Leaving Liverpool with its din and smoke behind, we begin our journey
by rail, through the northwestern part of England toward the Scottish
border. It is near the end of July, and the weather, for England, is
hot. But coming as we do direct from the stifling heat of Paris, we
find it cool by comparison. We are travelling by fast express, and
can catch but passing glimpses of the towns and hamlets, the broad
farms and comfortable homesteads, of Old England. Now we are dashing
through one of the many manufacturing towns with which the land is
studded. There are long rows of red brick houses, with here and
there a huge chimney belching forth black smoke. The next moment we
are once more in the open country. On either hand as far as the eye
can reach, are great stretches of farmland and green pastures where
cattle are grazing. The grain is ripening in the fields, and ever
and anon there comes, through the open window of the car, the sweet
savour of new-mown hay. As we go further north the country grows
more rugged. Dark ravines open at our feet, and shaggy hills frown
down upon us. By three o'clock we have passed Carlisle, once the
great stronghold of England against the fierce incursions of its
warlike neighbour to the north. Soon after we cross the border and
find ourselves on Scottish soil. It is the land of our fathers--
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,--
a land of stirring memories and teeming with romance. It is not
without emotion, therefore, that we enter it for the first time. Nor
does the dense Scotch mist into which we run before reaching
Edinburgh damp our enthusiasm in the least--though we should not be
able to say as much for our persons were we exposed to it but for a
moment.
We spend the Sunday in Edinburgh. That droll Frenchman who writes
under the pen-name of Max O'Rell, defines a Scotchman as one who
keeps the Sabbath and everything else he can lay his hands on! Well,
at any rate he keeps the Sabbath, and that is more than many a
Frenchman does. For the people of Edinburgh the Sunday is still
emphatically a day of rest. To a Protestant gentleman from Toronto
who had just come from Paris himself and put up at the same hotel
with us, we remark upon the contrast between the Parisian Sunday and
the solemn quiet of the Scotch Sabbath. "Quite so," he says, "but
you should have been here yesterday while the Labor Parade was
passing through the streets. You would have seen one after another
of the men dropping out of the procession in a state of beastly
intoxication. In all the time that I was in Paris I saw no single
instance of such drunkenness." He had come away from Paris greatly
edified, and was leaving Edinburgh utterly disgusted and horrified at
what he had seen. Sobriety was more to him than Sunday observance.
And yet human frailty may account for drunkenness, and palliate it at
least in part. But the violation of the Sunday has its root cause,
it is to be feared, in a spirit of contempt for the ordinances of the
Christian Religion.
Edinburgh is not only the capital of Scotland, but the queen of
Scottish cities. There are few finer cities, indeed, in all the
world. Its broad and well paved streets are kept scrupulously clean.
The buildings, almost all of them of granite, are tall and stately.
And the site with its picturesque setting of hills is superb. On one
of these hills, west from Prince street and Scott's Monument, stands
the historic Castle like a grim sentinel guarding the approaches of
the City. Climbing the hill and entering by the draw-bridge, we see,
among other interesting relics of the past, the Chapel of the saintly
Queen Margaret, and stand in the room where the ill-fated Mary Stuart
took refuge after the murder of Rizzio, and where was born James the
Sixth of Scotland and the First of England. In another room hard by
we gaze upon the ancient Regalia of Scotland, "worthy of a nation's
pride and jealous preservation."
The run from Edinburgh to Glasgow by rail is made in a little more
than one hour. Our route lies through Lanarkshire, famed for its
coal mines and iron foundries. Glasgow, with a population of over
one million, is the second city of the Empire. Unlike Edinburgh, it
has no pretentions to beauty. Still, it has some fine streets and
very beautiful parks. It contains, too, not a few notable buildings,
and there are in and around it many places of great historic
interest. Its water supply, brought from Loch Katrine, thirty miles
distant, is not surpassed perhaps by that of any other city in the
world.
Early in the morning we leave Glasgow for Oban by boat. Steaming
down the Clyde, we get a good view of the docks and of the ships both
great and small that are a-building on either bank. A few miles down
the river is Douglas Castle, and a little beyond, on the summit of a
rock 260 feet in height, rises Dumbarton Castle, famed in Scottish
story. We touch at Greenock and Dunoon, and thence make for
Rothesay, the capital of Bute. On our left, as we near the Bute
shore, we see Mount Stuart House, the seat of the Marquis.
Leaving Rothesay, the steamer runs up the Kyles or narrows (from the
Gaelic caolas, a strait) of Bute, round the northern end of the
island, and down the other side towards Ardlamont Point on the
mainland. The scenery on this strait is very fine, wooded mountain,
loch, and glen blending their varied beauties into one picturesque
whole. Rounding Ardlamont Point, we steer straight for the harbour
of Tarbert, on the coast of Kintyre. Away to the south, and but
dimly visible in the haze, is the island of Arran. From Tarbert we
proceed up Loch Fyne to Ardrishaig, 180 miles from Glasgow, at the
head of the Crinan Canal. This canal, which connects Loch Fyne with
Loch Crinan, and is nine miles in length, runs, for a great part of
the way, along the base of forest-clad hills.
By this time, unluckily for us, it has begun to rain heavily, which
mars our enjoyment of the rest of the trip to Oban. As the boat
stops for the opening of the locks of the canal, we hear people on
shore talking in Gaelic and realize that we have left the Lowlands
behind. In spite of the rain two little barefooted girls and a
little boy who has shoes on (shame on him!) follows us from lock to
lock, selling milk by the glassful to the passengers. The children
are quite brave at first, and stare at us, as much as to say, "What
do we care what these English strangers say or think of us." But the
moment I speak to them in Gaelic, they grow shy of me, and the poor
little girls look as if they were ashamed to be seen in their bare
feet.
Leaving Crinan, the western terminus of the canal, we have on our
right the mainland of Argyle; on our left are the islands of Jura and
Scarba. Between the two is the famous whirlpool of Corryvrechan, the
roar of which may be heard at a distance of many miles. Away in the
west, beyond Ross of Mull, lies far-famed Iona, with Ulva dark and
Colonsay
And all the group of islets gay
That guard famed Staffa round.
Presently we descry Dunollie Castle, once the chief stronghold of the
Lords of Lorn, and soon after land in Oban.
Oban has been called the Charing Cross of the Highlands. And such it
is in the sense of being the great distributing centre for tourists
and travellers by rail or boat. But in every other sense how unlike
is this quiet little town, with its cosy harbour and crescent beach,
where the wavelets play at hide-and-seek with the pebbles, to the
bustling railway station in the heart of the biggest and busiest of
all earth's cities! During the summer months this cosy harbour is
crowded with pleasure yachts from all parts of the world, and the
hotels that line the pebbly beach are thronged with tourists from
every land.
For Oban is a dainty place
In distant or in nigh lands,
No town delights the tourist race
Like Oban in the Highlands.
So wrote the late Professor Blackie, himself a frequent visitor in
his day to this charming resort on the shore of the western sea.
At Oban in the early morning we take the 'Gael' steamship for far
Gairloch in Rosshire. Dunollis Castle is on our right as we steam
out of Oban Bay and make for Lismore Light, on the extreme southern
end of the island of that name. Thence our way lies through the
Sound of Mull to Ardnamurchan Point. The scenery along this Sound,
where you have the mountains of Mull on the one hand, and on the
other those of misty Morven, is surpassingly grand. Here on the
Morven shore, in Ardtornish Castle, ancient seat of the Lords of the
Isles, is laid the opening scene of Scott's well-known poem, which
begins with the lines:
"Wake, maid of Lorn," the minstrels sung.
Thy rugged halls, Ardtornish, rung,
And the dark seas thy towers that lave,
Heaved on the beach a softer wave,
As 'mid the tuneful choir to keep
The diapason of the deep.
Near the other end of the sound is Tobermory (Mary's Well), the chief
seaport of Mull, a very pretty town, in whose land-locked harbour
ships of any tonnage find securest anchorage. This port has for us a
very special interest, as we have reason to believe that from hence
our grand-parents sailed in the dawn of the century to make for
themselves a home, beyond the stormy Atlantic, in what was then the
wild woods of Nova Scotia.
All day long, from early morn till set of sun, we follow our sinuous
course through the sounds and lochs and bays of this western sea,
calling here or there to land or take on passengers. After leaving
Torbermory while rounding Ardnamurchan Point, and until we gain the
shelter of towering Scaur-Eigg, a perpendicular cliff some five
hundred feet high at the southwestern extremity of the island of that
name, we are in the open Atlantic, with no land to the west of us
nearer than America. North of Ardnamurchan lies Moidart, where
Prince Charlie landed on the 25th of July, 1745, and whence after
many wanderings and hair-breadth escapes he sailed, on the 20th
September of the following year, a hopeless and broken man.
From Eigg we cross over to Arisaig. Judging by what one can see of
it from the deck of a steamer, it is far from being as fertile as the
district that has been named after it in Nova Scotia. But perhaps
there is no other spot on the western coast of Scotland where the
view landward and seaward is so varied and so magnificent.
After landing passengers at Arisaig, we steam along the coast of
Morar on the mainland, having on our left the islands of Eigg, Rum,
and Canna, and in front of us the southern extremity of Skye. Soon
we enter the Sound of Sleat, and passing through the Kyle of
Lochalsh, hug the eastern or inner shore of Skye till we reach
Portree. It is a perfect day. The sun shines brightly, and the face
of the laughing waters is gently fanned by the summer winds. And the
scenery is as grand as it is diversified. Leaving Portree (King's
Port), so-called from having been visited by James V. of Scotland
while cruising round these isles, we enter once more the Sound of
Raasay. On the Skye shore, near the little island of Holm, is to be
seen the entrance to a cave famed as one of the hiding places of the
unfortunate Prince Charlie. Presently we pass out of the Sound of
Raasay and enter the Minch. On the left, beyond the northern
promontory of Skye, some of the Hebridean Islands are visible in the
dim distance. Behind us the mountains of Skye rise in gloomy
grandeur. As one gazes upon them, there comes to one's mind these
words of MacCrimmon's Lament, done into English by Sir Walter Scott:
Farewell to each cliff, on which breakers are foaming,
Farewell to each dark glen in which red deer are roaming;
Farewell lovely Skye, to lake, mountain, and river--
Return, return, return, we shall never.
(Cha till, cha till, cha till sinn tuille.)
Gairloch has a fine hotel--with prices to match. It is a charming
place, this quiet hamlet by the sea, but lonely withal. For here,
away up north, one has that sense of isolation, of being cut off from
the great world, which is itself twin-sister to the feeling of
loneliness.
We leave Gairloch early in the morning for Inverness, travelling by
coach for 30 miles to Achnasheen (Field of the Fairies) and thence by
rail. In the first five miles the road runs, part of the time,
through a fine forest of larches, which seem to be related to our
juniper tree, but are very tall and stately. On emerging from the
wood and beginning the descent of a steep hill, we come of a sudden
upon a loch which seems to surpass all the Scottish lochs in the wild
and rugged grandeur of the scenery along its shores. It was some
such sight as here greets our eyes that inspired Sir Walter's muse to
sing,--
Stranger; if e'er thine ardent step hath traced
The northern realms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed,
By lake and cataract her lonely throne;
Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known,
Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high,
Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown
Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry,
And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning sky.
For where more fittingly than here by Loch Maree, on some lonely
mountain peak, could the Queen of Wilderness set up her throne?
Here, in sooth, are pathless glen and mountain high and torrents
flung from cliffs. And the very spirit of Desolation seems to brood
over the place. You may travel miles on this loch without seeing a
single human habitation. Steep mountains, bare of trees and even of
vegetation, shut it in on all sides. The loftiest peak in Ruadh Stac
Mor, which rises to a height of 3,309 feet; but there are several
other peaks almost as high. Half way up the loch is a summer hotel
for tourists, where Queen Victoria stayed a week something more than
a score of years ago. Over against this hotel, near the other side
of the loch, is a wooded islet, called Isle Maree, on which may be
seen the ruins of a monastery, "in days of yore," says our guide
book, "an oasis of learning in the desert of heathenism." Tradition
has it that the waters of a well on this little island (mayhap
another Tobair Moire or Mary's Well!) cured insanity--a tradition
which the gentle Quaker poet Whittier has embalmed in these lines:
Calm on the breast of Isle Maree
A little Well reposes:
A shadow woven of the oak
And willow o'er it closes,
And whoso bathes therein his brow,
With care or madness burning,
Feels once again his healthful thought
And sense of peace returning.
Life's changes vex, its discords stun,
Its glaring sunshine blindeth;
And blest is he who on his way
That fount of healing findeth!
I suspect that Loch Maree is an English corruption of the Gaelic Loch
Mairi (Loch Mary or Mary's Loch). The monks were ever and everywhere
devout clients of the Blessed Mary. It is not at all unlikely,
therefore, that the community of monks who anciently made their home
in this romantic spot named both the loch and the little isle on
which they built their monastery after their Heavenly Patroness.
On leaving Loch Maree the road follows the bed of a brook for some
distance up a dark glen. On either hand are "rising mountains red
with heather bells," on the slopes of which the hardy Highland sheep
are grazing. Once the summit of the ridge is gained, it is down hill
to Achnasheen, where we take the train for Inverness. Our way for
several miles lies through a wilderness, but all at once we come upon
a lovely strath, in as high a state of cultivation as any district we
have seen in the Lowlands or even in England. It looks all the more
beautiful by contrast with the barren and desolate region through
which we have just passed. The name of it I cannot for the moment
recall. But the valley itself as I saw it, with the bloom of summer
upon it, and the light of the westering sun, is vividly present to my
imagination.
Inverness, at the mouth of the River Ness, is, after Edinburgh, the
handsomest city in Scotland. Prof. Blackie sings its praises in the
following sonnet:
Some sing of Rome, and some of Florence; I
Will sound thy Highland praise, fair Inverness;
And till some worthier bard thy thanks may buy,
Hope for the greater, but not spurn the less.
All things that make a city fair are thine,
The rightful queen and sovereign of this land
Of bens and glens, and valiant men, who shine
Brightest in Britain's glory roll, and stand
Best bulwarks of her bounds--wide-circling sweep
Of rich green slopes and brown empurpled brae,
And flowering mead, and far inwinding bay,
Temple and tower are thine, and castled keep,
And ample stream, that round fair gardened isles
Rolls its majestic current, wreathed in smiles.
Scotland, as a glance at a map of the globe will show, is several
degrees farther north than Nova Scotia. Up here at Inverness, during
the first week of August, the twilight lasts till after 10 p.m.
Towards the end of June, when the day is at its longest, the sun does
no more than dip for a few hours below the horison, and at no time of
the night does its light fade away altogether from the northern sky.
Four miles from Inverness is Culloden Moor. But we visit not that
"field of the dead" so fraught with saddening memories to every
Highlander.
Leaving the capital of the Highlands, we go by boat to Fort William
through the Caledonian Canal. This passage is sixty-two miles long.
There are twenty-four miles of canal, and thirty-eight of natural
lake, namely, Loch Ness (24 miles), Loch Oich (4 miles), and Loch
Lochy (10 miles). On these lochs and along the stretches of land
between them the scenery is of surpassing beauty. On either side is
a range of purple hills rising in places to a great height. Now they
close in about us as if to dispute our passage. The next moment they
fall back and form into line in the rear, keeping ward over the great
highway of waters that cleaves the land of the Scottish Gael in twain
and weds two seas together. And now Ben Nevis (4,406 ft.) looms afar
off on the left, lording it over all the hills. At his feet and
under his very shadow stands Fort William, known to the old folk as
An Gearristan. Along the plain below rolls the Lochy River till it
empties its waters into Loch Linnhe. Those glens that lie at the
foot of the mountain range northeastward from Ben Nevis are Ruaidh
and Spean, along the rivers of the same name. And this is Lochaber,
"synonym for an exile's wail." Children we of those sad-eyed exiles,
is it any wonder that our hearts beat more quickly as we gaze on the
heather-clad hills now rising before us? Even we, of the third
generation, still feel within us something of their heart-hunger for
the old home they loved so well--the heart-hunger which found a voice
and still finds an echo in that saddest of sad refrains,
Lochaber, Lochaber, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.
The Highlands, and the islands on the west of Scotland, are to-day
but sparsely populated. A hundred years ago these lovely straths and
glens were filled with people. Even the braes and moorlands, now so
bare and barren, yielded a frugal livelihood to a hardy race of men
whose wants were few and tastes most simple. To-day whole districts
are given over to sheep and deer.
In Highland glens 'tis far too oft observed,
That man is chased away and game preserved.
So wrote the Hon. John Bright, in blunt but honest English fashion.
More pathetic is the tale of desolation as told in Gaelic verse--in
lines of exquisite tenderness and beauty--by one who is a native of
those glens and "to the manner born"--one who has in our own day
successfully wooed the Highland Muse "'mang the bonnie Highland
heather"--Macleod, the spirited bard of Skye. I quote two or three
stanzas from his poem, Anns a Ghleann 'san Robh Mi Og:
Tha na fardaichean 'n an fasaich
Far an d'araicheadh na seoid,
Far'm bu chridheil fuaim an gaire,
Far'm bu chairdeal iad mun bhord;
Far a fhaigheadh coigreach baigh,
Agus anrach bochd a lon;
Ach cha'n fhaigh iad sin's an am so
Anns a' ghleann's an robh mi og.
Chaochail maduinn ait ar n-oige
Mar an ceo air bharr nam beann,
Tha ar cairdean 's ar luchd-eolais
Air a fogradh bhos us thall;
Tha cuid eile dbuibh nach gluais,
Tha'n na cadal buan fodh'n fhod,
'Bha gun uaill, gun fhuath, gun anthlachd,
Anns a' ghleann's an robh iad og.
Mo shoraidh leis gach cuairteig,
Leis gach bruachaig agus cos:
Mu'n tric an robh mi 'cluaineis
'N am 'bhi buachailleachd nam bo--
'Nuair a thig mo reis gu 'ceann,
Agus feasgar fann mo lo,
B'e mo mhiann a bhi's an am sin
Anns a' ghleann's an robh mi og.
The song has been done into English, or rather into mixed English and
broad Scotch, but it has lost somewhat in the rendering. The
foregoing stanzas run thus in the translation:
Now in ruins are the dwellin's,
Where ance lived a gallant clan;
Their's was aye the friendly welcome,
Their's was aye the open han';
There the stranger and the puir
Found a place at the fire-en';
Now alas! there's nane tae greet them
In my bonnie native glen.
Like the mist upon the mountain
Youth's glad morn of promise died,
And our kinsfolk and acquaintance,
They are scattered far and wide;
Some of them are sleepin' soun'
Neath the shadow of the ben,
That were ance baith leal and hearty
In their bonnie native glen.
But now fare ye weel each fountain,
Each sweet dell an' grassy brae,
Where fu' aft the kye I herded,
In my boyhood's happy day.
When life's gloamin' settles down,
An' my race is at an en',
'Tis my wish that death should find me
In my bonnie native glen.
Wherever you travel in the Western Highlands you hear Gaelic spoken.
And ever as it strikes upon your ears, there arises within you--at
least if you happen to be a Highlander yourself--the question, Will
the old tongue live on here amid the bens and glens that have echoed
with it since immemorial time? Or is it doomed to die out in this
its ancient home? It is hard to say. For my own part, I believe
Gaelic will be spoken in the Highlands so long as there are
Highlanders there. But I don't know how long that will be.
Certainly they are far fewer to-day than they were at the beginning
of the last century. And the country is becoming more and more a
mere summer resort for tourists and sportsmen. As matters stand at
present there is no future for the Highland youth in their Highland
home. On growing up to manhood and womanhood, they drift into the
cities of the Lowlands, or cross the ocean. And ever as they go,
their sad hearts echo the wailing notes of MacCrimmon's Lament, or
Lochaber No More. I wish I could share the confidence in the
ultimate repeopling of the Highlands that is expressed--perhaps
rather than felt--by the Skye bard already quoted, in the following
lines:
'S bidh fhathast a cairdean
Mar bha iad bho chian,
An' duthaich nan ardbheann
An aite nam fiadh;
Gu curanta' laidir,
Gu blath-chridheach fial,
'S an comhradh gach la
Ann an canan nam Fionn.
With the Gaelic language there also survives in the Highlands the
hospitable spirit for which Highlanders, and all Celts indeed, are
noted wherever they are found. But while the people there give of
their Highland cheer to all who visit them, they have a particularly
warm place in their hearts for "muinntir America," their kinsmen from
across the seas.
Leaving Fort William, we go by boat on Loch Linnhe to Oban. The boat
calls at several places, among them Ballachulish, at the entrance to
Loch Leven, whence we get a glimpse in the distance of Glencoe. Even
on this bright summers day the narrow pass, hemmed in by frowning
mountains, looks gloomy and dark--fitting theatre for the black and
fearful tragedy that was enacted there.
From Oban we return to Glasgow through the Trossachs, part of the way
by rail, part of the way by boat on Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, and
part of the way by coach between the lochs. The whole country
through which we pass is classic ground, familiar to every lover of
Scott. To describe the scenery of the Trossachs, therefore, after
the exquisite word-painting of it in prose and verse that we have
from the pen of Sir Walter, were as "wasteful and ridiculous excess"
as
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To add a perfume to the violet.
As I write these last words the solemn bells are tolling the
death-knell of our beloved Queen. The whole Empire mourns, and the
grief is heartfelt, for all own and feel to-day the truth of the
lines written by the worthiest poet laureate of the long and glorious
reign that is now ended,
"Her court was pure; her life serene:
God gave her peace, her land reposed;
A thousand claims to reverence closed
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen."