especially in a mountainous country; but that afternoon and evening the
sky was in an extraordinary degree vivid and beautiful. We often stopped
in ascending the hill to look down the long reach of the glen. The road,
following the course of the river as far as we could see, the farm and
cottage hills, smooth towards the base and rocky higher up, were the sole
objects before us. This part of Glen Croe reminded us of some of the
dales of the north of England--Grisdale above Ulswater, for instance; but
the length of it, and the broad highway, which is always to be seen at a
great distance, a sort of centre of the vale, a point of reference, gives
to the whole of the glen, and each division of it, a very different
character.
At the top of the hill we came to a seat with the well-known inscription,
'Rest and be thankful.' On the same stone it was recorded that the road
had been made by Col. Wade's regiment. The seat is placed so as to
command a full view of the valley, and the long, long road, which, with
the fact recorded, and the exhortation, makes it an affecting
resting-place. We called to mind with pleasure a seat under the braes of
Loch Lomond on which I had rested, where the traveller is informed by an
inscription upon a stone that the road was made by Col. Lascelles'
regiment. There, the spot had not been chosen merely as a resting-place,
for there was no steep ascent in the highway, but it might be for the
sake of a spring of water and a beautiful rock, or, more probably,
because at that point the labour had been more than usually toilsome in
hewing through the rock. Soon after we had climbed the hill we began to
descend into another glen, called Glen Kinglas. We now saw the western
sky, which had hitherto been hidden from us by the hill--a glorious mass
of clouds uprising from a sea of distant mountains, stretched out in
length before us, towards the west--and close by us was a small lake or
tarn. From the reflection of the crimson clouds the water appeared of a
deep red, like melted rubies, yet with a mixture of a grey or blackish
hue: the gorgeous light of the sky, with the singular colour of the lake,
made the scene exceedingly romantic; yet it was more melancholy than
cheerful. With all the power of light from the clouds, there was an
overcasting of the gloom of evening, a twilight upon the hills.
We descended rapidly into the glen, which resembles the lower part of
Glen Croe, though it seemed to be inferior in beauty; but before we had
passed through one reach it was quite dark, and I only know that the
steeps were high, and that we had the company of a foaming stream; and
many a vagrant torrent crossed us, dashing down the hills. The road was
bad, and, uncertain how we should fare, we were eager and somewhat uneasy
to get forward; but when we were out of the close glen, and near to
Cairndow, as a traveller had told us, the moon showed her clear face in
the sky, revealing a spacious vale, with a broad loch and sloping corn
fields; the hills not very high. This cheerful sight put us into
spirits, and we thought it was at least no dismal place to sit up all
night in, if they had no beds, and they could not refuse us a shelter.
We were, however, well received, and sate down in a neat parlour with a
good fire.
* * * * *
_Tuesday_, _August_ 30_th_.--Breakfasted before our departure, and ate a
herring, fresh from the water, at our landlord's earnest
recommendation--much superior to the herrings we get in the north of
England. {124} Though we rose at seven, could not set off before nine
o'clock; the servants were in bed; the kettle did not boil--indeed, we
were completely out of patience; but it had always been so, and we
resolved to go off in future without breakfast. Cairndow is a single
house by the side of the loch, I believe resorted to by gentlemen in the
fishing season: it is a pleasant place for such a purpose; but the vale
did not look so beautiful as by moonlight--it had a sort of sea-coldness
without mountain grandeur. There is a ferry for foot-passengers from
Cairndow to the other side of the water, and the road along which all
carriages go is carried round the head of the lake, perhaps a distance of
three miles.
After we had passed the landing-place of the ferry opposite to Cairndow
we saw the lake spread out to a great width, more like an arm of the sea
or a great river than one of our lakes; it reminded us of the Severn at
the Chepstow passage; but the shores were less rich and the hills higher.
The sun shone, which made the morning cheerful, though there was a cold
wind. Our road never carried us far from the lake, and with the beating
of the waves, the sparkling sunshiny water, boats, the opposite hills,
and, on the side on which we travelled, the chance cottages, the coppice
woods, and common business of the fields, the ride could not but be
amusing. But what most excited our attention was, at one particular
place, a cluster of fishing-boats at anchor in a still corner of the
lake, a small bay or harbour by the wayside. They were overshadowed by
fishermen's nets hung out to dry, which formed a dark awning that covered
them like a tent, overhanging the water on each side, and falling in the
most exquisitely graceful folds. There was a monastic pensiveness, a
funereal gloom in the appearance of this little company of vessels, which
was the more interesting from the general liveliness and glancing motions
of the water, they being perfectly still and silent in their sheltered
nook.
When we had travelled about seven miles from Cairndow, winding round the
bottom of a hill, we came in view of a great basin or elbow of the lake.
Completely out of sight of the long track of water we had coasted, we
seemed now to be on the edge of a very large, almost circular, lake, the
town of Inverary before us, a line of white buildings on a low promontory
right opposite, and close to the water's edge; the whole landscape a
showy scene, and bursting upon us at once. A traveller who was riding by
our side called out, 'Can that be the Castle?' Recollecting the prints
which we had seen, we knew it could not; but the mistake is a natural one
at that distance: it is so little like an ordinary town, from the mixture
of regularity and irregularity in the buildings. With the expanse of
water and pleasant mountains, the scattered boats and sloops, and those
gathered together, it had a truly festive appearance. A few steps more
brought us in view of the Castle, a stately turreted mansion, but with a
modern air, standing on a lawn, retired from the water, and screened
behind by woods covering the sides of high hills to the top, and still
beyond, by bare mountains. Our road wound round the semicircular shore,
crossing two bridges of lordly architecture. The town looked pretty when
we drew near to it in connexion with its situation, different from any
place I had ever seen, yet exceedingly like what I imaged to myself from
representations in raree-shows, or pictures of foreign places--Venice,
for example--painted on the scene of a play-house, which one is apt to
fancy are as cleanly and gay as they look through the magnifying-glass of
the raree-show or in the candle-light dazzle of a theatre. At the door
of the inn, though certainly the buildings had not that delightful
outside which they appeared to have at a distance, yet they looked very
pleasant. The range bordering on the water consisted of little else than
the inn, being a large house, with very large stables, the county gaol,
the opening into the main street into the town, and an arched gateway,
the entrance into the Duke of Argyle's private domain.
We were decently well received at the inn, but it was over-rich in
waiters and large rooms to be exactly to our taste, though quite in
harmony with the neighbourhood. Before dinner we went into the Duke's
pleasure-grounds, which are extensive, and of course command a variety of
lively and interesting views. Walked through avenues of tall
beech-trees, and observed some that we thought even the tallest we had
ever seen; but they were all scantily covered with leaves, and the leaves
exceedingly small--indeed, some of them, in the most exposed situations,
were almost bare, as if it had been winter. Travellers who wish to view
the inside of the Castle send in their names, and the Duke appoints the
time of their going; but we did not think that what we should see would
repay us for the trouble, there being no pictures, and the house, which I
believe has not been built above half a century, is fitted up in the
modern style. If there had been any reliques of the ancient costume of
the castle of a Highland chieftain, we should have been sorry to have
passed it.
Sate after dinner by the fireside till near sunset, for it was very cold,
though the sun shone all day. At the beginning of this our second walk
we passed through the town, which is but a doleful example of Scotch
filth. The houses are plastered or rough-cast, and washed yellow--well
built, well sized, and sash-windowed, bespeaking a connexion with the
Duke, such a dependence as may be expected in a small town so near to his
mansion; and indeed he seems to have done his utmost to make them
comfortable, according to our English notions of comfort: they are fit
for the houses of people living decently upon a decent trade; but the
windows and door-steads were as dirty as in a dirty by-street of a large
town, making a most unpleasant contrast with the comely face of the
buildings towards the water, and the ducal grandeur and natural festivity
of the scene. Smoke and blackness are the wild growth of a Highland hut:
the mud floors cannot be washed, the door-steads are trampled by cattle,
and if the inhabitants be not very cleanly it gives one little pain; but
dirty people living in two-storied stone houses, with dirty sash windows,
are a melancholy spectacle anywhere, giving the notion either of vice or
the extreme of wretchedness.
Returning through the town, we went towards the Castle, and entered the
Duke's grounds by a porter's lodge, following the carriage-road through
the park, which is prettily scattered over with trees, and slopes gently
towards the lake. A great number of lime-trees were growing singly, not
beautiful in their shape, but I mention them for the resemblance to one
of the same kind we had seen in the morning, which formed a shade as
impenetrable as the roof of any house. The branches did not spread far,
nor any one branch much further than another; on the outside it was like
a green bush shorn with shears, but when we sate upon a bench under it,
looking upwards, in the middle of the tree we could not perceive any
green at all; it was like a hundred thousand magpies' nests clustered and
matted together, the twigs and boughs being so intertwined that neither
the light of the mid-day sun nor showers of hail or rain could pierce
through them. The lime-trees on the lawn resembled this tree both in
shape and in the manner of intertwisting their twigs, but they were much
smaller, and not an impenetrable shade.
The views from the Castle are delightful. Opposite is the lake, girt
with mountains, or rather smooth high hills; to the left appears a very
steep rocky hill, called Duniquoich Hill, on the top of which is a
building like a watch-tower; it rises boldly and almost perpendicular
from the plain, at a little distance from the river Arey, that runs
through the grounds. To the right is the town, overtopped by a sort of
spire or pinnacle of the church, a thing unusual in Scotland, except in
the large towns, and which would often give an elegant appearance to the
villages, which, from the uniformity of the huts, and the frequent want
of tall trees, they seldom exhibit.
In looking at an extensive prospect, or travelling through a large vale,
the Trough of the Clyde for instance, I could not help thinking that in
England there would have been somewhere a tower or spire to warn us of a
village lurking under the covert of a wood or bank, or to point out some
particular spot on the distant hills which we might look at with kindly
feelings. I well remember how we used to love the little nest of trees
out of which Ganton spire rose on the distant Wolds opposite to the
windows at Gallow Hill. The spire of Inverary is not of so beautiful a
shape as those of the English churches, and, not being one of a class of
buildings which is understood at once, seen near or at a distance, is a
less interesting object; but it suits well with the outlandish trimness
of the buildings bordering on the water; indeed, there is no one thing of
the many gathered together in the extensive circuit of the basin or vale
of Inverary, that is not in harmony with the effect of the whole place.
The Castle is built of a beautiful hewn stone, in colour resembling our
blue slates. The author-tourists have quarrelled with the architecture
of it, but we did not find much that we were disposed to blame. A castle
in a deep glen, overlooking a roaring stream, and defended by precipitous
rocks, is, no doubt, an object far more interesting; but, dropping all
ideas of danger or insecurity, the natural retinue in our minds of an
ancient Highland chieftain,--take a Duke of Argyle at the end of the
eighteenth century, let him have his house in Grosvenor Square, his
London liveries, and daughters glittering at St. James's, and I think you
will be satisfied with his present mansion in the Highlands, which seems
to suit with the present times and its situation, and that is indeed a
noble one for a modern Duke of the mountainous district of Argyleshire,
with its bare valleys, its rocky coasts, and sea lochs.
There is in the natural endowments of Inverary something akin to every
feature of the general character of the county; yet even the very
mountains and the lake itself have a kind of princely festivity in their
appearance. I do not know how to communicate the feeling, but it seemed
as if it were no insult to the hills to look on them as the shield and
enclosure of the ducal domain, to which the water might delight in
bearing its tribute. The hills near the lake are smooth, so smooth that
they might have been shaven or swept; the shores, too, had somewhat of
the same effect, being bare, and having no roughness, no woody points;
yet the whole circuit being very large, and the hills so extensive, the
scene was not the less cheerful and festive, rejoicing in the light of
heaven. Behind the Castle the hills are planted to a great height, and
the pleasure-grounds extend far up the valley of Arey. We continued our
walk a short way along the river, and were sorry to see it stripped of
its natural ornaments, after the fashion of Mr. Brown, {131} and left to
tell its tale--for it would not be silent like the river at Blenheim--to
naked fields and the planted trees on the hills. We were disgusted with
the stables, outhouses, or farm-houses in different parts of the grounds
behind the Castle: they were broad, out-spreading, fantastic, and
unintelligible buildings.
Sate in the park till the moonlight was perceived more than the light of
day. We then walked near the town by the water-side. I observed that
the children who were playing did not speak Erse, but a much worse
English than is spoken by those Highlanders whose common language is the
Erse. I went into the town to purchase tea and sugar to carry with us on
our journey. We were tired when we returned to the inn, and went to bed
directly after tea. My room was at the very top of the house--one flight
of steps after another!--but when I drew back the curtains of my window I
was repaid for the trouble of panting up-stairs by one of the most
splendid moonlight prospects that can be conceived: the whole circuit of
the hills, the Castle, the two bridges, the tower on Duniquoich Hill, and
the lake with many boats--fit scene for summer midnight festivities! I
should have liked to have seen a bevy of Scottish ladies sailing, with
music, in a gay barge. William, to whom I have read this, tells me that
I have used the very words of Browne of Ottery, Coleridge's
fellow-townsman:--
'As I have seen when on the breast of Thames
A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames,
In some calm evening of delightful May,
With music give a farewell to the day,
Or as they would (with an admired tone)
Greet night's ascension to her ebon throne.'
BROWNE'S _Britannia's Pastorals_.
* * * * *
_Wednesday_, _August_ 31_st_.--We had a long day's journey before us,
without a regular baiting-place on the road, so we breakfasted at
Inverary, and did not set off till nine o'clock, having, as usual, to
complain of the laziness of the servants. Our road was up the valley
behind the Castle, the same we had gone along the evening before.
Further up, though the plantations on the hills are noble, the valley was
cold and naked, wanting hedgerows and comfortable houses. We travelled
several miles under the plantations, the vale all along seeming to belong
almost exclusively to the Castle. It might have been better
distinguished and adorned, as we thought, by neater farm-houses and
cottages than are common in Scotland, and snugger fields with warm
hedgerows, at the same time testifying as boldly its adherence to the
chief.
At that point of the valley where the pleasure-grounds appear to end, we
left our horse at a cottage door, and turned a few steps out of the road
to see a waterfall, which roared so loud that we could not have gone by
without looking about for it, even if we had not known that there was one
near Inverary. The waterfall is not remarkable for anything but the good
taste with which it has been left to itself, though there is a
pleasure-road from the Castle to it. As we went further up the valley
the roads died away, and it became an ordinary Scotch glen, the poor
pasturage of the hills creeping down into the valley, where it was little
better for the shelter, I mean little greener than on the hill-sides; but
a man must be of a churlish nature if, with a mind free to look about, he
should not find such a glen a pleasing place to travel through, though
seeing little but the busy brook, with here and there a bush or tree, and
cattle pasturing near the thinly-scattered dwellings. But we came to one
spot which I cannot forget, a single green field at the junction of
another brook with the Arey, a peninsula surrounded with a close row of
trees, which overhung the streams, and under their branches we could just
see a neat white house that stood in the middle of the field enclosed by
the trees. Before us was nothing but bare hills, and the road through
the bare glen. A person who has not travelled in Scotland can scarcely
imagine the pleasure we have had from a stone house, though fresh from
the workmen's hands, square and sharp; there is generally such an
appearance of equality in poverty through the long glens of Scotland,
giving the notion of savage ignorance--no house better than another, and
barns and houses all alike. This house had, however, other
recommendations of its own; even in the fertile parts of Somersetshire it
would have been a delicious spot; here, ''Mid mountain wild set like a
little nest,' it was a resting-place for the fancy, and to this day I
often think of it, the cottage and its green covert, as an image of
romance, a place of which I have the same sort of knowledge as of some of
the retirements, the little valleys, described so livelily by Spenser in
his Fairy Queen.
We travelled on, the glen now becoming entirely bare. Passed a miserable
hut on a naked hill-side, not far from the road, where we were told by a
man who came out of it that we might refresh ourselves with a dram of
whisky. Went over the hill, and saw nothing remarkable till we came in
view of Loch Awe, a large lake far below us, among high mountains--one
very large mountain right opposite, which we afterwards found was called
Cruachan. The day was pleasant--sunny gleams and a fresh breeze; the
lake--we looked across it--as bright as silver, which made the islands,
three or four in number, appear very green. We descended gladly, invited
by the prospect before us, travelling downwards, along the side of the
hill, above a deep glen, woody towards the lower part near the brook; the
hills on all sides were high and bare, and not very stony: it made us
think of the descent from Newlands into Buttermere, though on a wider
scale, and much inferior in simple majesty.
After walking down the hill a long way we came to a bridge, under which
the water dashed through a dark channel of rocks among trees, the lake
being at a considerable distance below, with cultivated lands between.
Close upon the bridge was a small hamlet, {134} a few houses near
together, and huddled up in trees--a very sweet spot, the only retired
village we had yet seen which was characterized by 'beautiful' wildness
with sheltering warmth. We had been told at Inverary that we should come
to a place where we might give our horse a feed of corn, and found on
inquiry that there was a little public-house here, or rather a hut 'where
they kept a dram.' It was a cottage, like all the rest, without a
sign-board. The woman of the house helped to take the horse out of
harness, and, being hungry, we asked her if she could make us some
porridge, to which she replied that 'we should get that,' and I followed
her into the house, and sate over her hearth while she was making it. As
to fire, there was little sign of it, save the smoke, for a long time,
she having no fuel but green wood, and no bellows but her breath. My
eyes smarted exceedingly, but the woman seemed so kind and cheerful that
I was willing to endure it for the sake of warming my feet in the ashes
and talking to her. The fire was in the middle of the room, a crook
being suspended from a cross-beam, and a hole left at the top for the
smoke to find its way out by: it was a rude Highland hut, unadulterated
by Lowland fashions, but it had not the elegant shape of the ferry-house
at Loch Ketterine, and the fire, being in the middle of the room, could
not be such a snug place to draw to on a winter's night.
We had a long afternoon before us, with only eight miles to travel to
Dalmally, and, having been told that a ferry-boat was kept at one of the
islands, we resolved to call for it, and row to the island, so we went to
the top of an eminence, and the man who was with us set some children to
work to gather sticks and withered leaves to make a smoky fire--a signal
for the boatman, whose hut is on a flat green island, like a sheep
pasture, without trees, and of a considerable size: the man told us it
was a rabbit-warren. There were other small islands, on one of which was
a ruined house, fortification, or small castle: we could not learn
anything of its history, only a girl told us that formerly gentlemen
lived in such places. Immediately from the water's edge rose the
mountain Cruachan on the opposite side of the lake; it is woody near the
water and craggy above, with deep hollows on the surface. We thought it
the grandest mountain we had seen, and on saying to the man who was with
us that it was a fine mountain, 'Yes,' he replied, 'it is an excellent
mountain,' adding that it was higher than Ben Lomond, and then told us
some wild stories of the enormous profits it brought to Lord Breadalbane,
its lawful owner. The shape of Loch Awe is very remarkable, its outlet
being at one side, and only about eight miles from the head, and the
whole lake twenty-four miles in length. We looked with longing after
that branch of it opposite to us out of which the water issues: it seemed
almost like a river gliding under steep precipices. What we saw of the
larger branch, or what might be called the body of the lake, was less
promising, the banks being merely gentle slopes, with not very high
mountains behind, and the ground moorish and cold.