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Flowerdale, Gairlocu, Ross-shire. 
 
Scottish Pictures 
 
 IDvawii with ||>cn anb [pencil 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL G. GREEN, D.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF ‘FRENCH PICTURES,’ ‘PICTURES FROM THE GERMAN FATHERLAND,’ ETC. 
 
 NEW EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 Afton Water. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 
 56 Paternoster Row, and 164 Piccadilly 
 1886 
 
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 A FRIEND who read these pages while passing through the press suggested 
 that the brighter side of a visit to Scotland is too exclusively given ; 
 that more stress ought to have been laid on the probabilities of bad 
 weather, and the miseries of a ‘ Scotch mist ; ’ that a word of warning 
 might not have been misplaced as to the dearness of Highland hotels, and 
 the high rates charged for posting ; and that English readers might have 
 been put on their guard as to the uncompromising temper and blunt address 
 of some with whom they would have to do. Well, all these points have to 
 be considered ; and yet, with every drawback, the delight remains. Even 
 broken weather has its intervals, the brighter and more exhilarating for the 
 storm or mist that has preceded ; while no lover of the sublime and beautiful 
 would willingly exchange the grandeurs and terrors of the mountain gloom, 
 even for days of unclouded sunshine. But, as a matter of fact, it may be 
 asserted from the experience of many a tour, the weather is seldom or nevei 
 so bad for long together as absolutely to prevent, or even greatly to injure, 
 enjoyment. Then as to the other criticisms : it must be admitted that, unless 
 a traveller is very wary and thrifty, he will not find a tour in Scotland the 
 most economical form of enjoyment. Something is to be said in excuse for 
 high charges, when the season is necessarily so short ; yet things are some- 
 how much the same out of the season, when there has been no competitive 
 rush of tourists. There is room for improvement in some places that might 
 be mentioned ; and it is satisfactory to learn, on the high authority of Mr. 
 J. B. Baddeley, 1 that the Scottish hotel system is decidedly improving, in 
 
 1 The Northern Highlands and Islands (‘Thorough Guide’ Series). London, 1883, p. xiii. 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 this and other respects. For those who do not care to travel from place to 
 place, the great Hydropathic establishments in almost every popular resort 
 afford attractions hardly anywhere to be exceeded. 
 
 It is no part of our business to institute comparisons between Scotland 
 and other countries in their attraction for tourists. We can but say that 
 it is something to be able to travel where there is no sea to cross, no 
 Custom House to annoy, no foreign tongue with whose difficulties to grapple, 
 no distraction to interfere with the calm enjoyment of the Lord’s Day ; where 
 there is enough of difference from ordinary English life to give the charm of 
 novelty, with enough of resemblance to show that we are still at home. 
 The climate, too, in every bracing quality must be declared unsurpassed, 
 even in the Alps ; and there can hardly be a fresher, fuller glow of health 
 than that which is imparted by a stay at Strathpeffer, or at Castleton in 
 Braemar ; while such marine resorts as Rothesay, Whiting Bay, Nairn, and 
 many others, combine with these invigorating elements all the charms of 
 the seaside for those who welcome its purer enjoyments apart from the 
 intrusion of a noisy crowd. Of the delights of the Western Coast, with its 
 sea lochs, cliffs and islands, to all who love the sea, and can enjoy a cruise, 
 even when the waters are stormy, enough, but not too much, has been said 
 in the following pages. Mr. William Black has portrayed for multitudes of 
 readers the glories of yachting excursions amid these scenes ; and even to 
 the many who must confine themselves to the steamers which leave the 
 Clyde for these coasts continually all the summer through, there is hardly 
 a form of enjoyment more exquisite or more health-giving. In this respect 
 at least, a Scottish excursion favourably compares with any other attainable 
 in these latitudes. 
 
 The following pages contain memorials of several tours in Scotland, 
 undertaken at different periods of the year ; and it may honestly be certified 
 that some of the most delightful of these were made ‘ out of the season.’ 
 In spring, the snow lingers on the mountain summits long after the valleys 
 are bright with verdure and with flowers, and many a prospect in April and 
 May is Alpine in its variety and splendour. June is generally a month of 
 exquisite beauty in the Highlands, but there are few strangers to behold 
 the loveliness. We English people have mostly to defer our holidays until 
 the year has passed its prime, and, save for the blossoming heather, the 
 charms of wood and moor and mountain glen are already beginning to wane. 
 The ‘ swift steamers ’ and coaches, indeed, are in many cases not placed upon 
 their several routes until July, and the railway trains ‘out of the season’ are 
 provokingly slow. 
 
 These public conveyances, while of course the most economical, are 
 also generally the most enjoyable means of effecting a tour in Scotland 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 vii 
 
 except, indeed, for the pedestrian, who, in noble independence, can strike up 
 mountain glens or lose himself on untrodden heights at his own sweet will. 
 But the truth is that the coach routes, and to some extent the railroads 
 also, traverse much of the finest scenery of the country. The admirable 
 roads constructed through the Highlands by General Wade’s soldiers in the 
 early part of the last century (1726-1737) were but the beginning of a system 
 by which the Highlands have been pierced in almost all directions, and wild 
 regions opened up once declared inaccessible. On General Wade’s bridge 
 over the river Tay, a somewhat grandiloquent inscription was placed in good 
 Latin, which may be Englished thus : 
 
 ‘ Behold with wonder this Military Way, extended by various Passes 250 miles beyond the 
 Roman limits : triumphing over fens and morasses ; levelled through rocks and mountains, and 
 carried on, as you now see it, in spite of the River Tay (indignanti Tavo). This arduous work, 
 G. Wade, commander of the forces in Scotland, brought to perfection by his great judgment and 
 the ten years’ labour of his soldiers in the year of our Lord 1738. Of such mighty efficacy are 
 the Royal Auspices of George the Second ! ’ 
 
 A more expressive tribute to what was really a great enterprise was in 
 the distich, rather Hibernian than Scottish: 
 
 ‘ Had you seen these roads before they were made, 
 
 You’d lift up your hands and bless General Wade!’ 
 
 The railroads, too, in some of the fairest and grandest scenes of 
 Scotland, cannot be said even by the most determined votaries of the 
 picturesque to have destroyed the charm. In truth, the thin line creeping 
 along the margin of some stupendous mountain, as in the Pass of Brander, or 
 along Glen Ogle, or between the heights encircling Strathpeffer, is altogether 
 too inconsiderable to disturb the effect of the scenery. There is nothing 
 intrusive, as there would be, for instance, in many parts of the English Lake 
 District ; while, for the travellers themselves, there can scarcely be journeys 
 more replete with charm than the railway routes from Callander to Oban, 
 or from Dingwall to Strome Ferry. From the Highland Railway, especially 
 in its downward slope, where it skirts the river Spey, a succession of most 
 beautiful views may be, only too rapidly, obtained. On the whole, the tourist 
 has reason to be grateful for the facilities provided, and the votary of the 
 beautiful may restrain his protest. 
 
 Yet of course the paths which lie away from the possibilities of travel 
 by railroad or by coach, will to many form the greatest attraction, as they 
 have the most inexhaustible variety. The Highlands ot Scotland have 
 always something new, in every direction, no matter how often the visitor 
 may have explored their recesses. Few persons who have not travelled in 
 this country have any idea of the immense multitude of the mountain 
 heights, of the lochs and glens and streams. Every one knows about 
 Ben Nevis and Ben Lomond ; but there are more than twenty mountains 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 viii 
 
 intervening between these two in height. Lochnagar has been made familiar 
 b' r Byron’s poem and by association with Her Majesty’s Highland home: 
 Cairno-orm, again, is known to have something to do with pebbles ; but who, 
 except those who have wandered among the Grampians, have any idea of 
 Brae-Riach or Ben Muich Dhui ? Yet these, with Ben Lawers, Ben More, 
 Ben Cruachan, Schiehallion, Ben Wyvis and Ben Vorlich, all exceed Ben 
 Lomond in height, and all have grandeurs and beauties of their own. Then 
 there are the countless lower hill-ranges, often surpassing their mightier 
 
 John Knox ( from the Painting in the National Portrait Gallery). 
 
 brethren in grace of outline and in woodland richness. The ‘ waters ’ that 
 spring from their slopes and become tributary to one or other of the great 
 rivers that seek the German Ocean — the Forth, the d ay, the Dee, the Spey 
 — have many a nook of inexpressible charm, while the broad ‘straths,’ through 
 which these rivers pursue the lower part of their course, are lovely in their 
 luxuriance. Many a loch and lochlct too, besides those which every one 
 visits, have beauties little if at all inferior ; and how numerous are these 
 sheets ot water may be seen in the Sportsman' s Guide , which contains the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 names of 1037 separate lochs — many of them, no doubt, mere tarns among 
 the hills — and of 1166 rivers, large and small. In the Lowlands also there 
 are some Highland beauties, as shown farther on in this book, with many a 
 charm peculiar to themselves. In fact, it is impossible to select a tour 
 
 which shall not have its fascinations to lovers of the beautiful. Of the 
 
 historical and antiquarian interest attached to many spots, little need be said. 
 Some of these associations will be found touched upon in the following 
 
 pages ; but the topic would require a volume to itself. A few renowned 
 
 names, ancient and modern, necessarily occur in any book that treats on 
 Scotland; Knox and Scott and Burns could not fail of mention, nor, on 
 other grounds, Mary Queen ot Scots, nor the young ‘ Pretender.’ But such 
 references are fragmentary, and connected chiefly with localities that suggest 
 the names. 
 
 Nor have we attempted to sketch the character of the Scottish people, 
 with personal anecdotes and reminiscences. Other writers have done this 
 with distinguished success ; and after Dean Ramsay, and one or two who 
 have followed him, there can be little to say. This volume of Pictures is 
 intended to deal chiefly with external aspects, such as might strike any 
 observant traveller. No one indeed can fail to be struck with certain salient 
 peculiarities, such as a bluntness and independence, which mean not rude- 
 ness, but genuine respect to the worthy, with a caution that is not cunning 
 because it is so frank, and withal a genuine, kindly humour. High authori- 
 ties, indeed, have denied to Caledonians the credit of wit. Has it not been 
 said, ‘ It requires a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotchman ? ’ 
 ‘Maybe,’ retorted one, ‘ it was an English joke that Mr. Smith was meaning! ’ 
 A high intelligence will be found in all classes — the result in part of the 
 school system which has prevailed in Scotland through many generations, 
 and in part ot the Biblical training of the people by the ministrations 
 of their churches, and the general familiarity with the dialectics of eccle- 
 siastical and theological controversy. This familiarity no doubt has its 
 unfavourable side : but, on the whole, it has deepened seriousness and 
 quickened intelligence. A stranger in one of the towns soon feels in little 
 things that he has reached a higher level. The first man of whom he asks 
 his way will probably direct him according to the points of the compass. ‘ Go 
 a hundred yards farther to the west: then take the turn to the north,’ and 
 so on. On the other hand a London cabman directed to set down on 
 the north side of St. Paul’s Churchyard, is almost sure to ask, ‘ Which side 
 is that, right or left?' No Scotch driver would eyer be at such a loss in 
 Edinburgh or Glasgow, Dundee or Aberdeen. 
 
 The reader may probably expect to find the volume, like others treating of 
 Scotland, embellished with peculiarities of dialect. These have, however, been 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE . 
 
 purposely disregarded. Masters of the art, like Burns, Scott, or Dr. George 
 Macdonald, may indulge this freedom. An Englishman generally fails ; and 
 to a practised Scottish eye, the ‘ dialect ’ appears only a series of awkward 
 misspellings. What is gained by writing lang for long , aits for oats, or 
 even fa for fall? Possibly the maybe , in the little criticism just quoted on 
 Sydney Smith, ought to have been aiblins ; but it is best to write only in 
 a tongue of which one is sure. At the same time there are words in 
 
 o 
 
 constant Scottish use which can never sound even to our ears quite like their 
 English synonyms. A brae is more than a slope , and a loch is different some- 
 how from a lake (apart from the application of the word to an inlet of the 
 sea) ; laverock is a more musical name than lark , Untie than linnet ; gowan 
 than daisy : the birks of Aberfeldy suggest to us more than the Aberfeldy 
 birch-trees ; while the fond charm of the bonnie wee thing has almost 
 evaporated in little and pretty. We do not pretend to account for this; the 
 fact is certainly so. We shall not soon forget the sense of strangeness with 
 which we once saw the word brae applied to a steep, unsavoury street in the 
 closest part of Glasgow. It seemed a desecration ! 
 
 But on the tempting subject of language we must not now enter. 
 One interesting application of the topic will be the elucidation of many 
 hundreds of proper names ; but for this the excellent Glossaries given by 
 Murray, Black, or Baddeley must be consulted. There is a history in these 
 Gaelic and Norse appellations ; as interesting and suggestive in its way as 
 Ave have in another set of words relating to articles in common use, and 
 pointing to olden connections between Scotland and F ranee ; an association to 
 which perhaps few give any thought when they call an earthen dish an 
 ashet (assiette), or speak of a leg of mutton as a jigget (gigot). 
 
 It only remains to express the cordial acknowledgments of the 
 writer and of the 'bract Society to Mr. G. W. Wilson, of Aberdeen, for 
 advice and help in the preparation of the pictorial part of this volume, as 
 well as for the free use of photographs from his collection. Among these 
 may be specified two views of Glencoe, one of the summit of Ben 
 Nevis, with a series of mountain and lake-scenes from Sutherlandshire, in 
 the last chapter ; and a recent picture of Lerwick, Shetland. Messrs. 
 Valentine & Co., Dundee, have also with great kindness given for this work 
 the use of their excellent photographs of Elowerclale, Gairloch (frontispiece), 
 as also of the Trossachs (p. 94), of Oban (p. 64), and of John o’ Groat’s 
 (P- 1 930- 
 
 -r 
 

Lasswade Church, 
 
Balmoral from the Meadows. 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Flowerdale, Gairloch, Ross-shire ..... Frontispiece 
 
 Aft on Water .......... Title 
 
 Carron Side. .......... v 
 
 John Knox ( from the painting in the National Portrait Gallery ) . viii 
 
 Lasswade Church. ......... xii 
 
 Balmoral from the Meadows ....... xiii 
 
 Ailsa Craig ...... xv 
 
 ACROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 Bothwell Castle, on the Clyde (■ frontispiece ) 
 
 pag 
 
 ? 2 
 
 Abbotsford : the Drawing-Room 
 
 
 ■page 15 
 
 The Braes of Yarrow .... 
 
 
 3 
 
 Abbotsford : the Study 
 
 
 • i5 
 
 Prestonpans ...... 
 
 
 3 
 
 Abbotsford : the Library 
 
 
 ]6 
 
 Berwick-on-Tweed ..... 
 
 
 4 
 
 Abbotsford : the Armoury . 
 
 
 . 16 
 
 Dunbar Castle ...... 
 
 
 5 
 
 Hawthornden. 
 
 
 18 
 
 The Bass Rock : Waiting for the Homeward Bound 
 
 7 
 
 Roslin Chapel, with the ’Prentice 
 
 Pillar 
 
 20 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle’s Grave ; Haddington Church : 
 
 ‘ the 
 
 
 Habbie’s Howe 
 
 
 o •? 
 
 Lamp of Lothian.’ .... 
 
 
 9 
 
 Stonebyres Falls. 
 
 
 2 5 
 
 Tantallon Castle ..... 
 
 
 lO 
 
 The Auld Brig o’ Doon, Alloway, 
 
 Ayrshire 
 
 27 
 
 Colonel Gardiner’s Monument . 
 
 
 i i 
 
 The Martyrs’ Grave, Irongray 
 
 
 . 28 
 
 Melrose Abbey, from the River . 
 
 
 12 
 
 Covenanters’ Monument . 
 
 
 29 
 
 Dryburgh Abbey ..... 
 
 
 13 
 
 On the Upper Doon . 
 
 
 • 30 
 
 Abbotsford ...... 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 
XIV 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 llolyroocl Palace and Chapel, with Arthur’s Seat page 32 
 
 Edinburgh, from 1 Rest and be Thankful ’ . . 33 
 
 Birthplace of Lord Brougham, Cowgate, Edinburgh 34 
 Staircase, Holyrood ..... 34 
 
 Castle and Grassmarket, Edinburgh . . -36 
 
 Edinburgh University ..... 37 
 
 Magdalen Chapel, Cowgate, Edinburgh . . 38 
 
 Signing the Covenant, Greyfriars’ Churchyard . 40 
 
 Riddel’s Court, Edinburgh, where Hume began to 
 write his History. . . . . . 41 
 
 John Knox’s Study ...... 41 
 
 Knox’s Grave. ...... 42 
 
 The Covenant Stone ...... 42 
 
 BY THE CLYDE, TO 
 
 Arran ........ 58 
 
 Entrance to Fingal's Cave .... 59 
 
 The Clyde, Dumbarton . . . . .60 
 
 Loch Ranza ... ... 62 
 
 Goat Fell, from Brodick Bay . . . -63 
 
 Oban ........ 64 
 
 Iona ......... 66 
 
 The Shore of Iona ...... 68 
 
 Fingal’s Cave . . . . . . 71 
 
 Fingal’s Cave, from the Interior ... 73 
 
 Scene of the Massacre, Glencoe . . . -74 
 
 The Sisters, Glencoe ..... 75 
 
 Glencoe : a ‘ Wild Day ’ . . . . -76 
 
 Head of West Bow, Edinburgh, with the Assembly 
 
 Hall ; and old houses (now removed) , . page 44 
 
 Covenanters’ Monument, Greyfriars’ Churchyard 45 
 Craigcrook Castle, residence of Jeffery . . .46 
 
 The Scott Monument ..... 47 
 
 Knox’s Pulpit ....... 49 
 
 Choir of St. Giles’s Church, Edinburgh . . 50 
 
 View from the Burns Monument, Calton Hill . 51 
 
 Queen Margaret’s Bower, Linlithgow . . 53 
 
 Queen Margaret’s Bower, Linlithgow (Interior) . 53 
 
 St. Michael’s Well, Linlithgow ... 54 
 
 Glasgow Cathedral, from the South-east . . 55 
 
 Glasgow University, with the projected Spire . 56 
 
 Ben Nevis ....... 7^ 
 
 Section of the Ascent, with the successive stations . 79 
 
 Diagrams of the Summit, showing the positions of 
 the huts and instruments . . . . -79 
 
 Plan of the route up the Mountain ... 80 
 
 Observatory Station on the Summit of Ben Nevis . 81 
 
 Marscow from Scuir-na-Gillean ... 84 
 
 Loch Coruisk ....... 86 
 
 The Quiraing, Skye ..... 88 
 
 Scene in the Hebrides : 1 Return from the Shieling’ 89 
 Huts in Uig, Lewis, inhabited 1859 ... 90 
 
 An Open-air Service in Skye . . . 91 
 
 Scottish Crofter at Work. .... 92 
 
 THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 THROUGH THE 
 
 WESTERN HIGHLANDS. 
 
 
 Through the Trossachs ..... 
 
 94 
 
 Ben Venue ...... 
 
 IOI 
 
 ‘ The deep Trossachs’ wildest Nook ’ 
 
 95 
 
 In Glen Dochart ..... 
 
 103 
 
 Ben Arthur, or ‘ the Cobbler ’ . . . . 
 
 96 
 
 Head of Loch Awe and Kilchurn Castle 
 
 106 
 
 ‘ The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill ’ 
 
 97 
 
 Lower Fall of Foyers .... 
 
 108 
 
 Loch Katrine, with Ellen’s Isle .... 
 
 98 
 
 Inverness ....... 
 
 . 109 
 
 The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine 
 
 99 
 
 Loch Maree, with Ben Slioch. 
 
 1 10 
 
 THE CENTRAL 
 
 HIGHLANDS : 
 
 STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 
 Relics of Birnam Wood 
 
 
 
 I 12 
 
 Mountain Pass in the Grampians 
 
 132 
 
 View from Stirling Castle 
 
 
 
 I 13 
 
 Loch Ruicht and Cairngorm .... 
 
 I 33 
 
 The Bore Stone, Bannockburn 
 
 
 
 • I 14 
 
 The Grampians as seen from Aviemore : Rothie- 
 
 
 Windings of the Forth . 
 
 
 
 I l 6 
 
 murchus Forest as seen from the middle distance 
 
 157 
 
 Stilling Castle . 
 
 
 
 I l 8 
 
 Elgin Cathedral ...... 
 
 139 
 
 Wallace Monument, Stirling . 
 
 
 
 I 19 
 
 On the Findhorn ...... 
 
 141 
 
 Dunblane Cathedral . 
 
 
 
 . 120 
 
 On the Findhorn ...... 
 
 142 
 
 Carse of Gowrie 
 
 
 
 120 
 
 Dulsie Bridge ...... 
 
 142 
 
 Larches at Dunkeld . 
 
 
 
 122 
 
 View from the Ladies’ Walk, Grantown, Speyside 
 
 144 
 
 Loch Turrit .... 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 Cawdor Castle ...... 
 
 145 
 
 Hermitage Bridge, Dunkeld. 
 
 
 
 • 125 
 
 Mouth of Nairn Harbour in the Flood of 1829 
 
 146 
 
 Birks of Aberfeldy 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 Culloden Moor ....•• 
 
 i 47 
 
 Glen Tilt. 
 
 
 
 . 130 
 
 Scotch Fisher-Folk 
 
 148 
 
 Bruar Water 
 
 
 
 
 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 xv 
 
 THE EASTERN COAST AND DEESIDE. 
 
 Curling - page 150 
 
 Banks of the Devon, near Rumbling Bridge . 1 5 1 
 
 Loch Leven ....... 152 
 
 Royal Palace, Dunfermline . . 153 
 
 St. Andrew’s Cathedral : West Front . . 156 
 
 Priory Gateway, St. Andrews . . . .157 
 
 The Tay Bridge, prior to December 28, 1879 . 158 
 
 Dundee . . . . . . . 1 59 
 
 Triumphal Arch, Dundee . . . . 159 
 
 Bell Rock Lighthouse . . . . .160 
 
 Dr. Guthrie’s House, Loch Lee 
 
 . page 1 6 1 
 
 Loch Lee Churchyard . . . . 
 
 . 162 
 
 King’s College, Aberdeen 
 
 163 
 
 Locbnagar ...... 
 
 . 166 
 
 Balmoral Castle from the River 
 
 169 
 
 Scene in the Grampians : Stormy 
 
 . 172 
 
 Linn of Dee ...... 
 
 173 
 
 Bridge over Sluggan Water, near Braemar . 
 
 ■ >75 
 
 The 1 Cauldron ; ’ Bullers of Buchan 
 
 >77 
 
 TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 Sunday on the Northern Coast : Going Home . 180 
 
 Kirkabister Lighthouse . . . . . 181 
 
 St. Duthus’ Church, Tain ..... 181 
 
 ‘ Murray’s Pulpit,’ Tain . . . . . 182 
 
 Aultnagealgach, Sutlierlandshire . . . .183 
 
 Cape Wrath . ...... 184 
 
 Suilven-Assynt, near Lochinver .... 186 
 
 Stack Polly, from Loch Lurgan, Coigach, West 
 
 Sutherland . . . . . . .187 
 
 Loch Sheanaskaig, West Sutherlandshirc . . 188 
 
 Handa Island : above Scourie Bay, Sutherlandshire 189 
 Badgall Bay, Edrachillis ; on the Western Coast 190 
 
 Snroo Cave, near Durness ; on the Northern Coast 191 
 Dunrobin Castle . . . . . . 192 
 
 ‘John o’ Groats’ ...... 193 
 
 Fair Isle ; the ‘ Sheep Craig ’ . . . . 197 
 
 Fair Isle ; ‘ Sheldie Cliff ’ ..... 107 
 
 The Holm of Noss. ..... 19S 
 
 ‘ Giant’s Leg,’ Noss, Shetland . . . .199 
 
 The Drongs, Shetland ..... 200 
 
 Lerwick, Shetland . . . . . .201 
 
 The Brough of Mousa ..... 202 
 
 St. Ninian’s Cave, Wigtonshire .... 206 
 
 Ailsa Craig. 
 
‘ In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one epoch ; we may say, it 
 contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor barren 
 country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings ; a people in the last state of 
 rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce 
 barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what 
 they fleeced from these poor drudges ; but obliged, as the Columbian Republics are at this 
 day, to make of every alteration a revolution ; no way of changing a ministry but by 
 hanging the old ministers on gibbets : this is a historical spectacle of no very singular 
 significance ! “Bravery” enough, I do not doubt ; fierce fighting in abundance: but not 
 braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors ; whose exploits 
 we have not found worth dwelling on ! It is a country as yet without a soul : nothing 
 developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now at the Reformation, 
 the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. 
 A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high ; high as Heaven, 
 yet attainable from Earth ; — whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but 
 a Member of Christ’s visible Church ; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man ! ’ 
 
 ‘ This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really call a resurrection as 
 from death. It was not a smooth business ; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at 
 that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price ; — as life is. 
 The people began to live: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs 
 soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry ; James Watt, David Hume, 
 Walter Scott, Robert Burns : I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's 
 core of every one of these persons and phenomena ; I find that without the Reforma- 
 tion they would not have been.’ 
 
 Carlyi.e’s Lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship, IV. 
 
ACROSS THE BORDER: 
 
 TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 D 
 
Bothwell Castle, on the Clyde. 
 
The Braes of Yarrow. 
 
 ACROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND 
 
 GLASGOW. 
 
 OR practical purposes, a pleasure tour in 
 Scotland generally begins with Edin- 
 burgh or Glasgow. Travellers are too 
 much in haste to reach the Highlands 
 to spare time for the Border, renowned 
 though it be in song and story ; or to 
 take any leisurely survey of the country 
 that lies between the last towns left on 
 the English side, and the two great 
 Scottish cities. Yet this country is worth 
 visiting in every part of it, for its own 
 sake, and for that of its memories. Draw 
 a straight line across from Greenock to 
 Leith, and south of it, from east to west, will 
 - be found much, if not most, that is associated 
 with the chief glories of Scotland. The tourist may 
 well then linger ; and it is hard to say which par- 
 ticular route will prove of the highest interest. There 
 is the Eastern line, by the coast of the Firth of Forth : 
 and the Western, which crosses the Solway Frith near Carlisle. 
 Travellers again by the latter may strike across to Edinburgh by the 
 ‘ Waverley Route,’ or may follow the course of the infant Clyde by way of 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Carstairs Junction, or may take the South-western line to Glasgow by the 
 dales of the Annan and the Nith. We have travelled by all these lines in 
 turn, and have found in every one a special charm. In picturesqueness 
 perhaps the palm must be conceded to the route by the East coast, on which, 
 from the first glimpse of Berwick-upon-Tweed, with its encircling wall, its 
 high red roofs, and its houses seeming from the railway above to be crowded 
 together on the steep river’s bank, every mile is full of charm ; especially 
 where the line is carried along the verge of the cliff, with the noble expanse 
 of the German Ocean full in view, or where, diverging inland, it passes through 
 the rich pastures and great cornfields of Haddingtonshire (or East Lothian'), 
 
 Berwick-on -Tweed. 
 
 throughout which, down to the close-cropped hedges, economising arable 
 space, everything speaks of high farming on a kindly soil. 
 
 The traveller may do worse than stay for a night, or, as the writer did 
 on one occasion, pass a quiet Sabbath, at Dunbar, with its old shattered 
 castle on a rocky brow, in which time and weather and the hand of man 
 have wrought such havoc, that it is hard to distinguish the foundations of the 
 fabric from the rugged cliff, or to decide which of the underground recesses 
 are ocean-hollowed caves, and which are ancient castle crypts. Here was 
 spent the strange sad honeymoon of Both well and Mary : and with this the 
 history of the fortress really ends, as the pile was soon afterwards reduced 
 
 1 Englishmen are often perplexed about the Lothians, especially at election-times. Is it superfluous to inform 
 some readers that Haddingtonshire is East Lothian, Linlithgowshire West Lothian, and Edinburghshire Mid Lothian? 
 
A CROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 5 
 
 to a ruin by the Queen’s half-brother, the Regent Murray. The precincts 
 of the castle now form a line recreation ground for the week-day use of the 
 people : on the Sabbath, it was observable that chains were drawn across the 
 swing-gates at the entrances — showing that we were in Scotland. The chains, 
 however, it may be remarked, were there rather by way of testimony, than 
 as a material hindrance ; not a few maceless urchins having climbed over 
 
 Dunbar Castle. 
 
 them, without let or hindrance, into the enclosure. But upon the whole, the 
 stillness and peacefulness of the day were very refreshing. I remarked here, 
 what afterwards became so noticeable in many a Scottish town, the peculiar 
 resonant tramp of feet on the pavement at the time of the services. There 
 was little or no sound of wheels to break the effect, rendered more impres- 
 sive by the contrast of the previous silence. It was pleasant to join in the 
 
6 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES . 
 
 worship of the Free Church, led by a pastor, hale though venerable, who 
 had been one of the seceders in 1843, and had ever since that stormy time 
 held on his useful way in this quiet little town. In the course of the services 
 there was a pathetic allusion to the fewness of the survivors of that great 
 conflict. Some of us remember it all so well, and it is already history ! These 
 forty-three years, it is not too much to say, have revolutionised the religious 
 life of Scotland ; not simply by the organisation and the vigorous work of 
 another ecclesiastical community, but by the new vigour inbreathed into all 
 the churches. 
 
 Much in the neighbourhood of Dunbar invited a longer stay, had it been 
 possible. To the south-east there is the undulating pastoral district of 
 Lammermoor — scene of Sir Walter Scott’s most tragic story, the localities of 
 which are duly pointed out to the visitor. Wolf’s Crag, the home of the 
 Master of Ravenswood, famous for the humours' and the devices of Caleb 
 Balderstone, is unquestionably recognisable in Fast Castle, on a wild pro- 
 montory to the east. Not far from the town again is the battle-field, where, 
 in 1650, Cromwell defeated the Scottish army, under General Leslie. Readers 
 of Carlyle’s Cromwell will recollect the careful accuracy with which the 
 locality is sketched : 
 
 ‘ The small town of Dunbar stands high and windy, looking down over 
 its herring-boats, over its grim old castle, now much honey-combed, on one 
 of those projecting rock-promontories with which that shore of the Firth of 
 Forth is niched and vandyked, as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful 
 sea ; good land too, now that the plougher understands his trade ; a grim 
 niched barrier of whinstone sheltering it from the chafings and tumblings of 
 the big blue German Ocean. Seaward, St. Abb’s Head, of whinstone, 
 bounds your horizon to the east, not very far off ; west, close by, is the 
 deep bay and fishy little village of Belhaven, the gloomy Bass and other 
 rock islets, and farther the hills of Fife and foreshadows of the Highlands 
 are visible as you look seaward. From the bottom of Belhaven Bay to 
 that of the next sea-bight St. Abb’s-ward, the town and its environs form a 
 peninsula. Along the base of which peninsula, “not much above a mile and 
 a half from sea to sea,” Oliver Cromwell’s army, on Monday, the 2nd of 
 September, 1650, stands ranked, with its tents and town behind it — in very 
 forlorn circumstances.’ 1 
 
 The description, as we know from Carlyle’s biography, was the result of 
 careful personal examination ; and in the Letters of Mrs . Carlyle we read of 
 the author’s visit, and his windy walk over the high plain. Equally striking 
 is the battle picture. ‘ “ I never saw such a charge of foot and horse,” says 
 one ; nor did I. Oliver was still near to Yorkshire Hodgson, when the shock 
 succeeded. Hodgson heard them say, “ They run ! I profess they run.” 
 And over St. Abb’s Head, and the German Ocean, just then, bursts the 
 
 1 Oliva ■ Cromwell' $ Letters and Speeches , with Elucidations. Introduction to Letters cxxxix.-cxlvi. 
 
From the painting] THE BASS ROCK : WAITING FOR THE HOMEWARD BOUND. 
 
4 CROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 9 
 
 first gleam of the level sun upon us, “ and I heard Nol say, in the words 
 of the Psalmist, ‘Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,’” or in 
 Rous’s metre, 
 
 ‘ Let God arise, and scattered 
 Let all His enemies be ; 
 
 And let all those that do Him hate 
 Before His presence flee ! ’ 
 
 ‘ Even so, the Scotch army is shivered to utter ruin ; rushes in tumultuous 
 wreck, hither, thither, to Belhaven, or, in their distraction, even to Dunbar ; 
 the chase goes as far as Haddington, led by Hacker. “The Lord General 
 
 made a halt,” says Hodgson, “and sang the hundred and seventeenth psalm,” 
 till our horse could gather for the chase. Hundred and seventeenth psalm, 
 at the foot of the Doon hill. Then we uplift it, to the tune of Bangor, or 
 some still higher score, and roll it strong and great against the sky : 
 
 ‘ 0 give ye praise unto the Lord 
 All nati-ons that be ; 
 
 Likewise ye people all, accord 
 His name to magnify ! 
 
 For great to us-ward ever are 
 His loving-kindnesses ; 
 
 His truth endures for evermore 
 The Lord O do ye bless.’ 
 
 ‘ And now, to the chase again ! ’ 
 
 The remembrance of it survives in the local popular name of the battle : 
 
IO 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES . 
 
 Tuesday s Race , from the day of the week on which it was fought, and from 
 the hurry of the flight and pursuit which followed. 
 
 Tantallon Castle. 
 
 Out at sea the Bass Rock is grandly in sight, and those who have 
 visited it describe the excursion as very pleasant. The enormous flight of 
 
. A CROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 1 1 
 
 sea-birds when disturbed by visitors or by the tiring of a gun, is very 
 wonderful. The ruins of Tantallon Castle occupy a rocky promontory nearly 
 opposite, and at a short distance from the pretty sea-bathing resort of 
 North Berwick. Apparently corresponding to the Bass Rock are the inland 
 craggy hills peculiar to this district, and termed Laws. North Berwick Law 
 is one of the most commanding of these heights. Traprain Law is another, 
 near Linton Station, inland, and not far from Hailes Castle, where Mary and 
 
 Colonel Gardiner’s Monument. 
 
 Bothwell lived for a time before the surrender of the former at Carberry 
 Hill. The country people say that the name ‘Traprain Law’ was derived 
 from this capture, as it was thereabouts that la reine was trapped. Not a 
 bad illustration of the way in which etymologies are made ! 
 
 On the way to Edinburgh the leisurely traveller may turn aside to 
 Haddington with its fine Gothic remains The town is famous as John 
 Knox’s birthplace ; and the grave of Mrs. Carlyle will, to many visitors, 
 invest the ruined abbey with a new and pathetic interest. 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Nearer Edinburgh is Preston Pans (the pans are for getting salt by 
 evaporation), where Prince Charles Stuart defeated the King’s troops 
 under Sir John Cope, on the 21st of September, 1745. It was chiefly 
 this delusive gleam of success which encouraged the Young Pretender 
 to march southward, to his ruin ; but the chief interest of the scene to 
 ourselves is that Colonel James Gardiner fell in the skirmish, for it 
 
 Melrose Abbey, from the River. 
 
 was little more. We give, on the preceding page, a sketch of his monu- 
 ment, as it stands on the field. To this day the life of Gardiner by Dr. 
 Doddridge remains one of the finest portraitures we possess of a type of 
 character very real, and happily not infrequent in our day — the brave and 
 humble-minded Christian soldier. And Sir Walter Scott, in IVaverley, has 
 done more justice to this brave God-fearing man than to some other of his 
 Puritan heroes. 
 
A CROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 Soon after leaving Preston Pans the train plunges into a tunnel, from 
 which it emerges in the ravine over which seem to tower, height beyond 
 height, the massive buildings of Edinburgh. The approach is curiously 
 unlike that to any other city ; but we must not linger in the metropolis at 
 present, for we have yet to glance at the other routes enumerated above, 
 at least as rich in their personal and historical associations, 
 
 Instead, then, of Berwick, we will 
 suppose the traveller to have chosen 
 Carlisle as his starting-point, and to 
 have- fixed upon the Waverley Route, as 
 the railway company has named it in 
 memory of Scott. After crossing and 
 recrossing the Esk, a little above the 
 Solway Firth, the line runs up Eiddisdale, undulating and beautifully wooded, 
 with glimpses of distant hills : then for mile after mile, after crossing the 
 Border at Kershopefoot, in long sweeps and curves traverses the bare 
 pastoral Cheviots, whose vast rounded summits and grassy slopes fill up the 
 whole field of view ; only a few clumps of fir-trees appearing here and there 
 at the bottom ol the dells, where scanty streams pursue their way. Just 
 before reaching Hawick, where we cross the Teviot, Branksome Tower is 
 
 Drydurgh Abbey. 
 
14 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 passed on the left ; still beyond is the Vale of Ettrick, famous for ‘ the 
 Shepherd,’ James Hogg, who was a very real personage in his day, though 
 Professor Wilson in the Nodes Ambrosiaiu ? , did his best to render his honest 
 friend a mythical being. Still farther again is the Yarrow, with its ‘ dowie 
 dens,’ famous in Scottish pastoral poetry, but better known to us in three 
 lovely poems of Wordsworth. 
 
 At Ettrick, too, lie the remains of an author whose work, now perhaps 
 little read, used to be the great ‘ Sunday book ’ in grave Scottish house- 
 holds during several generations — Thomas Boston, the writer of the Fourfold 
 Stale. But Ettrick and Yarrow must both remain ‘ unvisited ’ by us now, 
 
 Abbotsford. 
 
 as they may be better approached another time from Moffat on the west, 
 or from Selkirk on the north, and we are nearing Melrose, having crossed 
 from the valley of the Teviot to that of the Tweed ; and we shall need 
 all the time at disposal for the Abbey, for Abbotsford and for Dryburgh. 
 
 To describe ‘ fair Melrose ’ would be superfluous. The impression even 
 of a first visit is that we have seen it before, so vividly has it been brought 
 before us both by poet and artist. Its position, close upon the outskirts of 
 the little town, does not destroy, but rather enhances its charm. Instead of 
 finding it, like 1 intern, or like Furness, in the heart of a romantic valley, 
 we enter it direct from a modern street, to be plunged at once into its 
 
A CROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 Abbotsford: The Drawing 
 Room. 
 
 solemn stillness, and awed by 
 
 the glimpses of its old-world 
 beauty, still most apparent amid 
 the restorations, in which dif 
 ferent ages have by turns dis- 
 played their sense of the fitness 
 of things ! To see it by moon- 
 light is of course the ambition 
 of every tourist, the achieve- 
 
 ment of but few ; and it has 
 been said that Scott himself 
 
 never visited it at this witching 
 time, having evolved the de- 
 scription which has enraptured 
 so many by its accuracy as well 
 as by its loveliness, entirely from 
 his own imagination. 
 
 Two roads from Melrose 
 
 attract the traveller almost equally ; the one, westward, to 
 Abbotsford, the other in the opposite direction, to Dryburgh 
 
 Abbey. Happily, on the occasion of our visit, there was time 
 
 for both, in a long summer day’s leisurely survey. The walk to 
 Dryburgh was somewhat long, and might have been saved in great 
 part by taking the train back to St. Boswell’s, the station 
 before reaching Melrose. But the way was very beautiful, in- 
 cluding one magnificent view of the Tweed, with its 
 wooded banks. The ruin itself is not extensive, 
 but the aisle in which Scott lies 
 buried is surely the ideal of a 
 poet’s resting-place. His beloved 
 Tweed half encircles the spot, 
 the ruin is embosomed in fair 
 trees, while the broken walls, 
 still noble in their decay, are 
 more appropriately and solemnly 
 suggestive than the stateliest 
 mausoleum could have been. 
 
 The remains of .Sir Walter Scott 
 are there among those of his 
 kindred — his wife, his eldest son, 
 and his son-in-law and biographer, 
 
 Mr. Lockhart. The guardian of 
 the ruins also will not fail to 
 
 Abbotsford: The Study. 
 
i6 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Abbotsford: The Library. 
 
 point out the tombstone of Henry 
 Erskine, whose sons, Ralph and 
 Ebenezer, founded in 1 740 the 
 Secession Church of Scotland, 
 now merged in the United Pres- 
 
 o 
 
 byterian body. 
 
 But the journey to Abbots- 
 ford remained. Probably the 
 natural order would have been 
 to visit the home which Scott oc- 
 cupied in his lifetime before this 
 pilgrimage to his grave. Why 
 a different course of proceeding 
 was adopted need not be ex- 
 plained ; we did not regret it 
 afterwards, when even after 
 having duly inspected all the 
 
 relics so lovingly preserved and so courteously shown, the 
 deepest impression left was still that of the quiet, lovely tomb. 
 
 The visitor cannot choose but look with interest on Abbotsford as the 
 
 poet’s favourite home— a noble residence and beautiful for situation, 
 although lower in the valley than modern taste approves. It might 
 be ungenerous to ask whether the rearing of this lordly abode was 
 worth the toil and struggle that it entailed ; the world at least 
 is the richer for those stupendous intellectual labours which at 
 length, though slowly, exhausted the poet’s life, d here 
 
 still we find ourselves in the very 
 scene of these great achievements. 
 The library contains his books 
 as he left them : in the study 
 there is the writing-table where 
 he used to sit, the desk at which 
 he wrote, and which was closed 
 when he ceased, more than half 
 a century ago. The quaint suits 
 of armour that he loved to col- 
 lect are where he left them ; 
 but their sight awakens no en- 
 thusiasm now for the days of 
 ancient chivalry. That passion 
 seems extinct ; new habits of 
 thought have succeeded, and not 
 
 o 
 
 Abbotsford : The Armoury. the greatest of novelists WQuld 
 
c 
 
I Iawthornden 
 
ACROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 19 
 
 venture, if he could, to give to the reader of this generation another Ivanhoe. 
 From casque and mail, the visitor turns to the homely memorial of the man 
 himself; his coat and hat and stick, preserved with reverent affection. Yet 
 these vestiges of life seemed only to make the fact of death more near : 
 and there was a deeper interest in yonder quiet Abbey, and in the words 
 of Christian faith and hope upon the poet’s tomb. Still it was something to 
 have seen even the books and the writing-desk ; for everything connected 
 with the daily habits of a great man tends to illuminate his biography, and 
 in some measure to increase our interest in the works in which his spirit 
 most truly lives among men. 
 
 After Melrose there is little of interest immediately bordering the 
 Waverley Route, unless indeed the traveller can spare time to change at 
 Galashiels into a line which will take him to Edinburgh by a more circuitous 
 course, passing from the valley of the Tweed (which it follows upwards as 
 far as Peebles) to the dale of the North Esk, with the wonderfully beautiful 
 ravine of Iiawthornden and the famous Roslin Chapel. 
 
 The visit will in most cases be made from Edinburgh : but the traveller 
 who is not incommoded by luggage may save time on his northward journey 
 by stopping at Hawthornden station, from which it is an easy walk to the 
 entrance of the grounds. Here lived the poet Drummond, so famous in his 
 day that Ben Jonson travelled on foot from London to Scotland, chiefly, 
 it is said, to converse with him. But his melancholy strains are now 
 little read ; and to most visitors the beauty of the place is more than 
 the fame of the former inhabitant. We do not say, ‘ It was here that 
 Drummond lived,’ but ‘ It was Drummond who lived here.’ The house 
 is sufficiently picturesque — a mansion of the seventeenth century upon a 
 grey cliff towering above the glen, with the ruined fragment of a tower 
 hard by. But the beauty of the scene is in the glen itself, to which 
 we descend through prettily laid out grounds, noting, as we pass, the 
 caverns in the rock beneath the house, constructed with evident care in 
 ancient times for some unknown purpose ; also, ‘ Ben Jonson’s Tree,’ 
 the ‘ Poet Drummond’s Seat,’ and ‘ John Knox’s Pulpit.’ These may be 
 more or less apocryphal ; but there is no doubt about the charm of the 
 deep glen where the stream, albeit defiled by the works of man, pursues its 
 way between broken cliffs and overhanging woods. It is the sense of 
 nearness to busy manufactures and great cities in this romantic and apparently 
 sequestered spot, that either heightens or destroys the charm, according 
 to the spectator’s mood. He will have abundant time to decide whether 
 the sense of beauty or of incongruity is the stronger ; as, after crossing 
 the little bridge from Hawthornden grounds, it is a long walk up the 
 valley to Roslin, which he must also see. The regular plan is to climb from 
 the glen to the castle, approached by a lofty bridge, and to recross to the 
 chapel. We venture to suggest that the castle may well be omitted, as, apart 
 
 c 2 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 from the view of the glen from the rocky platform on which the ruin stands, 
 there is neither picturesqueness nor real historic interest to repay the visitor. 
 The chapel, situated on the high ground beyond, overlooking the castle, must 
 by all means be examined, as an almost unique specimen of decorative art 
 
 Roslin Chapel, with the ’Prentice Pillar. 
 
 applied to somewhat heavy architecture. It is a small building, massive in 
 its details, with a general impression of heaviness that the splendid and even 
 excessive ornamentation but serves to relieve. Had the structure been com- 
 pleted according to the original design, in which this chapel was but the 
 choir of a great collegiate church, the magnificence would have seemed more 
 
ACROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 21 
 
 in place. The chapel is now fitted up with seats, has an organ gallery at the 
 western end, and is used for the worship of the Scottish Episcopal Church. 
 The ’Prentice Pillar, with its wreathed-work of foliage, will of course be noted 
 by the visitor ; and the custodian of the place tells the story effectively, as 
 he has rehearsed it a thousand times. Is there any one of our readers who 
 has not heard it ? In the temporary absence of the master-builder, an 
 apprentice, essaying his hand upon a portion of the fabric, so far surpassed 
 him in skill that the jealous and exasperated master struck the youth dead 
 upon the spot. The story, however, is found in various forms, but with the 
 same main incident, in many ages, and in relation to different walks of art. 
 It is probably but a legend, so true to human nature that it has been 
 accepted as an ‘ ower true tale,’ and shows to us how myths are made. 
 
 Leaving the chapel, we find ourselves in the little village of Roslin, or 
 Rosslyn, as it seems now generally to be written, and about seven minutes’ 
 distance from the railway station for Edinburgh. There are, however, 
 
 very few trains in the day, and careful arrangement is necessary that time 
 may not be vexatiously thrown away in a place where, after the glen 
 and the chapel, there is literally nothing to see. Part of the interest of 
 this excursion, no doubt, as Sir Walter Scott long ago remarked, is that its 
 picturesque features form so sudden and unexpected a contrast to the 
 surrounding country. In the Highlands few persons would take the trouble 
 to walk up Hawthornden glen, but its nearness to Edinburgh, and the 
 neighbourhood of Roslin, attract crowds of visitors every summer. Still 
 farther south, below the south-eastern slopes of the Pentland Hills, is the 
 yet more romantic glen of Habbie’s Howe, with its waterfall, supposed to 
 have suggested the description in Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd ; and the whole 
 surrounding region is full of pastoral and sylvan beauty. 
 
 Returning, however, to Carlisle : there are two other railway routes of 
 great interest, and more direct, at least in their access to Glasgow. They 
 unitedly traverse the old Solway Moss, once the notorious haunt of freebooters, 
 and pass through the fiat ‘ clebateable ground ’ where, until the union of 
 the two kingdoms, bold marauders bade defiance to the laws of both, until 
 the little river Sark is crossed, and the train reaches Gretna Green, once 
 famous for runaway weddings. The idea of making the Scottish marriage 
 law available to fugitives from England, seems to have first occurred to a man 
 named Paisley, residing here about i 760 ; Gretna being fixed upon as near the 
 Border, although, of course, any other part of Scotland would have answered 
 the purpose; and it was not until 1856 that the usage was stopped by Act of 
 Parliament, requiring previous residence as a condition of marriage. The 
 country now has but little attraction ; once it was a vast forest, but in the days 
 of Border rapine the wood was cleared away to destroy the haunts of the 
 moss-troopers, and it is now for the most part a bare open plain. On the 
 left is Annandale, where Edward Irving spent his youthful days ; and some 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 twelve miles from the Border the traveller reaches Ecclefechan, an un- 
 interesting-looking village, but famous for the birth of Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Habbie’s Howe. 
 
 Visitors are shown the ‘ work ’ of Carlyle’s father, the sturdy God-fearing 
 Scottish mason. And truly, whatever else may be thought of Carlyle’s 
 
A CROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 23 
 
 Reminiscences , the pictures of his father and mother as there delineated, will 
 live as long as the fame of their illustrious son shall last. The type ol man 
 is familiar to all who have watched the stalwart shepherd tramping over the 
 hills with his colley by his side, or who have stopped for a little talk with 
 a fisherman on the shore, or who have joined the group of country folk on 
 the mountain side as they wended their way on the Sabbath morning to the 
 humble house of prayer ; but Carlyle has disclosed the secret of its inner 
 nobleness, and has shown to us how a living faith, with that true humility 
 that does not shrink from self-assertion where it knows itself in the right, 
 creates the true heroic character. Carlyle could hardly have written his 
 
 Cromwell so sympathetically, had he not known his father so well. And 
 who is not touched by the picture of that peasant mother, with her anxious 
 cares for her son, denying herself and caring for all his little material 
 comforts, that he might be able to climb to a level whither her earnest spirit 
 could not follow him, save with anxious longings for his spiritual welfare ! 
 To read those simple-hearted letters of hers is infinitely touching, and we do 
 not wonder that the son who cherished them and gave them to the world 
 after more than half a century, notwithstanding the scorn and bitterness with 
 which he looked upon men in general, and especially on those who had found 
 a deeper secret in life than his own, could not but believe in the truth and 
 goodness embodied in the belief, the work and the worship of that lowly 
 home. 
 
 But we must pass from Ecclefechan, over the district where the line 
 climbs upwards along the banks of the Annan, to Beattock, from which 
 station a line is now opened to Moffat, a charming little watering-place 
 among streams and wooded hills, overtopped by the Hartfell range, the 
 highest in Southern Scotland. There is a pleasant drive to the Spa, with 
 excursions to the waterfall called the Grey Mare’s Tail, and to the dark, 
 desolate Loch Skene from which it issues ; or, through a cleft in the mountains 
 beyond the cascade, to St. Mary’s Loch upon the Yarrow. Or, diverging 
 before the waterfall is reached, the traveller may pierce the hill-range to the 
 right into the Ettrick valley. The air is most pure and exhilarating, and, in 
 addition to the ordinary watering-place accommodations, a noble Hydropathic 
 Establishment has been opened here, as at Melrose, Crieff, Dunblane, 
 Pitlochrie, Callander, Bridge of Allan, Rothesay, Forres, and many other 
 places of popular resort in Scotland. 
 
 We resume our journey from the Beattock junction, and having now 
 crossed the watershed at the height of about a thousand feet above the 
 sea, soon discern a narrow stream making its way with many a winding 
 over the green moor. This is the Clyde, which we cross and recross before 
 reaching the junction at Carstairs, whence radiate lines to Edinburgh, to 
 Glasgow, to Stirling, and the North. It will be a pity, however, not to 
 stay at least for two or three hours to see Lanark and the Falls of the 
 
24 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Clyde. 1 he town itself has little that is interesting, unless we are moved 
 by curiosity or by old association to visit the settlement in which Robert 
 Owen, about sixty years ago, strove to organise industry, and to inaugurate 
 a new moral world. 1 he parallelograms and manufactories of the Socialist 
 schemes failed, as might have been expected ; but there was some germ of 
 practical wisdom in his choice of a locality, since the mills of New Lanark, 
 now the property of Manchester manufacturers, are thriving and successful, 
 while the aspect of regularity and good order which they present may be in 
 some measure due to the projector’s plans. But we must hurry on to the water- 
 falls, which may perhaps impress us all the more because the glen in which 
 
 they make their grand successive descents is surrounded by few accessories 
 
 of beauty of any kind. The country, to say the truth, is uninteresting 
 until the river is reached ; but the three falls are magnificent. Corra Linn, 
 the central one, nearest to New Lanark, is the finest ; but Bonnington 
 Linn, the highest divided into two parts, with a rocky island between — a 
 miniature Schaff hausen — is also imposing, and Stonebyres, three miles from 
 Lanark, by the road-side, with its surroundings of cliff and foliage, is also 
 
 well worth visiting. The tourist will probably see no finer waterfalls than 
 
 these three until he reaches Foyers on Loch Ness. 
 
 1 he railway journey from Carstairs to Edinburgh has no points of 
 
 special interest ; that to Glasgow gives the opportunity, by a very slight 
 detour, of visiting Hamilton Palace, once famous for its art-treasures, and 
 still sumptuous, although despoiled. More attractive, however, will be the 
 remains of the old Caledonian Forest, where the celebrated herd of Scotch 
 
 wild cattle still roam at large, with the ruins of Cadzow Castle, the ancient 
 
 Hamilton Palace, commemorated by Sir Walter Scott. Very near also is 
 ‘ Bothwell Brig,’ where the Covenanters were defeated by the Duke of 
 
 Monmouth and Claverhouse, on the 22nd of June, 1679, as described in Old 
 Mortality. But these scenes of historic interest will, perhaps, be better 
 
 visited from Glasgow, than taken on the way to the city. A day could 
 
 scarcely be better spent than in traversing them. 
 
 1 he last of the alternative routes to Glasgow, as mentioned above, 
 denominated the ‘South Western,’ is more circuitous than that just described, 
 but derives a special interest from its giving the tourist an opportunity of 
 visiting, at small expenditure of time, the land of Burns. Turning aside 
 at Gretna, the line passes through Annan, where it crosses the river, 
 and at Dumfries reaches the Nith, up which it pursues its way. For 
 
 lovely glimpses of hill and woodland, with fertile cornfields and pastures 
 between, and the gleaming river amidst them all, there can hardly be a 
 
 pleasanter summer evening’s journey than this. At least, so we found it, 
 after a long morning of wonderful interest spent at Dumfries, beginning, of 
 course, with a visit to the cemetery where, beyond a crowd of monuments, 
 stands the mausoleum over the poet’s grave. Much cannot be said for the 
 
Stonebyres Falls. 
 
A CROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 7 
 
 monument itself. It is a poor Grecian temple, glazed between the columns, 
 and the allegorical design — the genius of Scotland casting her mantle over 
 the ploughman — -has a common-place effect. The attempt at classic forms 
 and figures seemed in truth singularly infelicitous ; though it could not but be 
 deeply interesting, apart from all such accessories, to know that here was 
 the last earthly resting-place of Burns, the poet to whom, with Cowper and 
 Wordsworth, each according to his special genius, belongs the distinction ot 
 having so widened the domain of poetry as to include the commonest 
 interests and homeliest cares that touch the heart of man. We might have 
 gone to see the house in which Burns spent his last days, and which still 
 
 The Aued Brig o’ Doom, Alloway, Ayrshire. 
 
 has much to remind the visitor of the poet ; but time pressed, and we were 
 bent on another errand. For Dumfries is famous in the annals of martyrdom. 
 In the cemetery itself, a plain obelisk marks the grave of some who suffered 
 in 1667. A lovely drive by the Water of Cairn brought us to Irongray 
 Church, near which, among overshadowing trees, is the grave of two others, 
 with the quaint inscription : 
 
 ‘ By Legg and Bloodie Bruce commands 
 We were hung up by hellish hands ; 
 
 And so, their furious wrath to stay, 
 
 We died near Kirk of Irongray ; 
 
 And boundless peace we now partake 
 For freedom’s and religion’s sake.’ 
 
28 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 In the churchyard, at close distance, is the tomb of Helen Walker, the 
 original of Jeanie Deans, with an inscription written by Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 But we had not yet finished with the Covenanters’ memorials ; as perhaps 
 the most interesting of all was one among the hills, not to be discovered 
 without difficulty — a long drive, then an ascent through a rugged lane, and a 
 
 The Martyrs’ Grave, Irongray. 
 
 walk over a piece of barren undulating moorland, with much climbing over 
 stone fences. The place was well adapted in its seclusion for a solemn 
 service held there in the summer of 1678, when for the last time a band of 
 Covenanting brethren met together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Then 
 they parted, some to fall in battle, others to suffer on the gibbet, few to 
 survive the conflict of that terrible time, but all to hold fast by the faith to 
 
ACROSS THE BORDER: TO EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 29 
 
 which they then renewed their solemn pledge. It is no wonder that this 
 bleak spot is regarded with affectionate veneration, the very stones which 
 served for the table and for seats in the service being marked as the 
 Communion Stones of Irongray. But, lest the outward features of the scene 
 should become obliterated or unrecognizable, a simple monument, surmounted 
 by the representation of the Cup, has been raised in recent years ; and in all 
 Scotland there is scarcely a memorial so deeply impressive as this emblem 
 of our faith and hope, with all its sacred and stern associations, on those 
 lonely moorland hills ! 
 
 Near the head of Nithsdale may be 
 visited another ‘ Martyrs’ Grave,’ not far 
 from Cumnock ; but that we did not stay 
 to see. The country has many such me- 
 morials ; and not far oft' is the battle-field 
 of Drumclog, where the Covenanters 
 gained a temporary success, June 1, 1679, 
 three weeks before the rout of Bothwell 
 Bridge. But the neighbourhood of Ayr 
 attracted us again a little from the direct 
 line, to visit Alloway Kirk, the ‘ Twa 
 Brigs,’ the birthplace and the monument 
 of Burns. The South-western line may 
 be left for this purpose at Mauchline, 
 about twelve miles from Ayr. After a 
 night in Ayr, we strolled through its 
 streets to the two bridges, auld and new, 
 celebrated in Burns’s Dialogue, then down 
 to the steam-wharf, and found that prepa- 
 rations, which we afterwards learned were 
 made almost daily through the summer, 
 were in full readiness to conduct ex- 
 pected visitors to the shrine. As soon 
 as the boat from Glasgow arrived, a 
 stream of waggonettes and other ‘ machines ’ started in full procession 
 through the town. We followed on foot ; there was no mistaking the way ! 
 After a somewhat uninteresting walk of two miles, we reached the poet’s 
 birth-place — an unpretending cottage in front, a gaudy drinking-saloon behind, 
 probably erected over .the cottage-garden for the reception of visitors, a 
 crowd of whom had evidently just left. The saloon is hung with pictures 
 representing scenes from the poet’s works. About half a mile farther on, 
 a flight of steps leads through a gap in a wall to a small roofless building, 
 the ruin of ‘ Alloway’s auld kirk.’ Here are the tombstones of Burns’s father 
 and mother, with a new one to the poet’s sister, Mrs. Begg. The new 
 
 Covenanters’ Monument. 
 
30 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 church — a somewhat florid Gothic structure — is on the other side of the 
 road. The monument stands high beyond. There is, it must be confessed, 
 something very striking in this memorial to the poet, whatever may be 
 thought of its good taste or appropriateness. The nine Corinthian columns 
 that support the circular structure are said to be emblematic of the nine 
 
 muses. In a chamber 
 within are copies of the 
 chief editions of the 
 poet’s works, a bust, and 
 a copy of the celebrated 
 portrait by Nasmyth, 
 with an old Bible, his 
 last present to ‘ High- 
 land Mary.’ From the 
 summit of the building 
 there is a pretty view of 
 the banks of the Doon, 
 and of the surrounding- 
 scenery. Outside in the 
 grounds under a canopy 
 sit the statues of two 
 men boozing and grin- 
 ning — Tam o’ Shanter 
 and Souter Johnnie ; 
 copies of which in clay 
 or plaster, or carved in 
 wood, are to be seen 
 everywhere in the neigh- 
 bourhood, for purchase, 
 if one had a mind for 
 such a memorial of what 
 after every drawback 
 was a truly memorable 
 visit! The tourists were 
 found in full force around 
 the monument, enjoying 
 themselves according to 
 their respective tastes, the majority in the inn garden, in which were seats and 
 a summerhouse, and which descends to the river ; others going farther afield, 
 down to the bank from which there is a pretty view of the old high arched 
 bridge mentioned in Tam o Shanter. A new bridge spans the stream just 
 
 On The Upper Doon. 
 
 by the inn ; and, crossing this, we found a pleasant walk back to Ayr on the 
 other side of the river, arriving in time to reach Glasgow early in the evening. 
 
GLIMPSES OF 
 
 EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
IIolyrood Palace and Chapel, with Arthur’s Seat. 
 
Edinburgh, from ‘ Rest and be Thankful.’ 
 
 GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 T HE first sight of Edinburgh is something never to be forgotten. Many 
 strangers have their earliest view of the city from the high bridge 
 that crosses from the Old Town to the New, as they emerge from the 
 railway station below ; others, more fortunate, who have arrived after dark, 
 or in the twilight of a summer’s evening, see it for the first time in the 
 morning light from some hotel window in Princes Street, commanding the 
 long sweep of Old Edinburgh downward from the Castle Rock, fronted by 
 tall buildings and towers that overhang the ravine ; while the slopes below 
 are gay with grass and flowers, and Arthur’s Seat beyond rears its massive 
 head. The graceful spire of the Scott Monument forms an appropriate 
 foreground ; to the right the low colonnades of the Art Galleries close in 
 the garden view, while to the left the eye ranges from the monuments of 
 the Calton Hill and the stately buildings at its foot, almost down to the 
 level on which stand Holyrood Palace and Chapel ; although indeed these 
 are quite shut out of sight by intervening buildings and the lofty North 
 Bridge. One excellence of Edinburgh is that its plan is so simple. There 
 is first the Old Town, Edinburgh proper — the Edinburgh of eighteenth- 
 century writers — an immense sweep of tall houses with spires and towers 
 interspersed, “from a palace in the plain to a castle in the air”; behind 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 these, narrow streets, with some statelier ones, as 
 “ Chambers Street ” and “Jeffrey Street,” worthily 
 preserving the names of men of whom Scotland is 
 proud ; at the back of all these one of the noblest 
 of infirmaries, built on the “ pavilion system,” with 
 its spacious grounds, and a fair walk close by ; 
 the far-famed Heriot’s Hospital, and the yet more 
 famous Greyfriars’ Churchyard, beside which we 
 may descend by several different ways to the 
 broad level Grassmarket at the foot of the pre- 
 cipitous Castle Rock, and return to the higher 
 parts of the city by the Cowgate, stopping, if 
 we please, to look at the house in which Lord 
 Brougham was born. 
 
 It is no part of our purpose to describe the 
 city in detail. Excellent Guide-books are to be 
 had, and intelligent canny guides also, by those 
 who care to be “ personally conducted ” from spot 
 to spot in regulated order, and to be duly reminded 
 of the history or the legend attached to each. 
 But most visitors, we suspect, prefer to wander at their own will, and to 
 select the special localities or objects to which their taste or their knowledge 
 may attract them. The Castle is visited, of course, as much for its superb 
 view of the city, as for anything that it contains, the Mons Meg, or even 
 the Scottish Regalia. At the other extremity, Holyrood must also be seen, 
 with its apartments, strangely small for royalty, 
 its pathetic associations, and that dim stain of 
 Rizzio’s blood ! The chapel behind is lovely 
 in its ruins, though tourists often neglect it 
 for the more easily comprehended wonders of 
 the palace. Then, from Holyrood, few who 
 are good walkers, or who enjoy a fine drive, 
 will fail to ascend Arthur’s Seat, where on 
 one side they will come upon a lonely loch, 
 to all appearance as far from the haunts of 
 men as though it were in some Highland 
 mountain recess ; and on the other will skirt 
 or traverse Salisbury Crags, and think of the 
 Heart of Mid-Lothian. From the summit the 
 view is fine, embracing the city outspread as 
 a map at the beholder’s feet, though too often 
 veiled in smoke, with the Firth of Forth 
 extending to the north and east, and in an 
 
 Birth-place of Lord Brougham, 
 Cowgate, Edinburgh. 
 
 Staircase, Holyrood. 
 

 
 D 2 
 
Castle and Grassmarket, Edinburgh. 
 
GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 37 
 
 opposite direction a fair reach of country terminated by the graceful outlines 
 of the Pentland Hills. But the city view here is less interesting on the 
 whole than that from the Castle Rock ; and the Firth of Forth, with the 
 hills of Fife behind, is seen better from the Calton Hill. 
 
 In returning to the city, the tourist may pass through Newington, and 
 by the aid of a tramcar, which seems in the great Scottish cities always at 
 hand, may proceed along Nicolson Street for the sake of looking at least at 
 the outside of the University Buildings and at the College of Surgeons 
 opposite, reaching the head of Princes Street, near the Post Office, over the 
 North Bridge. Should a keen north-east wind be blowing as he crosses this 
 bridge, he will understand why many people inveigh against the spring 
 climate of Edinburgh. The wind whose praises Mr. Kingsley has sung 
 
 Edinburgh University. 
 
 nowhere gives a better taste of its quality than in Edinburgh, and this lofty 
 
 crossing from the Old Town to the New is the very place to test it to the 
 
 uttermost. Shall we look down from the North Bridge for a moment, into 
 
 what we have called a ravine, where once spread the unfragrant waters of a 
 
 shallow loch, but where dingy roofs of iron and glass, and long station plat- 
 forms, and high flights of steps, and multitudinous branching lines of rail 
 occupy the whole space, from tunnel to tunnel ? Is it a blemish upon this 
 noble city that the railway is thus in the very heart of it ? At the first 
 view it would appear so ; and yet there are two sides to this question. 
 Think of the Charing Cross Terminus and the Cannon Street Station 
 in London, and it will appear a happy thing for the effect of Edinburgh 
 
38 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES 
 
 architecture that its main railway offices are packed away, so to speak, below 
 the general surface. Still, it is true, there is too much smoke and steam 
 for the fair gardens that border on part of the line ; but at any rate there is 
 no obtrusive ugliness ; even the spectator on the Waverley Bridge has so 
 much to attract his upward looks in every direction that he forgets to look 
 downwards at all ! Add to this, that the traveller entering Edinburgh from 
 the south is not carried past the upper stories of mean and squalid streets, 
 as in so many English towns and cities, but is afforded just one glimpse of 
 
 Holyrood, a glance at Arthur’s 
 Seat, and is then plunged into a 
 tunnel from which he emerges at 
 the foot of all that is most charac- 
 teristic in the architecture of the 
 city. In this respect, therefore, 
 the balance of advantage seems 
 to be with the northern capital. 
 
 The Old Town, as might be 
 expected, contains many memorials 
 of the past, though more have 
 disappeared. Ancient courts and 
 wynds sufficiently illustrate the 
 street architecture of bygone days. 
 Common stairs still lead — and not 
 in these parts of the city only — 
 to tenement above tenement, the 
 value and the respectability di- 
 minishing with the height. To 
 all pastoral visitation and mission 
 work in Edinburgh and most 
 Scottish towns, this style of build- 
 ing adds a toilsomeness that 
 doubles the fatigue. It is remark- 
 able that while the arrangement 
 into Hats seems coming into fashion 
 in London for the middle classes, 
 there seems a growing preference in Scotland for ‘ self-contained houses.’ 
 Certainly the great height which the former method enables architects to 
 give the tenements for all classes is a great element in picturesqueness, and 
 when several ol these vast dwellings are lighted up at night the effect is 
 singularly fine. There can hardly be a city in the world in which a general 
 illumination is so imposing as it is in Edinburgh. 
 
 Ot the old houses which the traveller may care to visit, none perhaps 
 will attract him more than the manse of John Knox, dark and small, the 
 
 Magdalen Chapel, Cowgate, Edinburgh. 
 

 
 
Signing the Covenant, Greyfriars’ Churchyard. From a painting by George Cattermoie. 
 
GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 4 > 
 
 rooms of which have been carefully preserved, 
 
 though filled with modern ‘ relics ’ and acces- 
 
 sories. The quaint inscription over the lower 
 
 storey : ‘ Lufe . God . above . al . and . yovr . 
 
 niciitbovr . as . yi . self ; ’ and the figure above 
 
 the door pointing to the word God graven in 
 
 three languages, date, it is said, from Knox’s own 
 
 time. It is natural to ask for the grave of the 
 
 great preacher, but the spot is uncertain. He 
 
 would have no monument to commemorate his 
 
 fame. No, he would be laid among his people 
 
 in the old burying-place of St. Giles’s, and the 
 
 rude inscription, ‘I. K. 1572,’ on a stone in the 
 
 pavement of what is now Parliament Square, 
 
 close by the Cathedral, and the interesting City 
 
 Cross, recently restored at Mr. Gladstone’s 
 
 expense, is the only indication of the place where 
 
 Knox’s remains are supposed to rest. For the Riddel’s Court, Edinburgh, where 
 
 r 1 f r 1 • • 111 Hume began to Write his History. 
 
 monuments of others, who alter his time helped 
 
 to make Scotland famous, we must go to the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, entered 
 through a gateway to the right after crossing the high causeway, leading to 
 the Infirmary and Iieriot’s Hospital, called George the Fourth’s Bridge. 
 The large ugly building just inside the gateway is Greyfriars' Church, where 
 the National Covenant was adopted in 1638. The document was brought 
 
 out into the churchyard for signature, so as to 
 make room for the anxious crowd who pressed 
 forward to add their names or to witness the 
 signature of others. The stone is still pointed out 
 — an authentic and very characteristic Scottish 
 relic ! But more impressive still are the ranges of 
 tombs, with the names they bear of the noble 
 and the obscure. All ranks, all characters, all 
 creeds are here, with inscriptions, curt or elaborate, 
 quaintly original or elegantly common-place — - 
 material enough for a Biographical History of 
 Scotland ! The scene is one in which to spend 
 musing hours, though destitute of the romantic 
 accessories which tempt the sentimental traveller 
 into many a ‘ God’s acre.’ The situation indeed 
 is magnificent, beneath the Castle walls and with 
 a grand view over the city, but nothing can be 
 more formal than the arrangement, nor more 
 tasteless than most of the tombs. The favourite 
 
42 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 mode of honouring the illustrious dead in this cemetery is by enclosing a 
 Hat grave by tall iron railings, which are sometimes carried over it as well 
 as on its three sides, the wall with its monument forming the back of the 
 enclosure. The effect is that of a great iron cage ; and many of the plots, 
 being uncared for even to the planting of a (lower, have a singularly 
 desolate appearance. But for all that, there are few, if any, places in 
 
 Edinburgh to compare in true interest with this Greyfriars’ 
 Churchyard. Here the persecutor and the persecuted 
 rest together ; one of the most elaborate of the monuments 
 is that to ‘ Bluidy Mackenzie,’ as he was long called by 
 those of whom in his lifetime he had been the terror ; 
 while the memorial to the Covenanters who suffered for 
 their faith, many of them in the Grassmarket below, is 
 of a touching simplicity. 
 
 If we wish to pass from these extinct forms of strife 
 Knox’s Grave. to the discussions, and often the controversies of the 
 
 present, we should take care to visit Edinburgh in May, 
 and to secure tickets for the meetings of the three great Ecclesiastical 
 Parliaments, the Established, the Free, and that which is universally called 
 in Scotland the U.P., ‘United Presbyterian’ being too large a phrase for 
 every-day use. An Englishman is above all things struck by the prominent 
 place which the theological and ecclesiastical debates of the several Assemblies 
 occupy in the newspapers. Discussions on difficult points of Biblical criticism, 
 or on details of church polity and order, engross a space in the daily press 
 which in London would rarely be 
 accorded to anything but politics, 
 art, or popular amusements. In the 
 assemblies themselves, the galleries 
 are thronged by audiences content 
 to listen for hours ; dispersing late 
 in the afternoon, only to resume their 
 eager attendance in the evening. On 
 one memorable day in 1876, we had 
 the happiness to be present in the 
 Free Church Assembly, when the 
 
 Reformed I resbyterian Chuich, repre- the covenant Stone. 
 
 sentative of the ancient Cameronians, 
 
 was solemnly incorporated into the body, and there became to all intents 
 and purposes one sect fewer in Protestant Christendom ! The proceedings 
 were partly formal, — the reading of documents, articles of agreement, etc., 
 but there was a dignity and a seriousness about the whole that kept the 
 attention strained to the utmost. A vacant space had been reserved in the 
 centre of the Assembly ; and when the preliminary business was over, the 
 

 
 
Head of West Bow, Edinburgh, with the Assembly Hall ; and Old Houses (now removed). 
 
GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 45 
 
 representatives of the newly-admitted Church, who had assembled elsewhere 
 to terminate, in their own Assembly, their denominational existence, entered 
 in long procession, and took their places, the multitude that crowded the 
 hall standing in unbroken silence to receive them. It was not until the last 
 had entered that the pent-up enthusiasm of the multitude welcoming their 
 brethren found vent; 
 and the proceedings of 
 the morning were fitly 
 crowned by an address 
 from Dr. Goold, Moderator 
 of the happily absorbed 
 community, which for 
 dignity, tenderness, and 
 real oratorical power 
 seemed to us about the 
 noblest speech we had 
 ever heard. All this was 
 but an episode. Now and 
 then the atmosphere of 
 the Assembly grows elec- 
 tric with the discussion 
 of great religious ques- 
 tions, and of late years, as 
 every one knows, these 
 have had to do with very 
 vital matters of Biblical 
 criticism and interpreta- 
 tion, as well as with the 
 doctrine of inspiration it- 
 self. The intense serious- 
 ness, as well as the vigour 
 and brilliancy with which 
 the debates are conducted 
 gives them a surpassing 
 interest ; the hearers in 
 the galleries take sides, 
 and are often loud in their 
 
 expressions of approval or otherwise. The keenness with which all classes 
 thus engage in religious discussion no doubt sometimes degenerates into 
 acrimony ; and the eagerness with which some points are debated appears to 
 an Englishman out of proportion to their real importance ; and yet on the 
 whole the enthusiasm is healthy. Almost anything is better than religious 
 indifference. 
 
 Covenanters’ Monument, Greyfriars’ Churchyard. 
 
46 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 The associations of Edinburgh with literature, art, and science are in 
 their way as signal and unique as its connection with matters theological and 
 ecclesiastical. But this is a topic hardly within our present scope, or our 
 Edinburgh “Pictures” might well include a portrait-gallery of men who have 
 done more to influence thought and action during the past century than any 
 equal number of persons taken from any single locality. Whether the title 
 of “the Modern Athens” was first conferred in banter, or whether the chief 
 reference was originally to the outward semblance of the city, with the Castle 
 
 Rock for the Acropolis, we need not inquire. 
 In sober seriousness, the intellectual pre- 
 eminence of Edinburgh justifies the name. The 
 very atmosphere of society in this favoured city 
 seems charged with mental energy. For the 
 scientific visitor there is the Museum of Science 
 and Art, adjoining the University buildings, 
 and admirably arranged, especially in the de- 
 partments of Natural History and of British 
 manufactures. The National Gallery of Anti- 
 quities, upon the Mound, contains a splendidly- 
 arranged series of objects, illustrating the history 
 of civilisation in Scotland, from the flint axes 
 and arrow-heads of a barbarous people, with 
 relics from their caves and lake dwellings, 
 down to the time when the ancient Celtic Church 
 had attained to a high degree of artistic refine- 
 ment, as shown in ecclesiastical relics and 
 sculptures of much beauty, and onward to quite 
 modern times. There are some grim memorials, 
 too, recalling times of strife and persecution : 
 the “ thumbikins ” used to extort the secrets of 
 the Covenanting recusants, and the “ Maiden,” 
 that primitive guillotine beneath whose cruel 
 knife so many of the best and bravest in Scotland fell. John Knox’s pulpit 
 from St. Giles’s Church is also preserved in this great collection : with originals 
 of the Covenants in their successive forms ; and — not the least noteworthy 
 among the curiosities — the very “cutty stool” that Jenny Geddes hurled at 
 the Dean’s head in St. Giles’s when he attempted to introduce the English 
 Liturgy into the Scottish Church, on the 23rd of July, 1637. Autograph 
 letters of David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hogg, and other Scottish 
 worthies add to the interest of this superb collection. There is also a 
 cheque written and signed by Sir Walter Scott, with deeds, charters and 
 royal signatures not a few. Under the same roof is a gallery of sculpture, 
 small and crowded, but with fine facsimiles of the most notable statues in 
 
 Craigcrook Castle, Residence of 
 Jeffery. 
 
The Scott Monument, 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 49 
 
 the world. Close by, again, is the National Gallery of Art, a noble collec- 
 tion, which if it were only in a foreign city, every visitor would make a point 
 of seeing. Here also in the early spring is held the annual Exhibition of 
 the Scottish Academy, generally, as might be expected, peculiarly rich in 
 pictures of Scottish scenery, though with a fair number of other paintings, 
 and often including masterpieces from the London Academy Exhibition of 
 the preceding year. 
 
 The visitor to Edinburgh who 
 has time and inclination to inspect 
 the interiors of great buildings 
 must by all means visit two great 
 churches, at least, in the city. 
 
 The principal, St. Giles’s, is often 
 called the Cathedral ; though rigid 
 Presbyterians disclaim the appella- 
 tion, there being no cathedra or 
 bishop’s chair in their ecclesiastical 
 arrangements. A mournful interest 
 attaches now to the sumptuous and 
 tasteful restoration of this building, 
 which has for the first time brought 
 out its full design, in stateliness of 
 plan and richness of decoration. 
 
 The work was carried on at the 
 expense of Mr. William Chambers, 
 the elder of the two brothers who 
 more than any other men have set 
 their mark on the popular literature 
 of the age, and the simple and 
 graceful record of whose lives 
 will probably outlast all the works 
 that bear their name. Chambers s 
 Journal , be it remembered, was 
 before the Penny Magazine, which 
 
 . , , i-iii,. Knox’s Pulpit. 
 
 it has long outlived, both having 
 
 been started in 1832 ; and the two for many years remained the chief helps 
 in periodical literature to youths and working-men athirst for knowledge. 
 Their one defect — and we must be honest enough to avow this — was that 
 they were exclusively secular ; giving hardly so much as a glance at the 
 deeper problems of existence, or at the principles of life and conduct which 
 only religion supplies. The great saying of Dr. Arnold, now a commonplace, 
 about treating common subjects in a Christian tone, expresses an aim which 
 fifty years ago hardly existed. Nor did writers of the Chambers and the old 
 
5 ° 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 ‘Useful Knowledge’ school ever recognise it. It was not that they were 
 always insensible to the supreme claim of Christianity ; but they had 
 deliberately chosen another line of popular instruction. And yet, that the 
 last work of the veteran publisher and philanthropist should be given to 
 a Christian church, which was solemnly re-dedicated to Divine service two 
 days after his funeral, in 1883, is a fact significant and beautiful. Earthly 
 honours came just too late for him, and perhaps the memory of William 
 and Robert Chambers will live more naturally and happily in the hearts of 
 
 their fellow-citizens than if 
 they had newly learned to call 
 the elder brother and survivor 
 ‘ Sir William.’ 
 
 But we have been led too 
 far from St. Giles’s Church, 
 especially as we have to refer 
 to another and a very different 
 ecclesiastical structure in Edin- 
 burgh as well worthy of a visit. 
 This is St. Mary’s Cathedral, 
 erected for the worship of the 
 Scottish Episcopal Church, 
 and one of the most important 
 works of the late Sir Gilbert 
 Scott. It would be super- 
 fluous to attempt a description 
 of this truly magnificent build- 
 ing : the first view of those 
 who look for a masterpiece of 
 architectural design may be a 
 little disappointing, owing to 
 the disproportionate heaviness 
 of the spire, which, we may 
 add, will not have its full effect 
 until it is balanced by the 
 two magnificent towers with 
 spires at the western front, which as yet exist only in the architect’s plan. On 
 entering the interior the beauty and harmony of every part is felt at once, the 
 general simplicity of plan being well set off by the elaborate magnificence of 
 the details, especially in the choir. To pass in one morning from St. Giles’s, 
 the oldest of Edinburgh churches, to this of St. Mary’s, the newest, is most 
 interesting and impressive. More than six hundred years separate the two 
 structures in point of date ; and between the forms of faith which they 
 severally represent, the difference has sometimes seemed correspondingly great. 
 
GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 5t 
 
 Happily, we live in days in which the true worshipper, however strong his 
 preference may be for one or for the other, may find Christian fellowship 
 in both. There may be many folds : but there is ‘ one flock, and one 
 
 Shepherd.’ 
 
 From these ecclesiastical reflections, however, into which we have been 
 betrayed by our visits to these great churches, it is good to escape 
 again into the open air, and, quitting St. Mary’s Cathedral, by way of Melville 
 Street, and passing by St. George’s Church, and through Charlotte Square, 
 
 View from the Burns Monument, Calton Hill. 
 
 to make our way, either by the stately houses and terraces which lie to the 
 north of Princes Street, or by Princes Street itself, with its range of shops 
 and hotels on one side, and its lovely gardens on the other, extending as 
 far as the Scott Monument and the Waverley Bridge, and along Waterloo 
 Place, to the Calton Hill. Here the visitor, if he feels so inclined, may 
 ascend the Nelson Monument, which towers above the city like a gigantic 
 telescope, and commands a magnificent view over the Firth of Forth in one 
 direction, and beyond the city southward to the Pentland Hills. We do not 
 know, however, that the prospect from the summit is so much finer than that 
 
 E 2 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 from the base, as to repay the labour of climbing. Certainly, on a clear 
 summer’s clay in early morning, before the smoke of the city, with that of 
 Leith and Portobello, has obscured the scene, there can hardly be a more 
 enchanting view than this from the Calton Hill, rich as it is in the beauty 
 of both land and sea, while the ‘ romantic town ’ as a foreground serves to 
 enhance the charm. To the other monuments on the hill no doubt a passing 
 glance will be given. Much cannot be said in their favour individually, yet 
 in their combination they certainly add to the attractiveness of the place. 
 The National Monument has the effect of a classic ruin ; although, as every 
 one knows, the picturesque incompleteness is due only to want of funds. Why 
 the Parthenon should have been adopted as the most appropriate type for the 
 commemoration of the Waterloo heroes, it is hard to say ; nor why the 
 monument to Burns, a little lower down, should also be classical in form. It 
 was the taste of the times : and, to say the truth, the adoption of another 
 style in the Wallace Monument near Stirling has not been so conspicuously 
 successful as to make us altogether discontented with the classic ideal. In 
 satisfying beauty of form, the Scott Monument remains unapproached. Still, 
 the grouping of the somewhat heterogeneous structures on the Calton Hill is 
 without doubt effective : and the large buildings on its southern edge, the High 
 School and the Prison, are even imposing. 
 
 The railway journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow is not particularly 
 interesting, save for the opportunity of visiting Linlithgow by the way, if 
 the longer route be taken. The walls of the old Palace in their square 
 massiveness are a striking object from the railway, and the traveller who has 
 an hour or two to spare may well alight to explore the ruin, with the 
 picturesque little lake on the border of which it stands. 
 
 ‘ Of all the palaces so fair, 
 
 Built for the royal dwelling, 
 
 In Scotland, far beyond compare 
 Linlithgow is excelling; 
 
 And in its park, in jovial June, 
 How sweet the merry linnet’s tune, 
 
 How blithe the blackbird’s lay ! 
 
 The wild buck bells from ferny brake, 
 The coot dives merry on the lake, 
 The saddest heart might pleasure take 
 To see all nature gay.’ 
 
 So sings the Minstrel, in Marmion. The fern-brakes are still there, the 
 linnet carols as in the olden days, and there is enough of stateliness remaining 
 in the shattered pile to show what the place must have been when the Lady 
 Margaret, Queen of James the Fourth, there had her bower, in which, after 
 the fatal day of Flodden, she mourned in widowed state. To Linlithgow 
 James the Fifth conducted his bride Mary of Guise, who expressed her 
 admiration of the place in words which are still remembered ; and here their 
 ill-fated daughter Mary Stuart was born, in a room which is still pointed out. 
 The church, dedicated to St. Michael, also deserves a visit, as ‘ one of the 
 few specimens still left of the ancient Scottish parish church.’ Part of it is 
 
GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 53 
 
 still used lor Divine worship. It was 
 in this church that James the Fourth 
 is said to have been warned by an 
 apparition not to advance to Flodden : 
 ‘ Sir King, my mother hath sent me to 
 desire thee not to pass at this time, 
 whither thou art purposed : for if thou 
 dost, thou wilt not fare well on thy 
 journey, nor any that passeth with 
 thee.’ It was in the street of Lin- 
 lithgow, also, that the Regent Murray 
 was shot by Hamilton of Bothwell- 
 haugh, in revenge for a grievous 
 wrong, for which, however, the Regent 
 was not wholly responsible. Pro- 
 ceeding down this street, the visitor 
 will notice one or two drinking foun- 
 tains, one of which, dedicated to St. 
 Michael, is surmounted by a rudely- 
 carved 
 angel, 
 neath, 
 
 Queen Margaret’s Bovver, Linlithgow. 
 
 representation of the arch- 
 with the inscription under- 
 ‘1720. Saint Michael is kinde to strangers. 
 
 Queen Margaret’s Bower, Linlithgow (Interior). 
 
 A speedy run by Polmont Junc- 
 tion, leaving for the present the 
 tempting northerly route to Stirling 
 and the Highlands, and past the 
 great Carron Ironworks, brings the 
 traveller to Glasgow. Here he will 
 hardly linger long, unless some errand 
 of business or claim of friendship 
 should detain him in the great, ener- 
 getic, progressive, hospitable city ; nor 
 need we linger over the description. 
 The broad and noble streets in the 
 heart of the town mostly intersecting 
 one another at right angles, and the 
 most important of them traversed 
 ceaselessly by tramcars,— among the 
 best-appointed in the kingdom, — 
 occupy a slope upwards from the north 
 bank of the Clyde. The business 
 streets are nearest the river ; Argyle 
 
54 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Street, continued by the Trongate, being the chief ; farther upward the 
 straight thoroughfares are lined with stately residences and offices, with 
 many handsome churches, chiefly belonging to the three Presbyterian com- 
 munities. To the north-east is the grand Cathedral, with its wonderful 
 crypt, a magnificent though gloomy vaulted chamber, part of which was 
 formerly used as a church; the ‘ laigh (low) kirk,’ as Scott calls it in Rob 
 Roy. In this crypt is the grave of Edward Irving, distinguished by a brass 
 plate under a stained glass window representing John the Baptist. Next to 
 the crypt, the most notable feature of the cathedral is the profusion of 
 stained glass, which cost, it is said, a hundred thousand pounds. It is 
 
 chiefly modern, the finest of the win- 
 dows having been executed at Munich. 
 An hour or two may well be spent 
 in the study of these very splendid 
 specimens of modern skill, reproducing 
 the style and tone of ancient art. The 
 subjects are arranged in Bible order, 
 beginning with the Expulsion from 
 Paradise, and continuing the Old Tes- 
 tament history along both sides of the 
 nave ; the choir and Lady chapel being 
 devoted to the New. A catalogue, to 
 be had in the building, gives a descrip- 
 tion of the pictures, with the names of 
 donors, and of the persons to whose 
 memory the windows are severally 
 dedicated 
 
 That this cathedral remains in so 
 good a state of preservation, when 
 most of the ecclesiastical buildings of 
 Scotland are in ruins, furnishes a good 
 illustration of the national forethought. 
 
 1 he Glasgow people in the year 1579 were bent upon its demolition, and had 
 already destroyed many of the images in its niches, when the chief magis- 
 trate of the city shrewdly proposed that a new church should be built before 
 the old one was pulled down. A counsel, this, of wide application ! The 
 citizens acknowledged the good sense of the advice, and so the cathedral 
 continues to this day: ‘A brave kirk,’ says Andrew Fairservice : ‘None 
 
 of your whigmaleeries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it— a’ 
 solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the world keep 
 hands and gunpowther aff it.’ The choir of the cathedral is used, under the 
 name of the High Church, for the simple Presbyterian worship. 
 
 The unsightly building near the cathedral on the south side is the 
 
 St. Michael’s Well, Linlithgow. 
 
GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW. 
 
 55 
 
 Barony Church, built for the congregation that formerly worshipped in the 
 cathedral crypt, more recently made famous by the ministrations ol Dr. 
 Norman McLeod, and still greatly prosperous under the care of a worthy 
 successor. Nearly opposite, on the site of the old Archbishop’s Palace, is 
 the Glasgow Royal Infirmary: and a little farther on, crossing a bridge, aptly 
 named the Bridge of Sighs, we reach the Necropolis, a burial-ground notable, 
 perhaps, beyond all other British cemeteries, for the number and variety of 
 its monuments. The hillside on which they stand contributes greatly to 
 
 Glasgow Cathedral, from the South-east. 
 
 their effect, when viewed from a little distance, and the column erected to 
 the memory of Knox, towering in the midst of them, seems to give a fine 
 completeness to the whole. 
 
 From the east to the west of the city, we may pass by the unpro- 
 nounceable Sauchiehall Street, leading to Kelvin Grove Park, which rises 
 steeply to the new University buildings. Few of our cities can boast a 
 place of public resort at once so accessible, so beautifully laid out, and with 
 so superb a prospect, reaching from the smoky city away to the verge of the 
 Highlands. The University is a noble pile, worthy of a great nation ; but it 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 56 
 
 still awaits completion. The spire which is eventually to crown the tower 
 will rise to a height of more than three hundred feet, and the whole structure, 
 with its library, museum, and halls, will have cost about half a million sterling. 
 The old University buildings are now turned into a railway station, it must 
 be confessed with but indifferent success. 
 
 Pursuing our way westward across the Kelvin, by the Botanic Gardens, 
 the wealth and tastefulness of the merchant princes of Glasgow show them- 
 selves in the long lines of sumptuous buildings with many a charming 
 pleasaunce. The distant hills now rise to view. Few suburban drives are 
 in their way more beautiful than that by the Great Western Road, through a 
 pleasantly undulating wooded country, to the verge of the Kilpatrick Hills, 
 where the Clyde is reached ; and the way back is through the ancient village 
 of Partick, older, it is said, than Glasgow itself. At some points along the 
 route the river may be crossed by well-appointed ferries, giving access to 
 what is really another city, — Glasgow south of the Clyde, extending from 
 Govan and Pollokshields in the west to the crowded districts of Tradeston, 
 Lauriestown, Hutchinsontown, and the Gorbals, with a nobly situated park, 
 the ‘ Queen’s,’ on a height to the south. From this district, several handsome 
 bridges lead back to the northern side, where to the east of the city the 
 great open Glasgow Green will well repay a visit. 
 
 Glasgow University, with the projected Spire. 
 
BY THE CLYDE 
 
 TO THE WESTERN COAST, 
 
Arrax. 
 
Entrance to Fingai/s Cave. 
 
 BY THE CLYDE, TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 F 'or all Glasgow people the great holiday is down the Clyde. No city in 
 Great Britain, perhaps none in Europe, has such immediate access to 
 scenes where the highest beauty of land and sea combines with every bracing 
 and exhilarating quality of the atmosphere to minister health and delight. 
 Accordingly, ‘ the coast,’ as it is familiarly called, is annually thronged by 
 visitors, and the broad waters of the estuary are crowded by one of the 
 finest fleets of river steamers in the world. 
 
 For several miles below Glasgow the river pursues a somewhat mono- 
 tonous course between low banks, vast ranges of ship-building yards extending 
 far beyond the city. The waters are muddy, and, it must be said, odoriferous, 
 especially when churned by the paddles or the screw of some mighty steamer. 
 Let no squeamish traveller arrange to leave Glasgow by a boat where 
 breakfast is served between the city and Greenock. In truth, the fare is so 
 good that it is a pity to spoil its relish by any intrusive accessories from the 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 river. Many tourists prefer to save 
 time and avoid discomfort by taking 
 the rail to Greenock, or to Helens- 
 burgh, nearly opposite ; but once, 
 at any rate, the visitor who desires 
 to have a full impression of what the 
 commerce of this great city really 
 is should embark at the Broomielaw, 
 and note, as the steamer bears him 
 swiftly down the stream, the enor- 
 mous vessels, countless in number, 
 and, as it would seem, from every 
 nation under heaven, busily loading 
 or unloading, or lying at anchor in 
 the stream. We do not wish to 
 trouble the reader with stating the 
 tonnage that annually enters or 
 leaves the port of Glasgow. These 
 are found in all books of commercial 
 statistics ; and every one who has 
 passed through those miles of ship- 
 ping will easily understand that the 
 amount is something enormous. 
 But our errand to-day is one of 
 recreation. After passing Dumbar- 
 ton, with its singular two-peaked 
 rock, the river widens out ; we are in 
 the blue water ; and before Greenock 
 or Helensburgh is reached the eye 
 already revels in the splendid 
 panorama of encircling hills, girdled 
 by fair woods and studded with 
 white villas, with misty mountain 
 tops here and there beyond. A 
 word must be given in passing to 
 the steamers which ply along this 
 favoured coast. They now form a 
 fleet unequalled in swiftness and 
 comfort, as well as in the lowness of 
 their fares. At their head confes- 
 sedly is the Coluviba , which runs 
 daily between Glasgow and Ardris- 
 haig on Loch Fyne, by way of 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 61 
 
 Rothesay, and the Kyles of Bute. The Iona , which this magnificent vessel 
 has succeeded, will be remembered by almost all Scottish tourists as having 
 for many years performed the same service. For swiftness— the rate is 
 about twenty miles an hour — and for commodiousness, these steamers are as 
 unrivalled as is the scenery through which they daily carry their crowds of 
 happy passengers. Other steamers, more fitted for a wild and open sea, ply 
 throughout the year round the Mull of Cantyre ; but we must now suppose 
 the short holiday route to be taken. From Greenock for some distance the 
 river seems at many points closed in by the hilly shores like a lake. Large 
 creeks or sea lochs run inland upon the right, suggesting more exquisite 
 beauties still of shore and mountain. Were there time, it would be pleasant 
 to sail by Helensburgh up the Gareloch, or, better still, to ascend Loch 
 Long to Arrochar ; whence again a short walk over a hilly pass would 
 conduct to Tarbet, where the glories of Loch Lomond are full in view. But 
 this cannot be for us to-day : we pass the pretty watering-places of Kilmun, 
 Dunoon, Inellan, and others looking very lovely from the water, and all 
 crowded with summer guests. We do not land at any of these places now : 
 they are too hot and relaxing for us, although they have the glorious 
 freshness of the sea, and their accessibility from Glasgow makes them favourite 
 resorts of men of business with their families. On the left a more level 
 shore faces the west, with the bracing seaside villages of Wemyss Bay, now 
 accessible from Glasgow by railway, Skelmorlie and Largs. The Great and 
 Little Cumbraes seem, in the distance, to bar the entrance to the river, and 
 complete its lake-like appearance. But the steamer now crosses to Rothesay, 
 on its lovely little bay in the Isle of Bute. There a multitude generally 
 disembark ; and truly, for a day’s or a week’s holiday, they could find no 
 fairer resting-place. The wooded hills beyond the town are picturesque and 
 attractive, and suggest many a pleasant little excursion over the heights or 
 through the valleys of the island. Leaving Rothesay, the steamer enters the 
 narrow passage between Bute and the mainland in a channel between green 
 hills, strikingly beautiful in one or two places, especially where, near the 
 entrance to a small sea loch (Loch Ridden), lies the village of Tighnabriuaich, 
 which has only recently been discovered, as it were, by summer holiday- 
 makers, but is rapidly becoming a crowded watering-place. We now turn 
 sharply to the south, and soon emerge from the narrow Kyles into open 
 water, with the peaks of Arran full in view. But our vessel to-day does not 
 go near this island — which must be reached in other ways, but which should 
 on no account be omitted by the lovers of bracing air and of noble scenery, 
 especially if their pedestrian powers are good. Loch Ranza, Corrie, Brodick, 
 Lamlash, Whiting Bay, have all their attractions ; but Corrie or Brodick 
 should be chosen by the stranger for his landing-place, as he must ascend 
 Goat Fell. Every one will ask him if he did this : in fact, the question is 
 so universal that, having failed in our first attempt, we found it advisable 
 
62 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 whenever we referred afterwards to having visited Arran, to add, ‘ but we did 
 not ascend Goat Fell.’ The ascent (2866 feet) is at once easy and most 
 charming, in the two grand glens, up one or other of which the finest part 
 of the route lies, Glen Sannox from Corrie, Glen Rosa from Brodick. We 
 follow the burn nearly to its source, then turn off to a track amid vast rough 
 boulders, very precipitous in parts and dangerous, if the prescribed path be 
 left. When the summit is gained, the view over sea and land is on all sides 
 magnificent : and we no longer wonder at the question with which we were 
 plied by our friends. Not to have ascended Goat Fell is to have missed one 
 of the noblest and most varied prospects which Great Britain affords. 
 
 But Arran has attractions for others than mountain climbers. Its climate 
 seems, if a flying visit gives sufficient warrant to speak of it, simply perfect 
 - — at least, when it does not rain ! The belt between the shore and the hills 
 is so equable in temperature that the plants and shrubs of warm climates 
 flourish there all the year round, while on every side breezy uplands are 
 accessible. The glens, beside those just named, are rich in foliage as they 
 approach the sea, stern and craggy in their upper reaches ; the burns that 
 ripple over their rocky beds abound in trout and perch, generally small, but 
 delicious. No doubt the accommodation and the fare are in general homely. 
 At Brodick the traveller may live sumptuously in a fine hotel, with prices 
 corresponding : but in general the lodgings are the farmhouses of the island, 
 
BY THE CLYDE, TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 6 3 
 
 quitted for the summer visitors by their occupants, who themselves make 
 
 shift in cottage out-buildings. The houses are in great request, and them- 
 selves form a refreshing contrast with the arrangements and supposed 
 
 necessities of city life. If any one wishes to prove with how little luxury he 
 and his family can be contented, blithe and strong, let him apply early in 
 the year — for this is necessary — to secure a farm lodging for July or August 
 in the interior of Arran. It is not wonderful that many who have 
 
 experienced this kind of life revisit the island year after year, hardly caring 
 
 Goat Fjlli., from Brodick Bay. 
 
 to go elsewhere, and often becoming very fanatics in their appreciation of this 
 fair Atlantic isle. 
 
 But we must resume our sail in the Columba , now rapidly drawing to 
 a close, as rounding Ardlamont Point, we turn our back on Arran, and the 
 breadth of Loch Fyne opens before us. Calling at Tarbert, separated only 
 by a narrow isthmus from the waters of the Atlantic, we sail rapidly past 
 beautifully wooded shores into a little recess on the left, Loch Gilp, at the 
 head of which the passengers stream forth upon the quay, many of them 
 
6 4 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 starting to walk across the neck of land that separates them from the 
 Hebridean sea, others making their way over a dusty hillside to the canal 
 steamer — it was the Linnet when we visited the place — and passing through 
 some locks, rather tediously, to Crinan on the other side. Women and 
 children selling milk and llowers greet us in our progress, pleasantly, but 
 importunately. At last we reach the steamer for Oban, and perceive at 
 once from the difference of its build that it is made for rougher seas than 
 the holiday “ swift ” Columba , though still admirable in all its appointments. 
 
 Oban. 
 
 The course now lies past the once terrible whirlpool of Corryvreken (“ the 
 cauldron of the haunted sea ”), through a vast archipelago, the islands 
 varying almost infinitely in form and extent. Sometimes they almost close 
 around the ship, then again they open out grandly, disclosing the basaltic 
 precipices of Mull to the north-west. The rocks on both sides now become 
 grander, and give to the voyager who purposes to follow the coast line to 
 the extreme north of Scotland a foretaste of what he may expect. For soon 
 the steamer enters a narrow sound between the green island of Iverrera and 
 the mainland ; a little bay opens to the right, and he is at Oban, where the 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 65 
 
 long range of shops and hotels fronting the shore, and the villas on the 
 heights, with a mammoth Hydropathic Establishment, finished only as far as 
 the first storey, not to mention the sound of the railway whistle, tell him 
 that he has reached the great tourist centre, the ‘ Charing Cross of Western 
 Scotland.’ The charm of Oban to the stranger is that it affords so ready a 
 way of access to all that is most beautiful in Scotland. Yet a Sunday spent 
 in the little town several years ago is not to be forgotten. It was a 
 sacramental occasion. From an early hour boats were seen coming in from 
 the surrounding islands, and at the time of service the little church on the 
 hill was crowded to its uttermost capacity, while a larger congregation still 
 had assembled on the green sward without for a Gaelic service. The High- 
 land folk had evidently come for a feast, and hour after hour they remained 
 there beneath the blue sky, as one minister alter another ascended the 
 ‘ pulpit of wood ’ which had been placed there for the purpose, and by turns 
 expounded or prayed, or called the congregation to sing, all seated, accord- 
 ing to their wont ; the Psalms being given out line by line. One of the 
 tunes was the ‘ plaintive Martyrs 1 and never did those touching strains so 
 much affect us as when the melody floated upwards in the still summer air 
 from that congregation of hardy men and women. The sermon, part of 
 which we heard, appeared amazingly to interest the audience, though no sign 
 of emotion of any kind escaped them. They sat, in fixed attention, evidently 
 prepared for any length of exhortation : but, a little wearied by the cadences 
 of an unknown tongue, we went indoors and heard a discourse nearly two 
 hours long, on the subject of Solomon's palanquin. ‘ King Solomon made 
 himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon : he made the pillars thereof of 
 silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple ; the midst 
 thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem.’ Perhaps the 
 singularity of the text riveted our attention ; it is certain that the sermon 
 was not wearisome : its somewhat romantic tone seemed in unison with the 
 place, and the preacher managed to bring out of his subject much good 
 Gospel teaching, appropriate to the service that was to follow. Then came 
 the ‘ fencing of the tables,’ and the solemn administration, with further 
 exhortation and appeal, the whole service having occupied more than four 
 hours when we left, and found our Gaelic friends in the act of rising from 
 their seats for the final benediction ; the solemnity of their attitude being 
 instantly and somewhat oddly exchanged for a scamper down the hills to 
 their boats, while the delight of the dogs was unrestrained ! The evening 
 sermon, to a much smaller audience, of course, carried us again into realms 
 of imagination. ‘ Who are these that fly as a cloud ? ’ was the text. The 
 subject was almost like an enigma : — ‘ Why is the Church like a cloud ? ’ 
 We do not remember much of the answer, save that one point was the unity 
 in diversity ; millions of drops making up the cloud, which 
 
 ‘ moveth altogether if it move at all : ’ 
 
66 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 wafted by the breath of the Spirit, and reflecting in its splendours the glory 
 of the Sun of Righteousness. A magnificent sunset with a gorgeous environ- 
 inent of clouds seemed to point the preacher’s glowing descriptions, which, 
 whatever may be thought of their exegetical correctness, have ever since 
 connected in at least one hearer’s mind some refreshing and stimulating 
 thoughts respecting the unity and glory of Christ’s Church on earth with the 
 summer splendours of the sky on that fair western coast. 
 
 We could not of course leave Oban without a visit to Staffa and Iona. 
 Happily the day for the excursion was bright, the sea was calm, and we 
 could enjoy to the full the little voyage that to some is a drawback to a 
 visit which under any circumstances must be one of rare interest. As we 
 
 Iona. 
 
 approached Iona the first object visible was the ruined cathedral tower, 
 surmounting the low dark line of coast. The sight brought to mind at once 
 the ancient name and story of Icolmkill, the ‘ Island of Columba’s Church,’ 
 with the Culdee traditions, from the dimness of which this fact at least 
 emerges, that out of the churches in Ireland formed by Patrick’s preaching 
 there arose, a century and a half afterwards, an evangelist ot princely blood , 1 
 who dedicated himself to the work of Christ in Scotland. As the old Latin 
 rhyming verse has it : 
 
 ‘ Sancte Columba pater ! quem fudit Hibernia mater, 
 
 Quem Christi numen dedit Ecclesise fore lumen.’ 
 
 1 See Usher, Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, c. xv. (Works, 1S64, vol. vi. p. 230). 
 

 
 
 
 F 2 
 
The Shore of Iona. 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 69 
 
 That the brave missionary and his companions chose this Hebridean island 
 for their resting-place, was due to the opposition of the savage Piets : but 
 they seem to have assiduously visited the mainland, and to have been 
 successful in the highest sense. We can fully adopt the conclusion of Dr. 
 Merle D’Aubigne, that though Columba might not have had the faith of a 
 Paul or a John, he lived as in the sight of God. ‘ He prayed and read, he 
 wrote and taught, he preached and redeemed the time. With indefatigable 
 activity, he went from house to house, and from kingdom to kingdom. 
 The king of the Piets was converted, as were also many of his people ; 
 precious manuscripts were conveyed to Iona, a school of theology was 
 founded there, in which the Word was studied : and many received through 
 faith the salvation which is in Christ Jesus. Ere long a missionary spirit 
 breathed over this ocean rock, so justly named “ the light of the western 
 world.” 
 
 ‘The Judaical sacerdotalism which was beginning to extend in the 
 Christian Church found no support in Iona. They had forms, but not to 
 them did they look for life. It was the Holy Ghost, Columba maintained, 
 that made a servant of God. When the youth of Caledonia assembled 
 around their elders on these savage shores, or in their humble chapel, these 
 ministers of the Lord would say to them : “ The Holy Scriptures are the only 
 rule of faith . . . Throw aside all merit of works, and look for salvation to 
 the grace of God alone . . . Beware of a religion which consists of outward 
 observances : it is better to keep your heart pure before God than to abstain 
 from meats . . . One alone is your head, Jesus Christ.” 
 
 ‘ The sages of Iona knew nothing of transubstantiation, or of the with- 
 drawal of the cup in the Lord’s Supper, or of auricular confession, or of 
 prayers to the dead, or tapers, or incense : they celebrated Easter on a 
 different day from Rome : synodal assemblies regulated the affairs of the 
 Church, and the papal supremacy was unknown. The sun of the gospel 
 shone upon these wild and distant shores.’ 1 
 
 Many a wild and foolish legend no doubt became attached to the later 
 records of a life which we thus see dimly through the mist of centuries 
 and the imagination of the great evangelist’s biographers. We reject the 
 Saint Columba of the hagiologies, but we are able to believe in Columba, 
 the great simple-hearted missionary to the Highlands of Scotland ; and if 
 the form of truth that he introduced was defaced by some errors, there 
 was at any rate the vitality in it which proved it to contain the essentials 
 of the faith, and which in times to come was to accomplish its further 
 purification. 
 
 The occasion of our visit proved of especial interest to the islanders, as 
 it was the first excursion of the season. A large number came to the shore to 
 
 1 History of the Reformation , vol. v. book xvii. ch. 1. See also Iona, by the Rev. Dr. W. Lindsay Alexander 
 (R. T. S. 1 monthly volume ’). 
 
7o 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 greet our landing, and the conductor of our trip, in particular, having proved 
 himself a warm friend to the islanders, in regard to their temporal and 
 spiritual wants, was received with a warmth of welcome that it was good to 
 see. We visited the ruined cathedral, inspected the curious crosses which the 
 island contains, and the unique burying-place, where in close array are ranged 
 the tombstones of the old Scottish kings, forty-eight in number, it is said ; 
 Shakespeare’s Macbeth being the last of the series, following his victim 
 Duncan, whose body had been 
 
 ‘ carried to Colmekill, 
 
 The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, 
 
 And guardian of their bones.’ 
 
 From Iona we passed to Staffa, reversing what we believe is the usual 
 excursion route. Here, too, the first visit of the season was hailed by the 
 
 inhabitants ; the sea-birds flew in thousands from the cliffs and caves, surround- 
 ing our boat with dissonant terrified screaming, until fragments of biscuit 
 thrown abroad created a diversion, and prepared them afterwards to hail the 
 approach of mankind. Had we brought guns with us, as many tourists do, 
 the effect might have been reversed. We entered Fingal’s Cave without 
 much difficulty by aid of the steamer’s boats, and climbed the wonderful 
 broken columns ; our good conductor reaching the farthest verge, and when 
 all the company had grouped themselves in the cavern side, leading off with 
 Bishop Ken’s Doxology, followed by a verse of God save the Queen. The 
 effect of the strain, echoed from the vault of the cavern, and blending with 
 the restless moan of the sea around the entrance, was something not to be 
 forgotten, while the effect was enhanced by the wild cries of the birds, 
 startled anew at this invasion of their haunts. After a climb by ladder to 
 the summit of this wonderful island, and a walk on its grassy platform, we 
 returned to Oban, with new zest for one yet further excursion northwards. 
 
 But now came in the difficulty of choice. Happily we have since had 
 opportunities of enjoying by turn all the chief tours to which Oban opens 
 the way, and they are all so rich in charm, that we hardly know how to 
 counsel the intending traveller. He may take the steamer upwards, passing 
 Dunolly and Dunstaffnage Castles, crossing the mouth of Loch Etive, and 
 after a fine sail through the lower part of Loch Linnhe, halting at the point 
 where the white cottages and clumps of trees which mark Ballachulish and its 
 quarries line the shore of an inlet, opening among the mountains. Landing 
 there, you are at the mouth of Glencoe ; and a day may well be spent in 
 exploring its gloomy grandeurs. A thunderstorm in the heart of this glen, 
 a few days after the visit to Staffa and Iona just recorded, was a wonderful 
 experience. Only once or twice, in the Alps, have we heard such tremendous 
 re-echoing peals, incessant flashes gleaming between, while a pair of eagles 
 screaming overhead seemed to add to the wildness of the scene. The rain 
 
Fingal’s Cave. 
 

 
 
 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 73 
 
 that followed came down as rain only can in the Western Highlands. In 
 a very short time the burn in the valley had swollen to a torrent, and 
 cascades were leaping from all the hills. This was a little beyond the scene 
 of ‘ the massacre,’ a tragedy on which enough has been written, and which 
 no partizanship or special pleading can make to appear anything but an 
 
 Fingal’s Cave, from the Interior, 
 
 atrocious crime. The stern, frowning ruggedness of this great glen seems in 
 harmony with the gloomy associations of its history, and well corresponds 
 with its name, which, like the Hebrew Baca , signifies ‘the Valley of 
 Weeping.’ As Lord Macaulay says in his History of England : ‘The pro- 
 gress of civilisation, which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with 
 harvest, or gay with apple-blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate.” 
 
74 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Some travellers pursue their course up Glencoe over the dreary summit 
 of the pass to Kingshouse, and thence up a tremendous ascent, followed by 
 a descent through a vast treeless ‘Forest’ — for in Scotland a forest does 
 not by any means necessarily imply trees — to a little lake, then over a wild 
 pass again to Tyndrum, near which the road is crossed by the Oban railway, 
 of which more anon ; and the route loses its character of wild sterility as it 
 approaches the head of Loch Lomond. The journey is one which emphati- 
 cally is not to be recommended. For wearying monotony of savage stony 
 grandeur, it stands out beyond any other day’s excursion we remember ; but 
 this was before the days of the railway. A much finer finish to the drive 
 
 the northern bank, and crossing 
 
 the loch near its mouth, at Connel Ferry, opposite Dunstaffnage Castle. 
 This road leads between fine mountain masses all the way, with Ben Cruachan 
 grandly towering to the south. 
 
 But, instead of turning aside at Ballachulish, the tourist may pursue his 
 way up Loch Eil, into which Loch Linnhe suddenly narrows. Both sides 
 are bounded by low hills descending to a level shore, where we now see 
 the ‘ crofts ’ or small homesteads with plots of land attached, of which so 
 much has lately been heard. Some of these have a comfortable, well-to-do 
 appearance as seen from the deck of the steamer, and contrast well with 
 
BY THE CLYDE, TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 75 
 
 the heathery wastes above ; while others seem hardly more than a part and 
 parcel of the waste, forced by painful efforts into some semblance of fertility. 
 The steamer touches at Ardgour, near the narrow entrance of the loch, 
 where, on occasion of our last visit, the inhabitants of the village seemed all 
 to have assembled on the pier to welcome a brightdooking lad, apparently 
 of nineteen or twenty, with whom we had been chatting a little on board 
 the steamer, who had been sent up from some cottage home to ‘ Glasgow 
 
 College,’ and was re- 
 turning radiant with 
 good humour from his 
 first session. It was 
 good to see how he went from 
 one to another, shaking hands 
 with fishermen and peasants, and 
 respectfully greeting the minister, 
 who stood in the background of 
 
 . . , . ... The Sisters, Glencoe, 
 
 the animated group ; then walking 
 off rapidly with his mother and 
 
 sister, raising his hat as he passed to the occupants of a carriage, evidently 
 containing the great people of the village, who had driven down to the pier 
 to show their interest in the youth’s return. The whole scene, rapidly as 
 it passed, was like some charming idyll, and was characteristic of one of the 
 best sides of Scottish peasant life. 
 
 As the steamer pursues its way up the loch, Ben Nevis comes into 
 view on the right hand, a vast elephantine mass, with none of the picturesque 
 grandeur of outline which in some aspects it presents. After seeing the 
 
76 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 peaked Ben Cruachan, and the gracefully towering outline of Ben Lomond, 
 it is hard to believe that this mountain surpasses both in height. Snow, it 
 is said, lies here in drifts all the year round. When we were there once in 
 April, the whole summit was covered with snow — some who had recently 
 ascended the mountain telling us, to the depth of eighteen feet. The ‘swift 
 steamers ’ had not yet begun to ply on these rough waters, the Caledonian 
 Canal, which opens into the head of Loch Eil, was still closed, and Fort 
 
 Glencoe : A ‘ Wild Day. ’ 
 
 William was the end of the journey. The weather, however, was bright and 
 genial, and the Great Glen Nevis, which leads up to the heart of the mountain, 
 was lovely with spring flowers and mosses in every crevice of its vast and 
 rugged rocks, while the stream, swollen by the melting snow, dashed grandly 
 downwards amongst the boulders. There was a charm in the place which 
 summer visitors lose ; and in a home-like little inn, exquisitely clean and 
 comfortable, at the extremity of the village, one had leisure, denied in the 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 77 
 
 full rush of the ‘ tourist season,’ to dwell upon the aspect of the scene. 
 Crossing the canal by a bridge near its outlet, we had a magnificent view of 
 Ben Nevis, its snows and precipices lighted by the declining sun ; and it was 
 possible now to feel the grandeur of this monarch among Scottish mountains. 
 With a very deep interest too, we heard, on returning to the inn, of those 
 meteorological observations which have of late years made Ben Nevis so 
 
 notable in a scientific point of view. Mr. Wragge himself was absent, but of 
 course his work was familiar to many in the little town ; and about the same 
 time a singularly interesting sketch of his disinterested labours, from his own 
 pen, had recently appeared in a scientific periodical. 1 For five months, from 
 the first of June to the first of November, 1 88 1 , Ben Nevis had been 
 ascended every morning by Mr. Wragge or his assistants, without one day’s 
 intermission ; and the meteorological observations were reported daily in the 
 London papers, for readers who could have but little notion of the toil 
 involved in making them. The observations were first taken at five in the 
 morning, at the Achintore Station, Fort William. The route then led 
 
 upwards for two miles and a quarter to what Mr. Wragge called the ‘ Peat 
 Moss Station,’ which was reached on horseback, between half-past five and 
 six. This point is but forty feet above the sea-level. There followed a 
 
 climb to Livingston’s Boulder Station, a mile and a quarter farther, 840 
 
 feet high, reached at a quarter-past six. Another mile led to a lake, a 
 
 thousand feet higher, on a small plateau on the side of the mountain-spur 
 Meall an t'-Suidhe , The Hill of Rest. Here also a station had been fixed, 
 and observations were taken. Soon after passing this point the pony which 
 had carried our energetic observer thus far was left behind. Three stations 
 succeeded, on the main slopes of Ben Nevis, at intervals of half a mile. 
 
 Brown’s Well, 2200 feet high, Red Burn Crossing, 2700 feet, and Buchan’s 
 
 Well, 3575 feet. This last was reached at half-past eight a.m. Then came 
 the final effort over rocks and boulders to the summit of the mountain, 
 somewhat more than a mile farther on, 4406 feet above the sea, reached at 
 nine o’clock. Here huts had been erected to contain the scientific instru- 
 
 ments, and five sets of observations were made, at half-hour intervals, from 
 9 to 11, comprising the following elements: ‘Pressure, by mercurial baro- 
 meter ; comparison pressure by aneroid ; temperature of air and evaporation 
 (dry and wet bulbs) ; wind and force ; kind of cloud, amount, and velocities 
 ot strata ; hydrometeors and remarks in fullest detail as at the sea-level and 
 intermediate stations at all the above times ; maximum and minimum shade 
 temperature, solar maximum and terrestrial minimum temperature, and rainfall 
 by four gauges at 9 a.m. ; temperature of Wragge’s Well and of ground at 
 depths of 1 and 2 feet between 9 and 1 1 am.: Ozone for periods of ^ hour, 
 
 1 hour, i-|- hour, and 2 hours between 9 and 11 a.m. ; also by two differently 
 
 ' Nature (Macmillan & Co,), March 22, 188,5. We have to acknowledge the courtesy 01 the publishers in 
 allowing the use of the following diagrams, 
 
73 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 exposed tests for 24 
 hours ending 9 a.m. ; 
 actinism of the sun’s rays and of daylight 
 by Dr. Angus Smith’s apparatus for 24 
 hours ending 10.17 A - M - Hygrometric conditions 
 prevailing about 9 o’clock the previous night by self- 
 registering dry and wet bulbs, were noted at 10.15 a.m. 
 
 Rainband by Browning’s spectroscope was observed 
 at various altitudes, and its indications proved of 
 considerable value. Full notes were taken of the cloud limits, and of any 
 important changes observed between the stations.’ 
 
 The indefatigable observer then retraced his steps, making a second set 
 
 Ben Nevis. 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 79 
 
 of observations at each station, and reaching the foot of the hill by 3 p.m. ; 
 observations having been taken at the Achintore station simultaneously with 
 every observation on the mountain side and summit, and being continued 
 until night. 
 
 o 
 
 THE LAKE STATION 
 
 BUCHANS WELL 
 STATION 
 ! 357 5 F 
 
 I VILE 
 
 L.-.L— -tV . 
 
 FURLONGS 
 
 Section of the Ascent, with the Successive Stations. 
 
 A few paragraphs from Mr. Wragge’s account of his methods will be 
 read with interest, now that the arrangements of the observatory are on a 
 permanent, as well as a more extended scale. 
 
 ‘ I arrived at Fort William from Edinburgh on May 25, and at once 
 proceeded to give effect to my plans. During the next few days I was 
 engaged mainly in erecting Steven- 
 son’s thermometer - screens, and 
 laying out the sea-level station ; 
 in establishing a new “mid-way” 
 observatory at the lake, erecting 
 screen, and building there a gi- 
 gantic cairn for a barometer ; and 
 in reopening the temporary obser- 
 vatory on the summit of the 
 mountain. It was only by dint 
 of great exertion and a gang of 
 men that I got all in order on 
 the top of the Ben on May 31. 
 
 I had no occasion, however, to 
 alter the arrangements of the pre- 
 vious summer ; and the heavy 
 work of reopening chiefly consisted 
 in digging out from the vast ac- 
 cumulations of snow, the barometer cairn, hut, and thermometer cage which 
 here, as a safeguard, incloses Stevenson’s screen. The snow, in fact, was 
 nearly four feet deep, and it was necessary to cut out wide areas around the 
 instrument. I also erected another screen to contain Negretti and Zambra’s 
 self-registering clock-hygrometer, most kindly placed at my disposal by that 
 eminent firm for the purpose of obtaining 9 p.m. values. I had also to fix a 
 
 Diagram of the Summit, showing the Positions of 
 the Huts and Instruments. 
 
So 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 new roof of ship’s canvas to the rude shanty that affords some little shelter from 
 the piercing cold and storms. The barometer, a fine Fortin, had been left 
 in its cairn built up during the past winter ; and great labour was expended 
 before the north side of the cairn was reopened, the stones being so hard 
 frozen that a crowbar had to be employed. The instrument was found in 
 good condition. 
 
 ‘ Passing over all other details of arranging the stations and fixing 
 instruments, I may say that I had all in order and commenced work on 
 June I. 
 
 ‘ Of course my first business was to get the main observations — pressure, 
 temperature, hygrometric conditions, wind, cloud, etc. — into full swing by 
 
 June 1 ; and as I felt my way and got my hours and distances well under 
 command I added to my work. Thus the ozone observing system and the 
 three extra rain-gauges on the summit were added on June 15, and the 
 delicate operations for measuring the actinism of light on July 9. The 
 additional gauges were established to discover if and to what extent the 
 rainfall varies in the connection with the wind at different points of the 
 plateau from the centre to the edge of the great precipice. 
 
 ‘ During June, Stevenson’s screens were in use only at the seadevel, lake, 
 and summit ; and hence at the other places the dry and wet bulbs had to 
 be swung and the latter moistened afresh from adjacent water at each swinging. 
 But aching wrists and sore fingers soon made me determine to have louvred 
 
BY THE CLYDE, TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 81 
 
 screens at all the stations, and by July i they were in their places, and dry 
 and wet bulbs, supplied by Hicks and Negretti and Zambra, fixed permanently 
 in each. So above all was accuracy the better insured, and the whole system 
 went like clockwork. I left Achintore before 5.30 a.m., and returned about 
 3 p.m., and the rate of ascending and descending was so regulated as to 
 insure punctuality usually within a few seconds— often to the second — at the 
 various stations. 
 
 ‘Two assistants, educated by Mr. Colin Livingston of Fort William — a 
 sufficient guarantee for their ability — and trained by myself, helped in the 
 work, and relieved me in the ascent of the mountain three times a week ; 
 
 Observatory Station on the Summit of Ben Nevis. 
 
 and on these occasions I took the sea-level station. One of the greatest 
 difficulties I had to contend with in the Ben Nevis routine was as to the 
 pony on which 1 rode to and from the lake, where it was left to graze 
 and await my descent. Occasionally the stable-boy overslept, and I had to 
 make up for lost time, — no easy matter, as the wretched track leads over 
 deep ruts and treacherous swamps, and the poor brute had a trying time of 
 it. Still more frequently the person to whom it belonged gave me rotten 
 saddlery, in spite of ail remonstrance ; and on commencing the ascent the 
 girth would break, and 1 had to turn the animal adrift and plod on to the 
 lake my fastest. This was decidedly hard, inasmuch as I was obliged to 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 climb afoot some 2,500 feet from the tarn in less than two hours by a 
 circuitous route and over rough rock, stopping to observe at the other inter- 
 mediate stations. Again, the pony often wandered in his hobbles, or having- 
 broken the tethering rope had made off to the moss ; so also on the home- 
 ward journey I had sometimes to leave him and run my hardest over ruts 
 and through swamps, by a short cut, to get my readings at the next station. 
 Other trying parts of the work consisted in the journeys between Buchan’s 
 Well and the top in the allotted time, in having the two hours’ exposure 
 on the summit in bad weather, and in becoming chilled after profuse perspira- 
 tion. The rude hut, with its walls full of holes of all shapes and angles, 
 through which the wind whistles and the snow-drifts drive, afforded but a 
 poor shelter from the drenching rain and cold, and it was impossible to 
 keep anything dry. My hands often became so numbed and swollen, and 
 my paper so saturated, that I had the utmost difficulty in handling keys, 
 setting instruments, and entering my observations. Usually so laden was 
 the air with moisture, and so very dense and lasting was the cloud-fog, that, 
 even when no rain had actually fallen, all the fixings and instruments were 
 dripping ; and although, of course, I made a point of wiping the dry bulb, 
 it almost immediately became wet again. Occasionally I timed the interval 
 between wiping and fresh condensation on the bulb, and have found it wet 
 again within thirty seconds. 
 
 ‘After November r, then, I had to discontinue the work. The hut 
 had become choked with snow, and the carrying on of the undertaking 
 satisfactorily impossible. I was, however, satisfied ; and very pleased that I 
 had secured five months’ observations without the break of a single day.’ 
 
 The work is of national interest, and it is satisfactory to know that, as 
 the result of these arduous labours, a properly appointed observatory has 
 been erected by the Scottish Meteorological Society, from which the results 
 of the observations made are despatched daily to every part of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 If the tourist should be disposed for an excursion in which every form 
 of beautiful scenery, mountain, lake and glen, rich woodland and rippling 
 stream, may be enjoyed in ever-varying combination, and where a fairly 
 good road, out of the line of the crowd of travellers, opens up these 
 attractions to easy access, let him drive 1 or walk from Banavie, on the 
 opposite side of the loch to Fort William, to Arisaig, on the Atlantic coast. 
 The distance is about thirty-nine miles, the road for one-third of the way 
 continuing along the shore of Loch Eil, which at Fort William makes an 
 abrupt bend westward. At the foot of Glenfinnan, some six miles beyond 
 the loch, there is a little inn, very welcome to pedestrians as a ‘ half-way 
 
 1 The mail-cart here, as in many other parts of the Highlands, is a really comfortable ‘ trap,’ the driver of which 
 is permitted to take three passengers at a reasonable charge ; although, ot course, they must not have much luggage. 
 

 G 2 
 
Marscow from Scuir-na-Gillean. 
 
BY THE CLYDE, TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 85 
 
 house.’ Here there is a colossal statue of Prince Charles, to mark the 
 place where he first unfurled his standard in 1745, with a part of the clan 
 Cameron, headed by the laird of Lochiel. Loch Shiel is now in view, 
 grandly stretching in a south-westerly direction to the Atlantic. Leaving 
 this, the road winds on in alternate ascents and descents, passing to the 
 left a lovely little lake, and reaching the inn of K inloch Aylort, ten miles 
 from Arisaig. From this point every mile is full of beauty, especially when 
 in the approach of autumn the hillsides put on all their splendour of colour- 
 ing : while in all seasons, excepting those of incessant misty rain, the sea 
 views are very line. Arisaig is prettily situated on the head of an inlet, in 
 face of a picturesque group of rocky islets, and just opposite the singular 
 basaltic island of Eigg, with its almost Hat-topped precipitous peak (Scuir 
 Eigg), like a stupendous broken column, towering to a height of 1,274 feet 
 above the sea. 
 
 By timing the visit to Arisaig carefully, the tourist may catch the 
 steamer southwards to Oban ; or northwards to Skye, Lewis, and Cape 
 Wrath, should he wish to extend his journey to the grandest and wildest 
 coast and island scenery in Great Britain. From Arisaig the steamer crosses 
 the open sea, passing to the left the rocky islands of Rum and Muck, names 
 to which the long u’s give a pronunciation more elegant than the appearance 
 of the words ! Thence Loch Scavaig, on the southern side of Skye, is 
 reached, magnificent in the lonely desolation of its broken cliffs of basalt 
 and its rocky caves, though not without softer touches of foliage, shrubs and 
 flowers, in the ravines that descend from the Cuchullin (or Coolin) hills to 
 the shore. 
 
 The description of this lake by Sir Walter Scott in the Lord of the 
 Isles is well known, and is as accurate as it is poetical : 
 
 ‘ For rarely human eye has known 
 A scene so stern as that dread lake, 
 
 With its dark ledge of barren stone. 
 
 Seems that primeval earthquake’s sway 
 Hath rent a strange and shattered way 
 Through the rude bosom of the hill ; 
 
 And that each naked precipice, 
 
 Sable ravine and dark abyss, 
 
 Tells of the outrage still. 
 
 The wildest glen but this can show 
 Some touch of Nature’s genial glow : 
 
 On high Ben More green mosses grow 
 And heathbells bud in deep Glencoe, 
 
 And copse in Cruchan-Ben : 
 
 But here — above, around, below, 
 
 On mountain or in glen, 
 
 No tree nor shrub, nor plant nor flower, 
 
 Nor aught of vegetative power, 
 
 The weary eye may ken : 
 
86 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 For all is rocks at random thrown, 
 
 Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone, 
 
 As if were here denied 
 The summer sun, the spring’s deep dew, 
 
 That clothe with many a varied hue 
 The bleakest mountain side.’ 
 
 — Canto iii. 14. 
 
 Loch Coruisk is a little inland, and the passengers have often the 
 opportunity, while the steamer waits, of climbing over rocky ground to take 
 a rapid view of its melancholy grandeurs, as it lie’s there among vast and 
 
 Loch Coruisk. 
 
 sterile rocks at the base of the pinnacled mountains. A long walk leads 
 from the foot of Loch Coruisk through Glen Sligachan towards the inhabited 
 part of the island. The path, which throughout is very wild, and in parts 
 romantic, runs along the western flank of the Cuchullins, first climbing 
 steeply upwards, with fine views of Loch Coruisk to the left, then skirting 
 in its descent a little stream, beyond which the view of the peaked hills, 
 and especially of Scuir-na-Gillean (the ‘scaur of the gillies,’ i.e. rock of the 
 young men), is very fine. From the Sligachan Hotel there is a long un- 
 interesting carriage road to Portree, the capital of Skye, which travellers 
 who have kept to the steamer have reached more quickly than those who 
 left the vessel at Loch Scavaig. The little town on its steep upward slope 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Quiraing, Skye. 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 89 
 
 has few attractions, beyond the fact of its opening up to the visitor rock 
 and mountain scenery of whose wild ruggedness nothing that he has yet 
 seen could have given him an adequate idea. The drives inland are as well 
 kept as with such a soil and climate could be expected ; there are abundant 
 facilities for hiring ; guides offer themselves at every turn, and the signs of 
 poverty and hard living everywhere prove that ‘ the season ’ is an inestimable 
 boon to the inhabitants. To the visitor who looks beyond the immediate 
 
 Scene in the Hebrides: ‘Return from the Shieling .’ 1 
 
 enjoyment, and endeavours to estimate what must be the conditions of living 
 all the year round, the very elements of the summer picturesqueness appear 
 almost mournful. It was in the early spring that our latest visit was paid 
 
 to these island coasts. The tourists had not begun to arrive, the swift 
 
 1 In the Hebrides during the summer months, the cattle are transferred from the low pastures near the villages 
 to more distant and higher ground. During this period the women live in shielings (huts built of turf on the 
 hillside) tending the cattle ; each day, however, returning to the villages with the milk. This they carry in large 
 
 cans which are placed in their ‘creels,’ and covered over with a flaky moss, which serves for future store of litter. 
 
90 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 steamers were still laid up in their winter moorings, and the chief passengers 
 in the vessels that continued to ply were commissioners and agents sent to 
 inquire into the distress, and if possible to relieve it. The questions 
 
 arising out of all this sore need are plainly not yet settled. The case 
 of the Highland crofters generally has been so touchingly and strongly 
 presented as to arouse the sympathies of the nation : but what is to 
 be the position of these honest hard-working peasants for the future ? Here, 
 too, is a ‘ Land question,’ likely to employ our wisest thinkers and ablest 
 administrators for many a day to come ! 
 
 But our business is now with the picturesque. The excursion to Uig 
 and Ouiraing, with its fantastic table rock, will of course be taken ; also, 
 
 Huts in Uig, Lewis, inhabited 1859. 
 
 quite as interesting, though less strange in its surroundings, the drive to 
 Dun vegan Castle, on the north-west of the island, the whole route affording 
 magnificent views of mountain and sea. The Cuchullin hills are better seen 
 from the road between Dunvegan and Sligachan than from any other part 
 of the island ; but to the nearer view of this wild romantic mountain-range 
 we are inclined to prefer such distant prospects as may be gained, for instance, 
 from the heights above Strome Ferry, on the mainland opposite. On a still 
 summer’s evening, nothing can be more beautiful than the view of the island 
 beyond the narrow strait, with the bold and peaked range beyond, blue-grey 
 and purple, dappled with cloud shadows and the gloom of many a ravine, 
 standing out against the sunset sky. 
 
BY THE CLYDE , TO THE WESTERN COAST. 
 
 91 
 
 From this wonderful island, the King of the Hebrides, the tourist may, 
 if he will, pursue his way over a grandly open sea to Stornoway, the little 
 capital of Lewis, or ‘ the Lews.’ The charm of this voyage is chiefly that 
 of the fresh and bracing air, with the changeful colouring ot sea and sky. 
 Lewis is bleak and wild enough, but after the wonders of Skye, few will 
 care to explore this island or its neighbour Harris very closely. 1 he sports- 
 man and fisherman, however, will reap here a rich harvest. Another grand 
 
 An Open-air Service in Skye. 
 
 sea excursion is to Cape Wrath, the north-westerly extremity of Scotland, a 
 magnificent granite headland chafed incessantly by an angry sea. The whole 
 coast of Ross-shire and Sutherlandshire, indeed, from Strome Ferry to this 
 promontory, is one succession of noble cliffs, indented by lochs and faced by 
 innumerable islets ; while, at almost half the distance, Loch Inver will be 
 found one of those charming seaside nooks about which all who have ever 
 explored their beauties prove enthusiastic. Sea, shore, river and lake, glen 
 
92 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 and mountain height, combine to make this little spot an earthly paradise. 
 Would it were more accessible ! The calls of the steamer here are infrequent, 
 and the only other public conveyance is the mail cart from Lairg, nearly 
 fifty miles inland. But we must leave these fascinating scenes. None but 
 those who have explored them can understand how great are their fascina- 
 tions. Pure air, glorious scenery, the splendour of the sea and sky, and the 
 pleasant if transitory companionship of the like-minded, who have also learned 
 to love these islands and shores, deepen the attachment of visitors, who 
 year by year desire no better holiday resort, and find that they can visit 
 these scenes with increasing facility and comfort. Yet, to confess the 
 truth, these fair western isles, so lovely amid their grandeur in the summer 
 sunlight, have their seasons of gloom and tempest, with long and trying 
 days of driving rain and mist, with what to many will be worse, an angry 
 raging sea. But even these have their compensations. The sunsets after 
 storm are often gorgeous beyond a poet’s dream ; and the 1 mountain glory ’ 
 is hardly to be apprehended by those who know nothing of the ‘ mountain 
 gloom,’ while the effect of both is aided beyond description by the changing 
 aspects of the sea. 
 
 Scottish Crofter at Work. 
 
THROUGH THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS. 
 
Through the Trossachs. 
 
‘The Deep Trossachs’ Wildest Nook.’ 
 
 rHROUGH THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS. 
 
 T HE route by sea from Glasgow to Oban, described in the foregoing 
 pages, has of late years found a formidable rival in the railway, which 
 also gives to leisurely travellers a fine opportunity of visiting Loch Lomond, 
 with Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. The ‘circular tour’ to these scenes 
 is indeed the best known excursion in Scotland, but it is too hurried for 
 perfect enjoyment. If the reader who has not visited the country would like 
 to know how in three or four days he can see as much as possible of its 
 most characteristic and most beautiful scenery, I would recommend him to 
 go from Glasgow to Oban by way of Loch Lomond, his halting-places being 
 Tarbet, the foot of Loch Katrine, and perhaps Killin or Dalmally. A short 
 run from Glasgow takes him to Balloch, where the Loch Lomond steamer 
 is waiting for passengers at a little inlet, whence there is hardly a glimpse 
 of the loveliness and grandeur beyond. It is well to begin such a tour 
 quietly — it may be with a little disappointment. But the beauties of the lake 
 soon unfold themselves, as the steamer swiftly makes its way among green 
 wooded islands, and the mountain heights which line the upper reaches of 
 the lake become visible in the distance. When the pretty village of Luss, 
 on the western bank, is fairly past, the mountain grandeurs disclose them- 
 selves in ever-varying forms beyond the expanse of blue water at their feet. 
 
96 . SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Ben Lomond towers on the right, while to the left the fantastic peaks of 
 Ben Arthur, or the ‘ Cobbler,’ and the grand precipices of Ben Voirlich stand 
 out against the sky. There will be time, should the weather prove favour- 
 able, for the hardy pedestrian to land at Rowardennan, and to walk over 
 
 Ben Arthur, or ‘The Cobbler. 
 
 the summit of Ben Lomond, descending at Inversnaid. The path is com- 
 paratively easy, and the prospect on a clear summer’s evening is of trans- 
 cendent beauty, ranging from Arran in the west to the Firth of Forth in 
 
THROUGH THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS , 
 
 97 
 
 the east. Travellers who decline this effort will nevertheless have from 
 Tarbet, on the opposite shore, a magnificent view of the mountain, seeming 
 to descend sheer into the waters to an unfathomable depth, and rising 1 
 upwards to a noble pyramid. There is no place where a few days’ summer- 
 quiet, or a Sabbath’s rest, may be more exquisitely enjoyed. ‘ I wonder,’ 
 once exclaimed Dr. Chalmers, ‘ whether there is a Loch Lomond in 
 heaven ! ’ 
 
 Across a narrow isthmus Loch Long is easily reached, or a long day’s 
 ramble may be taken in the 
 wild and rugged Glencoe, 
 at least as far as the 1 Rest 
 and be thankful ’ seat to 
 which Wordsworth’s sonnet 
 refers : — 
 
 ‘ Doubling and doubling with labo- 
 rious walk, 
 
 Who that has gained at length 
 
 the wished-for height, 
 
 This brief, this simple wayside 
 
 call can slight, 
 
 And rest not thankful ? ’ 
 
 From this point it is 
 time for us to return to 
 Tarbet, and as soon as we 
 can bring ourselves to leave 
 its fascinations we cross to 
 Inversnaid, made famous 
 again by Wordsworth, in 
 his Highland Girl. ‘The bay, the waterfall,’ of which the poet sings, are 
 still there in unspoiled beauty : the ‘ cabin small ’ has been replaced by a 
 large hotel, chiefly known to tourists as the starting-point for Loch Katrine, 
 which is reached by a five miles’ drive or walk over a rough and unin- 
 teresting road that crosses one part of the watershed between the Clyde 
 and the Forth. For the two lakes, so near, and to the thoughts of many 
 persons so inseparable, belong to two different water systems. Loch Lomond, 
 almost on the sea-level, discharges its waters in the great western estuary. 
 Loch Katrine, 350 feet higher, issues by Lochs Achray and Vennachar into 
 the Teith, which joins the Forth a little above Stirling, and so flows into the 
 German Ocean. Such at least is the natural course ol the Katrine waters : 
 we all know how science and skill have interfered to turn a great portion of 
 them westward also, and to make them tributary to human needs. Somewhat 
 sneeringly I was told by a fellow-traveller that we were going to see the great 
 ‘ Glasgow Reservoir ; ’ and, in fact, knowing that the level of the lake had 
 
 ‘The Lazy Mist hangs from the Brow of the Hill.’ 
 
 II 
 
9 8 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 been raised four or five feet by embankment, with a view to this water 
 supply, and that of course large engineering works had been constructed at 
 the place of issue, it was natural to expect some diminution of the old 
 romantic charm. But there is really little, if any. For one thing, the 
 water-works are placed at some distance from the more picturesque part 
 of the lake, and are passed by the little steamer, on which we embarked 
 at Stronachlachar pier, some time before we reach fair Ellen’s Isle, the 
 Silver Strand, or the opening to the Trossachs. The beauty that surrounds 
 the outlet of the lake is thus left unimpaired. Then, the flow of water 
 for Glasgow uses, vast as it is, bears but a small proportion to the capacity 
 
 Loch Katrine, with Ellen’s Isle. 
 
 of the lake. Loch Katrine contains in round numbers 5,620 millions of 
 gallons : the daily supply required for Glasgow and its suburbs is at the 
 rate of 54 gallons a head per day for a population of three quarters of a 
 million ; something less than 40 millions of gallons in all. 1 Speaking 
 roughly, therefore, the lake contains 140 days’ supply, were the rainfall 
 entirely to cease and every tributary stream from the mountains around to 
 be cut off. As it is, there is no deficiency, and though the trees on the 
 margin of the lake seem in places to have suffered, the outfall to Loch 
 Achray is, generally speaking, as copious as ever ; while, to prevent any 
 diminution in the river Teith, Loch Vennachar has been embanked, so 
 
 1 The average daily supply has been as follows : — 
 
 1871. 29,715,501 gallons. 
 
 1876. 32,336,788 ,, 
 
 1881. 39,144,907 gallons. 
 
 1882. 38,045,482 „ 
 
THROUGH THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS. 
 
 99 
 
 as greatly to increase its storage ; while little Loch Drunkie, a mountain 
 tarn 416 feet above the sea, that discharges into Loch Vennachar (269 feet) 
 is also used for storage. 1 There is thus no fear that the supply may prove 
 insufficient ; and in fact Loch Katrine at the very lowest falls but three 
 feet below the old summer level, while, as we have seen, it may touch four 
 feet above that level, a total range of but seven feet. From the lake the 
 water is conveyed to Glasgow, a distance of 34 miles ; partly by tunnels 
 through the hills, partly by aqueducts, overarched, and carried across valleys 
 by lofty bridges ; while in three valleys, those of the Dochray Water, the 
 River Endrick, and the Blane Water, the water is conducted down the 
 slope and ascends on the opposite side in cast-iron pipes four feet in diameter. 
 
 The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine, 
 
 Eight miles out of Glasgow, at Mugdock, there is a great service reservoir 
 317 feet above the sea-level, with a capacity of 550 millions of gallons; and 
 from this the water is carried to Glasgow by several mains, each to its own 
 quarter of the city and suburbs. The result is that the inhabitants of this 
 favoured town have everywhere in their houses and manufactories a practically 
 unlimited supply of the purest water, carefully filtered in its course, and 
 
 1 Here are the exact figures for the information of the curious : — Loch Katrine , raised 4 feet above the old 
 summer level, has a water surface of 3,059 acres, and a capacity of 5,623,581,250 gallons; Loch Vennachar, raised 
 5 feet 9 inches, covering 1,025 acres, capacity 2,588,960,350 gallons; Loch Drunkie, raised 25 feet, covering 138 
 acres, capacity 773,750,063 gallons ; total 4,222 acres of water level, and a capacity of 8,986,291,663 gallons. 
 These figures, and the facts given above, are taken from a remarkably interesting paper On the Latest Additions to 
 the Loch Katrine Water-works, by Mr. James M. Gale, C.E., in the Transactions of the Institution of Engineers and 
 Shipbuilders in Scotland, March 20, 1883. 
 
 H 2 
 
[OO 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 carrying health, cleanliness and comfort everywhere. 1 Who that knows facts 
 like these will not look on Loch Katrine with an interest even deeper than 
 that inspired by the Lady of the I^ake ? Or, at any rate, who will not be 
 willing to turn his thoughts for a moment from the adventures of Fitzjames 
 and Roderick Dhu, to acknowledge that the most illustrious memory con- 
 nected with this beautiful lake is that on the fourteenth of October, 1859, 
 our gracious Queen, by opening the first sluice and letting the waters flow, 
 conferred upon one of the greatest cities of her empire this gift beyond all 
 price ? 
 
 We have been led to dwell on this achievement of science somewhat 
 disproportionately perhaps for a book like the present ; and yet it seemed 
 not unnecessary, to meet an impression not uncommon among those who 
 have never seen Lochs Katrine, Vennachar and Achray, with their guardian 
 mountains ‘ huge Ben Venue ’ and 1 Ben Ledi’s ridge in air.’ Nothing has 
 impaired, and truly nothing can excel, the beauties of the opening to the 
 Trossachs as they unfold before the traveller, borne swiftly past Ellen’s Isle, 
 and stepping, full of expectancy and of Sir Walter Scott, upon the little 
 landing near Airdcheanochrochan. This portentous word, we believe, is 
 Gaelic for ‘the high point at the end of the knoll.’ He is now in the 
 Trossachs, or the ‘ bristly country ; ’ and perhaps his expectations have been 
 unduly raised by the poet’s description, for I have known some visitors to 
 confess disappointment, and have even been confidentially asked, ‘ But which 
 are the Trossachs?’ The truth is, we pass through this lovely glen too 
 quickly to take in all its beauties. We are in a hurry, perhaps, for luncheon 
 at the hotel, or are wondering whether there will be room on the coach. 
 It is best to linger. The crowd will soon have left; and when the distant 
 horn announces the departure of the coach the lover of solitude may have 
 his fill of delight as he makes his way to the Silver Strand, that edges the 
 lake on the western side a little less than a mile from the landing, or rambles 
 on the opposite side to the Pass of Beal-nam-bo (‘ Pass of the Cattle ’), on 
 the rocky flank of Ben Venue. The name speaks of the wild times when 
 the cattle stolen by Highland Caterans from the pastures beyond were 
 driven down this pass to the refuge of the Trossachs. Katrine itself, so 
 melodious in its sound, is only this Catera 7 i disguised ! The Robber Lake ? 
 So at least Sir Walter Scott informs us. But, without endeavouring to 
 settle this point of etymology, we can now re-enter the glen, in the light 
 
 1 The analysis of the water in one of the large mains during the year 1881-2 may interest our readers: — 
 Analysis of Loch Katrinf. Water by Dr. E. J. Mills, f.r.s. 
 
 Impurity. Grains per gallon. Impurity. Grains per gallon. 
 
 Solid .... 2 '1007 Nitric Nitrogen . . o’ 0056 
 
 Organic Carbon . . 0’098o Total combined Nitrogen . 0^0175 
 
 Organic Nitrogen . o’0H9 Chlorine .... 04410 
 
 Ammonia .... o’oooo 
 
Ben Venue. 
 

 
 
 
THROUGH THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS. 
 
 lol 
 
 In Glen Dochart. 
 
 of the westering sun, and give ourselves up to the full beauty of the scene. 
 On each side the crags, knolls, and mounds rise ‘ confusedly,’ streaked grey 
 
104 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 weather-stained, green with moss, purple with heather. From every crevice 
 where a root could fasten spring the feathery birch-tree and the quivering 
 aspen : — 
 
 ‘ Aloft, the ash and warrior oak 
 Cast anchor in the rifted rock.’ 
 
 Look upwards at the sunlight glistening through the boughs, or down- 
 ward on the long shadows that cross the path, or through the trees at the 
 grey mountain forms dimly discernible. 1 he view at every point is 
 
 ‘ So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 
 The scenery of a fairy dream.’ 
 
 But even more beautiful is the quiet summer’s morning in this exquisite 
 
 glen, when the dew glistens on every spray, and the birds fill the air with 
 
 music. The crowd of tourists will soon arrive, but at present the place is 
 
 free. Walk or drive to Callander, by the Bridge of Turk and beautiful 
 
 Vennachar ; you will soon meet the long procession of carriages and coaches, 
 
 with red-coated drivers showing to their passengers the successive points of 
 
 scenery described in the Lady of the Lake. ‘There’ — pointing with his 
 whip — ‘ is Coilantogle Ford — now occupied by the sluice and salmon ladders 
 connected with the water-works:’ — then, breaking into poetry, the driver 
 recites some lines of Scott. To him there is but one poem ; and every 
 
 character in it is historical. It is pleasant to see such enthusiasm, even 
 
 though after-thoughts of profit may be connected with it. We have driven 
 through famous historic scenes beside some sullen coachman who had nothing 
 but a gruff Yes or No to our most eager questions. Such drivers would 
 find no place in the Trossachs ! 
 
 Probably we may not be able to remain in the neighbourhood of Loch 
 Vennachar, or there are lovely spots that would well repay the explorer. 
 As a rule, however, these are as lonely all through the summer season as 
 though the crowd of excursionists were not daily rushing past. One bright 
 summer day stands out in memory, spent years ago with pleasant friends by 
 ‘the only Lake in Scotland.’ For all the rest are lochs: this of Menteith, 
 for some inscrutable reason, is always called a lake. Flere is ‘ Queen Mary’s 
 Bower’ in Inch-ma-home, the ‘Island of Rest;’ and here, with the ‘four 
 Maries ’ as her attendants, the ill-fated princess passed her brief and happy 
 childhood. For varied loveliness of woodland, streamlet, hill, lake, and island, 
 with glimpses of sterner majesty beyond, no little excursion could well be 
 more charming than this from Dullater, at the outlet of Vennachar, to the 
 Port ol Menteith, and to Aberfoyle, near the foot of beautiful Loch Ard, 
 described in Rob Roy. From this village a newly-constructed mountain-road 
 leads past Loch Drunkie to the Trossachs. 
 
 Callander itself, excepting the pretty fall of Bracklinn above the village, 
 

 
 
 
Head of Loch Awe and Kilchurn Castle. 
 
THROUGH THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS. 
 
 107 
 
 presents no points of special interest. The ‘ Dreadnought ’ Hotel is familiar 
 to tourists as a place for coming and going ; but most travellers now seek 
 the railway station ; and if bound, as we are now, for Oban, they will soon 
 find themselves on one of the finest routes by rail which these islands can 
 boast. Many people complain that railways interfere with the enjoyment of 
 scenery. In some localities this may be true. But here the natural features 
 of the country are on so vast a scale that the little railway line (mostly 
 single) and the infrequent trains seem no profanation either of the stillness 
 or of the beauty. To the traveller almost every mile is now full of charm. 
 First of all he proceeds up the glen of the Leny, a stream that flows over 
 rocky banks from Loch Lubnaig to the Teith : the lake then opens up and 
 the railway continues close upon its banks from end to end in view of crags 
 and wooded knolls on the opposite side. Soon the line mounts upwards to a 
 height above Loch Earn Head, a magnificent view of the loch with its 
 girdling mountains being obtained from the railway carriage windows. Glen 
 Ogle that follows is wild and rocky, the line being carried like a slender 
 thread among its gigantic crags. At Killin Station, three or four miles from 
 the village, there is a junction for Loch Tay, beyond which Ben Lawers rises 
 grandly. Glen Dochart, which is next ascended, brings into view the mighty 
 pyramid of Ben More, and the line still rises to Crianlarich, at the head of 
 Glen Falloch, and to Tyndrum. After passing the summit level, we obtain a 
 fine open view over Glen Orchy to the north, and soon after passing Dalmally 
 reach the head of Loch Awe, near Kilchurn Castle. At Loch Awe Station 
 a new hotel commands a grand prospect of lake and mountain, seen in too 
 brief glimpses from the train, which after pursuing its way for somewhat more 
 than a mile by the lake side plunges into the Pass of Brander, shared by 
 the railway with the road and the broad swift river. The latter is crossed 
 just above Taynuilt, and Loch Etive is reached, near the outlet of which by 
 Dunstaffnage Castle the train turns off through a green valley encircled by 
 low rocky hills to its destination at Oban. 
 
 The only other railway route to compare with this in varied beauty also 
 crosses the Highlands from east to west, but is much further north. It 
 may be entered at Inverness, though its proper starting-point is at Dingwall, 
 where the line diverges westward from the railway to the north. From 
 Oban to Inverness the best way is up what has been called the Great Glen 
 of Scotland, by way of Loch Linnhe, the Caledonian Canal, Loch Lochy 
 and Loch Ness. This route has already been sketched in these pages, as 
 far as Fort William : the part beyond, though the passing of the canal locks 
 is tedious, is very beautiful in fine summer weather, especially between the 
 green hills and woods that line the shore of Loch Ness. Boyers will of 
 course be visited ; though it is far better to take a more leisurely survey of 
 this grand waterfall, ‘ out of all sight and sound,’ says Professor Wilson, 
 
io8 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 ‘ the finest in Great Britain,’ than is possible amid the rush of tourists 
 while the steamer waits. It is a scene over which to linger through half a 
 
 Lower Fall of Foyers. 
 
 summer’s day : and although the Lower Fall is by far the finer, the Upper is 
 worth visiting too, and the paths up the glen are of rich and various beauty. 
 
THROUGH THE IVES TER A HIGHLANDS. 
 
 109 
 
 I NVER 
 
 NESS 
 
 was to us 
 
 un- 
 
 expectedly 
 
 at- 
 
 tracti v e. 
 
 We 
 
 had read 
 
 of a 
 
 ‘ little Highland 
 
 town,’ but 
 
 we 
 
 found a modern 
 
 city, b r i 
 
 or h t 
 £> 11 
 
 clean, and 
 
 evi- 
 
 clently prosper- 
 
 ous, while 
 
 the 
 
 swift clear 
 
 Ness 
 
 flowing from the 
 
 loch to the sea 
 
 (quite indepen- 
 
 dently of 
 
 the 
 
 outlet to 
 
 the 
 
 Caledonian 
 
 Canal) a< 
 
 ddecl 
 
 greatly to 
 
 the 
 
 char m. 
 
 But 
 
 there wa; 
 
 ^ n 0 
 
 time to 
 
 stay, 
 
 beyond 
 
 one 
 
 quiet Sunday, where in a church beside 
 the Ness we not only heard a most 
 admirable sermon, but listened to some 
 remarkably fine choral and congrega- 
 tional singing without any instrumental 
 accompaniment. If the service of song 
 could always be so conducted, we 
 thought, there would be no ‘ organ 
 question ’ to disturb the Assemblies and the churches ! 
 
 The next morning early found us on the way to Dingwall for what is 
 called the ‘Skye Railway,’ having its terminus at Strome Ferry, in full view 
 of that wonderful island. From Dingwall the first stage led to the broad 
 open vale of Strathpeffer, with Ben Wyvis rising grandly to the north, while 
 from the nearer foreground in every direction arose mountains exquisitely 
 diversified in contour. The place invited a longer stay, even apart from the 
 attractions of its mineral waters : but time forbade, and Auchnasheen farther 
 on promised yet greater charms. After passing through a wonderful ravine 
 and through many a rocky cutting, an expanse of rich pasture and lovely 
 
I IO 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 woods opened upon the view, with glimpses of a calm lake seeming to 
 recede among the hills. The mountain heights that bounded the valley in 
 all directions became softer and less rugged to the view, as well as almost 
 infinitely varied in form. At Auchnasheen, on the margin also of a little 
 lake, the railway was left awhile for an excursion to Loch Maree and 
 
 Gairloch, easily attainable by a good pedestrian, though in the season there 
 is generally sufficient coach accommodation for the tourists who come so far. 
 So much is now said about Loch Maree by those who have visited it that 
 expectation is apt to be disappointed. Yet those who care most for the 
 sterner aspects of nature, who delight in bold mountain forms, and see more 
 beauty in the dark green of pine forests on grey hill slopes, than in the 
 
 ‘birks of Aberfeldy ’ or the oaks and hazels of the Trossachs, will give 
 
 the palm to Loch Maree over perhaps all other scenery in Scotland. The 
 
 green islands on the lake are picturesquely beautiful, and Ben Slioch rises 
 on the farther shore, a very giant among the surrounding mountains. 
 
 Loch Maree, with Ben Slioch. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS: 
 STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
Relics of Birnam Wood, 
 
View from Stirling Castle. 
 
 THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS: STIRLING TO 
 
 INVERNESS. 
 
 r HE Scottish Highlands are sometimes spoken of so as to convey the 
 impression that there is a clearly defined mountain district, contrasted 
 with ‘ the Lowlands,’ as though the latter were a vast plain. There could 
 hardly be a greater mistake. From Kirkcudbright to Caithness, there is 
 hardly a county without its hill-ranges ; and without leaving the Southern 
 districts, the lover of mountain beauty will find noble heights and solitary 
 glens, with many a rippling burn from tarns among the hills. At some of 
 
 i 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES . 
 
 It4 
 
 these we have already glanced ; and it is almost with reluctance that 
 leave the rest for the grander, sterner hill country of the North. 
 
 It is at Stirling that the traveller from 
 the South first begins to discern the immensity 
 of the mountain region to which he is directing 
 his way ; and in comparison with the other 
 routes that have been already described in 
 these pages, or that may be sketched here- 
 after, possibly the region that lies about ‘ the 
 Highland Railway ’ affords the most varied 
 as well as the wildest and most magnificent 
 range of scenery. The line really starts from 
 Perth, but the access from Stirling is an ap- 
 propriate and striking introduction to its 
 wonders, although it may be approached a 
 little more directly from Edinburgh by crossing 
 the Firth of Forth, and proceeding through 
 Fifeshire. A detour by Dunfermline and 
 Kinross we found very pleasant, especially as it 
 gave the opportunity of visiting Foch Feven, 
 famed for Oueen Mary’s romantic escape ; but 
 the journey on the whole proved rather tedious,'] 
 and the route by Stirling seems preferable, 
 especially if the traveller is imbued with 
 
 The Bore Stone, Bannockburn, 
 
 we 
 

 I 2 
 
Windings of the Forth. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 1 1 7 
 
 the romance of Scottish history, and is able to stop at Bannockburn. 
 The name had always a peculiar charm to us, perhaps through Sir Walter 
 Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather— surely the best ‘ child’s history ’ ever 
 written : and although the place itself is flat and rather disenchanting, 
 the very sight of it brings back some of the old enthusiasm. Standing by 
 the ‘ Bore Stone ’ where Bruce placed his banner — now protected by 
 an iron grating — it is impossible not to recall that noblest of battle songs, 
 
 1 Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled ; ’ or the stirring lines in which Scott 
 describes the frenzy that fired the mixed multitude that watched the contest 
 from afar : 
 
 ‘ Each heart had caught the patriot spark, 
 
 Old man and stripling, priest and clerk, 
 
 Bondsman and serf; even female hand 
 
 Stretched to the hatchet or the brand. 
 
 % % % 
 
 <: To us, as to our lords, are given 
 A native earth, a promised heaven ; 
 
 To us, as to our lords, belongs 
 
 The vengeance for our nation’s wrongs ; 
 
 The choice, ’twixt death or freedom, warms 
 Our breasts as theirs. To arms! to arms!” 
 
 To arms they flew, — axe, club, or spear, — • 
 
 And mimic ensigns high they rear, 
 
 And like a bannered host afar, 
 
 Bear down on England’s wearied war,’ 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that in all the strifes of this period our 
 English sympathies should be with the Scotch ! The pride of the Scottish 
 people themselves in their patriot heroes, no Act of Union or blending of 
 interests seems ever able to diminish. 
 
 In Stirling itself the chief interest is concentrated in the Castle, which, 
 as ever}- one knows, surmounts a precipice fronting the plain of the Forth, 
 the town being built upon the slopes behind. From the terraces of this 
 grand rock the view is magnificent. Courteous guides will tell the visitor 
 where Oueen Mary stood to admire the prospect, or where Queen Victoria 
 gazed upon the scene. Or, enticing you within, they will show the ‘ Douglas 
 room,’ and repeat the tradition of the murder foully wrought, pointing out 
 also memorials of John Knox, side by side with relics from Bannockburn — 
 a singular combination ! Then for the sightseer there are the quaint decora- 
 tions of the Palace, and the Chapel Royal, now a store-room. But the 
 chief attraction is still without, in the glorious open plain girded by its 
 amphitheatre of mountains. The windings of the Forth, partially seen from 
 the Rock, so fertilise the vale as to have given rise to the saying, 
 
 ‘ The lairdship of the bonny Links of Forth 
 Is better than an earldom in the North.’ 
 
i IS 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Appearing to rise almost 
 sheer from the level in 
 the distance, may be traced, in the 
 west, the outlines of Ben Lomond, 
 Ben Venue, Ben Ledi, Ben 
 Voirlich, and of many lesser 
 heights, while in the east 
 the nearer and still more 
 beautiful Ochill Hills 
 close in the 
 prospect. 
 
 Stirling Castle. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS 
 
 119 
 
 The view is a fitting introduction to the mountain land. Of course we cast 
 our stone, metaphorically, at the unfortunate Wallace Monument, erected in 
 ‘ the baronial style ’ — whatever that may be — upon a wooded crag nearly two 
 miles off, an outlying spur of the Ochills that had formerly been one of the 
 most charming features of the scene. We are told for our comfort that the 
 structure is 220 feet high, and that if we please we can ascend it for the 
 
 Wallace Monument, Stirling. 
 
 sake of the yet more extensive view from its summit. Declining the offer, 
 and hardly caring to remain in Stirling, we pass on to rest for the night at 
 the Bridge of Allan, a watering-place on the brow of the Airthrey range, 
 luxuriantly wooded, and favoured not only by invigorating air, but by mineral 
 waters, which on ascending to the pump-room before breakfast the next 
 morning, we find we may drink ad libitum , on a small payment at entrance. 
 Several persons are already pacing in front of the building with tumblers 
 
120 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Dunblane Cathedral. 
 
 in their hands ; but the genial stim- 
 ulating air of the hillside seems at 
 present all we want, and a delightful 
 ramble through the woods higher up 
 sends us back to our comfortable 
 hotel with appetite ready for a Scottish 
 breakfast, to be followed by a long 
 journey to the Grampian Highlands. 
 The line to Perth crosses and re- 
 crosses the fair Allan Water, passing 
 Dunblane with its old cathedral- 
 worth a visit, were there time — then 
 reaches Crieff Junction, or rather, the 
 Junction for Crieff, that lovely rest- 
 ing-place in the strath or valley of 
 the Earn being still at a consider- 
 able distance. Should there be time 
 for a visit, an excursion up the wild Glen Turrit to the foot of Ben Chonzie 
 would be found wonderfully enjoyable ; but we must now press on from the 
 junction, and leave these scenes for the time unvisited. Auchterarder is 
 next passed, a name once famous in ecclesiastical controversy ; and the train 
 traverses a broad fertile valley until it rolls into the wide echoing station of 
 Perth. The ‘ fair city,’ however, need not detain us. Its far-famed Inches 
 are broad level meadows. Kinnoul Hill is beautiful for its wooded walks 
 and for its line views towards the 
 Grampian Mountains, while the Carse 
 of Gowrie, an expanse of rich meadow- 
 land bordering the Tay, stretches east- 
 ward, and the blue waters of the 
 estuary gleam beyond. It is said that 
 Moncrieff Hill, on the other side of 
 the river, is equally fine ; but we had 
 no time to ascend both, or rather, as 
 the time of our visit to Kinnoul hap- 
 pened to be the Sabbath evening after 
 the services of the day, it was more 
 congenial to rest, in quiet talk, as we 
 watched the sunset over the distant 
 hills. 
 
 Returning to the railway station in 
 the morning, we find two sets of trains 
 bound for the Highlands. One is by 
 Forfar to Aberdeen and the east; the 
 
 Carse of Gowrie. 
 

vS 
 
 Larches at Dunicei.d. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 123 
 
 other by Blair Athole more directly northward ; both routes meeting again at 
 Forres, and passing along the southern shore of the Moray Firth to Inverness. 
 It is the Blair Athole line that is called distinctively the 4 Highland Railway’; 
 and happy are those travellers who can linger at its successive points of 
 interest, and explore at leisure the wonderful regions that lie eastward and 
 westward, offering within a short distance scenes of alternate grandeur and 
 loveliness, enhanced by the stern and rugged desolation by which, on 
 the eastern side especially, they are shut in. At first, however, all is 
 tranquil loveliness, as the train rapidly ascends the valley of the Tay, with 
 many a view of the fair river. Dunkeld is soon reached — to many travellers 
 the first introduction to the Highlands. The town is some distance 
 from the station, and the best way to apprehend its beauty is to walk to 
 
 Locn Turrit. 
 
 the bridge over the Tay, from which a panorama of the richest beauty is 
 obtained, the hills, nowhere vast, but picturesque in outline, being clothed 
 to their summits with noble trees. The little town with its old cathedral 
 tower is in front of the spectator ; Birnam Hill, beyond the railway station, 
 rises behind him. Undoubtedly at Dunkeld the two things to be done are 
 to ascend this hill, and to walk through the Duke of Athole’s grounds. 
 Birnam is perfectly accessible, even to ordinary walkers ; the ‘ wood ’ which 
 Shakspeare has made famous 1 is represented by some fine old trees; the path 
 to the summit winds rounds a dense plantation of fir and birch ; above which 
 a grand view of the distant mountains is obtained, with Dunkeld in the 
 foreground, guarded as it were by the wooded bluff of Craigie-Barns. The 
 
 1 Mr. Pennant says that ‘ Birnam Wood has never recovered the march which its ancestors made to Dunsinane.’ 
 
124 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 sparkle of lakelets in the valley, and the luxuriance of the foliage on every 
 height, afford a charming contrast in colour to the purple and grey of the 
 mountains ; while the broad and beautiful Tay may be traced both upwards 
 and downwards for many a mile. It is only the background of rugged 
 desolateness that seems wanting to the perfection of this fine view. The 
 harsher features are softened by distance, and the spectator looks abroad as 
 on an earthly Paradise. 
 
 Descending to Dunkeld, and visiting the cathedral or not, as his anti- 
 quarian tastes may incline him, the traveller must next make a point of 
 visiting the Duke of Athole’s grounds, passing on the way some old larch- 
 trees, among the first introduced into Great Britain, having been brought 
 from the Tyrol in 1 738. There is a payment at the Duke’s gates which 
 nobody will grudge, and the prejudice with which some persons are apt to 
 enter show-grounds of any kind will soon disappear. True, there is much 
 of art in the laying out of walks and shrubberies, and opinions will differ as 
 to the effect produced in ‘ Ossian’s Hall,’ near the Hermitage, where the 
 throwing open of a door suddenly discloses a cataract which a cunning dis- 
 position of mirrors makes to appear as though environing the spectator on 
 all sides, and ready to pour on his head. 1 Some years ago a traveller whose 
 aesthetics probably were too much for his honesty, wantonly destroyed the 
 place with gunpowder, and left the falls to produce their own impression. 
 
 1 A naively amusing account of a visit to Ossian’s Cave is given by an American traveller in 1835 : 
 
 ‘ On mounting a bank, I saw my guide at the door of a rustic temple, which he threw open on my approach, 
 and introduced me to a circular mansion about 12 feet in diameter, neatly finished, and lighted in the top of the dome. 
 
 ‘“This,” said he, “is Ossian’s Hall.” Then, pointing to a painting on the farther side, he began to explain : — 
 “ That, as you see, is Ossian, singing to his two greyhounds and the maidens that stand before him.” I saw the 
 
 listeners were alike enraptured, the dogs no less than the maids, and Ossian lost in the inspirations of his song. 
 
 And while I myself began to sympathize with the group, and stood gazing on the venerable countenance, the 
 heaven- directed eye, and flowing locks of the Bard, on a sudden, in the twinkling of an eye, by some invisible 
 machinery, the painting was withdrawn — it was not to be found. The space occasioned by it opened into a splendid 
 though small saloon, the -farther end of which again opened directly on a cataract, 40 feet distant, and of 40 feet 
 descent, which came foaming and rushing down the rocks, heightened in its powers by the full light of a blazing 
 sun, and by the rocky bed and sides of the Braan, overhung by the thick-set trees, all stooping and bending to 
 look upon the scene. It was grand and overpowering. My first emotions were those of a shock. The whole 
 vision was thrown upon me so unexpectedly — the painting on which I was gazing had been withdrawn so miracu- 
 lously, that I had almost fallen back on the floor with surprise. But the recovery into unqualified transport was 
 
 as quick and irresistible as the emotions immediately preceding. It is an interesting device. The cataract itself, 
 
 in its own natural forms, is worth seeing. It is made to spring upon you like a lion pouncing upon its prey. It 
 seems actually to jump and leap towards you — and it takes a second long moment to be convinced that you are 
 not lost, overwhelmed, and borne away. 
 
 ‘ What gives additional, and partly a frightful interest to this scene, is a large reflecting mirror laid upon the 
 ceiling above, which unavoidably attracts the gaze ; and there you behold again the entire flood, with all its terrors 
 impending, and it seems impossible to escape it. It is a most imposing spectacle. 
 
 ‘ “Walk in, walk in,” said my guide, stepping himself before me into the saloon, as if to convince me it was 
 safe notwithstanding, as he saw me wrapt in amazement. I followed, and behold ! I saw myself thrown full length 
 from the walls on the right and left, presenting my front and rear, and both my sides, with every form and shape 
 I wore, from every point of the compass. I turned, and saw myself turning into a thousand shapes. I looked up, 
 and there saw myself looking down upon myself, and standing on my feet against the heavens. I moved onward, 
 and whichever way I went, saw myself moving in various directions — in one place slowly, in another quickly, in 
 another quicker still, and in another darting forward at a fearful rate. He that has not philosophy enough to find 
 out this secret, may ask me another time .’ — Four Years in Great Britain , by Calvin Colton. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS 
 
 125 
 
 Ossian’s Hall has, however, been rebuilt, and forms a more tasteful, if less 
 astonishing framework for the falls than before. But apart from such 
 devices, the natural beauties of the scene are of such a kind as to be really 
 enhanced by taste and culture. The Tay, with its lovely tributary the 
 Braan, the surrounding hills, and the kindly soil, were all ready to hand ; 
 and the result of wisely directed expenditure and labour is seen in the 
 charm of the turfy walks, the magnificence of the innumerable trees, 
 
 and the selection of best points for 
 the opening up of vistas, whence the 
 chief beauties of the place may be 
 seen. The Hermitage Bridge and Fall 
 in the Braan Valley is perhaps the place 
 that will most tempt the lingering 
 footsteps of the visitor ; although the ‘ Rumbling Bridge ’ beyond (not to 
 be confounded with the more celebrated Rumbling Bridge over the Devon, 
 between Kinross and Stirling) is romantically wild. Altogether, it will be 
 seen, Dunkeld is a place that may well become the Capua of the tourist 
 who gives way to its fascinations. There is harder work before him, if he 
 wishes to see the Highlands as they are. For, as we proceed northwards, we 
 
 Hermitage Bridge, Dunkeld. 
 
126 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 shall leave this luxuriance and splendour behind, and shall better perhaps be 
 able to enter into the description of Dr. Beattie, author of The Minstrel and 
 of Essays on Taste , who thus refers to the Scottish Highlands : 
 
 ‘ The Highlands of Scotland are a picturesque but in general a melan- 
 choly country. Long tracts of mountainous desert, covered with dark heath, 
 and often obscured by misty weather ; narrow valleys, thinly inhabited, and 
 bounded by precipices resounding with the fall of torrents ; a soil so rugged and 
 a climate so dreary as in many parts to admit neither the amusements of 
 pasturage nor the labours of agriculture ; the mournful dashing of waves along 
 the friths and lakes that intersect the country ; the portentous noises which 
 every change of the wind and every increase and diminution of the waters is 
 apt to raise in a lonely region, full of echoes, and rocks, and caverns ; the 
 grotesque and ghastly appearance of such a landscape by the light of the moon 
 —objects like these diffuse a gloom over the fancy, which may be compatible 
 enough with occasional and social merriment, but cannot fail to tincture the 
 thoughts of a native in the hour of silence and solitude.’ 
 
 Dr. Beattie’s remarks occur in an Essay on Music , and are intended to 
 explain how the Highland music is naturally plaintive and much in minor key; 
 but that it is not therefore devoid of pleasing melody, the works of great 
 composers, notably Mendelssohn in his Highland Symphony , as well as the 
 native Scottish music, sufficiently attest. Yet the description has interest, 
 as showing how much the enthusiasm about Highland scenery is the result 
 of association. That the taste for such scenery is of comparatively recent 
 origin is shown in the Letters of the poet Gray, who writes almost as if 
 the wonder and beauty of the Highlands were a new discovery. It must 
 be remembered that General Wade’s roads, giving easy access for the first 
 time to the chief beauties of this mountain district, were but newly opened. 
 
 ‘ The Lowlands,’ writes Gray, ‘ are worth seeing once, but the mountains 
 are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year.’ And again, 
 speaking of Killiecrankie : ‘ A hill rises, covered with oak, with grotesque 
 
 masses of rock staring from among their trunks, like the sullen countenance 
 
 of Fingal and all his family, frowning on the little mortals of modern days. 
 
 From between this hill and the adjacent mountains, pent in a narrow channel, 
 comes roaring out the river Tuminel, and falls headlong down, enclosed in 
 white foam, which rises in a mist all around it. But my paper is deficient, 
 and I must say nothing of the Pass itself, the black river Garry, the Blair 
 of Athol, Mount Beni-gloe, my return (by another road) to Dunkeld, the 
 Hermitage, the Stra-Braan , and the Rumbling Brigg. In short, since I saw 
 the Alps, I have seen nothing sublime till now .’ 1 
 
 The railway, keeping for the most part to the valley, shuts out at 
 
 present the sterner features of the scenery ; though by-and-by it will pass 
 through a dreary country enough ! The route continues from Dunkeld 
 
 1 See Gray’s Letters to the Rev. IV. Mason, 1765, p. 348, and Letter to Dr. Wharton ( Works, Pickering), vol. iv. p, 61. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 127 
 
 to the point where, in an open valley, the Tay branches to the west : 
 the river that comes clown from the north to join it at this spot is the 
 
 Tummel. It is worth while again to leave the direct line for a brief visit 
 
 to Aberfeldy with its ‘ birks ’ or birch-trees, and pretty waterfall. As far as 
 this point there is now a branch railway, so that the visit can be made with 
 but small expenditure of time, although the leisurely traveller will find the 
 
 drive or walk by the river past Taymouth Castle and as far as Kenmore 
 
 very lovely. Here Loch Tay opens up amid a scene of perfect sylvan 
 
 Birks of Aberfeldy. 
 
 beauty, with Ben Lawers, the sixth 1 highest mountain in Scotland, 3984 feet 
 in height, rising grandly to the north, and the purple hills about Killin at 
 the head of the loch, ten miles distant, affording some hint of the sterner 
 grandeurs in the west. At Killin, as shown in a previous chapter, the 
 
 1 Which are the first five? We take the list from Mr. Baddeley’s Guide to the Highlands : Ben Nevis, 4406 
 feet ; Ben Muich Dhui, 4296 ; Braeriach, 4248 ; Cairn Toul, 4241 ; Cairngorm, 4084. These last four form one 
 stupendous irregular quadrangle about the source of the Dee. Ben Lomond comes only twenty-fourth, with a height 
 of 3192 feet. There are no fewer than foyty summits, from Ben Nevis to Ben Venue (2393 feet), that may rank 
 as mountains of the first class. 
 
128 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 railway to Oban may be joined : but our present purpose is to return to the 
 northward route. The Tummel, whose course the railway now ascends as far 
 as Pitlochrie, has been called the ‘ loveliest river in Scotland ’ ; but its chief 
 beauties will be seen by those who have time to turn off from Pitlochrie 
 up to Lochs Tummel and Rannoch. The combinations of wood and rock 
 almost along the whole route are exquisite, and the Falls of the Tummel, 
 though not high, are striking when the river is in full Hood. We ferried across 
 at the foot of the former lake to a point where a rock, easily reached, 
 commands a superb view, known as ‘ the Queen’s,’ over the loch with its 
 surrounding mountains, clothed along their bases with noble woods, their 
 endless curves and slopes culminating in the mighty pyramid of Schiehallion. 
 Should it be impossible to proceed as far as Loch Rannoch, the visitor may 
 well turn back to Pitlochrie. He will see nothing finer of its kind in all 
 Scotland. The Hydropathic Establishment at Pitlochrie attracts many 
 visitors : the vale here expands into a wide strath ; the air, without being 
 chill or harsh, is very bracing, and, though we cannot here speak from 
 experience, it is said to be well adapted for tender lungs in winter, being 
 dry and pure, while all the sunshine that there is, falls upon this happy 
 sheltered valley. 
 
 Instead of resuming the railway journey at Pitlochrie, the traveller 
 should — I might almost say must , for the sake of the rich beauty of the 
 scene — proceed on foot or by carriage along the road as far as Ivilliecrankie, 
 passing up the river Garry from its junction with the Tummel. Road, rail, 
 and river, are all carried along the glen, and though even the railroad does 
 not spoil its magnificence, but, on the contrary, affords many fine views of 
 the wooded heights which seem to close it in, the best view, incomparably, 
 is from the path below, close by the rushing river. A chatty, and, as he 
 described himself, a vara ceevil, guide accompanied us : such attendance 
 seems to be the rule when the footpath is taken. He was, as Scottish 
 guides generally are, full of honest enthusiasm for the beautiful ravine of 
 which he was the custodian. The only defect of the pass is that there is 
 so little of it. Not far from the end, we reach the Soldier's Leap, the 
 river being hemmed in by great boulders to a width of not more than ten 
 or twelve feet, where it is said a Highland soldier, hotly pursued after the 
 battle in July 1689, cleared the chasm and saved his life. There always is a 
 Lover’s Leap, a Soldier’s Leap, or a Smuggler’s Leap, over such narrow 
 gorges ! The battle-field is just outside the glen, not far from the station, 
 and close by Urrarcl House, where Claverhouse died from the wound received 
 in the conllict. 
 
 We seem to linger on these fair scenes : but in fact we are not yet 
 at an hour’s distance by train from Dunkeld. Yet a little higher, and we 
 reach Blair A thole, where now the traveller begins to feel the coldness of 
 the hills. The village lies in an open plain, and possesses no remarkable 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 MVfplp 
 
 
 ■J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Glen Tilt. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 features, apart from the castle and grounds of ‘ the Duke.’ These we did not 
 care much to see, nor even to visit the grave of Claverhouse, who is interred 
 here, but without a monument. For time was limited ; and Glen Tilt, that 
 wondrous path into the mountain land, had supreme attractions. The Tilt 
 is the little river which here comes down from the east into the Garry ; and 
 
 Bruar Water. 
 
 after following its upward course through a beautiful valley for a few miles, 
 we emerge upon a grand bare glen, in the bed of which the stream dashes 
 among its rocks. A narrow path is carried along the mountain side on the 
 right bank of the river : opposite and in front of the pedestrian, hills rise 
 beyond hills, in endless variety of bold magnificent outline ; torrents, which 
 
 K 2 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 in dry weather dwindle into rivulets, descend from the heights ; and one of 
 these, the Tarff, when in flood has proved a barrier to many a stout pedes- 
 trian. Readers of the Journal of our Life in the Highlands will remember 
 a picture of the royal party crossing the ford on horseback. This seems 
 adventurous enough ; but sometimes the ford has been entirely impracticable, 
 and the traveller on foot who has been resolved to proceed has found it neces- 
 sary to ascend the rough and broken path by the torrent for about two miles, 
 to some rude stepping-stones. Life has even been lost at the ford ; but we 
 
 Mountain Pass in the Grampians. 
 
 hear that a bridge is to be immediately placed over the stream. Some distance 
 higher up the pass, the Tilt, now an inconsiderable burn, is easily crossed ; 
 Loch Tilt, the desolate mountain tarn from which it issues, is a little to the 
 left ; and the weary traveller, having gained the summit, is at the watershed 
 between the systems of the Tay and the Dee, on the border of the counties 
 Perth and Aberdeen. Before him are the giants of the Grampians, Cairntoul, 
 Ben-Muich-dhui, and Cairngorm ; and the stream which begins to appear 
 through the stones and heather on his right hand is one of the affluents of 
 
Loch Ruicht and Cairngorm. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 135 
 
 the Dee. He is now on his way to Braemar ; but we cannot follow him, as 
 we must return to complete our journey over the ‘ Highland line.’ 
 
 After leaving Blair Athole, this line becomes very dreary ; the last ol 
 the woodland glens, with whose beauty we have been almost surfeited, 
 being at the Falls of the Bruar, a tributary of the Garry, to the right. 
 The trains mostly stop at Struan Station, and we would strongly recommend 
 any tourist who cares to see another cataract to alight there and walk up to 
 the series of falls. In its higher reaches the torrent dashes over the wildest, 
 grimmest rocks ; lower down the ravine is clothed with firs and other trees, 
 in accordance with the petition of Burns, who in his admiration of the scene 
 felt that it only needed the adornment of woodland : 
 
 ‘ Let lofty firs and ashes cool 
 My lowly banks o’erspread, 
 
 And view, deep-bending in the pool, 
 
 Their shadows’ watery bed. 
 
 Let fragrant birks, in woodbines drest, 
 
 My craggy cliffs adorn; 
 
 And for the little songster’s nest, 
 
 The close embowering thorn.’ 
 
 The line now borders the Forest of Athole — a vast dreary undulating 
 waste, scarred by many a storm, with boulders from the heights lying in all 
 directions, to tell of fierce battling of the elements through winter days and 
 nights. The Garry to the right flows over its wild, rocky, treeless bed ; 
 few habitations of men appear, and the glories of the distant hills are 
 mostly hidden by the high curves of the desert region close at hand. This 
 is the district of which we of the south so often read in winter time 
 that it is ‘snowed up,’ ‘impassable.’ More than once, a train has been 
 actually missing, until dug out— as wanderers on the St. Bernard are dis- 
 covered by the faithful hounds! In summer time, however, the air is 
 exhilarating, and some indefatigable travellers who have climbed on foot 
 this watershed between the Tay and the Spey have avowed that they 
 found Glengarry delightful to the end. Near the summit of the line the 
 river is crossed ; Loch Garry, from which it issues, lies a little to the left : 
 and at the Pass of Drumouchter (‘ the upper ridge ’) a ‘ dip ’ between the 
 counties of Perth and Inverness, the highest point is reached, fifteen hundred 
 feet above the sea-level, near two singular mountains, the ‘ Badenoch Boar ’ 
 and the ‘ Athole Sow,’ which rise right and left of the line, while a little 
 farther on is a glimpse of Loch Ericht — the Scottish Wastwater, only 
 gloomier and bigger. The running stream which we now cross and recross 
 in its stony bed, shows us that we are beginning to descend ; and the pace 
 quickens through the dreary wilderness until we reach the Spey, already a 
 fine river swiftly flowing from the west ; and fair woods and pasture land 
 are once more seen. Kingussie (of which the u, be it observed, is long) is 
 
136 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 the first considerable village reached ; the line soon skirts a pretty little 
 lake (Loch Inch), and beyond the woods on our right hand the highest 
 mountains of the Grampian range appear ; not frowningly, as seen from 
 Glen Tilt, but with considerable beauty of outline, enhanced by the fore- 
 ground of forest. Rothiemurchus, on Spey-side, is a most attractive resting- 
 place, as we can testify, from the memory of bright summer days spent in 
 roaming through the forests, or climbing the neighbouring heights, or 
 
 pleasant converse with friends in a certain shooting-lodge not far from the 
 
 mighty slopes and ravines of Cairngorm. For we are now in the haunts 
 of the wild deer ; and the sport which to its votaries not unnaturally seems 
 the noblest and most inspiriting, as well as the most healthful form of 
 recreation, engrosses the thoughts of all. It is indeed difficult not to share 
 
 the enthusiasm of the deerstalker, when some noble quarry — the prize of skill, 
 patience, and hardy endurance — is brought home in triumph from the hills. 
 Grouse-shooting, too, though making a far inferior claim upon the physical 
 powers, has its ardent votaries ; and a glance down the pages of the Sports- 
 man s Guide to the Rivers , Lochs , Moors , and Deer Forests of Scotland, published 
 monthly in the summer, will show by the rents attached to the several 
 
 ‘shootings,’ how highly the opportunity of sport is rated. Still the sport 
 is but secondary, and the main gift of these wild moors and mountain airs 
 is equally for those who have never held a gun. It is the gift of health, 
 recovered energy of brain and limb, elasticity of spirits, power to resolve 
 and to achieve, so that much of the noblest work wrought by our highest 
 and best through the winter and the spring, may be traced to those autumnal 
 days spent among the moors of Scotland. 
 
 The Spey now gathers volume, and the railroad continues close beside 
 it as far as Grantown ; the views of the river, the woodland and the distant 
 hills continuing very fine, notably where the Braes of Abernethy mark the 
 confluence of the little river Nethy from the east with the grander stream. 
 A beautiful excursion of about ten miles may be taken from Grantown to 
 Loch Ruicht, near Glen More, reflecting on its surface the precipitous sides 
 of Cairngorm and the summits of the greater and smaller Bynach. The 
 scenery around is of the wildest character — the neighbouring moor is studded 
 with pine trunks blackened by fire ; the forest is said, but I believe unjustly, 
 to have been maliciously set on fire, and the crime is spoken of as the 
 ‘ Shepherd’s Revenge.’ 
 
 The loch at its western extremity is the resort of wild fowl, who 
 breed without disturbance among the water-lilies and flags. At the other 
 end the sandy beach is indented with the countless footprints of the deer, 
 who come down to drink, or to relieve themselves from flies, by swimming 
 to the opposite shore. To the east of the loch, lies a rocky defile known 
 as ‘ The Thieves’ Road,’ along which the cattle ‘ lifted ’ from their southern 
 neighbours were driven by the Highland marauders. The mountains 
 

 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 139 
 
 become less elevated ; Strathspey opens to the right, and there is a 
 pleasant route along the banks of the river, turning off some miles below 
 its mouth in the direction of Elgin. Here there is little to be seen but 
 the cathedral, once a truly noble pile, and now imposing in its ruins. The 
 western towers, though dilapidated, stand in their original massiveness : and 
 the chapter-house at the north-east angle is almost intact ; — ‘ an elegant 
 octagonal room supported by one slender central pillar beautifully llowered 
 
 Elgin Cathedral. 
 
 and clustered, which sends forth tree-like as it approaches the roof its 
 branches to the different angles, each with its peculiar incrustation of rich 
 decorations, and its grotesque corbel.’ The desk to which a copy of the 
 Scriptures was formerly chained is still attached to the pillar. The 
 architecture of the cathedral is in general ‘ Decorated English ; ’ the building 
 was founded in 1224, burned in 1390 by Alexander Stewart, son of 
 Robert 11., commonly called the Wolf of Badenoch, and rebuilt during the 
 
140 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 first quarter of the fifteenth century. A magnificent steeple rose from the 
 centre, but this fell in 1506, and being rebuilt to the height of 198 feet, fell 
 again in 1711. Before this the building had been irretrievably despoiled in 
 1568 by the Regent Murray, who sold its leaden roof for money to pay his 
 soldiers. 
 
 Perhaps, however, some of the most interesting of the reminiscences 
 connected with this venerable pile are those associated with the name of 
 Andrew Anderson. A little dark room is still shown to the visitor between 
 the chapter-house and the north cloister, said to have been anciently used 
 as a lavatory, or, according to some, as the sacristy of the building. Here, 
 about the year 1747, a poor distraught woman took up her abode, with an 
 infant, whom she cradled in an ancient font. Once Margaret Gilzean had 
 been among the loveliest of the fair maidens of Elgin ; but she had married 
 a soldier, and had gone off with him without her parents’ consent ; he seems 
 to have fallen in one of the battles of the ’45 rebellion, and the poor 
 young widow with her babe returned to find herself despised and disowned. 
 Under the accumulated trouble her wits gave way, and resisting all tardy 
 offers of kindness and shelter, she clung to this forlorn home in the ruined 
 cathedral, wandering about with her boy, living on charity, and known by all 
 as ‘ daft Mary Gilzean, a harmless creature, that wept and sang by turns.’ 
 The boy Andrew received a gratuitous education at the Elgin Grammar 
 School, being appointed ‘ Pauper ’ to that institution, sweeping the rooms and 
 tending the fires in return for the instruction received. At the end of his 
 school course he was apprenticed to a cruel master, a stay-maker by trade 
 — brother to the soldier Anderson, his father — from whose harsh treatment 
 at last he absconded and found his way to London. He obtained work as 
 a tailor’s assistant, and in that capacity attracted the notice of an officer 
 bound for India, who was struck by his appearance and induced him to 
 enlist as his servant. 
 
 Some forty or forty-five years afterwards Andrew Anderson returned, after 
 many an adventure that it would take too long to tell, a Lieutenant-General in 
 the East India Company’s service. None recognised him, as he sought the 
 cathedral which had so strangely sheltered his infancy, and inquired of the old 
 sexton, Saunders Cooke, ‘ if he knew whereabouts in the churchyard a poor 
 woman called Marjory Gilzean had been buried.’ ‘ Na,’ answered Saunders, 
 
 ‘ she was a puir worthless craitur ; naebody kens where she is buried. But 
 I can tell ye where she lived. It was in that place they ca’ the Sacristy. 
 She brought up a bairn there, in a hollow stone that was ance a font for 
 holy water. I mind the laddie weel ; he grew up a browe loon (Morayshire 
 for a “stout boy”) and was pauper at our school.’ ‘ Unfortunate ,’ replied 
 the stranger with much emotion, ‘but never worthless !' He took up his 
 summer abode in Elgin ; and some years afterwards assigned the bulk of 
 his property to endow a hospital for ten old and indigent persons, a school 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 141 
 
 of industry for sixty poor children, and a free school for two hundred and 
 thirty scholars. The building was to be called ‘ the Elgin Institution,’ the 
 founder desiring to suppress his own name ; but as 4 Anderson’s ’ it is, and 
 doubtless always will be known. A story like this gives to a somewhat 
 
 On the Findhorn. 
 
 commonplace-looking edifice a dignity which surpasses even the time-worn 
 splendours of the cathedral ! 
 
 The Highland railway itself leaves Strathspey near Grantown, and pro- 
 ceeds directly northwards, first climbing to the summit of a ‘ blasted heath ’ 
 (but not Shakspeare’s) on the road to Forres. The descent to this famous 
 place is long. We did not find it very interesting. ‘ How far is t called to 
 
142 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 On the Findhorn. 
 
 Forres ?’ was a question that recurred irresistibly. At length we alighted, 
 and soon found comfortable quarters, after a journey filled with excitement 
 and delight. Two or three days were spent here in exploring the neigh- 
 bourhood, especially the course of the Findhorn. Nothing that we had heard 
 
 or read had prepared us for 
 the exceeding beauty of this 
 river, dashing as it does over its 
 rocky bed, amid vast granite 
 boulders and between high, pre- 
 cipitous, wooded banks ; the 
 brown water, with crests and 
 fringes of white foam, hurrying 
 tumultuously onward in rapid 
 and innumerable small cataracts. 
 There are some charming 
 grounds, through which a path 
 leads above the river, traversing 
 noble woods. Soon after emer- 
 ging, we came upon the junction 
 of a mountain torrent, the Divie, 
 with the Findhorn, and walked 
 a little way up the lovely glen, 
 
 Dulsie Bridge. 
 

 
 
 
View from the Ladies’ Walk, Gkantown, Speyside. 
 
THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 145 
 
 returning, however, to the main stream, and following its course upwards as far 
 as Dulsie Bridge — a walk altogether of some thirteen or fourteen miles from 
 Forres, as rich in picturesque beauty as any ramble in these islands. ‘ What spot 
 on earth,’ writes Mr. St. John, ‘can exceed in beauty the landscape comprising 
 the old bridge of Dulsie, spanning with its lofty arch the deep, dark pool, shut 
 
 Cawdor Castle. 
 
 in by grey and fantastic rocks, surmounted with the greenest of greenswards, 
 with clumps of ancient weeping birches, backed by the dark pine trees ? ’ 
 The bridge, as will be seen from our cut, consists of one bold lofty arch 
 spanning the yawning chasm, and of one smaller subsidiary one, carrying 
 the roadway from a high rock onwards to the north bank. The greater 
 arch is 46 feet in width. Here are indications even yet of ‘the Morayshire 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 Floods’ in 1829, when the wild little river rose between its granite banks 
 to a height of forty or fifty feet above its ordinary level, 1 overspreading 
 much of the neighbouring country, sweeping away stone bridges, and 
 spreading so much desolation around that the catastrophe has become an 
 epoch of reckoning ; and old people at Forres will tell you of events 
 
 ‘ before the Flood.’ At Dulsie 
 
 Bridge the mass of water was 
 
 «_> 
 
 so confined that it completely 
 filled the smaller arch, and rose 
 in the greater to within three 
 feet of the keystone ; being thus 
 no less than forty feet in per- 
 pendicular height above the 
 usual level. From this spot a 
 ‘ machine ’ carried us by a good 
 road to Cawdor, where the 
 castle again called up Shak- 
 spearean recollections. The 
 building is a fine unmodernized 
 specimen of feudal architecture, 
 with drawbridge and battlemented tower, commanding a magnificent view 
 over the surrounding country. The old and splendid trees by which it is 
 environed increase its charm. 
 
 £ Duncan. This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 Banqtto. This guest of summer, 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 
 
 By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath 
 Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, 
 
 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle : 
 
 T here they most breed and haunt, I have observed, 
 
 The air is delicate .’ 2 
 
 From Cawdor, a pleasant drive of six miles along the broad valley of 
 the Nairn leads to the town at the mouth of the river, also called Nairn, 
 with its broad grassy and sandy beach, unsurpassed, we should think, for 
 bathing purposes. This also was a place that invited a longer stay, from 
 the clear freshness of its air, as well as for the charms of the beautiful 
 Moray Firth, with the distant view of Ben Wyvis rising grandly to the 
 west, beyond the Black Isle and the head of Cromarty Firth. But time 
 pressed, and we had to return to the little inn at Forres by rail. It would- 
 
 Mouth of Nairn Harbour in the Flood of 1829. 
 
 See The Moyayshn'e Floods , by Sir T. D. Lauder, Bari. 
 
 ■ Sbakspeare, Macbeth , Act i. sc. 6 
 
147 
 
 THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS : STIRLING TO INVERNESS. 
 
 have been easy to reach Inverness from Nairn, passing near Culloclen Moor, 
 where Prince Charles was defeated in 1746 by the Duke of Cumberland, 
 and the cause of the Stuarts was finally lost. The battle-field, on the moor 
 of Drummossie, is three miles from the Culloden station : a bleak and 
 melancholy waste, not inappropriate to that scene of slaughter, where a 
 thousand Highlanders gallantly laid down their lives in the last struggle for 
 a hopeless cause ; and their descendants, while admiring their courage, now 
 unanimously admit their mistake. There are none now, as there were in 
 the days of Sir Walter Scott, to cherish the Jacobite tradition ; and though 
 the cruelties perpetrated by the Duke of Cumberland after the battle have 
 stamped his name with everlasting infamy, all Highland men are now loyal 
 to the cause for which he fought. 
 
 o 
 
 Cui.loden Moor. 
 
 Returning to Forres, we visited its two monuments with no little interest. 
 The modern one, a ‘ Pharos ’ in honour of Nelson, stands in a lofty position, 
 a little to the east of the town, and commands an extensive view. ‘ It is 
 worth mentioning, as a fine instance of patriotic feeling, that every individual 
 man and woman in Forres contributed by labour or money to the erection 
 of this interesting public work.’ The other monument, in a field at the 
 roadside, is the mysterious relic known as ‘ Sweno’s Stone ; ’ a Runic 
 obelisk, erected, says Camden, to commemorate a victory gained by King 
 Malcolm MacKenneth over Sweno, King of Denmark. It is twenty-three 
 feet high, and is divided into compartments, five on one side, and three 
 on the other, all filled with rude figures of men and animals, much defaced. 
 As far as can be made out, one set seems to represent a military triumph, 
 while the emblems of the other point to some religious meaning : but the 
 stone is still a puzzle to antiquaries. Some have seen in it a relic of 
 Macbeth ! The ‘ blasted heath ’ where that chieftain met the witches is 
 
 l 2 
 
148 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 identified in a reach of waste land partly reclaimed, on the border of a 
 wood, five or six miles from Forres on the road to Nairn. A spot called 
 ‘ Macbeth’s Hill ’ perpetuates the tradition : but, when we passed it, the 
 general effect of the scene was moderately cheerful, not to say common- 
 place. There was, at any rate, no help to the imagination in the aspect of 
 the heath, though it was possible to conjecture what it might be ‘ in 
 thunder, lightning, and in rain,’ when clouds that have gathered over the 
 Grampians sail on the wings of the south wind, gathering blackness as they 
 move, and at the Moray Firth seem to ‘ mingle sea and sky.’ 
 
 Scotch Fisher-Folk. 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEESIDE. 
 
Banks of the Devon, near Rumbling Bridge. 
 
 THE EASTERN COAST AND DEESIDE, 
 
 A N excursion to Scotland would hardly be complete without a visit to 
 the Grampians from their eastern side. It is not only that some of 
 their most characteristic beauties are thus to be seen, but that an oppor- 
 tunity will at the same time be given for at least a glimpse of that 
 ‘ Highland Home ’ whose name is so familiar to all the subjects of our 
 Oueen. Balmoral, Crathie, Braemar, are household words with us all, and 
 
J52 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 it is as much a feeling of loyalty as a love of the picturesque that sends 
 so many of our countrymen and countrywomen every year along that 
 fair valley which we call Deeside. The city of Aberdeen gives entrance 
 to it, and may be reached most easily by a route already described, through 
 Stirling and Perth, where a line branches eastwards to Forfar. Another 
 way, far more interesting, is across the Firths of Forth and Tay ; 
 the traveller pausing if he will to visit Dunfermline, with its singularly 
 beautiful ruined palace wall, and the room where Charles the First was 
 born ; proceeding thence to Kinross and Loch Leven, and sparing 
 half a day at least, to the banks of the Devon, especially to the 
 
 beautiful scenery of Rumbling 
 Bridge ; and arranging, if possible, 
 for a short stay at St. Andrews. 
 This ancient city ought to be seen, 
 if only for its fine bay and its stately 
 ruins overlooking the sea. To 
 another class of visitors the fine 
 golfing links will have a supreme 
 attraction. There is no place in 
 Great Britain, 1 believe, where that 
 fascinating game is cultivated with 
 greater persistency and enthusiasm, 
 or on more favourable ground. 
 Some English readers may not 
 precisely know what this ‘ royal 
 and ancient ’ game may be. Some 
 have even proved so benighted as 
 to confound it with ‘ curling,’ a 
 splendid game, also, it is true, as 
 played over the vast smooth ex- 
 panse of some frozen loch. Golf is 
 yearly becoming more appreciated 
 south of the border, and yet its 
 proper home is still in the North. 
 A few lines, therefore, from a high authority, may be quoted here. 1 ‘ Small 
 holes of about four inches diameter are punched in the turf at distances 
 indefinitely variable, but ranging from about ioo to 400 or 500 yards ; and 
 from one of these holes into the next in order, a ball of guttapercha of about 
 14 ounce weight has to be driven with implements (“clubs”) of some variety 
 devised for the purpose. Their variety is determined by this : that while in 
 starting from the hole the ball may be “teed” (i.e. placed where the player 
 chooses, with a little pinch of sand under it called a “tee”), it must in every 
 
 1 Encyclopedia Britannica , ninth edition, vol. x. art. ‘ Golf,’ by P. P. Alexander. 
 
 Loch Leven. 
 
Royal Palace, Dunfermline. 
 

 
 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEES IDE. 
 
 1 5 5 
 
 other case be played strictly from its place as it chances to be — in sand, whin, 
 or elsewhere — a different club being necessary in each particular difficulty. 
 These clubs may generally be defined as shafts of wood, with so-called 
 “heads” of wood or iron attached. Starting from the one hole, it is the 
 immediate aim of the player to drive his ball as far towards the next as he 
 can. Having got within some moderate distance of it, he proceeds to make 
 his “ approach shot,” carefully selecting the appropriate implement. When 
 he has reached the “putting green,” a smooth space carefully chosen for the 
 purpose, he essays to put (or “ putt ”) his ball into the hole ; and generally 
 if he does it in two strokes, he may be held skilful or fortunate. The 
 player who “holes” his ball in the smallest number of strokes is, as a 
 matter of course, winner of the hole.’ It may be added that the circuit 
 consists of eighteen holes, which have to be successively won. Such is the 
 
 mystery of the game. The writer goes on candidly to avow that it may 
 
 not seem, in this description, ‘ very lively or entertaining.’ ‘ And yet,’ 
 he adds, kindling with his subject into eloquence, ‘ no game stirs a keener 
 enthusiasm in its votaries ; and very few people who have ever fairly 
 
 committed themselves to the serious practice of it will be found to deny its 
 extreme fascination. It is a manly and eminently healthful recreation, 
 pursued, as it is mostly, amid the fresh sea breezes ; while as exercise it has 
 this particular merit, that, according to pace, it may be made easy or smart 
 at pleasure, and thus equally adapts itself to the overflowing exuberance of 
 youth, the matured and tempered strength of manhood, and the gentler 
 
 decays of age.’ 
 
 We are bound to say that in the game, as it was our good fortune to 
 witness it at St. Andrews, there was not much of the ‘ exuberance of youth ; ’ 
 but it was interesting to see how for hours the patient middle-aged players, 
 attended by ‘ cadies ’ carrying their sheaves of clubs, followed the little balls 
 over the sandy grassy ‘links,’ never seeming to quicken their pace, and 
 only showing the energy that was in them when the club was uplifted for 
 some mighty stroke, that sent the ball i 8 o yards or more towards its desti- 
 nation. The rest was science ; and the skill with which the tiny ball was 
 sped to its resting-place was olten really extraordinary. No one who has 
 watched the game well played on these breezy uplands by the sea will 
 wonder at its popularity. Any of us who could and would take easy 
 healthful exercise in the finest of air, without mental distraction or excite- 
 ment, for several hours together, through successive days of early summer, 
 would find the result in the bracing and exhilaration of the whole system ; 
 and it is into exercise like this that the orame beguiles its votaries. 
 
 But we shall be accused of giving way to the tendency of the times, by 
 thus presenting St. Andrews as famous for its golfing ground, rather than 
 for its University. This is the oldest in Scotland, having been founded in 
 1 4 1 1 , and it has a noble record, as well as great present influence and power. 
 
156 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 New plans are proposed, as we write, for its constitution and management, 
 and are much discussed in the Scottish newspapers. Whatever may come 
 of these proposals, it is at any rate to be hoped that the result will be 
 to maintain the continuity, as well as to enlarge the scope of this ancient 
 and renowned University; the earliest of those institutions which have for 
 centuries maintained the standard of general education in Scotland so high 
 above that of other nations. For there has not been through all these 
 generations a barefooted laddie in Scotland who might not hope to become 
 a University student. The common school system instituted by John Knox, 
 
 and the University system originated in St. Andrews by Bishop Wardlaw, 
 have mainly made the Scottish people what they are ; and ftom the latter 
 England too has reaped the benefit, as not a few of her greatest names 
 attest. 
 
 But when we visited St. Andrews there was no opportunity of studying 
 even the external features of its University life. Bor the session was over, 
 the college buildings seemed given up to whitewashers, masons and carpenters, 
 and the little city was decidedly dull, save when happy bright-looking school- 
 children streamed forth upon its pavement, reminding the spectator that St. 
 
 St. Andrew’s Cathedral : West Front. 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEES IDE. 
 
 157 
 
 Andrews is as famous for its elementary school system 1 as for the University 
 itself. The time for seaside holidays had scarcely arrived, or we could have 
 wondered at the fewness of visitors to a place which must surely be one of 
 the most healthful and bracing resorts in Great Britain. I he dry pure air 
 was delightfully invigorating, and the view over the German Ocean in the 
 bright summer weather, truly magnificent. Possibly a visitor’s impression 
 might have been different in other aspects of the sea and sky ; and, like our 
 eastern shores generally, St. Andrews may be subject to the visitation of 
 
 Priory Gateway, St. Andrews. 
 
 bitter east winds and driving- mists, when the weather on the western coasts 
 is clear and bright. Thus the balance assuredly is not entirely against 
 the West ! 
 
 From St. Andrews to Dundee, by the Tay Bridge, was but a brief run. 
 The overthrow of that structure in the terrific storm of December 28, 1879, 
 will be fresh in the memory of my readers. In the preceding summer we had 
 crossed it, and, like many a passenger, had noted how frail it seemed. Yet 
 
 1 Dr. Bell, the founder of the ‘Madras’ system of instruction, was a native of St. Andrews, and the Madras 
 College here, founded by his bequest, has about nine hundred pupils, of both sexes, 
 
i5» 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 the assurances of its safety appeared decisive, until the crisis came. A much 
 stronger bridge is in course of construction ; meanwhile the ferry over is not 
 unpleasant on a calm and sunny day. Dundee itself is apt to disappoint the 
 visitor, — very much, perhaps, because he has so often heard the city called 
 ‘ bonnie Dundee.’ Assuredly this is not exactly the epithet one would 
 choose for the great commercial port. As the Journal already quoted 
 tersely puts the matter, ‘ Dundee is a very large place, and the port is 
 large and open ; the situation of the town is very fine, but the town itself is 
 not so.’ No doubt the views up and down the Tay are imposing ; but we 
 suspect that the ‘bonnie’ is from the old Jacobite songs, and means not this 
 city at all, but Viscount Dundee, better known to us as John Graham of 
 Claverhouse ! The city has at least the interest which belongs to a thriving 
 centre of industry, mostly modern, with an intelligent energetic working 
 population ; llax, jute, and bitter oranges being constantly unloaded at its 
 
 The Tay Bridge, prior to December 28, 1879. 
 
 busy wharves, for the staple products of the place. There is also a fine 
 People’s Park, a memorial of the honoured name of David Baxter ; and 
 from Dundee Law, a hill in the neighbourhood, there is a fine sea view, 
 including the Bell Rock, famed through Southey’s ballad of the Abbot of 
 Aberbrothock (Arbroath), with the lighthouse that has succeeded the ‘ warning 
 bell ’ of the old tradition. 
 
 The journey to Aberdeen will probably not be broken, else the fine 
 land-locked estuary of Montrose, should the visitor be fortunate enough to 
 see it when the tide is high, would richly repay a few hours’ tarrying, not 
 to mention the handsome town with its breezy links, and Ferryden Craig 
 with its magnificent view. It should be added that for travellers to Deeside 
 who wish to leave the beaten path, there is a short cut beyond railways, 
 through Forfarshire, by way of Brechin, hence twenty miles to Loch Lee, 
 a little lake of rare beauty, surrounded by magnificent scenery, where, in 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEESIDE. 
 
 i>9 
 
 Dundee. 
 
 farmhouse or cottage lodgings, a few families spend their summer. It was a 
 
 favourite retreat of the late Dr. 
 Guthrie. Hence a road across the 
 shoulder of Mount Keen leads to 
 Ballater. The route is but little 
 known ; but there are few which 
 have more to repay the lover of 
 fine scenery who can be independent 
 of hotels for some thirty miles of 
 the distance. If the tourist has 
 already seen Aberdeen, he should 
 by all means take this journey. 
 Otherwise he will probably prefer 
 to visit Deeside by way ot the 
 ‘ Granite City ’ and the comfortable, 
 well-appointed railway. After Mon- 
 trose, the railway runs along a level 
 pretty country, approaching the sea 
 near Stonehaven, and thence con- 
 tinuing near the shore with many 
 grand glimpses of the German 
 Ocean, until crossing the north 
 of the Dee it enters the low-lying 
 
 Triumphal Arch, Dundee. 
 
i6o 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 spacious Aberdeen station, above which tower the lofty granite houses of Castle 
 and Union Streets. There is no more solid-looking imposing city in Great 
 Britain. Union Street in particular is unequalled in its aspect of stately strength. 
 But the interest of Aberdeen is chiefly in its colleges, King’s and Marischal, 
 incorporated into the University, and in its cathedral, of which the choir and 
 transepts have been long destroyed, and only the grand nave remains. Maris- 
 chal College was specially attractive to us from the memories of the two friends 
 Robert Hall and James Mackintosh, who there together began their career, 
 two lads of eighteen. ‘ They read together,’ says Hall’s biographer, ‘ they 
 
 Bell Rock Lighthouse. 
 
 sat together at lecture, if possible; they walked together. In their joint 
 studies, they read much of Homer and Herodotus, and more of Plato ; and 
 so well was all this known, exciting admiration in some, in others envy, that 
 it was not unusual, as they went along, for their class-fellows to point at them 
 
 and say, “ There go Plato and Herodotus ! ” But the arena in which they met 
 
 most frequently was that of morals and metaphysics, furnishing topics of 
 incessant disputation. After having sharpened their weapons by reading, they 
 often repaired to the spacious sands upon the sea-shore, and still more 
 
 frequently to the picturesque scenery on the banks of the Don, above the 
 old town, to discuss with eagerness the various subjects to which their 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEES IDE. 
 
 1 6 1 
 
 attention had been directed. There was scarcely an important position in 
 Berkeley’s Minute Philosopher , in Butler’s Analogy , or in Edwards On the 
 Will , over which they had not thus debated with the utmost intensity. 
 Night after night, nay, month after month, for two sessions, they met only 
 to study or to dispute ; yet no unkindly feeling ensued. The process seemed 
 rather, like blows in that of welding iron, to knit them closer together .’ 1 
 
 On one of our visits it was our good fortune to attend the ‘ capping 
 ceremony’ — that is, the conferring of degrees in the chapel of King’s College. 
 Very interesting was it to witness the enthusiasm of the youths of the 
 University, albeit displayed in exuberant ways ! Still more pleasing was the 
 
 Dr. Guthrie’s House, Loch Lee. 
 
 eager delight of the successful students’ kinsfolk — many of them evidently of 
 the humbler classes. For in Scotland the honour and reward of learning are 
 accessible to all, irrespective of their social rank ; hence the people at large 
 reo-arcl the Universities as in every sense their own. 
 
 From the 1 capping ceremony ’ we went into the noble library of King’s 
 College; then to the Old Town. It lies on the way to the mouth of the 
 river Don, and in its amplitude and repose affords a strange contrast to the 
 great and busy city a mile away. The aber, or river mouth, of Aberdeen, it 
 should be noted, is that of the Bon, not of the Dee , as some have supposed ; 
 
 1 Life of Rev. R. Ha!!, by Dr. Olinthus Gregory, ITalTs Works , vol. vi. pp. 14, 15. 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 and so the citizens are often called ‘ Aberdonians.’ Yet the tide of population 
 and commerce has long been shifted to the latter river. A little way beyond 
 the Old Town is the famous Bridge of Don, otherwise known as the Brig o’ 
 Balgownie, made famous by Lord Byron, who spent the first ten years of his 
 life at Aberdeen, and to whose youthful fancy the old prediction respecting 
 it had a strange and awful fascination — 
 
 ‘ Brig o’ Balgownie, black’s your wa’ ; 
 
 Wi’ a wife’s ae son, an’ a mare’s ae foal, 
 
 Down ye shall fa’.’ 
 
 Byron, be it remembered, was an only son. But the bridge has not fallen 
 
 Loch Lee Churchyard. 
 
 yet, and its tall pointed arch has outlasted more than five centuries and a 
 half of change. 
 
 On one of our visits to Aberdeen, we had the opportunity of attending a 
 performance by the ‘Dundee Children’s Choir’ of Handel’s Messiah. The 
 choir, it appears, is composed of scholars from the different board schools ; and 
 a party of 220 of these were visiting Aberdeen for the evening, with about 
 sixty grown-up singers for the bass and tenor parts. Three-fourths of the 
 singers were actually children, from eight years old to fourteen, and very beauti- 
 fully they sang. We never heard children's singing so sweet and true. A tall 
 tenor, and a bass singer, who took the necessary solos, looked like good-natured 
 giants in front of the little mites ! The soprano solos were sung by children 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEESIDE. 
 
 163 
 
 themselves, and the effect was very thrilling and tender, while the choruses 
 were delightful. There was a very large and enthusiastic audience, and the 
 general effect was truly impressive. Perhaps Scottish children can undertake 
 such a task more gravely and seriously than would be the case in England : 
 certainly there were no signs of self-consciousness or of a tendency to display : 
 and a pleasanter evening has rarely been spent by us than in listening to 
 those little folks from Dundee. 
 
 The ‘ Deeside Railway ’ to Bailater pursues its way through a country 
 beautifully wooded, and for the most part close beside the river, which in a 
 
 King’s College, Aberdeen. 
 
 swift and lovely flood comes down from the hills. At the time of our visit 
 the woods that lined the banks were still brown and leafless, save where fir- 
 trees were abundant. By degrees we gained the upper levels, where the 
 view beyond the river was grandly closed by dark hills, with streaks and 
 fields of snow. Bailater at last was reached — a village on a somewhat con- 
 siderable plain, where the river makes a great curve before fairly entering 
 the region of the hills. A conical wooded hill, Craig-an-darroch, ‘ crag of 
 the oaks,’ rising close by the village, gives a picturesqueness to the scene, 
 which otherwise would be somewhat tame. This hill should be ascended tor 
 the sake of the view 7 to be obtained, at a very slight expenditure of time 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 and trouble, of the river Dee, both upward and downward ; the Grampian 
 heights closing in the prospect to the west. To the north is Morven, bare 
 and massive, though scarcely beautiful, and disappointing to those who have 
 formed their anticipations from Byron’s lines : 
 
 ‘ When I roved a young Highlander o’er the dark heath, 
 
 And climbed thy steep summit, O Morven, of snow, 
 
 To gaze on the torrents that thundered beneath, 
 
 Or the mist of the tempest that gathered below.’ 
 
 The so-called ‘ Pass of Ballater ’ runs behind Craig-na-darroch, and is 
 simply a narrow lane separating it from the heights that rise steeply beyond. 
 It is overrated, we think, by those who call it ‘romantic.’ The true beauty 
 of the neighbourhood is upon the open road that leads from Ballater. This 
 was now comparatively deserted. Public conveyances had not yet begun 
 running, and the glorious freshness of the spring air, the beauty of the sun- 
 shine, and the tender grace of the early flowers, were all lavished on a stray 
 
 tourist or two, with a few elderly salmon fishers, stalwart educated gentlemen 
 
 from the South, whose evening talk, though naturally dealing over-much 
 with sport, was very pleasant. They seemed like men who had done a 
 good work in life, and who now had a right to their enjoyment. We left 
 them by the river-bank, while pursuing my way to Braemar. There was a 
 little characteristic scene at starting. It appears that the post cart, here as 
 elsewhere, is allowed to take a few passengers. We therefore asked the 
 
 driver, a youth, whether he had any places to spare. Quite imperturbably, 
 he answered, No! It was a specimen of the way in which Scottish people 
 spare their words. In the South, it would probably have been, ‘ The 
 
 places are all taken , sir , to-day ; ’ or ‘ Very sorry , but we are full this 
 morning .’ But the driver’s No was at least sufficient, and not another word 
 did he speak. Not that he was inconsiderate, for he readily consented to 
 take our knapsacks to Braemar for the small sum of sixpence. And here 
 again was a little incident quite as characteristic. All this took place in 
 front of the post office. We had not wherewithal to pay the sixpence — only 
 gold, for which the postmistress had not sufficient change, but she at once 
 took up sixpence and handed it to us, saying, ‘Oh, I’ll lend it ye, sir!’ not 
 knowing of course whether she would ever see us again, and apparently 
 not caring — on that ground, at least ! The walk was grand ; the beautiful 
 Dee was with us all the way, now and then receding in lovely bends round 
 fir-clad peninsulas, but soon reappearing. Its music was unceasing — how is 
 it that guide books do not mention this special charm ? We suppose it is 
 because with most travellers the noise of wheels and the clatter of conver- 
 sation drown the more exquisite melody. Every mountain river, it has been 
 said, has its own peculiar tone , and certainly the song of the Dee, whether 
 in its ripple or its bolder dash, was characteristic all along. The mountains 
 

 
 
Lochnagar, 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEES IDE. 
 
 1 6 7 
 
 gradually swelled to greater vastness ; Lochnagar, especially (so-called from 
 a lakelet, ‘ The Hare’s Loch,’ at its base), with its peaks and curves, its 
 recesses and precipices, now white with dazzling snow, was not unworthy of 
 the Oberland. As in Switzerland, too, the lesser heights in the foreground 
 were covered with pine forests, interspersed with woods of birch and alder, 
 with that lovely April Hush upon their brownness that presages the breaking 
 into leaf. 
 
 Some of Lord Byron’s earliest associations were with the mountain 
 scenery of this district, and he has recorded his impressions in lines, less 
 artistic perhaps, but more genuine in their sentiment, than many of his later 
 poems. 
 
 ‘ Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses ! 
 
 In you let the minions of luxury rove ; 
 
 Restore me the rocks, where the snow-flake reposes, 
 
 Though still they are sacred to freedom and love : 
 
 Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains, 
 
 Round their white summits though elements war : 
 
 Though cataracts foam ’stead of smooth-flowing fountains, 
 
 I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar. 
 
 Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wandered, 
 
 My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid, 
 
 On chieftains long perished my memory pondered, 
 
 As daily I strode through the pine-covered glade. 
 
 I sought not my home till the day’s dying glory 
 Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star ; 
 
 For fancy was cheered by traditional story, 
 
 Disclosed by the natives of dark Lochnagar.’ 
 
 For miles we met nobody : reaching in due course the Prince of Wales’s 
 
 shooting lodge Abergeldie, on the opposite side of the river. There, by the 
 
 way, we noticed what we had heard before, that the banks of the river are lined 
 with beautiful birch tree woods. The birks of A bergeldie being famous, Burns 
 was led partly by the alliteration to celebrate instead the ‘birks of Aber- 
 feldy,’ which are also fine, though far inferior in number to these beside 
 the Dee. The tower of Balmoral next rose into view, low down amid a 
 
 grand amphitheatre of hills. On a knoll to the right stood the little church 
 of Crathie, humble and simple in appearance, very like many a village 
 chapel in England. On the other side of the road, towards the river, is the 
 little churchyard, surrounding the ruins of the ‘ auld kirk,’ a very vale of 
 rest amid the silence and splendours of the mountains. Her Majesty’s 
 
 faithful attendant Mr. John Brown had been interred there only a few days 
 before. It was easy to discover his grave, in an inclosure where are grave- 
 stones to his ancestors and relatives, most of them erected by himself. The 
 grave was covered with wreaths of immortelles and other flowers : many 
 with cards attached bearing the names of the givers ; princesses, countesses, 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 1 68 
 
 some other great people, and John Brown’s own associates and kindred. 
 One wreath had on the card ‘A tribute of love to dear Uncle John from 
 his little niece, Victoria.’ Probably the Oueen had been godmother to his 
 brother’s or sister’s child. At the head of the grave was a wreath of some 
 lovely purple flower, with the Queen’s card attached to it, and in her 
 own handwriting the words : A tribute of loving grateful and everlasting 
 friendship and affection from his truest best and most faithful friend , Victoria 
 R. and /. It was very touching to have such an illustration before one’s 
 own eyes of that spirit of true-hearted faithful service which too often seems 
 only like a tradition of the past. 
 
 Balmoral itself need not be described : its outward form is tamiliar to 
 us all. In beauty of situation, as beauty is reckoned in the Highlands, it 
 is almost incomparable, being surrounded by the grandeur of forest sweep 
 and purple mountains, and, at the time of our visit, vast dazzling snow- 
 fields ; with the blue sky and sunshine over all, and the pellucid, rushing, 
 singing Dee beneath. In different directions the heights are surmounted by 
 cairns, beehive-shaped, commemorative of royal visits, birthdays, and other 
 events. These do not add to the impressiveness of the scenery : yet it 
 was impossible not to sympathise with the feelings which have thus sought 
 expression. They tell of a blithe and happy family life in past days, such 
 as we do not always associate with our ideas of royalty. 
 
 'Phe grounds of the castle appeared in perfect order, with lawns, 
 paths, and drives, all approached by a bridge, as the palace is on the 
 opposite side of the river from the main road : but access is rigorously 
 forbidden whether Her Majesty is there or not. All looked very lonely : 
 not even a gardener was visible in the grounds, and the blinds of the palace 
 windows were all down. The only sign of movement about the place was 
 in the clock at the top of the tower, which was going as usual, and struck 
 one as we were looking on, reminding us of luncheon, that soon was obtained 
 at a charming little roadside inn at Crathie, a mile farther on, exquisitely 
 clean and beautifully situated. In fact, so attractive was the place that we 
 instantly engaged lodgings for a night on our return ; our business was now 
 to get to Braemar, or rather, as it should be called in full, Castleton of 
 Braemar. The walk now became surpassingly beautiful the road leading 
 through pine-woods that extend to the river’s edge, while the endless 
 mountain forms, black with heather, grey with granite, richly green with 
 firs, and in the background ever lustrous with snow, gave a variety and 
 charm to every turn. In many places there were leartul signs ol the late 
 winter’s havoc. Vast forests had been cut through by the gale almost as 
 cleanly as standing corn by the sweep of the sickle, and the gaps were 
 strewn with hundreds of uprooted trees, some lifting their roots high in air, 
 grasping huge stones and masses of earth, as if in convulsive effort to stay 
 the catastrophe. 
 
Balmoral Castle from the River. 
 

THE EASTERN COAST AND DEES IDE. 
 
 171 
 
 At length a few people appeared upon the lonely road — a very few, 
 but sufficiently numerous to show that groups of human habitations could 
 not be far off. Then Castle Braemar was seen, and immediately afterwards, 
 to the left, the village of Castleton, high up on a hill slope or brae, 
 commanding, of course, an extensive view of valleys and mountains. In a 
 comfortable hotel the only other occupant was again a salmon-fisher, disap- 
 pointed but aspiring. ‘ There are no fish in the Dee this year,’ he said ; 
 ‘there is no sport at all ! ' Yet he seemed to enjoy himself so much that we 
 could not help suggesting there was plenty of sport , though perhaps no salmon 
 — a view of the matter which seemed to comfort him but little. However, he 
 Avas off the next morning from the Dee to the Don, hoping for better 
 results, and we were left alone to explore this fine village, and to breathe its 
 exhilarating air — the purest, it is said, and most bracing in Great Britain, 
 according to the ozone standard. Yet its mountains are here too near to 
 make the scenery very grand, as for the full effect of mountain prospects a 
 clear space is required, opening up to the loftier heights which of necessity 
 recede from the rest. But the glory of Braemar is that in all directions 
 paths lead directly to the mountain solitudes and sublimities ; while the Dee 
 may be followed by ‘ linns ’ and rapids and a vast rocky wilderness, to the 
 point where the infant stream leaps from a ledge a thousand feet high, and 
 begins its swift journey to the sea. We could not penetrate to this ledge, 
 high up among the secrets of the Cairngorm mountains ; although those who 
 have followed the path between the stupendous heights of Ben Muich Dhui 
 to the right and Cairn foul to the left, crossing the summit of the glen by 
 the Pass of Larig, and descending through the Rothiemurchus forest to 
 Aviemore, declare that there is nothing so fine in all Scotland. It was 
 possible only to take the comparatively easy road which leads upwards to 
 the head of Glen Tilt, commanding after the first mile or two a magnificent 
 view across the valley of the highest mountains in the Grampian range ; 
 Ben Muich Dhui, the loftiest of all, being grandly conspicuous. Some pretty 
 falls are passed at the Linn of Corriemulzie, and at six miles distance the 
 Linn of Dee is reached, where a handsome bridge of white Aberdeen 
 granite, opened by the Oueen in September 1857, spans the river. The 
 Linn itself is a narrow fissure between slaty rocks, through which the river 
 chafes and tumbles ; and at the time of our visit, the melting snows having 
 swollen the torrent almost to the projecting edges of the rocks, the force of 
 the river was tremendous. Three miles beyond this the river-side is left, 
 and the climb to the water-shed fairly commences. But to attempt this the 
 snow forbade, and there was nothing for it but to return to Braemar, taking 
 now the opposite, or left bank of the Dee, and visiting on the way the 
 pretty glen and Linn of Ouoich, ‘ the Cup.’ Some distance below this glen 
 the little Sluggan Water falls into the Dee, and is spanned near the 
 juncture by one of General Wade’s bridges. 
 
7 2 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 The route by Glenshee past ‘ the Spital, ’ or Hospice , a good, though in 
 parts very tedious carriage-road in summer, to Blairgowrie and the valley of 
 the Tay, was likewise impracticable. We could only take this road for a little 
 distance up the beautiful Glen Clunie, and our visit to Braemar was over. 
 
 The Braemar Highlands, like most far-spreading mountain regions, have 
 many a tale and tradition of ancient strife, with weird stories of the super- 
 
 SCENE IN THE GRAMPIANS : STORMY. 
 
 natural, such as the winter terrors of the mountain land may well suggest. 
 A long evening on our return to the charming inn at Crathie was spent in 
 reading these tales of olden time. It was amusing to find that the district 
 had, like other mountain countries of the west and east, its William Tell. 
 H ere is the narrative. 
 
 ‘A young man named M’Leod had been hunting one day in the 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEES IDE. 
 
 173 
 
 Royal Forest. A 
 favourite hound of the 
 king’s having attacked 
 M’Leod, was killed 
 b y h i m. The 
 king soon heard 
 of the slaughter 
 of his favourite, 
 
 and was exceedingly angry — so much so, that M’Leod was condemned to 
 death. 
 
 ‘ The gibbet was erected on Craig Choinnich , i.e. Kenneth’s Crag. As 
 there was less of justice than revenge in the sentence, little time was 
 permitted ere it was carried into execution. The prisoner was led out by 
 
174 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 the north gate of the castle. The king, in great state, surrounded by a 
 crowd of his nobles, followed in procession. Sorrowing crowds of the people 
 came after, in wondering amazement. As they moved slowly on, an incident 
 occurred which arrested universal attention. A young woman with a child 
 in her arms came rushing through the crowd, and, throwing herself before 
 the king, pleaded with him to spare her husband’s life, though it should be 
 at the expense of all they possessed. 
 
 ‘ Her impassioned entreaties were met with silence. Malcolm was not 
 to be moved from his purpose of death. Seeing that her efforts to move the 
 king were useless, she made her way to her husband, and throwing her arms 
 round him, declared that she would not leave him — she would die with him. 
 
 ‘ Malcolm was somewhat moved by the touching scene. Allen Durward, 
 noticing the favourable moment, ventured to put in the suggestion that it 
 was a pity to hang such a splendid archer. 
 
 ‘ “ A splendid archer, is he ? ” replied the king ; “ then we shall have 
 his skill tried.” 
 
 ‘So he ordered that M’Leod’s wife and child should be placed on the 
 opposite side of the river ; something to serve as a mark was to be placed 
 on the child’s head. If M’Leod succeeded in hitting the mark without 
 injuring his wife or child, his life was to be spared, otherwise the sentence 
 was to be carried into immediate execution. Accordingly (so the legend 
 goes) the young wife and her child were put across the river, and placed on 
 Tomghainmheine ; according to some, a little farther down the river, near where 
 a boat-house once stood. The width of the Dee was to be the distance 
 separating M’Leod from his mark. 
 
 ‘ He asked for a bow and two arrows ; and having examined each with 
 the greatest care, he took his position. The eventful moment came ; the 
 people gathered round him and stood in profound silence. On the opposite 
 side of the river his wife stood, the central figure of a crowd of eager 
 bystanders, tears glistening on her cheeks as she gazed alternately at her 
 husband and child in dumb emotion. 
 
 ‘ M’Leod took aim ; but his body shook like an aspen leaf in the 
 evening breeze. This was a trial for him far harder than death. Again he 
 placed himself in position ; but he trembled to such a degree that he could 
 not shoot, and, turning to the king, who stood near, he said in a voice 
 scarcely articulate in its suppressed agony, “ This is hard.” 
 
 ‘ But the king relented not : so the third time he fell into the attitude ; 
 and as he did so almost roared, “ This is hard ! ” Then, as if all his 
 nervousness and unsteadiness had escaped through the cry, he let the arrow fly. 
 It struck the mark. The mother seized her child, and in a transport of joy 
 seemed to devour it with kisses ; while the pent-up emotion of the crowd found 
 vent through a loud cry of wonder and triumph, which repeated itself again 
 and again as the echoes rolled slowly away among the neighbouring hills. 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEESIDE, 
 
 175 
 
 ‘ The king now approached M’Leod, and, after confirming his pardon, 
 inquired why he, so sure of hand and keen of sight, had asked for two 
 arrows. 
 
 ‘“Because,” replied M’Leod, “had I missed the mark, or hurt my wife 
 or child, I was determined not to miss you!' 
 
 ‘ The king grew pale, and turned away as if undecided what to do. 
 His better nature prevailed ; so he again approached M’Leod, and with 
 
 Bridge over Sluggan Water, near Braemar. 
 
 kindly voice and manner told him that he would receive him into his body- 
 guard, and that he would be well provided for. 
 
 ‘ “ Never,” answered the undaunted Celt. “ After the painful proof to 
 which you have just put my heart, I could never love you enough to serve 
 you faithfully.” 
 
 ‘The king in amazement cried out, “Thou art a Hardy! and as Hardy 
 thou art , so Hardy thou shalt be.” From that time, M’Leod went under the 
 appellation of Hardy, while his descendants were termed the MacHardys, 
 Mac being the Gaelic word for son. 
 
176 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 ‘ “ Why, that is a corruption of the story of William Tell,” I rather un- 
 courteously remarked, on hearing for the first time this MacHardy legend. 
 
 ‘The old lady who had just related it retorted with considerable warmth, 
 and ended by asking when the story of William Tell took place. 
 
 ‘“About the year 1307,” I replied. 
 
 ‘ “ There,” she said, with such an air of triumph, “ I thought that : the 
 William Tell story happened in 1307, and ours in 1060 or thereabouts, more 
 than 200 years before. Na, na ! our story is nae a corruption of William 
 dell, though William Tells may weel be a corruption of ours.”’ 1 
 
 The similarity in the popular legends of mountain lands is a topic for 
 interesting discussion. But we cannot stay to consider it here. The romance 
 is sufficient now ; the rationale may be left to another season. 
 
 It will be observed that many of these stories are connected with the 
 names of families or clans, of which they assign the origin. Another tale 
 accounts for the origin of the Stuarts. The author says that it was ‘ noted 
 down from an old record belonging to one of the residents.’ It may be 
 older than Shakspeare, presenting one form of the tradition which he has 
 immortalised in Macbeth. There is no mention, it will be seen, of King 
 Duncan’s murder in this version of the story. 
 
 ‘ Duncan King of the Scots had two principal men whom he employed 
 on all matters of importance — Macbeth and Banquho. They, travelling- 
 together in a wood one day, met three fairies ; the first, after making her 
 obeisance, saluted Macbeth as Thane of Glamis ; the second, Thane of 
 Cawdor; the third, King of Scotland. 
 
 ‘When Banquho complained loudly of their unequal dealing in giving 
 all the honours to Macbeth, one of them thus addressed him : “ Be content, 
 Banquho ; for though you will never be King of Scotland, a race of kings 
 will proceed from you that will rule it for ever.” 
 
 ‘ Macbeth was scarce warm in his seat as king ere he thought of the 
 prediction given to Banquho ; and, to prevent its fulfilment, caused him to 
 be killed, and all his posterity. But by some means Fleance, one of his 
 sons, escaped, and fled to Wales, where he prospered greatly, and was 
 married to the prince’s daughter of that court. 
 
 ‘ Fleance had a son named Walter, who returned to Scotland in the time 
 of Edgar, Malcolm Canmore’s son. And Edgar not only restored Walter 
 to all Banquho’s estates and honours, but made him steward over all his 
 house, — the name and office of Stewart becoming hereditary in his posterity. 
 
 ‘ Erom this Walter the steward descended Robert Stewart, who 
 succeeded David Bruce in the kingdom of Scotland. For this Robert 1 1. , 
 surnamed Stuart, became King of Scotland by descent from the eldest 
 sister of David Bruce, and was also extracted from the ancient princes of 
 
 The Braemar Highlands; their Tales, Traditions, and History, by Elizabeth Taylor. Nirnmo, 1869, pp. 99-103. 
 
THE EASTERN COAST AND DEES IDE. 
 
 1 77 
 
 Wales, by Flear.ce, as before said; thus restoring British blood to the throne 
 of Scotland. 
 
 ‘ Thus the name of Stuart originated ; and in early times it was one of 
 the predominant names in Braemar.’ 
 
 But we must leave these old stories now, for to-morrow will take us by 
 a long journey back to Aberdeen and Inverness; the far north is as yet 
 
 The ‘Cauldron;’ Bullers of Buchan. 
 
 unexplored, and we must have at least a glimpse of its glens, mountains, and 
 far-away islands before bidding farewell to Scotland. 
 
 Yet before starting on the northward journey we shall do well, if possible, 
 to spend two days in an excursion to Peterhead, not indeed for anything 
 remarkable in that thriving little town, but for the opportunity of visiting what 
 may fairly be called the finest rock-scenery in Great Britain. The table-land 
 of Buchan here projects into the German Ocean, which rounds it off, so to 
 
 N 
 
i7§ 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 speak, in a corner below Fraserburgh, where the granite cliffs grandly confront 
 almost every wind that blows. But the most wonderful part of the formation 
 is south of Peterhead, where the rosy granite rocks are hollowed into caves, 
 smoothed into precipices, and moulded here and there into vast fantastic 
 masses by the ceaseless chafing of the sea. In particular, the Buller, or 
 Bouilloir of Buchan, says Dr. Johnson , 1 ‘is a sight which no man can see with 
 indifference, who has either sense of danger or delight in rarity. It is a rock 
 perpendicularly tubulated, united on one side with a high shore, and on the 
 other rising steep to a great height, above the main sea. The top is open, 
 from which may be seen a dark gulf of water, which flows into the cavity 
 through a breach made in the lower part of the enclosing rock. It has the 
 appearance of a vast well bordered with a wall. The edge of the Buller is 
 not wide, and to those that walk round appears very narrow. Me that 
 ventures to look downward sees that if his foot should slip he must fall 
 from his dreadful elevation upon stones on one side, or into the water on 
 the other. We, however, went round, and were glad when the circuit was 
 completed. 
 
 ‘When we came down to the sea we saw some boats and rowers, and 
 resolved to explore the Buller at the bottom. We entered the arch which 
 the water had made, and found ourselves in a place which, though we could 
 not think ourselves in danger, we could scarcely survey without some recoil 
 of the mind. The basin in which we floated was nearly circular, perhaps 
 thirty yards in diameter. We were enclosed by a natural wall, rising steep 
 on every side to a height which produced the idea of insurmountable con- 
 finement. The interception of all lateral light caused a dismal gloom. 
 Round us was a perpendicular rock, above us the distant sky, and below 
 an unknown profundity of water. If I had any malice against a walking 
 spirit, instead of laying him in the Red Sea, I would condemn him to 
 reside in the Buller of Buchan !’ 2 
 
 ‘But,’ Dr. Johnson wisely adds, ‘terror without danger is only one of 
 the sports of fancy, a voluntary agitation of the mind that is permitted no 
 longer than it pleases. We were soon at leisure to examine the place 
 with minute inspection, and found many cavities which, as the watermen 
 told us, went backward to a depth which they had never explored. Their 
 extent we had not time to try ; they are said to serve different purposes. 
 Ladies come hither sometimes in the summer with collations, and smugglers 
 make them storehouses for clandestine merchandise.’ Happily the ‘ smugglers ’ 
 and the ‘ clandestine merchandise ' have disappeared ; but the ‘ collations ’ are 
 not unfamiliar to this day ! 
 
 1 A Journey to the Western Islands of Seotla/id, Works, vol. viii. p. 
 
 a Buller may be holler , as Dr. Johnston suggests ; but a more likely etymology is that which connects the word 
 with the Swedish buller , ‘ uproar g so that the Bulkrs are the Roarers of Buchan, a name very applicable in time 
 of storm. 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 N 2 
 
Sunday on the Northern Coast : Going Home. 
 
Kirkabister Lighthouse. 
 
 TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 St. Dutrus’ Church, Tain. 
 
 , 7 E enter now a region be- 
 L yond the usual tourist 
 haunts, and decidedly inferior to 
 these in its attractions to the lover 
 of scenery. Yet all who delight 
 most in breezy health-giving up- 
 lands, and yet more those who 
 can secure the opportunities of 
 sport which every glen and loch 
 and stream in these vast solitary 
 regions afford, will be ready 
 to esteem a visit to Sutherland- 
 shire as the crowning delight of 
 a sojourn in Scotland. North of 
 the ‘ Skye Railway,’ whose course 
 we have already described, lies a 
 wide and comparatively unpeopled region, comprising part of Ross-shire, the 
 counties of Sutherland and Caithness ; with bits of Cromarty here and there, 
 as though that shire had been wrecked by some convulsion of nature, and 
 its fragments scattered east and west. Sutherlandshire extends from sea to 
 
1 82 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 sea. Already in these pages we have given some description of its western 
 
 coast, with cliffs scarred and broken 
 by the fury of the Atlantic, and 
 innumerable lochs and bays indent- 
 in or the shore. The northern coast 
 is not dissimilar ; one of its lochs, 
 Eriboll, with its transparent waters 
 and bare shadowing hills, being 
 one of the most beautiful inlets 
 alonor the Scottish coast. The 
 
 o 
 
 eastern side of the great county— 
 or principality, shall we call it ? — 
 is in all respects a contrast. The 
 coast line is almost unbroken, and 
 a broad belt of cultivated land 
 between the sea and the inland 
 heights displays all the signs of 
 prosperous and scientific husbandry. 
 It is along the most fertile part 
 of this rim that the railway runs 
 from Golspie to Helmsdale, after 
 having skirted the northern shore 
 of the Moray Firth from Dingwall ; 
 then diverging to Tain, on the 
 Firth of Dornoch, an antique, pret- 
 tily-situated little town, with a 
 church dedicated to St. Duthus, or 
 Duthac, a bishop of Ross in the 
 thirteenth century. It contains a 
 finely-carvecl pulpit presented by 
 the Regent Murray. From Tain 
 the line skirts the Dornoch Firth 
 to Bonar Bridge ; then crosses to 
 Fairg, the headquarters of most 
 tourists and sportsmen in Suther- 
 landshire. Hence roads have been 
 carried across the wild barren 
 country to the principal places on 
 the western and northern coasts. 
 One of these, as already shown, 
 leads to the beautiful and risino- 
 
 o 
 
 western watering-place of Fochinver, passing the fishing station of Aultna- 
 
 Murray’s Pulpit, ’ Tain. 
 
 gealgach, and the 
 
 mountain Suilven (the ‘ Sugar Foaf’ ). There 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 18,3 
 
 is also a road by Loch Shin, ‘the longest and the dullest lake in Scotland,’ 
 and the vast treeless Reay Deer Forest, with a romantic descent to the 
 pretty sea-side village of Scourie on the west, near the many-islanded 
 Edrachillis Bay. Another road, less interesting, leads to Tongue, on the 
 northern coast, a wild and picturesque nook much admired by tourists, 
 overshadowed by the magnificent peaks and precipices of Ben Loyal. 
 These roads, it may be added, are very good and well-kept ; but their 
 solitariness is something awful, as the traveller drives mile after mile 
 through the monotonous undulating pasture land, among hills that can 
 hardly be called mountains, and lochs innumerable. From Tongue, again, 
 
 AuLTNAGEALGACH, SUTIIERLANDSIIIRE. 
 
 to Cape Wrath the traveller making a long circuit round ‘ Wild Loch 
 Eriboll ’ passes Durness, famous for its cave, the chief ‘show-place’ of 
 Northern Scotland. The vivid description of this cave given by Sir Walter 
 Scott, 1 arouses expectation of its wonders perhaps somewhat beyond the 
 reality. The combination of caves and pools, with a resounding, half-seen 
 cataract, is however sufficiently striking, especially at one point which Scott 
 describes : — 1 Standing on a natural foot-bridge, formed by an arch dividing 
 two gulfs, you have a grand prospect into both. I he one is deep, black 
 and silent, only affording at the bottom a glimpse oi the dark and sullen 
 pool which occupies the interior of the cavern. The right-hand rent, down 
 
 1 See Lockhart’s Life of Scott: Journal, August 19, 1S14. 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 184 
 
 which the stream discharges itself, seems to ring and reel with the increasing 
 roar of the cataract, which envelopes its side in mist and foam. This part 
 of the scene alone is worth a day’s journey. After heavy rains, the torrent 
 is discharged into the cavern with astonishing violence ; and the size of the 
 chasm being inadequate to the reception of such a volume of water, it is 
 thrown up in spouts like the blowing of a whale. But at such times the 
 entrance of the cavern is inaccessible.’ 
 
 On the way to Cape Wrath, the Kyle of Durness must first be crossed 
 by ferry-boat ; and a hilly road, a little inland and not very interesting, 
 leads up to the great promontory, the northernmost part of Great Britain, 
 
 Cape Wrath. 
 
 with its white lonely lighthouse, and its mass of rocks jutting out into the 
 wildly magnificent restless sea. 
 
 It must have been a journey through scenes like these that prompted 
 Scott’s lines, introducing the Fourth Canto of the Lord of t/12 Isles : 
 
 ‘ 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 ; 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 185 
 
 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. 
 
 Yes ! ’twas sublime, but sad. — The loneliness 
 Loaded thine heart, the desert tired thine eye ; 
 
 And strange and awful fears began to press 
 Thy bosom with a sad solemnity. 
 
 Then hast thou wished some woodman’s cottage nigh, 
 
 Something that showed of life, though low and mean ; 
 
 Glad sight, its curling wreath of smoke to spy, 
 
 Glad sound, its cock’s blithe carol would have been, 
 
 Or children whooping wild beneath the willows green. 
 
 Such are the scenes, where savage grandeur wakes 
 An awful thrill that softens into sighs ; 
 
 Such feelings rouse them by dim Rannochs’ lakes, 
 
 In dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise. 
 
 Or further, where, beneath the northern skies, 
 
 Chides wild Loch Eriboll his caverns hoar — 
 
 Rut, be the minstrel judge — they yield the prize, 
 
 Of desert dignity to that dread shore, 
 
 That sees grim Coolin rise, and hears Coriskin roar.’ 
 
 The region was more populous once ; and whether it was or was not 
 a kindness to remove a peasantry who could never keep themselves much 
 above starvation-point in this wild country, to the fertile western coast, 
 turning the bulk of Sutherlandshire into sheep-walks and deer-forests, is one 
 of those questions on which the wisest and most humane may well hesitate. 
 
 ‘What has been, in fact,’ writes Lord Ronald Gower, ‘the result of the 
 
 policy pursued by my grandfather in Sutherland ? An increase of population, 
 as well as of rental and wealth. Lord Stafford has been accused of causing 
 these evictions to take place, in order to gain by them : but, as a matter 
 of fact, between the years 1811 and 1833, not a sixpence of rent was drawn 
 from the country ; but over sixty thousand pounds were spent in improving 
 it. If any harshness was used during the evictions, Lord Stafford cannot 
 
 fairly be blamed, but the agent employed. However, it was never proved 
 
 that such had been the case.’ 1 
 
 Lairg is the great rendezvous ; the village is on a heathery upland two 
 miles from the station, and is not to be commended lor a sojourn. But the 
 scene both there and at the station is at times very lively ; the trains in 
 summer both ways calling three times a day, ‘ machines ’ of all kinds being 
 in readiness to carry off tourists and sportsmen to their favourite resorts, 
 and mail-coaches, such as they are, plying three or four times a week. It is 
 true that the visitors are comparatively few, but not even Oban finds such 
 
 1 Reminiscences , vol. i. p. 85. 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 1 86 
 
 enthusiastic admirers; and those who have either ‘used up’ or learned to 
 disdain the more ordinary routes, feel when reaching this breezy hamlet that 
 the delights of their Scottish tour are now about to begin. 
 
 But we cannot now pursue our way inland. Our route lies again to 
 the eastern coast, to Golspie, whence, as in duty bound, we visit the capital 
 of Sutherlandshire, the old cathedral city of Dornocii, opposite to Tain, 
 across the Firth. ‘This,’ says Chambers, ‘is without exception the most 
 miserable of all our royal burghs.’ Mr. Baddeley observes that it ‘is the 
 smallest by several hundred inhabitants of that trio of pigmy capitals, 
 
 Suilven-Assynt, near Lociiinver. 
 
 Cromarty, Inveraray , 1 and itself.’ Every description ot the town, the same 
 writer adds, should begin Once upon a time. There may probably be now 
 between six and seven hundred inhabitants. Golspie has become the more 
 populous and important place, partly from its nearness to Dunrobin Castle 
 
 1 But let no one despise Inveraray ! There is to my mind hardly a more beautiful excursion in Scotland than 
 one that may be taken from Dunoon on the Clyde, by the wild and beautiful Loch Eck, to Strachur on Loch 
 Fyne, whence the traveller may reach Inveraray by ferry, with the mountains at the head of the loch rising 
 grandly to the right, and in front the town with its castle (of the Duke of Argyll), the wooded hill of Dunaquoich 
 rising beyond, and farther still, the vast shadowy mass of Ben Cruachan. No : Dornoch has little in common 
 with Inveraray but its smallness. 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 187 
 
 {Dun-Robin, ‘ Robert’s Fortress,’ having been built in the thirteenth century 
 by Robert, the second Earl of Sutherland). This is the chief residence of 
 ‘ the Duke,' of whose personality, in Sutherlandshire at least, no further 
 description is necessary. As shown in our cut , 1 the building is a modern 
 one, the late Sir Charles Barry having reconstructed the whole. ‘ From the 
 terraces and steps leading down to the gardens, there are beautiful views 
 over Moray Firth to the blue hills of Banffshire and Morayshire beyond. 
 I he garden itself is divided into parterres, and is sheltered seawards by 
 thick belts of evergreens ; but trees of the finest description flourish within 
 
 Stack Polly, from Locu Lurgan, Coigacii, West Sutherland. 
 
 a stone’s throw of the shore without any protection. Unless it be at Mount 
 Edgecumbe, we can call to mind no place in Great Britain where the sea 
 air seems to affect the timber so little.’ 'Bo many visitors the place will be 
 additionally interesting from its association with the memory of the Duchess 
 of Sutherland, so well known in the early part of our Queen’s reign as the 
 friend and promoter of every good and philanthropic cause . 2 
 
 At Helmsdale the railway diverges once more inland, up a long glen ; 
 
 1 Page 192. 2 See the Reminiscences of Lord Ronald Gower, for an artless picture, drawn by 
 
 a manly filial hand, of a noble and beautiful life. 
 
iSS 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 a fair road, however, keeps to the line of the coast, and soon enters Caith- 
 ness-snire over a bold, bleak, immense rocky table-land, or promontory, 
 called the Ord of Caithness, a tremendous barrier between the two counties, 
 after descending which, up to the little seaport of Wick, the inland views 
 become quite changed in character. With the exception of one low range 
 of hills, marked by three separate unpicturesque rounded peaks, the whole 
 country is flat, treeless, and for the most part barren, peaty, with patches of 
 cultivation here and there, and lines of brighter verdure marking the course 
 of the little rivers. At Wick we meet the railway again ; but unless we are 
 enthusiastic anglers there is little or nothing to attract us in the route to 
 
 o o 
 
 Loch Sheanaskaig, West Sutherlandshire. 
 
 Halkirk and Thurso. The last-named town, however, is finely situated on 
 a wide bay, and, after the little villages and the scanty population with 
 which we have lately become familiar, is somewhat surprising from its size and 
 substantial appearance. The piles of paving-stones in the yards and on the 
 wharf will attract every visitor’s notice. They belong to the old ‘ Devonian ’ 
 red sandstone, and are sent all over the kingdom. Many visitors will recall 
 the name of Robert Dick, the baker of Thurso, who amid the greatest 
 privations attained to a mastery of geological and botanical science, which 
 has placed his name among the highest in the rank of self-taught men. 
 There is a handsome obelisk in the cemetery, to his memory. 
 
 But it is to ‘John o’ Groat’s House’ that the curious traveller will 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 189 
 
 desire to wend his way. This extreme northerly point of Scotland may be 
 reached by roach either from Wick along the eastern coast or from Thurso 
 along the north. The ruins of the famous House are still to be seen, and 
 there is now a comfortable inn, commanding a fine view over the Pentlancl 
 Firth, and embracing the Orkney Isles. Who knows not the legend ? 
 Yet we may tell it again for old association’s sake. The family of Groat, 
 it is said, was of Dutch descent ; Groat, or Groot, being the same name as 
 that which in its Latin form, Grotius, is so famous. The founder of the 
 Scottish branch of this family was, however, a Lowlander, who in the reign 
 
 IIanda Island : above Scourie Bay, Sutheklandshire. 
 
 of James the Fourth settled in this northern region. His descendants 
 became numerous, and eight several heads of households were accustomed to 
 assemble once a year to celebrate the memory of their ancestor. A dispute 
 arose concerning precedency, each claiming to be head of the feast. The 
 quarrel become inveterate, and the clan of Groat seemed in danger of being 
 dissolved by intestine feuds ; when one of them whose name was John, 
 proprietor of the ferry to Orkney, erected during a year which intervened 
 between two of their meetings an octagonal building with a door and 
 window on every side, and a table in the interior to correspond, inviting 
 
190 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 each kinsman when the festal clay arrived to enter by his separate door 
 and to take his seat accordingly. The ingenuity and humour of this plan 
 removed all scruples, and all being equally placed the struggle for primacy 
 was forgotten. The story may be true or not : it is certainly very much 
 akin to that of King Arthur and his Round Table. It was probably a 
 parable to begin with, and thus became a myth : but, whether history or 
 legend, it has a meaning worth consideration still ! 
 
 We have now reached the northern apex, the peak of the conical cap, 
 if the comparison be not too irreverent, by which Scotland is crowned. In one 
 
 Badgai.l Bay, Edkachillis ; on the Western Coast. 
 
 of those quaint pleasant little essays which used to form a distinguishing feature 
 of Chambers s Journal , one of the brothers, we think it was Robert, started the 
 idea that the form of the country was that of an old woman , in the position 
 usually attributed to witches, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire being the hump, and 
 the western coast of Sutherland being the wrinkled front. Paint Caithness red, 
 as in some coloured maps, and the witch-picture is complete, without ‘ making 
 believe very much.’ Yes, the witchery is real, only of another kind ! 
 
 And beyond the point of coast where, above John o’ Groat’s, Dun- 
 cansbay Head, with its precipices and chasms, fronts the northern sea, still 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 19 1 
 
 new wonders lie. First, the Pentland Firth, with its tumultuous agitated 
 waters, then the Orkneys, with their endless convolutions of cliff and 
 coast, their thirty inhabited islands and their almost innumerable rocks 
 and islets, attract, but do not long detain the traveller. The best view is 
 from the outside, and from the west. The little towns of Kirkwall and 
 Stromness may be visited ; both on the island which is called Mainland, or 
 (inappropriately enough) Pomona— the latter town being especially interesting, 
 as having given occasion by its geological phenomena for one of FI ugh Miller’s 
 most brilliant essays against the doctrine of Evolution, as propounded in 
 the once famous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. For there was a 
 
 Smoo Cave, near Durness; on the Northern Coast. 
 
 theory of evolution before Mr. Darwin, and the great Cromarty stone-mason 
 addressed himself to its refutation with a fulness of information, a power 
 and brilliancy of argument which few since his time have rivalled. The 
 Asterolepis (star-scale) of Stromness, in his hands, became a sign of Divine 
 creative power ; and notwithstanding all the advance in knowledge which has 
 been made since his day, the discussion may still be read with conviction 
 as well as with admiration. The argument is briefly that the very oldest 
 vertebrate remains are complete in organisation : whereas, had the species 
 been developed from a lower type, there must have been intermediate links 
 discoverable. The argument has been repeatedly urged in various forms : 
 and it has never been answered, save by the conjecture that somewhere and 
 
19 - 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 somehow the ‘ missing links ’ may come to light. But every fresh series of 
 observations reduces the value of this hypothesis. It is inconceivable that 
 if the stages of transition were in truth discoverable they should not have 
 been discovered ere now. There is no more eloquent or convincing passage 
 in Hugh Miller’s work than that in which he applies this argument to the 
 presumed transmutation of the algae to land-plants ; 1 and the same considera- 
 tions, when applied to the vaster processes required by the later form of the 
 
 development theory, are even more cogent. It may not be out of place to 
 quote a paragraph or two, as not yet out of date : 
 
 ‘ Along the green edge of the Lake of Stennis, selvaged by the line 
 of detached weeds with which a recent gale had strewed its shores, I 
 marked that for the few first miles the accumulation consisted of marine 
 algae, here and there mixed with tufts of stunted reeds or rushes, and that 
 as I receded from the sea it was the algae that became stunted and 
 
 1 See Footprints of the Creator, pp. 240-256, 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 193 
 
 dwarfish, and that the reeds, aquatic grasses, and rushes, grown greatly more 
 bulky in the mass, were also more fully developed individually, till at 
 length the marine vegetation altogether disappeared, and the vegetable 
 debris of the shore became purely lacustrine, — I asked myself whether here, 
 if anywhere, a transition flora between lake and sea ought not to be found ? 
 bor many thousand years ere the tall gray obelisks of Stennis, whose forms 
 I saw this morning reflected in the water, had been torn from the quarry, 
 or laid down in mystic circle on their flat promontories, had this lake 
 admitted the waters of the sea, and been salt in its lower reaches and 
 fresh in its higher. And during this protracted period had its quiet, well- 
 
 no disturbing influences through which 
 
 the delicate process of transmutation could have been marred or arrested. 
 Here, then, if in any circumstances, ought we to have had, in the broad 
 permanently brackish reaches, at least indications of a vegetation intermediate 
 in its nature between the monocotyledons of the lake and the algas of the 
 sea ; and yet not a vestige of such an intermediate vegetation could I find 
 among the up-piled debris of the mixed floras, marine and lacustrine. The 
 lake possesses no such intermediate vegetation. As the water freshens in 
 its middle reaches, the alg£e become dwarfish and ill-developed ; one species 
 after another ceases to appear, as the habitat becomes wholly unfavourable 
 to it ; until at length we find, instead of the brown, rootless, flowerless, 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 fucoids and confervae of the ocean, the green, rooted, flower-bearing flags, 
 rushes, and aquatic grasses of the fresh water. Many thousands of years 
 have failed to originate a single intermediate plant. And such, tested by 
 a singularly extensive experience, is the general evidence. There is scarce a 
 chain-length of the shores of Britain and Ireland that has not been a 
 
 hundred and a hundred times explored by the botanist, — keen to collect and 
 prompt to register every rarity of the vegetable kingdom ; but has he ever 
 yet succeeded in transferring to his herbarium a single plant caught in the 
 transition state ? 
 
 ‘ It will not do to tell us, — as Cuvier was told, when he appealed to 
 the fact, determined by the mummy birds and reptiles of Egypt, of the 
 fixity of species in all, even the slightest particulars, for at least three 
 
 thousand years, — that immensely extended periods of time are necessary to 
 effect specific changes, and that human observation has not been spread 
 over a period sufficiently ample to furnish the required data regarding them. 
 
 ‘It is not true that human observation has not been spread over a 
 
 period sufficiently extended to furnish the necessary data for testing the 
 development hypothesis. In one special walk, — that which bears on the 
 supposed transmutation of algae into terrestrial plants, — human observation 
 has been spread over what is strictly analogous to millions of years. For 
 extent of space in this matter is exactly correspondent with duration of 
 
 time. No man, in this late period of the world’s history, attains to the age 
 of five hundred years ; and as some of our larger English oaks have been 
 known to increase in bulk of trunk and extent of bough for five centuries 
 together, no man can possibly have seen the same huge oak pass, according 
 to Cowper, through its various stages of “ treeship,” — 
 
 “ First a seedling hid in grass ; 
 
 Then twig ; then sapling • and, as century rolls 
 Slow after century, a giant bulk, 
 
 Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root 
 Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed 
 With prominent wens globose.” 
 
 But though no man lives throughout five hundred years of time, he can 
 trace, by passing in some of the English forests through five hundred yards 
 of space, the history of the oak in all its stages of growth, as correctly as 
 if he did live throughout the five hundred years. Oaks, in the space of a 
 few hundred yards, may be seen in every stage of growth, from the newly- 
 burst acorn, that presents to the light its two fleshy lobes, with the first 
 tender rudiments of a leaflet between, up to the giant of the forest, in the 
 hollow of whose trunk the red deer may shelter, and find ample room for 
 the broad spread of his antlers. The fact of the development ol the oak 
 from the minute two-lobed seedling of a week’s growth up to the gigantic 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 *95 
 
 tree of five centuries, is as capable of being demonstrated by observation 
 spread over five hundred yards of space, as by observation spread over five 
 hundred years of time. And be it remembered, that the sea-coasts of the 
 world are several hundred thousand miles in extent. Europe is by far the 
 smallest of the earth’s four large divisions, and it is bounded, in proportion 
 to its size, by a greater extent of land than any of the others. And yet the 
 sea-coasts of Europe alone, including those of its islands, exceed twenty-five 
 thousand miles. We have results before us, in this extent of space, identical 
 with those of many hundred thousand years of time ; and if terrestrial plants 
 were as certainly developments of the low plants of the sea as the huge 
 oak is a development of the immature seedling just sprung from the acorn, 
 so vast a stretch of sea-coast could not fail to present us with the inter- 
 mediate vegetation in all its stages. But the sea-coasts fail to exhibit 
 even a vestige of the intermediate vegetation. Experience spread over an 
 extent of space analogous to millions of years of time, does not furnish, in 
 this department, a single fact corroborative of the development theory, but, 
 on the contrary, many hundreds of facts that bear directly against it .’ 1 
 
 Yet the wonder of the Orkneys is not in its bold cliffs with their fossils, 
 nor in the cultivated plots which cover its uplands, nor in its remarkable and 
 mysterious sepulchral monuments and ‘Piets’ houses ,’ 2 nor even in the superb 
 climate, as soft and equable as that of the Channel Islands, so much as in the 
 lingering beauty of its summer days. The evening twilight magically melts 
 into the rose-light of the dawn ; night is practically unknown ; you can read at 
 midnight not only the inscriptions over the shop-doors, but the pages of a 
 printed book. Only a little farther north, and you would see the midnight 
 sun. No doubt there is a corresponding loss of daylight in winter ; but the 
 natives tell you that the starry nights are glorious, and there are no Arctic 
 chills to impair the enjoyment. Few love their country better, or with 
 better reason than the industrious, simple-minded Orcadians. 
 
 A sail of twelve hours over an often stormy sea takes the traveller 
 
 1 Footprints oj the Creator ; or, the Asterolepis oj Stromness, by Hugh Miller, 1849, pp. 240-256. 
 
 2 ‘ Peculiar to the north of Scotland, beyond the Great Glen, or line of the Caledonian Canal, are certain round 
 towers, called burghs or brocks, or Piets’ castles, of unknown age and origin. The most perfect type is the tower 
 of Mousa, on an islet in Shetland. (See page 202.) From this example, and others less perfect, they appear to be 
 cylinders of masonry tapering upwards into a truncated cone, or waisted like a dice-box. The walls are composed 
 of an outer and inner concentric shell of untrimmed stones — evenly set, but without mortar. This rude masonry is 
 bound together by four or five courses of slabs of slate placed crosswise, so as to leave in the thickness of the wall 
 a gallery or inclined plane winding up to the top like a corkscrew, and lighted by small openings or slits in the 
 inside. The rest ol the wall is filled up with loose stones, and it may measure in thickness from ten to fifteen 
 feet. The towers vary in height from twenty-five to forty feet, and in diameter from thirty to fifty. They were 
 not roofed, but the inner slits open into a circular court. A low door on the ground level led into this and 
 communicated with the winding galleries or cells, which in some instances are so low and narrow (three feet) that 
 it is difficult to understand how any but a race of pigmies could have traversed them. Sir Walter Scott compares 
 the tower of Mousa to a ruined pigeon-house. More than four hundred examples are known of these towers in the 
 North and North-west of Scotland and in the Isles, for the most part more or less ruined. They are thus 
 distributed — in Shetland, seventy-five ; Orkney, seventy ; Caithness, seventy-nine ; Sutherland, sixty ; Long Island, 
 thirty-eight ; Skye, thirty, etc.’ — Murray, Section vi. 3. 
 
 O 2 
 
196 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 from Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkneys, to Lerwick, the capital of the 
 Shetlands. Half-way he passes Fair Isle, an island twenty-five miles from 
 any other land, containing just 214 inhabitants, and causing much wonder 
 to many who view it from without, or scramble over its craggy landing, as 
 to the origin of its name. ‘ Fair ’ it certainly is not, in the sense in which 
 we usually understand that term of an island. We think of coral caves, of 
 yellow sands, of grassy slopes, of groves and shady bowers. But nothing of 
 this kind meets us here. Wild precipices are chafed by restless waves, the 
 access is by clefts in the rock, leading by rough steep paths to the barren 
 
 summit ; and perhaps the explanation 
 is that ‘ Fair’ is not an epithet at all, 
 but a corruption of Norwegian Faar, 
 ‘a sheep.’ ‘Sheep island.’ ‘The 
 Faroe Islands have the same ety- 
 mology.’ 1 On this island one of the 
 vessels of the Spanish Armada, driven 
 northwards, was wrecked ; and the 
 crew are said by tradition to have 
 taught the women the art of knitting 
 the brilliantly variegated hosiery that 
 we call Shetland. The account is 
 probably correct, as the patterns in 
 
 similar to those which are wrought by 
 the Moors of Spain. 2 
 
 Lerwick is a town to astonish 
 the visitor who has thought of the 
 Orkney and Shetland isles only as 
 solitary rockbound wastes in the midst 
 of an angry sea. It is in fact a busy, 
 thriving little metropolis, well-placed, 
 and even imposing to view on its steep upward slope, the tiers of houses 
 rising from the very water. The main thoroughfares are irregularly parallel 
 with the shore, and are intersected by narrow lanes, climbing to the brow of 
 the hill. These lanes are called ‘ trances ’ or ‘ transes,’ possibly from the Latin 
 transire through the French. Dr. Jamieson in his Scottish Dictionary gives 
 several instances of the use of transe {ox passage. The building in the higher 
 part of the town, with tower and flagstaff, is the Lerwick Town Hall, an 
 edifice of which the Shetlanders are justly proud. It contains a series of 
 pictures, carvings and stained glass windows, which, when complete, will 
 present an illustrated history of Shetland for the past thousand years. 
 
 Everyone has heard of ‘Shetland wools,’ and of ‘Shetland ponies.’ In 
 
 ’ See The Orkneys am/ S/ni/am/s, by John R. Tudor (London, 2883), pp, 430-432. " Ibid. p. 439. 
 
 many of these shawls are remarkably 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 197 
 
 the former commodity, Lerwick drives a thriving trade ; the scanty pastures 
 
 having long sustained a fine breed 
 of sheep. The Shetland ponies 
 too are famous ; though these no 
 longer roam at large. The breed 
 is carefully maintained, not so much 
 for their beauty as for their utility 
 — - alas ! in the coal mines of 
 England ; it being found that these 
 hardy little creatures can best en> 
 dure the fatigue of continued 
 monotonous work in those sunless 
 depths. They accordingly are im- 
 ported southward in great numbers, 
 never to see the light of day from 
 the time of their descent. It is a 
 comfort to know that they are 
 Fair Isle ; the ‘ Sheep Craig.’ generally well cared for, and greatly 
 
 petted by the miners. Often one 
 will be rescued by some purchaser, wishing to please his children, and will 
 spend its days in fresh air and 
 sunlight — a happier lot, and to 
 outward seeming more congenial. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the patient 
 little sturdy four-footed toilers in 
 the mine know not what they lose ! 
 
 The Shetland Islands contain 
 more than 30,000 inhabitants, a 
 hardy race, who mostly live by 
 fishing. The number of islands 
 is said to be exactly a hundred, 
 only between thirty and forty being 
 inhabited. Some of these are very 
 bold in outline. The cliffs of Bres- 
 say are extraordinary ; but perhaps 
 the greatest wonder is the Holm 
 of Noss, detached from the island 
 of that name by a fissure between 
 the cliffs from four to five hundred 
 feet in depth. ‘ The Holm consists 
 of a rock with perpendicular sides Fair Isle ; ‘ Sheldie Cliff.’ 
 
 160 feet in height, and having a 
 
 level top, the area of which is 500 feet by 170 feet. Somewhere in the 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 198 
 
 seventeenth century this apparently inaccessible stack was scaled by a fowler 
 for the promised reward of a cow. Once on the summit he drove in a 
 couple of stout stakes, to which were fastened strong guy-ropes, that had 
 been dragged over the intervening chasm, 60 feet broad, by means of a 
 
 The Holm of Noss. 
 
 stone and a string. On these guy-ropes was fastened an oblong box, which 
 slid easily enough down from the Noss side, where the cliff was slightly 
 higher, to the Holm, and was hauled back on the return journey. Tradition 
 says that the original scaler of the Holm refused to avail himself of the box, 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 199 
 
 but essayed to return as he came, and in so doing was killed. Latterly the 
 box was made large enough to hold a man and a sheep, and in this manner 
 twelve sheep were taken on to and off the Holm every summer. Some few 
 years back, however, the whole apparatus was dismantled, for fear of 
 
 ‘Giant’s Leg,’ Noss, Shetland. 
 
 accidents, and the summit of the Holm handed back to its original tenants, 
 the gulls, who during the breeding season leave very little of it unoccupied.’ 
 The rock scenery on the western side of the island, is, if possible, more 
 wonderful still. Scalloway, only six or seven miles from Lerwick, and facing 
 
200 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 the Atlantic at the southern extremity of what may truly be called a ‘ Bay of 
 Islands,’ is now one of the most accessible places in the whole region, and 
 there can be nothing finer in its way than the sail along the western coast, 
 past innumerable headlands broken into every variety of shape by the constant 
 chafing of the sea, with islets large and small, and many a picturesque 
 ‘stack’ or rock-group towering above the surface of the water. We enter 
 St. Magnus Bay by a strait between the mainland and the island of Papa 
 Stour. ‘ Papa,’ be it noticed, is a relic of the word for ‘ priest,’ and points 
 
 The Drongs, Shetland. 
 
 back to the time when the earliest missionaries from Ireland came to these 
 wild shores. 7 hrough the mist of ages we catch glimpses of these simple 
 messengers of the Gospel, placing themselves here and there where the sea 
 formed some protection for their rock-girt home, while yet the mainland was 
 open to their frequent visits. The invasions of heathen Norsemen in later 
 days swept away the fruit of their toils ; and only a name or a tradition 
 here and there preserves the memory. 
 
 Across the noble bay the steamer passes to Hillswick, giving us full 
 leisure to admire the fantastic rock forms of porphyry, gneiss, sandstone, 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 201 
 
 conglomerate — at once a fascination and a puzzle for geologists. The ‘ Drongs ’ 
 are here conspicuous, standing out of the lonely sea like a great group 
 of castle towers. Hillswick itself is a pleasant village by the sea, with 
 sheltered green slopes, and a few houses and cottages where fishermen, 
 farmers and peasants lead their quiet life, removed at once from wealth and 
 destitution, with the homely kirk where they worship together in peace. 
 
 This is the extreme point of our present tour. Farther on, if dis- 
 posed to explore, the voyager will find in the ‘northern islands,’ Yell, 
 Fetlar, Unst, yet more fine cliff-scenery, and endless labyrinths of deep-sea 
 channels, with a grand sweep round the northern extremity of the Shetlands 
 
 If exceptionally fortunate, he may here en- 
 counter a ‘ school ’ of whales, and imagine 
 himself, but for the genial climate, an Arctic 
 adventurer. In the course of this circuit, there is an opportunity of visiting 
 ‘ the most northerly village in the British Isles,’ Haroldswick : so called from 
 Harold Haarfager, the ‘ Fair-haired,’ who founded the old Norwegian 
 dynasty, and also made himself master of these northern islands a thousand 
 years ago. 
 
 T he climate of the Shetlands lacks the delicious softness of the Orkneys ; 
 the constant dampness being chilly and oppressive to the visitor ; although 
 in one of the latest and best accounts of these northern islands we read that 
 ‘Shetland, if liable to greater rainfall, has, so far as the writer can judge, 
 a more bracing and exhilarating atmosphere during the summer months than 
 
 Lerwick, Shetland. 
 
202 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 the southern group, where at times the heat is apparently much more intense 
 and oppressive, and in Shetland, even in the height of summer, it is always 
 well to be provided with warm garments .’ 1 The inhabitants appear a 
 hardy race, honest, shrewd, and sensible. They seem peculiarly open also 
 to the lessons and influences of Christianity, and, beside the Presbyterian 
 churches, there is also a mission of the Baptists, which has effected great 
 good. In courtesy and intelligence the people compare favourably with those 
 of any place in Great Britain. 
 
 The route from Lerwick southwards on the eastern side passes by the 
 
 The Brough of Mousa. 
 
 lonely tower of Mousa, on the island of that name. This tower is worth 
 visiting as one of the best preserved relics of Pictish occupation. We may 
 be allowed to copy the excellent description of it by Mr. M. J. B. Baddeley : 
 
 < ^ stands close to the shore on the west side of the small island which 
 oives it a name. Its measurement is about forty feet high and fifty in diameter ; 
 its shape, that of a dice box, the outside wall leaning slightly inward for the 
 lower thirty feet, and bulging out again above that height, with the result, if 
 not with the special object, of making it as difficult as possible to scale. 
 
 1 The Orkneys ana Shetlamis, by J. R. Tudor, p. 41 1. 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 203 
 
 This outside wall, built in courses and entirely without cement, is nearly six 
 feet in thickness ; and within it, separated by a space of about the same 
 width, is a second and similar wall with apertures looking on to the circular 
 unroofed court within, and containing a number of recesses. The only 
 entrance to the whole is by a small doorway on the seaward side ; and as 
 even this might easily be made impregnable, there seems abundant evidence 
 for the theory that the primary object of these structures was defence from 
 external foes — “towns of refuge” they might be called. In the few other 
 instances of their remaining sufficiently intact to allow their original construction 
 to be understood, there is nothing to oppose this theory. One and all seem to 
 afford mute yet eloquent testimony to the turbulence of the age in which 
 they were built.’ 
 
 It is in these islands of the North that Sir Walter Scott found much 
 of the material for his Pirate ; Sumburgh Head, where much of the action 
 of the story lies, being the most southerly point of the Shetland group — a 
 grand, bare cliff, about 300 feet in height — while the Roost of Sumburgh 
 (‘rust,’ Icelandic for the current or whirlpool caused by the meeting of 
 tides) still rushes with the fury depicted by the great novelist. A little 
 to the north, on the western side of the island, the great promontory of 
 Fitful Head fronts the Atlantic. A short distance above the former head- 
 land, and upon the shore of a little bay or ‘ voe,’ are the remains of 
 Jarlshof, the home of some of the principal characters in the tale. It is 
 with a new interest that we re-read Scott’s glowing pages, on the deck of 
 the steamer which bears us swiftly past these scenes over what is now the 
 calmest of summer seas. Well, however, can we imagine what they must 
 become in times of storm. The wild tumult of nature seems only too 
 congenial with strongly-marked characters and tempestuous passions. Fully 
 to comprehend Scott’s descriptions, it is almost necessary to know the 
 locality. Otherwise, they may seem exaggerated ; while in these times 
 of comparative civilisation the counterpart may not often be found cf all his 
 characters. Yet on the whole the outline is wonderfully correct, as well 
 as vivid; and the finest creation in his story, Norna of the Fitful Head, 
 seems to have been in part a transcript from life. The grandeurs and 
 terrors of those storm-beaten shores, with their loneliness, and the mystery 
 beyond, quicken the sense of the supernatural ; although in our own day 
 this rather appears in the simple intense piety of a well-instructed people, 
 than in any tendency to credulity and superstition. The inhabitants of 
 mountain regions, it is said, have often little sense of the majesty and 
 glory that surround them on their daily path ; not so the dwellers by those 
 wild and stormy seas. To them the lessons of the ‘great deep’ are not 
 wholly in vain. ‘The sea is 1 1 is ; ’ and ‘He made it,’ finds a response, — 
 
204 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 often confused and inarticulate, it may be,— in the hearts of men with 
 whose whole life sublimity and terror are so closely intertwined. It was with 
 a strange thrill of sympathy as well as awe that in a little assembly of 
 those northern sailors and fishermen we read the old words : 
 
 ‘ They that go down to the sea in ships, 
 
 That do business in great waters : 
 
 These see the works of the Lord, 
 
 And His wonders in the deep ; 
 
 For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, 
 
 Which lifteth up the waves thereof. 
 
 They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths ; 
 
 Their soul is melted because of trouble. 
 
 They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, 
 
 And are at their wit’s end. 
 
 Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, 
 
 And He bringeth them out of their distresses. 
 
 He maketh the storm a calm, 
 
 So that the waves thereof are still. 
 
 Then are they glad because they be quiet. 
 
 So He bringeth them unto their desired haven.’ 
 
 Our tour in Scotland is now finished. These last words of the volume 
 are written amid calmer scenes than those which have been just described. 
 A tlowery meadow before us slopes down to the lower reach of a lovely 
 lake. Heathery slopes on one side, and wooded hill on the other, descend 
 to the water’s edge. The morning sunshine brightens the verdure, while in 
 the distance one of the giant ‘Bens’ of the country rears its clouded brow. 
 There are no tourists, for the path lies beyond their track. Only a few 
 resident families, in the white houses scattered over the hill-sides, spend here 
 their happy summer. We worshipped with them and with the little 
 company of village-folk, yesterday, in their fair sanctuary, reared by the 
 liberality of a visitor from England. To what ‘ denomination ’ the one 
 church of the village may have belonged it is needless to inquire ; nor 
 perhaps did the thought occur to any worshipper there. The communion 
 was not ours ; yet we sang the same hymns — certainly with unfamiliar 
 additions from the noble quaint old Scotch Psalter ; the prayers in their 
 comprehensiveness were suited to the needs of all ; and the sermon, on 
 Jacob’s wanderings, touched some chords which must have vibrated in every 
 heart. The closing hymn, although a Scottish ‘ Paraphrase,’ was by an 
 English Nonconformist, and is a ‘Psalm of Life’ for Christians universally: 
 
 ‘ O God of Bethel, by whose hand 
 Thy people still are fed, 
 
 Who through this weary pilgrimage 
 Hast all our fathers led : 
 
TO THE FAR NORTH. 
 
 205 
 
 Oh spread Thy covering wings around, 
 Till all our wanderings cease, 
 
 And at our Father’s loved abode 
 Our souls arrive in peace.’ 
 
 Such Sabbath hours, spent in fellowship with congenial friends, are 
 among the choicest remembrances of journeys like those that we have attempted 
 to describe. The visitor to Scotland is constantly reminded that he is 
 among a religious people. This fact is sometimes apparent in the theological 
 and ecclesiastical disputes which ruffle the surface of the national life ; but 
 it reveals itself more constantly and happily in the depths of that life- in 
 the good sense, the integrity and the devoutness which may be found in all 
 classes of the people. The old discords have largely ceased, the fidelity to 
 truth remains, with perhaps a wider catholicity. There is a very remarkable 
 little inscription on one of the pillars in St. Giles’s Church, Edinburgh — To 
 James Hannay, Dean of this Cathedral, 1634-1639. He was the first 
 
 AND THE LAST WHO READ THE SERVICE-BOOK IN THIS ClIURCII. TlIIS MEMORIAL 
 
 is erected in happier times by ms descendant. The ‘ happier times ’ are 
 acknowledged by Presbyterianism and Episcopacy alike ; and one who is an 
 adherent of neither system can rejoice in the essential varieties in which, 
 below the differences once deemed insurmountable, an underlying harmony 
 is discerned. We do not, indeed, affirm that all is peace even now. 
 Questions have been raised, unknown in earlier times ; and some great 
 controversies seem as far from settlement as ever. But these appear at 
 least to be approached in a kindlier spirit. The odium theologicuni, if not 
 extinct, is regarded as uncongenial with the spirit of the time, not because 
 Christians care less for doctrinal correctness, but because they more clearly 
 recognise the supreme claims of charity. 
 
 This, however, is a digression — not unnatural when Scotland is the 
 subject. It is not until we have worshipped with a people that we can be 
 said to know them. In truth, the materials of such knowledge can scarcely 
 be attained by the hasty tourist. Scotland is emphatically a country to be 
 revisited and to be explored, in recesses to which we have had no 
 opportunity of conducting our readers. With one of the many excellent 
 guide books now published, and a large scale Ordnance map, the pedestrian 
 especially and with certain qualifications we might add, the cyclist - may 
 find materials for ever new and practically inexhaustible delight. 
 
 Nor should the quieter beauties of the Lowland district be forgotten. 
 No doubt the lake and mountain land will attract most visitors ; and to 
 these, accordingly, most of our pages have been devoted. But Southern 
 Scotland has its rural charms, in their way as fascinating as the wild regions 
 of Sutherland, Caithness and Ross ; while many a seaside resort all round 
 the indented coasts of the country, are among the choicest of British 
 
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 
 
 206 
 
 watering-places. But English people are finding this out; and North 
 
 Berwick, East Wemyss, with other places along the eastern coast, are 
 
 becoming increasingly famed for their bracing air and noble views over the 
 German Ocean. On the extreme south-west again, the neighbouring ports 
 of Stranraer and Portpatrick have opened a new route to Ireland, 
 
 more and more frequented ; and Wigton, famous in the. annals of 
 martyrdom, invites the stranger, not only by its memories, but by the 
 
 tranquil beauties that surround its quiet bay. 
 
 Sr. Ninian's Cave, Wigtoxshire. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbotsford, page 14 
 
 Aberdeen, its University &c., 160 
 
 Aberfeldy, 1 27 
 
 Abergeldie, 167 
 
 Abernethy, Braes of, 136 
 
 Airdcheanochrochan, 100 
 
 Allan Water, 120 
 
 Alloway Kirk, 29 
 
 Anderson, Andrew of, Elgin, 140 
 
 Annandale, 21 
 
 Annan, 24 
 
 Ardgour, 75 
 
 Arisaig, 85 
 
 Arran, Isle of, 62 
 
 ‘ Assemblies,’ the, at Edinburgh, 42 
 Asterolepis of Stromness, 191 
 Athole’s, Duke of, Grounds, 124 
 Auchnasheen, 109 
 Auchterarder, 120 
 Aviemore, 137, 17 1 
 Ayr, 29 
 
 Bali.achulish, 74 
 
 Ballater, Pass of, 164 
 
 Balloch, 95 
 
 Balmoral, 168 
 
 Banavie to Arisaig, 82 
 
 Bannockburn, 117 
 
 Bass Rock, 7, 10 
 
 Beal-nam-bo, Pass of, 100 
 
 Beattie, Dr., on Highland Scenery, 126 
 
 Belhaven, 6 
 
 Bell Rock, 158 
 
 Ben Arthur, 96 ; Chonzie, 120 ; Crua- 
 chan, 76 ; Lawers, 107, 127 ; Ledi, 
 100, 1 18; Lomond, viii., 96, 1 18; 
 More, 107 ; Muich Dhui, viii., 132, 
 171 ; Nevis, Mr. Wragge’s observa- 
 tions on, 79; Slioch, no; Venue, 
 100, 1 18; Voirlich, 96, 118; Wyvis, 
 109, 146 
 Ben Jonson, 19 
 Berwick-on-Tweed, 4 
 Birnam Hill, 123 
 Blair Athole, 123 
 Bonnington Linn, 24 
 Border, The, 3 
 ‘ Bore Stone,’ 1 14 
 Boston, Thomas, 14 
 Bothwell, 4, 11 
 Bothwell Brig, 24 
 Bracklin Fall, 104 
 
 Braemar, 168 ; mountain scenery round, 
 171 ; tales and traditions of, 172 
 Brander Pass, 107 
 Branksom e Tower, 13 
 Bressay, 197 
 
 Bridge of Allan, 119 
 
 Brig o’ Balgownie, 162 
 
 Brusr, Falls of the, 135 
 
 Buchan, Bullers of, 177 
 
 Burns, Robert, 135; Tomb of, 24; 
 
 Birthplace, 29 
 Bute, Isle of, 61 
 
 Byron, Lord, his early days at Aber- 
 deen, 162 
 
 Cadzow Castle, 24 
 Cairngorm, viii., 1 32, 136 
 Cairntoul, 132, 171 
 Caledonian Canal, 76, 107 
 Caledonian Forest, 24 
 Callander, 104 
 
 ‘ Cameronian ’ and Free Church, 42 
 Cape Wrath, 184 
 
 Carlyle, Birthplace ol, 22 ; Father and 
 Mother of, 22 ; at Dunbar, 6 
 Carse of Gowrie, 120 
 Castleton, see Braemar. 
 
 Cawdor, 146 
 
 Chambers, the brothers, 49 
 Cheviots, The, 13 
 
 Children’s Concert at Aberdeen, 162 
 Claverhouse, 24, 128, 158 
 Clyde, The, 23 ; Falls of, 23 ; general 
 view of the, 60 ; Steamers on the, 
 60; Watering-places on the, 61 
 Coilantogle Ford, 104 
 Columba at Iona, 66 
 ‘ Columba,’ the steamer, 60 
 Communion Service at Oban, 65 
 Corra Linn, 24 
 Corrie, 62 
 
 Corryvrekan, whirlpool, 64 
 
 ‘Covenant,’ The, 41 
 
 Covenanters, 24 ; Monument, 29 
 
 Crathie, 168 
 
 Crianlarich, 107 
 
 Crieff, 120 
 
 Crinan, 64 
 
 Cromarty Firth, 146 
 
 Cromwell at Dunbar, 6 
 
 Culloden Moor, Battlefield of, 147 
 
 Cumnock, 29 
 
 Deeside Railway, 163 
 Dee, source of, 164 
 Devon, the river, 152 
 Dialect, the Scottish, ix. 
 
 Dingwall, 109 
 Don, the river, 161, 171 
 Doon, the river, 30 
 Dornoch, 186 
 ‘Dreadnought’ Hotel, 107 
 
 Drongs, the, 200 
 Drummond, the poet, 19 
 Drumouchter, Pass of, 135 
 Dry burgh Abbey, 13 
 Dullater, 104 
 Dulsie Bridge, 145 
 Dumbarton, 60 
 Dumfries, 24 
 
 Dunbar, 4 ; Cromwell at, 6 ; Carlyle 
 at, 6 
 
 Dunblane, 120 
 
 Duncansbay Plead, 190 
 
 Dundee, 157; Children’s Choir of, 162 
 
 Dunfermline, 114, 152 
 
 Dunkeld, 124, 126 
 
 Dunrobin Castle, 186 
 
 Ecclefeciian, 22 
 
 Edinburgh, 11 ; Arthur’s Seat, 33; 
 Calton Hill, 33 ; First view of, 33 ; 
 Greyfriars’ Churchyard, 41 ; lloly- 
 rool Palace, 34 ; University, 37 ; 
 Museums and Galleries, 46; Rail- 
 way Stations, 37 ; Religious feeling 
 in, 42 ; St. Giles’s and St. Mary’s, 
 49, 50 ; Salisbury Crags, 34 ; The 
 Castle, 36 ; The Old Town, 37 ; The 
 Scott Monument, 47 
 Ellen’s Isle, 98 
 
 Elgin, Anderson’s Institution, 141 
 Cathedral, 139 
 Erskines, The, 16 
 Ksk, The, 13, 19 
 Ettrick, 14 
 
 Fair Island, 196 
 Fast Castle, 6 
 Findhorn, 'l’he, 142 
 Fingal’s Cave, 71 
 Firth of Forth, 4 
 Fitful Head, 203 
 Hodden, 53 
 
 ‘ Forests’ in Scotland without trees, 74 
 
 Forres, 141 
 
 Fort William, 76 
 
 Forth, The, 1 1 7 
 
 Foyers, Falls of, 107 
 
 Gairloch, The, no 
 Gardiner, Colonel, 12 
 Garry, river and glen, 128, 131, 135 
 Glasgow, general view of, 55 ; its 
 Cathedra], 55 ; its University, 56 ; 
 Necropolis, 55 ; Public Parks of, 56 ; 
 West and South, suburbs of, 56 ; 
 v ater supply, 98 
 
208 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Glen Dochart, 107 ; Falloch, 107 ; 
 Nevis, 76 ; Ogle, 107 ; Orcliy, 107 ; 
 Tilt, 131 ; Turrit, 120 
 Glencoe, 74 
 Goat Fell, 61, 63 
 Golf at St. Andrews, 152 
 Golspie, 186 
 Grampians, The, 120 
 Grantown, 136 
 
 Gray, the Poet, on Highland Scenery, 126 
 
 Great Glen, 107 
 
 Gretna Green, 21 
 
 Grey Mare’s Tail Fall, 23 
 
 Guthrie, Dr., his summer retreat, 161 
 
 Habbie’s Howe, 21 
 Haddingtonshire, 4 
 Hailes Castle, 1 1 
 
 Flail and Mackintosh at Aberdeen, 160 
 
 Hamilton Palace, 24 
 
 Haroldswick, 201 
 
 Hawthornden, 18, 19 
 
 Highland Girl , Hie, 97 
 
 Highland Scenery, Dr. Beattie on, 126 
 
 Highlands out of ‘ the season,’ vi. 
 
 Hillswick, Shetland, 200 
 
 Hogg, James, 14 
 
 Hotels, Scottish, v. 
 
 Icolmkiix, 66 
 
 Inch-nia-home, 104 
 
 Intelligence of the Scottish people, ix. 
 
 Inveraray, 186, 11. 
 
 Inverness, 107 
 Inversnaid, 97 
 Iona and Columba, 69 
 Irongray Church, 27 ; Communion 
 Stones, 29 
 Irving, Edward, 21 
 
 Jarlshof, 203 
 Jeanie Deans, 28 
 John o’ Groats, 193 
 Johnson, Dr., 178 
 
 Katrine Loch Waterworks, 97 
 Kershopefoot, 13 
 Kilchurn Castle, 107 
 Killiecrankie, Pass of, 128 
 Kingussie, 135 
 Kinnoul llill, 120 
 Kirkwall, Orkneys, 191 
 Knox, John, his Grave, 42 ; his House, 
 38 ; his Pulpit, 49 ; Memorials at 
 Stirling Castle, 1 1 7 j his School 
 system, 156 
 Kyles of Bute, 61 
 
 Lady of the I^ake, 100 
 Lairg, 92, 182 
 Lammermoor, 6 
 Lanark, 23 
 Larig, Pass of, 171 
 Lerwick, Shetland, 196 
 Leslie, General, 6 
 Lewis, 85 
 Liddisdale, 13 
 Linlithgow, 52 
 
 Linn of Bonnington, 24; of Dee, X 7 1 ; 
 of Quoich, 1 71 
 
 Loch Achray, 97 ; Awe, 107 ; Coruisk, 
 
 86 ; Drunkie, 90, 104 ; Eck, 186, 
 
 Eil, 76; Ericht, 135; Eriboll, 182; 
 Etive, 70, 74, 107 ; Fyne, 63 ; Gair- 
 loclr, 1 10; Garry, 135 ; Gilp, 63; 
 Inver, 91, 182; Katrine, 95, 98; 
 Lee, 161 ; Leven, 114, 152 ; Linnhe, 
 70, 107; Lochy, 107 ; Lomond, 95, 97 ; 
 Long, 61, 97 ; Lubnaig, 107 ; Ma- 
 ree, no; Menteith, 104 ; Ness, 107; 
 Rannoch, 128 ; Ranza, 62 ; Ridden, 
 61 ; Scavaig, 86 ; St. Mary's, 23 ; 
 Shiel, 85; Skene, 23; Tay, 127; 
 Vennachar, 97 
 Loclinagar, vii., 167 
 Lochs, their number in Scotland, viii. 
 
 Macbeth, Burial-place of, 70 ; Birnam 
 Wood, 123 ; Cawdor Castle, 145 ; 
 Scottish version of, 176; The 
 ‘ blasted heath,’ 147 
 Mainland, Orkneys, 191 
 Mary Queen of Scots, 4, 11, 52, 104, 
 114 
 
 Massacre of Glencoe, 74 
 Melrose, 12 
 Monteith, Lake, 104 
 Miller, Hugh, Footsteps of the Creator , 
 192 
 
 Moffat, 23 
 
 Monmouth, Duke of, 24 
 Montrose, 158 
 ‘Morayshire Floods,’ 145 
 Mountains, the six highest in Scotland, 
 127, n. ; vast number of in Scotland, 
 viii. 
 
 Mousa, Tower of, 202 
 Mugdoclc Reservoir, 99 
 Murray, the Regent, 5, 53, 140 
 
 Nairn, 148 
 
 Nodes Ambrosiance, 14 
 
 Nith, The, 24 ; Nithsdale, 29 
 
 North Berwick, 11 
 
 Noss, Shetland, 197 
 
 Oban, 107 ; a Sabbath at, 65 
 
 Ochill Hills, 118 
 
 Orel of Caithness, 188 
 
 Orkneys, duration of the day in, 195 
 
 ‘ Ossian’s Hall,’ 124 
 
 Owen, Robert, 24 
 
 Perth, 120 
 Peterhead, 177 
 Piets’ Castles, 195, n. 
 
 Pirate, the Scenery of, 203 
 Pitlochrie, 128 
 Pomona, Orkneys, 191 
 I’restonpans, 12 
 
 Queen Margaret’s Bower, 53 
 Queen Mary’s Bower, 104 
 Quiraing, Skye, 90 
 
 Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, 21 
 Rivers, their number, in Scotland, viii. 
 Roslin Chapel, 19; Apprentice Pillar, 20 
 Rothesay, 61 
 Rothiemurchus, 136 
 Rowardennan, 96 
 Rumbling Bridge, 125, 152 
 
 | Sabbath, The, 4 
 j St. Abb’s Head, 6 
 
 j St. Andrew’s, Golf at, 152 : University 
 of, 156 
 
 Sark River, 21 
 Scalloway, Shetland, 199 
 Scotland, shape of, 190 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 12, etc. 
 
 Scottish tour, drawbacks and advan- 
 tages, vii. 
 
 Seafarers, Religion of, 202 
 Shetland, Hosiery, 196 ; Ponies, 197 
 Shetlands, Inhabitants of the, 202 
 Silver Strand, 98 
 
 Skye, destitution in, 90 ; Loch Coruisk, 
 86 ; Portree, 86 ; Railway, 109 ; 
 Loch Scavaig, 86 ; Uig and Quiraing, 
 90 
 
 Smoo Cave, 19 1 
 
 Solway Moss, 21 
 
 Spital of Glenshee, 172 
 
 Sport in Scotland, 136, 172 
 
 Stafifa, Fingal’s Cave, 70 
 
 Steamboat sailing in the West, 60, 92 
 
 Stirling, 1 1 3 ; Castle, lib 
 
 Stonebyres Fall, 25 
 
 Stornoway, Lewis, 91 
 
 Strathpeffer, IC9 
 
 Strathspey, 139, 141 
 
 Strorne Ferry, 109 
 
 Stromness, 191 
 
 Stuarts, their traditional origin, 176 
 Sutherland, Duchess of, 187 
 Sutherlandshire, evictions in, 183 
 ‘ Sweno’s Stone ’ at Forress, 147 
 
 Tain, 182 
 
 1 Tales of a Grandfather, 117 
 Tam o' Shanter, 30 
 Tantallon Castle, 10 
 Tarbet, 97 
 
 j Tarff, the river, 132 
 | Tay, The, 123 ; Bridge destroyed, 157 
 Teith, The, 97 
 Tell, a Scottish, 176 
 Teviot, 13 
 Thurso, 188 
 Tighnabruiach, 61 
 Tongue, 183 
 Traprain Law, 1 1 
 Trossachs, 100 
 ‘Tuesday’s Race,’ 10 
 Tummel, The, 128 
 Tweed, The, 14 
 Tyndrum, 74 
 
 University, Scottish system, 156 
 
 Wade, General, his Roads, vii. 
 
 Walker, Helen, 28 
 
 Wallace Monument, Stirling, 52, 119 
 
 Wardlaw, Bishop, 156 
 
 Waverley Route, 13 
 
 Wick, 188 
 
 Wit, Scottish appreciation of, ix. 
 Wordsworth, 14, 97 
 Wragge, Mr., his observations at Ben 
 Nevis, 79 
 Wrath, Cape, 184 
 
 Yarrow, The, 14 
 
 London: william clowes and sons, t.'Mited, Stamford street and charing cross. 
 

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