MISCELLANY No 70
RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR MADE IN SCOTLAND: VIII
Tuesday, August 30th.—Breakfasted before our
departure, and ate a herring, fresh from the water, at our landlord’s earnest
recommendation—much superior to the herrings we get in the north of England.
Though we rose at seven, could not set off before nine o’clock; the servants
were in bed; the kettle did not boil—indeed, we were completely out of
patience; but it had always been so, and we resolved to go off in future
without breakfast. Cairndow is a single house by the side of the loch, I
believe resorted to by gentlemen in the fishing season: it is a
pleasant place for such a purpose; but the vale did not look so beautiful as by
moonlight—it had a sort of sea-coldness without mountain grandeur. There
is a ferry for foot-passengers from Cairndow to the other side of the water,
and the road along which all carriages go is carried round the head of the lake,
perhaps a distance of three miles.
After we
had passed the landing-place of the ferry opposite to Cairndow we saw the lake
spread out to a great width, more like an arm of the sea or a great river than
one of our lakes; it reminded us of the Severn at the Chepstow passage; but the
shores were less rich and the hills higher. The sun shone, which made the
morning cheerful, though there was a cold wind. Our road never carried us
far from the lake, and with the beating of the waves, the sparkling sunshiny
water, boats, the opposite hills, and, on the side on which we travelled, the
chance cottages, the coppice woods, and common business of the fields, the ride
could not but be amusing. But what most excited our attention was, at one
particular place, a cluster of fishing-boats at anchor in a still corner of the
lake, a small bay or harbour by the wayside. They were overshadowed by
fishermen’s nets hung out to dry, which formed a dark awning that covered them
like a tent, overhanging the water on each side, and falling in the most
exquisitely graceful folds. There was a monastic pensiveness, a funereal
gloom in the appearance of this little company of vessels, which was the more
interesting from the general liveliness and glancing motions of the water, they
being perfectly still and silent in their sheltered nook.
When we
had travelled about seven miles from Cairndow, winding round the bottom of a
hill, we came in view of a great basin or elbow of the lake. Completely
out of sight of the long track of water we had coasted, we
seemed now to be on the edge of a very large, almost circular, lake, the town
of Inverary before us, a line of white buildings on a low promontory right
opposite, and close to the water’s edge; the whole landscape a showy scene, and
bursting upon us at once. A traveller who was riding by our side called
out, ‘Can that be the Castle?’ Recollecting the prints which we had seen,
we knew it could not; but the mistake is a natural one at that distance: it is
so little like an ordinary town, from the mixture of regularity and
irregularity in the buildings. With the expanse of water and pleasant
mountains, the scattered boats and sloops, and those gathered together, it had
a truly festive appearance. A few steps more brought us in view of the
Castle, a stately turreted mansion, but with a modern air, standing on a lawn,
retired from the water, and screened behind by woods covering the sides of high
hills to the top, and still beyond, by bare mountains. Our road wound
round the semicircular shore, crossing two bridges of lordly
architecture. The town looked pretty when we drew near to it in connexion
with its situation, different from any place I had ever seen, yet exceedingly
like what I imaged to myself from representations in raree-shows, or pictures
of foreign places—Venice, for example—painted on the scene of a play-house,
which one is apt to fancy are as cleanly and gay as they look through the
magnifying-glass of the raree-show or in the candle-light dazzle of a
theatre. At the door of the inn, though certainly the buildings had not
that delightful outside which they appeared to have at a distance, yet they
looked very pleasant. The range bordering on the water consisted of
little else than the inn, being a large house, with very large stables, the
county gaol, the opening into the main street into the
town, and an arched gateway, the entrance into the Duke of Argyle’s private
domain.
We were
decently well received at the inn, but it was over-rich in waiters and large
rooms to be exactly to our taste, though quite in harmony with the
neighbourhood. Before dinner we went into the Duke’s pleasure-grounds,
which are extensive, and of course command a variety of lively and interesting
views. Walked through avenues of tall beech-trees, and observed some that
we thought even the tallest we had ever seen; but they were all scantily
covered with leaves, and the leaves exceedingly small—indeed, some of them, in
the most exposed situations, were almost bare, as if it had been winter.
Travellers who wish to view the inside of the Castle send in their names, and
the Duke appoints the time of their going; but we did not think that what we
should see would repay us for the trouble, there being no pictures, and the
house, which I believe has not been built above half a century, is fitted up in
the modern style. If there had been any reliques of the ancient costume
of the castle of a Highland chieftain, we should have been sorry to have passed
it.
Sate after
dinner by the fireside till near sunset, for it was very cold, though the sun
shone all day. At the beginning of this our second walk we passed through
the town, which is but a doleful example of Scotch filth. The houses are
plastered or rough-cast, and washed yellow—well built, well sized, and sash-windowed,
bespeaking a connexion with the Duke, such a dependence as may be expected in a
small town so near to his mansion; and indeed he seems to have done his utmost
to make them comfortable, according to our English notions
of comfort: they are fit for the houses of people living decently upon a decent
trade; but the windows and door-steads were as dirty as in a dirty by-street of
a large town, making a most unpleasant contrast with the comely face of the
buildings towards the water, and the ducal grandeur and natural festivity of
the scene. Smoke and blackness are the wild growth of a Highland hut: the
mud floors cannot be washed, the door-steads are trampled by cattle, and if the
inhabitants be not very cleanly it gives one little pain; but dirty people
living in two-storied stone houses, with dirty sash windows, are a melancholy
spectacle anywhere, giving the notion either of vice or the extreme of
wretchedness.
Returning
through the town, we went towards the Castle, and entered the Duke’s grounds by
a porter’s lodge, following the carriage-road through the park, which is
prettily scattered over with trees, and slopes gently towards the lake. A
great number of lime-trees were growing singly, not beautiful in their shape,
but I mention them for the resemblance to one of the same kind we had seen in
the morning, which formed a shade as impenetrable as the roof of any
house. The branches did not spread far, nor any one branch much further
than another; on the outside it was like a green bush shorn with shears, but
when we sate upon a bench under it, looking upwards, in the middle of the tree
we could not perceive any green at all; it was like a hundred thousand magpies’
nests clustered and matted together, the twigs and boughs being so intertwined
that neither the light of the mid-day sun nor showers of hail or rain could
pierce through them. The lime-trees on the lawn resembled this tree both in shape and in the manner of intertwisting their
twigs, but they were much smaller, and not an impenetrable shade.
The views
from the Castle are delightful. Opposite is the lake, girt with
mountains, or rather smooth high hills; to the left appears a very steep rocky
hill, called Duniquoich Hill, on the top of which is a building like a
watch-tower; it rises boldly and almost perpendicular from the plain, at a
little distance from the river Arey, that runs through the grounds. To
the right is the town, overtopped by a sort of spire or pinnacle of the church,
a thing unusual in Scotland, except in the large towns, and which would often
give an elegant appearance to the villages, which, from the uniformity of the
huts, and the frequent want of tall trees, they seldom exhibit.
In looking
at an extensive prospect, or travelling through a large vale, the Trough of the
Clyde for instance, I could not help thinking that in England there would have
been somewhere a tower or spire to warn us of a village lurking under the
covert of a wood or bank, or to point out some particular spot on the distant
hills which we might look at with kindly feelings. I well remember how we
used to love the little nest of trees out of which Ganton spire rose on the
distant Wolds opposite to the windows at Gallow Hill. The spire of
Inverary is not of so beautiful a shape as those of the English churches, and,
not being one of a class of buildings which is understood at once, seen near or
at a distance, is a less interesting object; but it suits well with the
outlandish trimness of the buildings bordering on the water; indeed, there is
no one thing of the many gathered together in the extensive circuit of the
basin or vale of Inverary, that is not in harmony with the
effect of the whole place. The Castle is built of a beautiful hewn stone,
in colour resembling our blue slates. The author-tourists have quarrelled
with the architecture of it, but we did not find much that we were disposed to
blame. A castle in a deep glen, overlooking a roaring stream, and
defended by precipitous rocks, is, no doubt, an object far more interesting;
but, dropping all ideas of danger or insecurity, the natural retinue in our
minds of an ancient Highland chieftain,—take a Duke of Argyle at the end of the
eighteenth century, let him have his house in Grosvenor Square, his London
liveries, and daughters glittering at St. James’s, and I think you will be
satisfied with his present mansion in the Highlands, which seems to suit with
the present times and its situation, and that is indeed a noble one for a
modern Duke of the mountainous district of Argyleshire, with its bare valleys,
its rocky coasts, and sea lochs.
There is
in the natural endowments of Inverary something akin to every feature of the
general character of the county; yet even the very mountains and the lake
itself have a kind of princely festivity in their appearance. I do not
know how to communicate the feeling, but it seemed as if it were no insult to
the hills to look on them as the shield and enclosure of the ducal domain, to
which the water might delight in bearing its tribute. The hills near the
lake are smooth, so smooth that they might have been shaven or swept; the
shores, too, had somewhat of the same effect, being bare, and having no
roughness, no woody points; yet the whole circuit being very large, and the
hills so extensive, the scene was not the less cheerful and festive, rejoicing
in the light of heaven. Behind the Castle the hills are planted to a
great height, and the pleasure-grounds extend far up the
valley of Arey. We continued our walk a short way along the river, and
were sorry to see it stripped of its natural ornaments, after the fashion of
Mr. Brown, and left to tell its tale—for it would not be
silent like the river at Blenheim—to naked fields and the planted trees on the
hills. We were disgusted with the stables, outhouses, or farm-houses in
different parts of the grounds behind the Castle: they were broad,
out-spreading, fantastic, and unintelligible buildings.
Sate in
the park till the moonlight was perceived more than the light of day. We
then walked near the town by the water-side. I observed that the children
who were playing did not speak Erse, but a much worse English than is spoken by
those Highlanders whose common language is the Erse. I went into the town
to purchase tea and sugar to carry with us on our journey. We were tired
when we returned to the inn, and went to bed directly after tea. My room
was at the very top of the house—one flight of steps after another!—but when I
drew back the curtains of my window I was repaid for the trouble of panting
up-stairs by one of the most splendid moonlight prospects that can be
conceived: the whole circuit of the hills, the Castle, the two bridges, the
tower on Duniquoich Hill, and the lake with many boats—fit scene for summer
midnight festivities! I should have liked to have seen a bevy of Scottish
ladies sailing, with music, in a gay barge. William, to whom I have read
this, tells me that I have used the very words of Browne of Ottery, Coleridge’s
fellow-townsman:—
‘As I have seen when on the
breast of Thames
A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames,
In some calm evening of delightful May,
With music give a farewell to the day,
Or as they would (with an admired tone)
Greet night’s ascension to her ebon throne.’
Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals.
Wednesday, August 31st.—We had a long day’s
journey before us, without a regular baiting-place on the road, so we
breakfasted at Inverary, and did not set off till nine o’clock, having, as
usual, to complain of the laziness of the servants. Our road was up the
valley behind the Castle, the same we had gone along the evening before.
Further up, though the plantations on the hills are noble, the valley was cold
and naked, wanting hedgerows and comfortable houses. We travelled several
miles under the plantations, the vale all along seeming to belong almost
exclusively to the Castle. It might have been better distinguished and
adorned, as we thought, by neater farm-houses and cottages than are common in
Scotland, and snugger fields with warm hedgerows, at the same time testifying
as boldly its adherence to the chief.
At that
point of the valley where the pleasure-grounds appear to end, we left our horse
at a cottage door, and turned a few steps out of the road to see a waterfall,
which roared so loud that we could not have gone by without looking about for
it, even if we had not known that there was one near Inverary. The
waterfall is not remarkable for anything but the good taste with which it has
been left to itself, though there is a pleasure-road from the Castle to
it. As we went further up the valley the roads died away, and it became
an ordinary Scotch glen, the poor pasturage of the hills creeping down into the
valley, where it was little better for the shelter, I mean
little greener than on the hill-sides; but a man must be of a churlish nature
if, with a mind free to look about, he should not find such a glen a pleasing
place to travel through, though seeing little but the busy brook, with here and
there a bush or tree, and cattle pasturing near the thinly-scattered
dwellings. But we came to one spot which I cannot forget, a single green
field at the junction of another brook with the Arey, a peninsula surrounded
with a close row of trees, which overhung the streams, and under their branches
we could just see a neat white house that stood in the middle of the field
enclosed by the trees. Before us was nothing but bare hills, and the road
through the bare glen. A person who has not travelled in Scotland can
scarcely imagine the pleasure we have had from a stone house, though fresh from
the workmen’s hands, square and sharp; there is generally such an appearance of
equality in poverty through the long glens of Scotland, giving the notion of
savage ignorance—no house better than another, and barns and houses all
alike. This house had, however, other recommendations of its own; even in
the fertile parts of Somersetshire it would have been a delicious spot; here,
‘’Mid mountain wild set like a little nest,’ it was a resting-place for the
fancy, and to this day I often think of it, the cottage and its green covert, as
an image of romance, a place of which I have the same sort of knowledge as of
some of the retirements, the little valleys, described so livelily by Spenser
in his Fairy Queen.
We
travelled on, the glen now becoming entirely bare. Passed a miserable hut
on a naked hill-side, not far from the road, where we were told by a man who
came out of it that we might refresh ourselves with a dram of whisky. Went over the hill, and saw nothing remarkable till we came in
view of Loch Awe, a large lake far below us, among high mountains—one very
large mountain right opposite, which we afterwards found was called
Cruachan. The day was pleasant—sunny gleams and a fresh breeze; the
lake—we looked across it—as bright as silver, which made the islands, three or
four in number, appear very green. We descended gladly, invited by the
prospect before us, travelling downwards, along the side of the hill, above a
deep glen, woody towards the lower part near the brook; the hills on all sides
were high and bare, and not very stony: it made us think of the descent from
Newlands into Buttermere, though on a wider scale, and much inferior in simple
majesty.
After
walking down the hill a long way we came to a bridge, under which the water
dashed through a dark channel of rocks among trees, the lake being at a
considerable distance below, with cultivated lands between. Close upon
the bridge was a small hamlet, a few houses near together, and huddled up in
trees—a very sweet spot, the only retired village we had yet seen which was
characterized by ‘beautiful’ wildness with sheltering warmth. We had been
told at Inverary that we should come to a place where we might give our horse a
feed of corn, and found on inquiry that there was a little public-house here,
or rather a hut ‘where they kept a dram.’ It was a cottage, like all the
rest, without a sign-board. The woman of the house helped to take the
horse out of harness, and, being hungry, we asked her if she could make us some
porridge, to which she replied that ‘we should get that,’ and I followed her
into the house, and sate over her hearth while she was
making it. As to fire, there was little sign of it, save the smoke, for a
long time, she having no fuel but green wood, and no bellows but her
breath. My eyes smarted exceedingly, but the woman seemed so kind and
cheerful that I was willing to endure it for the sake of warming my feet in the
ashes and talking to her. The fire was in the middle of the room, a crook
being suspended from a cross-beam, and a hole left at the top for the smoke to
find its way out by: it was a rude Highland hut, unadulterated by Lowland
fashions, but it had not the elegant shape of the ferry-house at Loch Ketterine,
and the fire, being in the middle of the room, could not be such a snug place
to draw to on a winter’s night.
We had a
long afternoon before us, with only eight miles to travel to Dalmally, and,
having been told that a ferry-boat was kept at one of the islands, we resolved
to call for it, and row to the island, so we went to the top of an eminence,
and the man who was with us set some children to work to gather sticks and
withered leaves to make a smoky fire—a signal for the boatman, whose hut is on
a flat green island, like a sheep pasture, without trees, and of a considerable
size: the man told us it was a rabbit-warren. There were other small
islands, on one of which was a ruined house, fortification, or small castle: we
could not learn anything of its history, only a girl told us that formerly
gentlemen lived in such places. Immediately from the water’s edge rose
the mountain Cruachan on the opposite side of the lake; it is woody near the
water and craggy above, with deep hollows on the surface. We thought it
the grandest mountain we had seen, and on saying to the man who was with us
that it was a fine mountain, ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘it is an excellent mountain,’
adding that it was higher than Ben Lomond, and then told us
some wild stories of the enormous profits it brought to Lord Breadalbane, its
lawful owner. The shape of Loch Awe is very remarkable, its outlet being
at one side, and only about eight miles from the head, and the whole lake
twenty-four miles in length. We looked with longing after that branch of
it opposite to us out of which the water issues: it seemed almost like a river
gliding under steep precipices. What we saw of the larger branch, or what
might be called the body of the lake, was less promising, the banks being
merely gentle slopes, with not very high mountains behind, and the ground
moorish and cold.
The
children, after having collected fuel for our fire, began to play on the green
hill where we stood, as heedless as if we had been trees or stones, and amused
us exceedingly with their activity: they wrestled, rolled down the hill,
pushing one another over and over again, laughing, screaming, and chattering
Erse: they were all without shoes and stockings, which, making them fearless of
hurting or being hurt, gave a freedom to the action of their limbs which I
never saw in English children: they stood upon one another, body, breast, or
face, or any other part; sometimes one was uppermost, sometimes another, and
sometimes they rolled all together, so that we could not know to which body
this leg or that arm belonged. We waited, watching them, till we were
assured that the boatman had noticed our signal—By the bye, if we had received
proper directions at Loch Lomond, on our journey to Loch Ketterine, we should
have made our way down the lake till we had come opposite to the ferryman’s
house, where there is a hut, and the people who live there are accustomed to
call him by the same signal as here. Luckily for us we were not so well
instructed, for we should have missed the pleasure of
receiving the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Macfarlane and their family.
A young
woman who wanted to go to the island accompanied us to the water-side.
The walk was pleasant, through fields with hedgerows, the greenest fields we
had seen in Scotland; but we were obliged to return without going to the
island. The poor man had taken his boat to another place, and the waters
were swollen so that we could not go close to the shore, and show ourselves to
him, nor could we make him hear by shouting. On our return to the
public-house we asked the woman what we should pay her, and were not a little
surprised when she answered, ‘Three shillings.’ Our horse had had a
sixpenny feed of miserable corn, not worth threepence; the rest of the charge
was for skimmed milk, oat-bread, porridge, and blue milk cheese: we told her it
was far too much; and, giving her half-a-crown, departed. I was sorry she
had made this unreasonable demand, because we had liked the woman, and we had
before been so well treated in the Highland cottages; but, on thinking more
about it, I satisfied myself that it was no scheme to impose upon us, for she
was contented with the half-crown, and would, I daresay, have been so with two
shillings, if we had offered it her at first. Not being accustomed to fix
a price upon porridge and milk, to such as we, at least, when we asked her she
did not know what to say; but, seeing that we were travelling for pleasure, no
doubt she concluded we were rich, and that what was a small gain to her could
be no great loss to us.
When we
had gone a little way we saw before us a young man with a bundle over his
shoulder, hung on a stick, bearing a great boy on his back: seeing that they
were travellers, we offered to take the boy on the car, to
which the man replied that he should be more than thankful, and set him up
beside me. They had walked from Glasgow, and that morning from Inverary;
the boy was only six years old, ‘But,’ said his father, ‘he is a stout walker,’
and a fine fellow he was, smartly dressed in tight clean clothes and a nice
round hat: he was going to stay with his grandmother at Dalmally. I found
him good company; though I could not draw a single word out of him, it was a
pleasure to see his happiness gleaming through the shy glances of his healthy countenance.
Passed a pretty chapel by the lake-side, and an island with a farm-house upon
it, and corn and pasture fields; but, as we went along, we had frequent reason
to regret the want of English hedgerows and English culture; for the ground was
often swampy or moorish near the lake where comfortable dwellings among green
fields might have been. When we came near to the end of the lake we had a
steep hill to climb, so William and I walked; and we had such confidence in our
horse that we were not afraid to leave the car to his guidance with the child
in it; we were soon, however, alarmed at seeing him trot up the hill a long way
before us; the child, having raised himself up upon the seat, was beating him
as hard as he could with a little stick which he carried in his hand; and when
he saw our eyes were on him he sate down, I believe very sorry to resign his
office: the horse slackened his pace, and no accident happened.
When we
had ascended half-way up the hill, directed by the man, I took a nearer footpath,
and at the top came in view of a most impressive scene, a ruined castle on an
island almost in the middle of the last compartment of the lake, backed by a
mountain cove, down which came a roaring stream. The
castle occupied every foot of the island that was visible to us, appearing to
rise out of the water; mists rested upon the mountain side, with spots of
sunshine between; there was a mild desolation in the low grounds, a solemn
grandeur in the mountains, and the castle was wild, yet stately, not dismantled
of its turrets, nor the walls broken down, though completely in ruin.
After having stood some minutes I joined William on the high road, and both
wishing to stay longer near this place, we requested the man to drive his
little boy on to Dalmally, about two miles further, and leave the car at the
inn. He told us that the ruin was called Kilchurn Castle, that it
belonged to Lord Breadalbane, and had been built by one of the ladies of that
family for her defence during her Lord’s absence at the Crusades, for which
purpose she levied a tax of seven years’ rent upon her tenants; a he said that from that side of the lake it did
not appear, in very dry weather, to stand upon an island; but that it was
possible to go over to it without being wet-shod. We were very lucky in
seeing it after a great flood; for its enchanting effect was chiefly owing to
its situation in the lake, a decayed palace rising out of the plain of
waters! I have called it a palace, for such feeling it gave to me, though
having been built as a place of defence, a castle or fortress. We turned
again and reascended the hill, and sate a long time in the middle of it looking
on the castle and the huge mountain cove opposite, and William, addressing
himself to the ruin, poured out these verses:—Child of loud-throated War! the
mountain stream
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age.
We walked
up the hill again, and, looking down the vale, had a fine view of the lake and
islands, resembling the views down Windermere, though much less rich. Our
walk to Dalmally was pleasant: the vale makes a turn to the right, beyond the
head of the lake, and the village of Dalmally, which is, in fact, only a few
huts, the manse or minister’s house, the chapel, and the inn, stands near the
river, which flows into the head of the lake. The whole vale is very
pleasing, the lower part of the hill-sides being sprinkled with thatched
cottages, cultivated ground in small patches near them, which evidently
belonged to the cottages.
We were
overtaken by a gentleman who rode on a beautiful white pony, like Lilly, and
was followed by his servant, a Highland boy, on another pony, a little
creature, not much bigger than a large mastiff, on which were slung a pair of
crutches and a tartan plaid. The gentleman entered into conversation with
us, and on our telling him that we were going to Glen Coe, he advised us,
instead of proceeding directly to Tyndrum, the next stage, to go round by the
outlet of Loch Awe to Loch Etive, and thence to Glen Coe. We were glad to
change our plan, for we wanted much to see more of Loch Awe, and he told us
that the whole of the way by Loch Etive was pleasant, and the road to Tyndrum
as dreary as possible; indeed, we could see it at that time several miles
before us upon the side of a bleak mountain; and he said that there was nothing
but moors and mountains all the way. We reached the inn a little before
sunset, ordered supper, and I walked out. Crossed a bridge to look more
nearly at the parsonage-house and the chapel, which stands upon a bank close to
the river, a pretty stream overhung in some parts by trees. The vale is very pleasing; but, like all the other Scotch
vales we had yet seen, it told of its kinship with the mountains and of poverty
or some neglect on the part of man.
To be
continued
A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames,
In some calm evening of delightful May,
With music give a farewell to the day,
Or as they would (with an admired tone)
Greet night’s ascension to her ebon throne.’
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age.
