ToJames R. Manners, Esq.
My dear Mr.Manners,
Among many ways in which a holiday, or a Saturday afternoon, can be profitably and enjoyably spent by those members of the community whom the late Dr. Andrew Wynter designated as “our working bees,†there should be none more attractive than a climb to the top of some of our highest western hills. The following pages, which are respectfully dedicated to you who suggested them, make no pretence to fine writing or original matter, but are simply a short and, I trust, readable guide to those who care to make a journey to the hilltops which they attempt to describe. The hills that find a place in these pages are accessible to all who are capable of average physical endurance, and the account of what may be seen from their tops and in their immediate neighbourhood may help to add to the pleasurable emotions that are certain to arise from a visit to them. We certainly miss at home the solemn and almost unearthly look of the Alps, but our Scottish hills have a greater variety in colour, size, and shape, and many of them have historical and antiquarian associations which help to make them the more interesting to those who climb them. It is astonishing, considering what a wealth of mountain scenery we have in Scotland, that their cult should have been so late and should still be so scanty. There are those who are nothing if they are not practical, and who see in a mountain or a range of hills little more than so many acres or tons of waste soil, which would have had a much greater economic value if it could be levelled down in some way. We can scarcely hope to interest such; but people are getting more alive to the value and significance of mountains, and are beginning to feel that if there be healthy power anywhere on earth for the wasted body, or the sorrowing soul, or larger thoughts of God and of ourselves, they are to be found on the top of some lofty hill. Who can long be sick at heart with the glory of hill and dale and sky about him? and who frail of step with his nostrils full of the scent of varied nature, and his tread on the springy heather? Indeed, it has been truly said that “the mountains in their nearness, and yet remoteness, in the poetry and romance that gather round them, in their simplicity and purity, in the aspirations they kindle, and in the manifold and yet often occult services which they render to humanity, are to the world what religion is to life.†These articles have been written in the midst of an active and busy life, and have been prepared for publication so hurriedly as to make it impossible that they should be free from mistakes. They will, however, to some small extent help and interest those who have not fuller and better guides.