CALEDONIAN CANAL—DOGS—ENGLISH EXCLUSIVENESS—ENGLISH
INSENSIBILITY OF FINE SCENERY—FLORA MACDONALD AND THE PRETENDER
—HIGHLAND TRAVELLING.
We embarked early in the morning in the steamer which goes across
Scotland from sea to sea, by the half-natural, half-artificial passage
of the Caledonian canal. One long glen, as the reader knows, extends
quite through this mountainous country, and in its bosom lies a chain of
the loveliest lakes, whose extremities so nearly meet, that it seems as
if a blow of a spade should have run them together. Their different
elevations, however, made it an expensive work in the locks, and the
canal altogether cost ten times the original calculation.
I went on board with my London friend, who, from our meeting so
frequently, had now become my constant companion. The boat was crowded,
yet more with dogs than people; for every man, I think, had his brace of
terriers or his pointers, and every lady her hound or poodle, and they
were chained to every leg of a sofa, chair, portmanteau, and fixture in
the vessel. It was like a floating kennel, and every passenger was fully
occupied in keeping the peace between his own dog and his neighbor’s.
The same thing would have been a much greater annoyance in any other
country; but in Scotland the dogs are all of beautiful and thorough-bred
races, and it is a pleasure to see them. Half as many French pugs would
have been insufferable.
We opened into Loch Ness immediately, and the scenery was superb. The
waters were like a mirror; and the hills draped in mist, and rising one
or two thousand feet directly from the shore, and nothing to break the
wildness of the crags but the ruins of the constantly occurring castles,
perched like eyries upon their summits. You might have had the same
natural scenery in America, but the ruins and the thousand associations
would have been wanting; and it is this, much more than the mere beauty
of hill and lake, which makes the pleasure of travel. We ran close in to
a green cleft in the mountains on the southern shore, in which stands
one of the few old castles, still inhabited by the chief of his
clan—that of Fraser of Lovat, so well known in Scottish story. Our
object was to visit the Fall of Foyers, in sight of which it stands, and
the boat came off to the point, and gave us an hour for the excursion.
It was a pretty stroll up through the woods, and we found a cascade very
like the Turtmann in Switzerland, but with no remarkable feature which
would make it interesting in description.
I was amused after breakfast with what has always struck me on board
English steamers—the gradual division of the company into parties of
congenial rank or consequence. Not for conversation—for fellow
travellers of a day seldom become acquainted—but, as if it was a
process of crystallization, the well-bred and the half-bred, and the
vulgar, each separating to his natural neighbor, apparently from a mere
fitness of propinquity. This takes place sometimes, but rarely and in a
much less degree, on board an American steamer. There are, of course, in
England, as with us, those who are presuming and impertinent, but an
instance of it has seldom fallen under my observation. The English seem
to have an instinct of each other’s position in life. A gentleman enters
a crowd, looks about him, makes up his mind at once from whom an advance
of civility would be agreeable or the contrary, gets near the best set
without seeming to notice them, and if any chance accident brings on
conversation with his neighbor, you may be certain he is sure of his
man.
We had about a hundred persons on board, (Miss Inverarity, the singer,
among others,) and I could see no one who seemed to notice or enjoy the
lovely scenery we were passing through. I made the remark to my
companion, who was an old stager in London fashion, fifty, but still a
beau, and he was compelled to allow it, though piqued for the taste of
his countrymen. A baronet with his wife and sister sat in the corner
opposite us, and neither saw a feature of the scenery except by an
accidental glance in changing her position. Yet it was more beautiful
than most things I have seen that are celebrated, and the ladies, as my
friend said, looked like “nice persons.”
I had taken up a book while we were passing the locks at the junction of
Loch Ness and Loch Oich, and was reading aloud to my friend the
interesting description of Flora Macdonald’s heroic devotion to Prince
Charles Edward. A very lady-like girl, who sat next me, turned around as
I laid down the book, and informed me, with a look of pleased pride,
that the heroine was her grandmother. She was returning from the first
visit she had ever made to the Isle (I think of Skye,) of which the
Macdonalds were the hereditary lords, and in which the fugitive prince
was concealed. Her brother, an officer, just returned from India, had
accompanied her in her pilgrimage, and as he sat on the other side of
his sister he joined in the conversation, and entered into the details
of Flora’s history with great enthusiasm. The book belonged to the boat,
and my friend had brought it from below, and the coincidence was
certainly singular. The present chief of the Macdonalds was on board,
accompanying his relatives back to their home in Sussex; and on arriving
at Fort William, where the boat stopped for the night, the young lady
invited us to take tea with her at the inn; and for so improvised an
acquaintance, I have rarely made three friends more to my taste.
We had decided to leave the steamer at Fort William, and cross through
the heart of Scotland to Loch Lomond. My companion was very fond of
London hours, and slept late, knowing that the cart—the only conveyance
to be had in that country—would wait our time. I was lounging about the
inn, and amusing myself with listening to the Gaelic spoken by everybody
who belonged to the place, when the pleasant family with whom we had
passed the evening, drove out of the yard, (having brought their horses
down in the boat,) intending to proceed by land to Glasgow. We renewed
our adieus, on my part with the sincerest regret, and I strolled down
the road and watched them till they were out of sight, feeling that
(selfish world as it is,) there are some things that _look_ at least
like impulse and kindness—so like, that I can make out of them a very
passable happiness.
We mounted our cart at eleven o’clock, and with a bright sun, a clear,
vital air, a handsome and good-humored callant for a driver, and the
most renowned of Scottish scenery before us, the day looked very
auspicious. I could not help smiling at the appearance of my fashionable
friend sitting, with his well-poised hat and nicely-adjusted curls, upon
the springless cross-board of a most undisguised and unscrupulous
market-cart, yet in the highest good humor with himself and the world.
The boy sat on the shafts, and talked Gaelic to his horse; the mountains
and the lake, spread out before us, looked as if human eye had never
profaned their solitary beauty, and I enjoyed it all the more, perhaps,
that our conversation was of London and its delights; and the racy
scandal of the distinguished people of that great Babel amused me in the
midst of that which is most unlike it—pure and lovely nature.
Everything is seen so much better by contrast!
We crossed the head of Loch Linnhe, and kept down its eastern bank,
skirting the water by a winding road directly under the wall of the
mountains. We were to dine at Ballyhulish, and just before reaching it
we passed the opening of a glen on the opposite side of the lake, in
which lay, in a green paradise shut in by the loftiest rocks, one of the
most enviable habitations I have ever seen. I found on inquiry that it
was the house of a Highland chief, to whom Lord Dalhousie had kindly
given me a letter, but my lameness and the presence of my companion
induced me to abandon the visit; and, hailing a fishing-boat, I
dispatched my letters, which were sealed, across the loch, and we kept
on to the inn. We dined here; and I just mention, for the information of
scenery-hunters, that the mountain opposite Ballyhulish sweeps down to
the lake with a curve which is even more exquisitely graceful than that
of Vesuvius in its far-famed descent to Portici. That same inn of
Ballyhulish, by the way, stands in the midst of a scene, altogether,
that does not pass easily from the memory—a lonely and serene spot that
would recur to one in a moment of violent love or hate, when the heart
shrinks from the intercourse and observation of men.
We found the travellers’ book, at the inn, full of records of
admiration, expressed in all degrees of doggerel. People on the road
write very bad poetry. I found the names of one or two Americans, whom I
knew, and it was a pleasure to feel that my enjoyment would be
sympathized in. Our host had been a nobleman’s travelling valet, and he
amused us with his descriptions of our friends, every one of whom he
perfectly remembered. He had learned to use his eyes, at least, and had
made very shrewd guesses at the condition and tempers of his visiters.
His life, in that lonely inn, must be in sufficient contrast with his
former vocation.
We had jolted sixteen miles behind our Highland horse, but he came out
fresh for the remaining twenty of our day’s journey, and with cushions
of dried and fragrant fern, gathered and put in by our considerate
landlord, we crossed the ferry and turned eastward into the far-famed
and much boasted valley of Glencoe. The description of it must lie over
till my next letter.