CHAPTERXVIIINTO THE HIGHLANDS
Loch Awe, September 14, 1889.—Under a soft gray sky and through fields that still are slumbering in the early morning mist, the train rolls out of Edinburgh, bound for the north. The wind blows gently; the air is cool; strips of thin, fleecy cloud are driving over the distant hill-tops, and the birds are flying low. The track is by Queensferry, and in that region many little low stone cottages are seen, surrounded with simple gardens of flowers. For a long time the train runs through a deep ravine, with rocky banks on either hand, but presently it emerges into pastures where the sheep are grazing, and into fields in which the late harvest stands garnered in many graceful sheaves. Tall chimneys, vigorously smoking, are visible here and there in the distant landscape. The fat, black rooks are taking their morning flight, clamouring as they go. Stone houses with red roofs glide into the picture, and a graceful church-spire rises on a remote hill-top. In all directions there are trees, but they seem of recent growth, for noone of them is large. Soon the old cattle-market town of Falkirk springs up in the prospect, girt with fine hills and crested with masses of white and black smoke that is poured upward from the many tall chimneys of its busy ironworks. The houses here are made of gray stone and of red brick, and many of them are large, square buildings, seemingly commodious and opulent. A huge cemetery, hemmed in with trees and shrubs, is seen to skirt the city. Carron River, with its tiny but sounding cataract, is presently passed, and at Larbert your glance rests lovingly upon "the little gray church on the windy hill." North of this place, beyond the Forth, the countryin the distance is mountainous, while all the intermediate region is rich with harvest-fields. Kinnaird lies to the eastward, while northward a little way is the famous field of Bannockburn. Two miles more and the train pauses in "gray Stirling," glorious with associations of historic splendour and ancient romance. The Castle of Stirling is not as ruggedly grand as that of Edinburgh, but it is a noble architectural pile, and it is nobly placed on a great crag fronting the vast mountains and the gloomy heavens of the north. The best view of it is obtained looking at it southward, and as I gazed upon it, under a cold and frowning sky, the air was populous with many birds that circled around its cone-shaped turrets, and hovered over the plain below, while across the distant mountain-tops, east, west, and north, dark and ragged masses of mist were driven, in wild, tempestuous flight. Speeding onward now, along the southern bank of the Forth, the traveller takes a westerly course, past Gargunnock and Kippen, seeing little villages of gray stone cottages nestled in the hill-gaps, distant mountain-sides, clad with furze, dark patches of woodland, and moors of purple heather commingled with meadows of brilliant green. The sun breaks out, for a few moments, and the sombre hue of the gray sky is lightened with streaks of gold. At Bucklyvie there is a second pause, and then the course is northwest, through banks and braes of heather, to peaceful Aberfoyle and the mountains of Menteith.
Stirling Castle.
Stirling Castle.
The characteristic glory of the Scottish hills is the infinite variety and beauty of their shapes and the loveliness of their colour. The English mountains and lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland possess asweeter and softer grace, and are more calmly and wooingly beautiful; but the Scottish mountains and lakes excel them in grandeur, majesty, and romance. It would be presumption to undertake to describe the solemn austerity, the lofty and lonely magnificence, the bleak, weird, haunted isolation, and the fairy-like fantasy of this poetic realm; but a lover of it may declare his passion and speak his sense of its enthralling and bewitching charm. Sir Walter Scott's spirited and trenchant lines on the emotion of the patriot sang themselves over and over in my thought, and were wholly and grandly ratified, as the coach rolled up the mountain road, ever climbing height after height, while new and ever new prospects continually unrolled themselves before delighted eyes, on the familiar but always novel journey from Aberfoyle to the Trosachs. That mountain road, on its upward course, and during most part of the way, winds through treeless pastureland, and in every direction, as your vision ranges, you behold other mountains equally bleak, save for the bracken and the heather, among which the sheep wander, and the grouse nestle in concealment or whir away on frightened wings. Ben Lomond, wrapt in straggling mists, was dimly visible far to the west; Ben A'an towered conspicuous in the foreground; and further north Ben Ledi heaved its broad mass and rugged sides to heaven. Loch Vennacher, seen for a few moments, shone like a diamond set in emeralds, and as we gazed we seemed to see the bannered barges of Roderick Dhu and to hear the martial echoes of "Hail to the Chief." Loch Achray glimmered forth for an instant under the gray sky, as when "the small birds would not sing aloud" and thewrath equally of tempest and of war hung silently above it, in one awful moment of suspense. There was a sudden and dazzling vision of Loch Katrine, and then all prospect was broken, and, rolling down among the thickly wooded dwarf hills that give the name of Trosachs to this place, we were lost in the masses of fragrant foliage that girdle and adorn, in perennial verdure the hallowed scene ofThe Lady of the Lake.
Loch Achray.
Loch Achray.
Loch Katrine.
Loch Katrine.
Loch Katrine is another Lake Horicon, with a grander environment, and this, like all the Scottish lakes, has the advantage of a more evenly sharp and vigorous air and of leaden and frowning skies [in which, nevertheless, there is a peculiar, penetrating light,] that darken theirwaters and impart to them a dangerous aspect that yet is strangely beautiful. As we swept past Ellen's island and Fitz-James's silver strand I was grateful to see them in the mystery of this gray light and not in the garish sunshine. All around this sweet lake are the sentinel mountains,—Ben Venue rising in the south, Ben A'an in the east, and all the castellated ramparts that girdle Glen Finglas in the north. The eye dwells enraptured upon the circle of the hills; but by this time the imagination is so acutely stimulated, and the mind is so filled with glorious sights and exciting and ennobling reflections, that the sense of awe is tempered with a pensive sadness, and you feel yourself rebuked and humbled by the final and effectual lesson of man's insignificance that is taught by the implacable vitality of these eternal mountains. It is a relief to be brought back for a little tocommon life, and this relief you find in the landing at Stronachlachar and the ensuing drive,—across the narrow strip of the shire of Stirling that intervenes between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond,—to the port of Inversnaid. That drive is through a wild and picturesque country, but after the mountain road from Aberfoyle to the Trosachs it could not well seem otherwise than calm,—at least till the final descent into the vale of Inversnaid. From Inversnaid there is a short sail upon the northern waters of Loch Lomond,—forever haunted by the shaggy presence of Rob Roy and the fierce and terrible image of Helen Macgregor,—and then, landing at Ardlui, you drive past Inverarnan and hold a northern course to Crianlarich, traversing the vale of the Falloch and skirting along the western slope of the grim and gloomy Grampians, on which for miles and miles no human habitation is seen, nor any living creature save the vacant, abject sheep. The mountains are everywhere now, brown with bracken and purple with heather, stony, rugged, endless, desolate, and still with a stillness that is awful in its pitiless sense of inhumanity and utter isolation. At Crianlarich the railway is found again, and thence you whirl onward through lands of Breadalbane and Argyle to the proud mountains of Glen Orchy and the foot of that loveliest of all the lovely waters of Scotland,—the ebony crystal of Loch Awe. The night is deepening over it as I write these words. The dark and solemn mountains that guard it stretch away into the mysterious distance and are lost in the shuddering gloom. The gray clouds have drifted by, and the cold, clear stars of autumnal heaven are reflected in its crystal depth, unmarred by even thefaintest ripple upon its surface. A few small boats, moored to anchored buoys, float motionless upon it, a little way from shore. There, on its lonely island, dimly visible in the fading light, stands the gray ruin of Kilchurn. A faint whisper comes from the black woods that fringe the mountain base, and floating from far across this lonely, haunted water there is a drowsy bird-note that calls to silence and to sleep.