual style of military ostentation, the
forests which he had passed, the mountains which he climbed, and the
barbarians whom he put to the rout; while the sailor had his storms
and tempests, the wonders of the deep, and the spirit with which he
conquered winds and waves.
The offensive operations of the sixth campaign were commenced by the
Caledonian Britons, who, from the higher country, made a furious
attack upon the trans-Forthan fortifications, which so alarmed some
of Agricola’s officers, who were afraid of being cut off from a
retreat, that they advised their general to recross the Forth without
delay; but Agricola resisted this advice, and made preparations for
the attack which he expected would soon be made upon his army. As
Agricola had received information that the enemy intended to fall
upon him from various quarters, he divided his army into three bodies
and continued his march. Some antiquarians have attempted to trace
the route taken by each division, founding their elaborate theories
on the very slender remains of what they suppose to have been Roman
fortifications and encampments. As it would serve no good purpose
to encumber our pages with these antiquarian conjectures, detailed
accounts of which will be found in Chalmers, Stuart, Roy, and
others, we shall only say that, with considerable plausibility, it
is supposed that the Ninth Legion encamped on the north side of Loch
Ore, about two miles south of Loch Leven in Kinross-shire. Another
legion, it is said, encamped near Dunearn Hill, about a mile distant
from Burntisland, near which hill are still to be seen remains of
a strength called _Agricola’s camp_. At all events the divisions
do not seem to have been very far apart, as will be seen from the
following episode.
The enemy having watched the proceedings of the Roman army made
the necessary preparations for attack, and during the night made
a furious assault on the Ninth Legion at Loch Ore. They had acted
with such caution that they were actually at the very camp before
Agricola was aware of their movements; but with great presence of
mind he despatched a body of his lightest troops to turn their flank
and attack the assailants in the rear. After an obstinate engagement,
maintained with varied success in the very gates of the camp, the
Britons were at length repulsed by the superior skill of the Roman
veterans. This battle was so far decisive, that Agricola did not
find much difficulty afterwards in subduing the surrounding country,
and, having finished his campaign, he passed the winter of 83 in
Fife; being supplied with provisions from his fleet in the Forth,
and keeping up a constant correspondence with his garrisons on the
southern side.
By this victory, according to Tacitus, so complete and glorious, the
Roman army was inspired with confidence to such a degree, that they
now pronounced themselves invincible, and desired to penetrate to the
extremity of the island.
The Caledonians now began to perceive the danger of their situation
from the proximity of such a powerful enemy, and a sense of this
danger impelled them to lay aside the feuds and jealousies which had
divided and distracted their tribes, to consult together for their
mutual safety and protection, and to combine their scattered strength
into a united and energetic mass. The proud spirit of independence
which had hitherto kept the Caledonian tribes apart, now made them
coalesce in support of their liberties, which were threatened with
utter annihilation. In this eventful crisis, they looked around them
for a leader or chief under whom they might fight the battle of
freedom, and save their country from the dangers which threatened
it. A chief, named Galgacus by Tacitus, was pitched upon to act as
generalissimo of the Caledonian army; and, from the praises bestowed
upon him by that historian, this warrior appears to have well
merited the distinction thus bestowed. Preparatory to the struggle
they were about to engage in, they sent their wives and children
into places of safety, and, in solemn assemblies in which public
sacrifices were offered up, ratified the confederacy into which they
had entered against their common enemy.
Having strengthened his army with some British auxiliaries from the
south, Agricola marched through Fife in the summer of 84, making for
a spot called by Tacitus _Mons Grampius_; sending at the same time
his fleet round the eastern coast, to support him in his operations,
and to distract the attention of the Caledonians. Various conjectures
have been broached as to the exact line of Agricola’s march and the
exact position of the Mons Grampius. The most plausible of these
is that of General Roy,[9] who supposes that the march of Agricola
was regulated by the course of the Devon; that he turned to the
right from Glendevon through the opening of the Ochil hills, along
the course of the rivulet which runs along Gleneagles; leaving the
braes of Ogilvie on his left, and passing between Blackford and
Auchterarder towards the Grampian hills, which he saw at a distance
before him as he debouched from the Ochils. By an easy march he
reached the moor of Ardoch, from which he descried the Caledonian
army, to the number of 30,000 men, encamped on the declivity of the
hill which begins to rise from the north-western border of the moor
of Ardoch. Agricola took his station at the great camp which adjoins
the fort of Ardoch on the northward. If the Roman camp at Ardoch does
mark the spot where the disastrous engagement about to be noticed
took place between these brave and determined Caledonians and the
invincible Roman legions, it is highly probable that Agricola drew
out his army on the neighbouring moor, having a large ditch or trench
of considerable length in front, the Caledonian host under Galgacus
being already disposed in battle array on the heights beyond. The
Roman army is supposed to have numbered about 20,000 or 30,000, the
auxiliary infantry, in number about 8,000,[10] occupying the centre,
the wings consisting of 3,000 horse. The legions were stationed in
the rear, at the head of the entrenchments, as a body of reserve to
support the ranks, if necessary, but otherwise to remain inactive,
that a victory, obtained without the effusion of Roman blood, might
be of higher value. Previous to the commencement of this interesting
light, according to “the fashion of historical literature at that
time,” a speech is put into the mouth of each general by the
historian Tacitus. “How much more valuable would it have been to us
had Tacitus deigned to tell us something about the tongue in which
the leader of the barbarians spoke, or even his name, and the name of
the place where he fought, as the natives uttered it! Yet, for the
great interests of its day, the speech of Galgacus was far removed
from a mere feat of idle pedantry. It was a noble rebuke on the
empire and the Roman people, who, false to the high destiny assigned
to them by Virgil, of protecting the oppressed and striking down
the oppressors, had become the common scourge of all mankind. The
profligate ambition, the perfidy, the absorbing pride, the egotism,
and the cruelty of the dominant people--how could all be so aptly
set forth as in the words of a barbarian chief, ruling over the free
people who were to be the next victims.”[11]
The narrative of the battle we give mainly in the words of the
Roman commander’s son-in-law, Tacitus, who no doubt had the story
from Agricola’s own mouth.[12] The battle began, and at first was
maintained at a distance. The Britons wanted neither skill nor
resolution. With their long swords, and targets of small dimension,
they had the address to elude the missive weapons of the Romans, and
at the same time to discharge a thick volley of their own. To bring
the conflict to a speedy decision, Agricola ordered three Batavian
and two Tungrian cohorts to charge the enemy sword in hand. To
this mode of attack those troops had been long accustomed, but to
the Britons it was every way disadvantageous. Their small targets
afforded no protection, and their unwieldy swords, not sharpened to
a point, could do but little execution in a close engagement. The
Batavians rushed to the attack with impetuous fury; they redoubled
their blows, and with the bosses of their shields bruised the enemy
in the face, and, having overpowered all resistance on the plain,
began to force their way up the ascent of the hill in regular order
of battle. Incited by their example, the other cohorts advanced with
a spirit of emulation, and cut their way with terrible slaughter.
Eager in pursuit of victory, they pressed forward with determined
fury, leaving behind them numbers wounded, but not slain, and others
not so much as hurt.
The Roman cavalry, in the mean time, was forced to give ground. The
Caledonians, in their armed chariots, rushed at full speed into the
thick of the battle, where the infantry were engaged. Their first
impression struck a general terror, but their career was soon checked
by the inequalities of the ground, and the close embodied ranks of
the Romans. Nothing could less resemble an engagement of the cavalry.
Pent up in narrow places, the barbarians crowded upon each other,
and were driven or dragged along by their own horses. A scene of
confusion followed. Chariots without a guide, and horses without a
rider, broke from the ranks in wild disorder, and flying every way,
as fear and consternation urged, they overwhelmed their own files,
and trampled down all who came in their way.
Meanwhile the Britons, who had hitherto kept their post on the
hills, looking down with contempt on the scanty numbers of the Roman
army, began to quit their station. Descending slowly, they hoped,
by wheeling round the field of battle, to attack the victors in the
rear. To counteract their design, Agricola ordered four squadrons
of horse, which he had kept as a body of reserve, to advance to the
charge. The Britons poured down with impetuosity, and retired with
equal precipitation. At the same time, the cavalry, by the directions
of the general, wheeled round from the wings, and fell with great
slaughter on the rear of the enemy, who now perceived that their own
stratagem was turned against themselves.
The field presented a dreadful spectacle of carnage and destruction.
The Britons fled; the Romans pursued; they wounded, gashed, and
mangled the runaways; they seized their prisoners, and, to be ready
for others, butchered them on the spot. Despair and horror appeared
in various shapes; in one part of the field the Caledonians, sword
in hand, fled in crowds from a handful of Romans; in other places,
without a weapon left, they faced every danger, and rushed on certain
death. Swords and bucklers, mangled limbs and dead bodies, covered
the plain. The field was red with blood. The vanquished Britons had
their moments of returning courage, and gave proofs of virtue and of
brave despair. They fled to the woods, and, rallying their scattered
numbers, surrounded such of the Romans as pursued with too much
eagerness.
Night coming on, the Romans, weary of slaughter, desisted from the
pursuit. Ten thousand of the Caledonians fell in this engagement:
on the part of the Romans, the number of slain did not exceed three
hundred and forty.
The Roman army, elate with success, and enriched with plunder, passed
the night in exultation. The Britons, on the other hand, wandered
about, uncertain which way to turn, helpless and disconsolate. The
mingled cries of men and women filled the air with lamentations. Some
assisted to carry off the wounded; others called for the assistance
of such as escaped unhurt; numbers abandoned their habitations, or,
in their frenzy, set them on fire. They fled to obscure retreats,
and, in the moment of choice, deserted them; they held consultations,
and, having inflamed their hopes, changed their minds in despair;
they beheld the pledges of tender affection, and burst into tears;
they viewed them again, and grew fierce with resentment. It is a fact
well authenticated, that some laid violent hands upon their wives and
children, determined with savage compassion to end their misery.
After obtaining hostages from the Horestians, who in all probability
inhabited what is now the county of Fife, Agricola garrisoned the
stations on the isthmus and elsewhere, recrossed the Forth, and
took up his winter-quarters in the north of England, about the Tyne
and Solway. In the meantime he gave orders to the fleet, then lying
probably in the Frith of Forth or Tay, to proceed on a voyage
of discovery to the northward. The enterprise appears to have
been successfully accomplished by the Roman navy, which proceeded
coastwise as far as the Orkneys, whence it sailed by the Western
Islands and the British Channel _ad Portum Trutulensem_, Richborough
in Kent, returning to the point from which it started. This is the
first voyage on record that determined Britain to be an island.
The Emperor Domitian now resolved to supersede Agricola in his
command in North Britain; and he was accordingly recalled in the
year 85, under the pretence of promoting him to the government of
Syria, but in reality out of envy on account of the glory which
he had obtained by the success of his arms. He died on the 23d of
August, 93, some say, from poison, while others attribute his death
to the effects of chagrin at the unfeeling treatment of Domitian. His
countrymen lamented his death, and Tacitus, his son-in-law, preserved
the memory of his actions and his worth in the history of his life.
During the remainder of Domitian’s reign, and that of Hadrian his
successor, North Britain appears to have enjoyed tranquillity; an
inference which may be fairly drawn from the silence of the Roman
historians. Yet as Hadrian in the year 121 built a wall between the
Solway and the Tyne, some writers have supposed that the Romans had
been driven by the Caledonians out of North Britain, in the reign of
that Emperor. But if such was the case, how did Lollius Urbicus, the
Roman general, about nineteen years after Hadrian’s wall was erected,
penetrate without opposition to Agricola’s forts between the Clyde
and the Forth? May we not rather suppose that the wall of Hadrian was
built for the purpose of preventing incursions into the south by the
tribes which inhabited the country between that wall and the Friths?
But, be this as it may, little is known of the history of North
Britain from the time of Agricola’s recall till the year 138, when
Antoninus Pius assumed the imperial purple. That good and sagacious
emperor was distinguished by the care which he took in selecting the
fittest officers for the government of the Roman provinces; and his
choice, for that of Britain, fell on Lollius Urbicus.
The positive information concerning the transactions of this general
in North Britain is as meagre as could possibly be, the only clearly
ascertained fact in connection with his command being that he built
a wall between the Forth and Clyde, very nearly on a line with
the forts established by Agricola. “The meagreness of all ancient
record,” says Burton,[13] “of the achievements of Lollius Urbicus is
worthy of emphatic mention and recollection, because his name has
got into the ordinary abridged histories which speak of it, and of
‘his campaign in the north’ as well-known events, of which people
naturally expect fuller information elsewhere. The usual sources for
reference regarding him will however be found utterly dumb.” The
story commonly given is that he proceeded north as far as the Moray
Frith, throwing the extensive country between Forth and Clyde and the
Moray Frith into the form of a regular Roman province, which, on the
worthless authority of the pseudo-Richard, was named Vespasiana. All
this may have been the case, and the remains[14] of Roman stations
found throughout the wide tract just mentioned give some plausibility
to the conjecture; but there is only the most slender grounds for
connecting them with any northern expedition of Lollius Urbicus. At
all events we may very safely conclude, from the general tone of
the records which remain of his and of subsequent expeditions, as
well as from the fact that they found it necessary to divide the
Lowlands from the Highlands by a fortified wall, that the Romans
considered the Caledonians of their time very troublesome, and found
it exceedingly difficult if not impossible to bring them under their
otherwise universal yoke.
[Illustration: Map and Profile of Antonine’s Wall.]
It may not be out of place to give here some account of the wall of
Antonine. The wall or rampart extended from Carriden on the Forth,
two miles west from Blackness, and about the same distance east from
Bo’ness, to West Kilpatrick on the Clyde. The date, which may be
depended on, assigned to the building of the wall is between 138 and
140 A.D. Taking the length of this wall from Kilpatrick on the Clyde
to Caeridden or Carriden on the Forth, its extent would be 39,726
Roman paces, which exactly agrees with the modern measurement of
36 English miles and 620 yards. This rampart, which was of earth,
and rested on a stone foundation, was upwards of twenty feet high
and four and twenty feet thick. Along the whole extent of the wall
there was a vast ditch or _prætentura_ on the outward or north
side, which was generally twenty feet deep and forty feet wide, and
which, there is reason to believe, might be filled with water when
occasion required.[15] This ditch and rampart were strengthened at
both ends, and throughout its whole extent, by about twenty forts,
three being at each extremity, and the remainder placed between at
the distance of about two English miles from one another; and it is
highly probable that these stations were designedly placed on the
previous fortifications of Agricola. The following, going from east
to west, are the names and sites of some of the stations which have
been identified:--Rough Castle, Castlecary, Westerwood, Bunhill,
Auchindinny, Kirkintilloch, Bemulie, East Kilpatrick, Castlehill,
Duntocher, West Kilpatrick. It will be seen that to a certain extent
they are on the line of the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, and
throughout nearly its whole length that of the Forth and Clyde canal.
Its necessary appendage, a military road, ran behind the rampart from
end to end, for the use of the troops and for keeping up the usual
communication between the stations or forts. From inscriptions on
some of the foundation stones, which have been dug up, it appears
that the Second legion, with detachments from the sixth and twentieth
legions and some auxiliaries, executed these vast military works,
equally creditable to their skill and perseverance. Dunglas near the
western extremity, and Blackness near the eastern extremity of the
rampart, afforded the Romans commodious harbours for their shipping,
as also did Cramond, about five miles west from Edinburgh. This wall
is called in the popular language of the country Grime’s or Graham’s
Dyke.[16] In 1868 a large oblong slab, in first-rate preservation,
was dug up at Bo’ness, in the parish of Kinneil (Bede’s _Peanfahel_,
“the head of the wall”), containing an inscription as distinct as it
was on the day when it came from a Roman chisel. We give here a cut
of this remarkable stone, which is now in the Scottish Antiquarian
Museum.
[Illustration: Stone from Antonine’s Wall. (Copied and engraved
specially for the present work.)]
We have no distinct mention of the Caledonians again until the reign
of Commodus, when, about the year 183, these troublesome barbarians
appear to have broken through the northern wall, slain the general in
command of the Roman forces, and pillaged the lowland country beyond.
They were, however, driven back by Ulpius Marcellus, who succeeded
by prudent management in maintaining peace for a number of years. In
the beginning of the reign of Severus, however, the Caledonians again
broke out, but were kept in check by Virius Lupus, who appears to
have bribed rather than beaten the barbarians into conformity.
The irrepressible Highlanders again broke out about the year 207,
and this time the Emperor Severus himself, notwithstanding his bad
health and old age, came from Rome to Britain, determined apparently
to “stamp out” the rebellion. On hearing of his arrival the tribes
sent deputies to him to negotiate for peace, but the emperor, who was
of a warlike disposition, and fond of military glory, declined to
entertain any proposals.
After making the necessary preparations, Severus began his march to
the north in the year 208. He traversed the whole of North Britain,
from the wall of Antoninus to the very extremity of the island,
with an immense army. The Caledonians avoided coming to a general
engagement with him, but kept up an incessant and harassing warfare
on all sides. He, however, brought them to sue for peace; but the
honours of this campaign were dearly earned, for fifty thousand of
the Romans fell a prey to the attacks of the Caledonians, to fatigue,
and to the severity of the climate. The Caledonians soon disregarded
the treaty which they had entered into with Severus, which conduct
so irritated him that he gave orders to renew the war, and to spare
neither age nor sex; but his son, Caracalla, to whom the execution of
these orders was intrusted, was more intent in plotting against his
father and brother than in executing the revengeful mandate of the
dying emperor, whose demise took place at York on the 4th February,
211, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and in the third year of his
administration in Britain.
It is in connection with this invasion that we first hear of the
Meats or Mæatæ, who are mentioned by Dion Cassius, or rather his
epitomiser Xiphiline, and who are supposed by some to have inhabited
the country between the two walls, while others think it more likely
that they were a part of the Caledonians, and inhabited the district
between the Grampians and the wall of Antonine. We shall not,
however, enter into this question here, but endeavour, as briefly as
possible, to record all that is known of the remaining transactions
of the Romans in the north of Scotland, reserving other matters for
the next chapter.
It was not consistent with the policy by which Caracalla was
actuated, to continue a war with the Caledonians; for the scene of
his ambition lay in Rome, to which he made hasty preparations to
depart on the death of his father. He therefore entered into a treaty
with the Caledonians by which he gave up the territories surrendered
by them to his father, and abandoned the forts erected by him in
their fastnesses. The whole country north of the wall of Antonine
appears in fact to have been given up to the undisputed possession
of the Caledonians, and we hear of no more incursions by them till
the reign of the emperor Constantius Chlorus, who came to Britain in
the year 306, to repel the Caledonians and other Picts.[17] Their
incursions were repelled by the Roman legions under Constantius, and
they remained quiet till about the year 345, when they again entered
the territories of the provincial Britons; but they were compelled,
it is said, again to retreat by Constans, son of Constantine the
Great.
Although these successive inroads had been always repelled by
the superior power and discipline of the Romans, the Caledonians
of the fourth century no longer regarded them in the formidable
light in which they had been viewed by their ancestors, and their
genius for war improving every time they came in hostile contact
with their enemies, they meditated the design of expelling the
intruders altogether from the soil of North Britain. The wars which
the Romans had to sustain against the Persians in the East, and
against the Germans on the frontiers of Gaul, favoured the plan of
the Caledonians; and having formed a treaty with the _Scots_, whose
name is mentioned for the first time in history in this connection
by Ammianus Marcellinus, they, in conjunction with their new allies,
about the year 360 invaded the Roman territories and committed many
depredations. Julian, who commanded the Roman army on the Rhine,
despatched Lupicinus, an able military commander, to defend the
province against the Scots and Picts, but he was recalled before he
had done much to repel them.
The Picts--who on this occasion are mentioned by Ammianus
Marcellinus[18] as being divided into two nations, the _Dicaledones_
and _Vecturiones_--and Scots, being joined by the Attacots, “a
warlike race of men,” and the Saxons, numbers of whom appear at this
early period to have settled in Britain, made another attack on the
Roman provinces in the year 364, on the accession of Valentinian.
These appear to have made their way as far south as London, and it
required all the valour and skill of Theodosius the Elder, father of
the emperor of that name, who was sent to Britain in the year 367,
to repel this aggression, and to repair the great ravages committed
by the barbarians. The next outbreak occurred about the year 398,
when the Picts and Scots again broke loose and ravaged the provinces,
being repelled by a legion sent over by the great Stilicho, in answer
to the petition of the helpless provincials for assistance.
In the beginning of the fifth century the enervated Romanized Britons
again appear to have been subjected to the tender mercies of their
wicked northern neighbours; and in reply to their cry for help,
Honorius, in 416, sent over to their relief a single legion, which
drove back the intruders. The Romans, as is well known, engrossed by
overwhelming troubles nearer home, finally abandoned Britain about
the year 446, advising the inhabitants, who were suffering from the
ravages of the Picts and Scots, to protect themselves by retiring
behind and keeping in repair the wall of Severus.
Such is a brief account of the transactions of the Romans in Britain
so far as these were connected with the Highlands of Scotland. That
energetic and insatiable people doubtless left their mark on the
country and its inhabitants south of the Forth and Clyde, as the
many Roman remains which exist there at the present day testify. The
British provincials, indeed, appear in the end to have been utterly
enervated, and, in the worst sense, Romanized, so that they became
an easy prey to their Saxon helpers. It is quite evident, however,
that the inhabitants of Caledonia proper, the district beyond the
wall of Antonine, were to a very slight extent, if at all, influenced
by the Roman invasion. Whether it was from the nature of the people,
or from the nature of the country which they inhabited, or from both
combined, they appear to have been equally impervious to Roman force
and Roman culture. The best services that their enemies rendered to
the Caledonians or Picts were that they forced them to unite against
the common foe thus contributing towards the foundation of a future
kingdom; and that they gave them a training in arms such as the
Caledonians could never have obtained, had they not been brought into
collision with the best-trained soldiers of the world in their time.
We have in what precedes mainly followed only one thread in the very
intricate web formed by the early history of the Highlands, which,
to a certain extent at this period, is the history of Scotland; but,
as will have been seen, there are various other threads which join
in from time to time, and which, after giving a short account of the
traces of the Roman invasion still existing in the Highlands, we
shall endeavour to catch up and follow out as far as possible.
It is not necessary in a history of the Highlands of Scotland, as
we have defined that term, that much space should be given to an
account of Roman remains; for, as we have already said, these Italian
invaders appear never to have obtained anything like a firm footing
in that rugged district, or made any definite or characteristic
impression on its inhabitants. “The vestiges whence it is inferred
that the Empire for a time had so far established itself in Scotland
as to bring the natives over to the habits of peaceful citizens,
belong almost exclusively to the country south of Antonine’s wall,
between the Forth and Clyde. Coins and weapons have been found
farther north, but scarcely any vestige of regular settlement. None
of the pieces of Roman sculpture found in Scotland belong to the
districts north of the wall. It is almost more significant still,
that of the very considerable number of Scottish Roman inscriptions
in the various collections, only one was found north of the wall,
and that in the strongly-fortified station of Ardoch, where it
commemorated that it was dedicated to the memory of a certain
Ammonius Damionis.[19] On the other hand, it is in that unsubdued
district that the memorials of Roman conquest chiefly abound.”[20]
The whole of Britain was intersected by Roman ways, and as,
wherever a Roman army went, it was preceded by pioneers who cleared
and made a durable road to facilitate its march, there can be no
doubt that the north of Scotland was to a considerable extent
intersected by highways during the invasion of Agricola, Lollius
Urbicus, and Severus. One road at least can be traced as far north
as Aberdeenshire, and is popularly known in some districts as the
_Lang Causeway_. This road appears to have issued from the wall of
Antonine, passed through Camelon, the Roman port on the Carron, and
pushing straight forward, according to the Roman custom, across the
Carron, it pursued its course in a general north-east direction
through Stirling, Perth, by Ardoch, through Forfar and Kincardine, to
about Stonehaven.
It would appear that there are traces of Roman roads even farther
north. Between the rivers Don and Urie in Aberdeenshire, on the
eastern side of Bennachee, there exists an ancient road known in
the country by the name of the _Maiden Causeway_, a name by which
some of the Roman roads in the north of England are distinguished.
This proceeds from Bennachee whereon there is said to have been
a hill-fort, more than the distance of a mile into the woods of
Pitodrie, when it disappears: it is paved with stones, and is about
fourteen feet wide. Still farther north, from Forres to the ford
of Cromdale on the Spey, there has been long known a road of very
ancient construction, pointing to Cromdale, where the Romans may have
forded the Spey. Various traces of very ancient roads are still to be
seen by Corgarf and through Braemar: the tradition of the people in
Strathdee and Braemar, supports the idea that there are remains of
Roman roads which traverse the country between the Don and the Dee.
Certain it is, that there are obvious traces of ancient roads which
cross the wild districts between Strathdon and Strathdee, though it
is impossible to ascertain when or by whom these ancient roads were
constructed, in such directions, throughout such a country.
Along these roads there were without doubt many camps and stations,
as it is well known that the Romans never halted even for a single
night, without entrenching themselves behind secure fortifications.
There are many remains of what are supposed to have been Roman camps
still pointed out in various places north of the line occupied
by Antonine’s wall. These are well known even to the peasantry,
and are generally treated with respect. The line of these camps
reaches as far as the counties of Aberdeen and Inverness, the most
important of them, however, being found in Strathallan, Strathearn,
and Strathmore. Besides the most important of these camps, that at
Ardoch, traces of many others have been found. There was one on the
river Earn, about six miles east of Ardoch, which would command
the middle part of Strathearn lying between the Ochil hills on the
south and the river Almond on the north. Another important station
is supposed to have been established near Callander, where, on a
tongue of land formed by the junction of the rivers Strathgartney and
Strathyre, the two sources of the Teith, are seen the embankments
referred to by Scott[21] as
“The mouldering lines
Where Rome, the empress of the world,
Of yore her eagle wings unfurled.”[22]
Another camp is placed at Dalgenross, near the confluence of the
Ruchel and the Earn, which, with Bochastle, would command the
western district of Strathearn. Another important station was the
East Findoch, at the south side of the Almond; it guarded the only
practicable passage through the mountains northward, to an extent of
thirty miles from east to west. The Roman camp here was placed on a
high ground, defended by water on two sides, and by a morass with
a steep bank on the other two sides. It was about one hundred and
eighty paces long, and eighty broad, and was surrounded by a strong
earthen wall nearly twelve feet thick, part of which still remains.
The trenches are still entire, and in some places six feet deep.
On the eastern side of Strathearn, and between it and the Forth,
are the remains of Roman posts; and at Ardargie a Roman camp was
established with the design, it is supposed, of guarding the passage
through the Ochil hills, by the valley of May water. Another camp at
Gleneagles secured the passage of the same hills through Glendevon.
With the design of guarding the narrow, but useful passage from the
middle Highlands, westward through Glenlyon to Argyle, the Romans
fixed a post at Fortingal, about sixteen miles north-west from the
station at East-Findoch.
A different line of posts became necessary to secure Angus and the
Mearns. At Coupar Angus, on the east side of the Isla, about seven
miles east from Inchtuthel, stood a Roman camp, of a square form, of
twenty acres within the ramparts. This camp commanded the passage
down Strathmore, between the Siedlaw hills on the south-east, and
the Isla on the north-west. On Campmoor, little more than a mile
south from Coupar Angus, appear the remains of another Roman fort.
The great camp of Battledyke stood about eighteen miles north-east
from Coupar Angus, being obviously placed there to guard the passage
from the Highlands through Glen Esk and Glen Prosen. About eleven and
a-half miles north-east of the camp at Battledykes was another Roman
camp, the remains of which may still be traced near the mansion-house
of Keithock. This camp is known by the name of Wardikes. The country
below the Siedlaw hills, on the north side of the estuary of Tay, was
guarded by a Roman camp near Invergowrie, which had a communication
on the north-east with the camp at Harefaulds. This camp, which was
about two hundred yards square, and fortified with a high rampart and
a spacious ditch, stood about two miles west from Dundee.
[Illustration: Roman Camp at Ardoch as it appeared in 1755.
(Stuart’s _Caledonia Romana_.)]
Traces of a number of others have been found, but we need not go
farther into detail. This account of the Roman transactions in
Scotland would, however, be incomplete without a more particular
notice of the well-known camp at Ardoch. Ardoch village, in
Perthshire, lies on the east side of Knaigwater, ten miles north
from Stirling, and is about two miles from the Greenloaning station
of the Caledonian railway, the site of the camp being a little
distance to the north-west of the village. As this station guarded
the principal inlet into the interior of Caledonia, the Romans were
particularly anxious to fortify so advantageous a position. “The
situation of it,” says the writer of the Old Statistical Account of
Muthill, “gave it many advantages; being on the north-west side of
a deep moss that runs a long way eastward. On the west side, it is
partly defended by the steep bank of the water of Knaik; which bank
rises perpendicularly between forty and fifty feet. The north and
east sides were most exposed; and there we find very particular care
was taken to secure them. The ground on the east is pretty regular,
and descends by a gentle slope from the lines of fortification,
which, on that side, consists of five rows of ditches, perfectly
entire, and running parallel to one another. These altogether are
about fifty-five yards in breadth. On the north side, there is an
equal number of lines and ditches, but twenty yards broader than the
former. On the west, besides the steep precipices above mentioned,
it was defended by at least two ditches. One is still visible; the
others have probably been filled up, in making the great military
road from Stirling to the north. The side of the camp, lying to the
southward, exhibits to the antiquary a less pleasing prospect. Here
the peasant’s rugged hand has laid in ruins a great part of the
lines; so that it may be with propriety said, in the words of a Latin
poet, ‘Jam seges est, ubi Troja fuit.’ The area of the camp is an
oblong of 140 yards, by 125 within the lines. The general’s quarter
rises above the level of the camp, but is not in the centre. It is
a regular square, each side being exactly twenty yards. At present
it exhibits evident marks of having been enclosed with a stone wall,
and contains the foundation of a house, ten yards by seven.” There
are two other encampments adjoining, having a communication with one
another, and containing about 130 acres of ground. A subterranean
passage is said to have extended from the prætorium under the bed of
the Knaik. Not far north of this station, on the way to Crieff, may
be traced three temporary Roman camps of different sizes. Portions of
the ramparts of these camps still exist. A mile west of Ardoch, an
immense cairn lately existed, 182 feet long, 45 broad at the base,
and 30 feet in sloping height. A human skeleton, 7 feet long, in a
stone coffin, was found in it.[23]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] We are indebted for great part of this description to Fullarton’s
_Gazetteer of Scotland_.
[2] _Caledonia Romana_, p. 11.
[3] The _De Situ Britanniæ_ “professed to be a manuscript of the
fourteenth century, written by a monk named Richard of Cirencester,
made up by him from certain fragments left by a Roman General. The
person who stepped forth as the lucky discoverer of so precious a
relic was Charles Julius Bertram, English Professor in the Royal
Marine Academy at Copenhagen. His revelation was accepted without
hesitation, and revolutionized the existing notions about the
geography of Roman Britain. After all, the hoax was not absolutely
useless; it stimulated inquiry, and, in itself, what it professed to
lay down on authority, were the guesses and theories of a learned and
acute man.”--Burton’s _History of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 13.
[4] _De Bello Gallico_, ii. 17.
[5] Tacitus, _Agricola_, xxix.
[6] E. W. Robertson’s _Scotland under her Early Kings_, vol. i. p. 31.
[7] Stuart’s _Caledonia Romana_, pp. 35, 36.
[8] _Agricola_ xxv.
[9] _Military Antiquities._
[10] Tac. _Agricola_ xxxv.
[11] Burton’s _Hist. of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 9.
[12] Tac. _Agricola_ xxxvi, &c. We adopt Murphy’s translation in the
main, here and elsewhere.
[13] _Scotland_, vol. i. p. 29.
[14] Wilson says that beyond the Forth and Clyde nearly the sole
traces of the presence of the Romans are a few earthworks, with one
or two exceptions, of doubtful import, and some chance discoveries
of pottery and coins, mostly ascribable, it may be presumed, to the
fruitless northern expedition of Agricola, after the victory of Mons
Grampius, or to the still more ineffectual one of his successor,
Severus.--_Prehistoric Annals_, p. 365.
[15] On the estate of Callender, to the east of Falkirk, distinct
remains of this trench are still to be seen, in good preservation,
measuring a few hundred yards in length and about 12 feet in depth.
[16] There are several other earthworks in England, according to
Chalmers (_Caledonia_) and Taylor (_Words and Places_), which go
under the appellation of Grime’s Dyke or Grime’s Ditch. _Grime_ in
Cornish is said to signify _strong_; in Gaelic, _war_, _battle_.
[17] The first writer who mentions the _Picts_ is Eumenius, the
orator, who was a Professor at Autun, and who, in a panegyric
pronounced by him in the year 297, mentions the _Picts_ along with
the Irish, and again, in 308, in a panegyric pronounced by him on
Constans, speaks of the _Caledonians and other Picts_. This is one of
the passages mainly relied on by those who consider the Caledonians
and Picts to have been the same people.
[18] _Am. Mar._, xxvii., 8.
[19] Wilson’s _Prehist. Annals_.
[20] Burton’s _Scotland_, vol. i. p. 74.
[21] _Lady of the Lake._
[22] According to Burton, however, these are by some geologists set
down as a geological phenomenon.--_Hist. of Scot._ i. 75.
[23] For more minute descriptions of this camp, as well as for
further details concerning the Roman transactions in Scotland,
consult Roy’s _Military Antiquities_, Gough’s _Camden_ (under
Strathearn), Stuart’s _Caledonia Romana_, Burton’s _History of
Scotland_.