Chapter V: Foreword (5)

We were awakened at six o'clock in the morning, and after a good breakfast we left the Half-Way House (later the "Aultnamain Inn"), and well pleased we were with the way the landlady had catered for our hungry requirements. We could see the sea in the distance, and as we resumed our march across the moors we were often alarmed suddenly by the harsh and disagreeable cries of the startled grouse as they rose hurriedly from the sides of our path, sounding almost exactly like "Go back!--go back!" We were, however, obliged to "Go forward," and that fairly quickly, as we were already a few miles behind our contemplated average of twenty-five miles per day. We determined to make the loss good, and if possible to secure a slight margin to our credit, so we set out intending to reach Inverness that night if possible. In spite, therefore, of the orders given in such loud and unpleasant tones by the grouse, we advanced quickly onwards and left those birds to rejoice the heart of any sportsman who might follow.

Cromarty Firth was clearly visible as we left the moors, and we could distinguish what we thought was Cromarty itself, with its whitewashed houses, celebrated as the birthplace of the great geologist, Hugh Miller, of whom we had heard so much in the Orkneys. The original cause of the whitewashing of the houses in Cromarty was said to have been the result of an offer made by a former candidate for Parliamentary honours, who offered to whitewash any of the houses. As nearly all the free and independent electors accepted his offer, it was said that Cromarty came out of the Election of 1826 cleaner than any other place in Scotland, notwithstanding the fact that it happened in an age when parliamentarian representation generally went to the highest bidder.

We crossed the Strathrory River, and leaving the hills to our right found ourselves in quite a different kind of country, a veritable land of woods, where immense plantations of fir-trees covered the hills as far as the eye could reach, sufficient, apparently, to make up for the deficiency in Caithness and Sutherland in that respect, for we were now in the county of Ross and Cromarty.

Shortly afterwards we crossed over the River Alness. The country we now passed through was highly cultivated and very productive, containing some large farms, where every appearance of prosperity prevailed, and the tall chimneys in the rear of each spoke of the common use of coal. The breeding of cattle seemed to be carried on extensively; we saw one large herd assembled in a field adjoining our road, and were amused at a conversational passage of arms between the farmer and two cattle-dealers who were trying to do business, each side endeavouring to get the better of the other. It was not quite a war to the knife, but the fight between those Scots was like razor trying to cut razor, and we wished we had time to stay and hear how it ended.

Arriving at Novar, where there was a nice little railway station, we passed on to the village inn, and called for a second breakfast, which we thoroughly enjoyed after our twelve-mile walk. Here we heard that snow had fallen on one of the adjacent hills during the early hours of the morning, but it was now fine, and fortunately continued to be so during the whole of the day.

Our next stage was Dingwall, the chief town in the county of Ross, and at the extreme end of the Cromarty Firth, which was only six miles distant. We had a lovely walk to that town, very different from the lonely moors we had traversed earlier in the day, as our road now lay along the very edge of the Cromarty Firth, while the luxuriant foliage of the trees on the other side of our road almost formed an arch over our way. The water of the Firth was about two miles broad all the way to Dingwall, and the background formed by the wooded hills beyond the Firth made up a very fine picture. We had been fully prepared to find Dingwall a very pretty place, and in that we were not disappointed.

The great object of interest as we entered this miniature county town was a lofty monument fifty or sixty feet high,[Footnote: This monument has since been swept away.] which stood in a separate enclosure near a graveyard attached to a church. It was evidently very old, and leaning several points from the perpendicular, and was bound together almost to the top with bands of iron crossed in all directions to keep it from failing. A very curious legend was attached to it. It was erected to some steward named Roderick Mackenzie, who had been connected with the Cromarty estate many years ago, and who appeared to have resided at Kintail, being known as the Tutor of Kintail. He acted as administrator of the Mackenzie estates during the minority of his nephew, the grandfather of the first Earl of Cromarty, and was said to have been a man of much ability and considerable culture for the times in which he lived. At the same time he was a man of strong personality though of evil repute in the Gaelic-speaking districts, as the following couplet still current among the common people showed:

The three worst things in Scotland--
Mists in the dog-days, frost in May, and the Tutor of Kintail.

The story went that the tutor had a quarrel with a woman who appeared to have been quite as strong-minded as himself. She was a dairymaid in Strathconon with whom he had an agreement to supply him with a stone of cheese for every horn of milk given by each cow per day. For some reason the weight of cheese on one occasion happened to be light, and this so enraged the tutor that he drove her from the Strath. Unfortunately for him the dairymaid was a poetess, and she gave vent to her sorrow in verse, in which it may be assumed the tutor came in for much abuse. When she obtained another situation at the foot of Ben Wyvis, the far-reaching and powerful hand of the tutor drove her from there also; so at length she settled in the Clan Ranald Country in Barrisdale, on the shores of Loch Hourn on the west coast of Inverness-shire, a place at that time famous for shell-fish, where she might have dwelt in peace had she mastered the weakness of her sex for demanding the last word; but she burst forth once more in song, and the tutor came in for another scathing:

Though from Strathconon with its cream you've driven me,
And from Wyvis with its curds and cheese;
While billow beats on shore you cannot drive me
From the shell-fish of fair Barrisdale.

These stanzas came to the ear of the tutor, who wrote to Macdonald of Barrisdale demanding that he should plough up the beach, and when this had been done there were no longer any shell-fish to be found there.

The dairymaid vowed to be even with the tutor, and threatened to desecrate his grave. When he heard of the threat, in order to prevent its execution he built this strange monument, and instead of being buried beneath it he was said to have been buried near the summit; but the woman was not to be out-done, for after the tutor's funeral she climbed to the top of the pinnacle and kept her vow to micturate there!

As our time was limited, we were obliged to hurry away from this pleasantly situated town, and in about four miles, after crossing the River Conon, we entered Conon village, where we called for refreshments, of which we hastily disposed. Conon was quite an agricultural village, where the smithy seemed to rival the inn in importance, as the smiths were busy at work. We saw quite a dozen ploughs waiting to be repaired in order to fit them to stir up the soil during the ploughing season, which would commence as soon as the corn was cleared off the land. Here we observed the first fingerpost we had seen since leaving John o' Groat's, now more than a hundred miles distant, although it was only an apology for one, and very different from those we were accustomed to see farther south in more important but not more beautiful places. It was simply an upright post with rough pieces of wood nailed across the top, but we looked upon it as a sign that we were approaching more civilised regions. The gentry had shown their appreciation of this delightful part of the country by erecting fine residences in the neighbourhood, some of which we passed in close proximity. Just before crossing over the railway bridge we came to a frightful figure of a human head carved on a stone and built in the battlement in a position where it could be seen by all. It was coloured white, and we heard it was the work of some local sculptor. It was an awful-looking thing, and no doubt did duty for the "boggard" of the neighbourhood. The view of the hills to the right of our road as we passed along was very fine, lit up as they were by the rays of the evening sun, and the snow on Ben Wyvis in the distance contrasted strangely with the luxuriant foliage of the trees near us, as they scarcely yet showed the first shade of the autumn tints.

About four miles farther on we arrived at a place called the Muir of Ord, a rather strange name of which we did not know the meaning, reaching the railway station there just after the arrival of a train which we were told had come from the "sooth." The passengers consisted of a gentleman and his family, who were placing themselves in a large four-wheeled travelling-coach to which were attached four rather impatient horses. A man-servant in livery was on the top of the coach arranging a large number of parcels and boxes, those intolerable appendages of travel. We waited, and watched their departure, as we had no desire to try conclusions with the restless feet of the horses, our adventures with the Shetland pony in the north having acted as a warning to us. Shortly afterwards we crossed a large open space of land studded with wooden buildings and many cattle-pens which a man told us was now the great cattlemarket for the North, where sales for cattle were held each month--the next would be due in about a week's time, when from 30,000 to 35,000 sheep would be sold. It seemed strange to us that a place of such importance should have been erected where there were scarcely any houses, but perhaps there were more in the neighbourhood than we had seen, and in any case it lay conveniently as a meeting-place for the various passes in the mountain country.

We soon arrived at Beauly, which, as its name implied, was rather a pretty place, with its houses almost confined to the one street, the Grammar School giving it an air of distinction. Our attention was attracted by some venerable ruins at the left of our road, which we determined to visit, but the gate was locked. Seeing a small girl standing near, we asked her about the key, and she volunteered to go and tell the man who kept it to come at once. We were pressed for time, and the minutes seemed very long as we stood awaiting the arrival of the key, until at last we decided to move on; but just as we were walking away we saw an old man coming up a side street with the aid of a crutch and a stick.

He pointed with his stick towards the cathedral, so we retraced our steps and awaited his arrival with the key. A key it certainly was, and a large one too, for it weighed 2 lbs. 4 ozs. and the bore that fitted the lock was three-quarters of an inch in diameter. It was the biggest key we saw in all our long journey. We listened to all the old man had to tell us about the cathedral, the building of which begun in the year 1230. It measured 152 feet in length and about 24 feet in breadth, but was ruined in the time of Cromwell. He showed us what he described as the Holy Water Pot, which was quite near the door and had some water in it, but why the water happened to be there the old man could not explain. The front gable of the nave was nearly all standing, but that at the back, which at one time had contained a large window, was nearly all down. The old font was in the wall about half-way down the cathedral; the vestry and chapter house were roofless. The grave-stones dated from the year 1602, but that which covered the remains of the founder was of course very much older. Beauly was formerly a burial-place of the ancient Scottish chieftains, and was still used as the burial-ground of the Mackenzies, the name reminding us of our friends at the "Huna Inn." Rewarding our guide and the bairn who had returned with him for their services, we walked quickly away, as we had still twelve miles to walk before reaching Inverness.

After crossing the bridge over the River Beauly we had the company for about a mile of a huge servant-girl, a fine-looking Scotch lassie, with whom we ventured to enter into conversation although we felt like dwarfs in her presence. She told us she had never been in England, but her sister had been there in service, and had formed a bad opinion of the way the English spent their Sundays. Some of them never went to church at all, while one young man her sister knew there actually whistled as he was going to church! It was very different in Scotland, where, she said, all went to church and kept holy the Sabbath day. She evidently thought it a dreadful offence to whistle on Sundays, and we were careful not to offend the susceptibilities of the Scots, and, we may safely say, our own, by whistling on the Lord's day. Whistling was, however, an accomplishment of which we were rather proud, as we considered ourselves experts, and beguiled many a weary mile's march with quicksteps--English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish--which we flattered ourselves sounded better amongst the hills of the Highlands of Scotland even than the sacred bagpipes of the most famous Scotch regiments.

We thanked our formidable-looking friend for her company and, presenting her with a John o' Groat's buckie, bade her farewell. When she must have been a distance away we accelerated our pace by whistling "Cheer, Boys, Cheer!" one of Charles Russell's songs. We could not keep it up for long, as we were not only footsore, but sore in every joint, through friction, and we were both beginning to limp a little when we came to a junction in the roads. Here it was necessary to inquire about our way, and seeing a farm quite near we went to it and asked a gentleman who was standing in the yard which way we should turn for Inverness and how far it was. He kindly directed us, and told us that town was nine miles distant, but added, "I am just going there in my 'machine,' which will be ready directly, and will be glad to give you a lift." This kind offer formed one of the greatest temptations we had during our long journey, as we had already walked thirty miles that day, and were in a pitiable condition, and it was hard to say "No." We thanked the gentleman heartily, and explained why we could not accept it, as we had determined to walk all the way to Land's End, and with an effort both painful and slow we mournfully took our way. We had only travelled a short distance when he overtook us with a spirited horse and a well-appointed conveyance, bidding us "Good night" as he passed.

We had a painful walk for the next three miles, and it was just at the edge of dark when we called for tea at the "Bogroy Inn." We were shown into the parlour by the mistress herself, a pleasant elderly lady, very straight, but very stout, and when my brother complimented her on her personal appearance, she told him that when she first came into that neighbourhood thirty-five years ago she only weighed eleven stone, but six years since she weighed twenty-two stone; now, she rather sorrowfully added, "I only weigh seventeen stone!" She evidently thought she had come down in the world, but she was an ideal landlady of the good old sort, for she sent us some venison in for our tea, the first we had ever tasted, and with eggs and other good things we had a grand feast. Moreover, she sent her daughter, a prepossessing young lady, to wait upon us, so we felt ourselves highly honoured.

As we were devouring the good things provided we heard some mysterious tappings, which we were unable to locate. My brother suggested the house might be haunted, but when the young lady entered the room again we discovered that the tappings were outside the house, on the shutters which covered the windows, for every one in the Highlands in those days protected their lower windows with wooden shutters. The tappings were accompanied by a low whistle, by which we could see the young lady was visibly affected, until finally she left the room rather hurriedly, never to appear again; nor did we hear the tappings any more, and the requiem we sung was:

If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be?

We were sorry to leave the "Bogroy Inn," as the mistress said she would have been glad of our further patronage, but we had determined to reach Inverness as a better place to stay over the week end. With great difficulty we walked the remaining six miles under the trees, through which the moon was shining, and we could see the stars twinkling above our heads as we marched, or rather crawled, along the Great North Road. On arriving at Inverness we crossed the bridge, to reach a house that had been recommended to us, but as it was not up to our requirements we turned back and found one more suitable across the water. Our week's walk totalled 160 miles, of which thirty-nine had been covered that day.

(_Distance walked thirty-nine miles._)

_Sunday, September 24th._

After a good night's rest and the application of common soap to the soles of our feet, and fuller's earth to other parts of our anatomy--remedies we continued to employ, whenever necessary, on our long journey--we were served with a good breakfast, and then went out to see what Inverness looked like in the daylight. We were agreeably surprised to find it much nicer than it appeared as we entered it, tired out, the night before, and we had a pleasant walk before going to the eleven-o'clock service at the kirk.

Inverness, the "Capital of the Highlands," has a long and eventful history. St. Columba is said to have visited it as early as the year 565, and on a site fortified certainly in the eighth century stands the castle, which was, in 1039, according to Shakespeare, the scene of the murder of King Duncan by Macbeth. The town was made a Royal Burgh by David I, King of Scotland. The Lords of the Isles also appear to have been crowned here, for their coronation stone is still in existence, and has been given a name which in Gaelic signifies the "Stone of the Tubs." In former times the water supply of the town had to be obtained from the loch or the river, and the young men and maidens carrying it in tubs passed this stone on their way--or rather did not pass, for they lingered a while to rest, the stone no doubt being a convenient trysting-place. We wandered as far as the castle, from which the view of the River Ness and the Moray Firth was particularly fine.

We attended service in one of the Free Churches, and were much interested in the proceedings, which were so different from those we had been accustomed to in England, the people standing while they prayed and sitting down while they sang. The service began with the one hundredth Psalm to the good old tune known as the "Old Hundredth" and associated in our minds with that Psalm from our earliest days:

All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell,
Come ye before Him, and rejoice.

During the singing of this, all the people remained seated except the precentor, who stood near the pulpit. Then followed a prayer, the people all standing; and then the minister read a portion of Scripture from the thirty-fourth chapter of the prophet Ezekiel beginning at the eleventh verse: "For thus saith the Lord God; Behold I, even I, will both search My sheep, and seek them out."

Another hymn was followed by the Lord's Prayer; after which came the sermon, preached by the Rev. Donald Fraser, M.A., of Marylebone, London, a former minister of the church. He read the last three verses of the ninth chapter of St. John's gospel, continued reading down to the sixteenth verse of the tenth chapter, and then selected for his text the fourth, ninth, and tenth verses of that chapter, the first verse of these reading: "And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice."

The sermon had evidently been well thought out and was ably delivered, the subject being very appropriate to a district where sheep abound and where their habits are so well known. Everybody listened with the greatest attention. At the close there was a public baptism of a child, whose father and mother stood up before the pulpit with their backs to the congregation. The minister recited the Apostles' Creed, which was slightly different in phraseology from that used in the Church of England, and then, descending from the pulpit, proceeded to baptize the child in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The closing hymn followed, and the people stood while the minister pronounced the benediction, after which the congregation slowly separated.

During the afternoon we visited an isolated hill about a mile from the town named Tomnahurich, or the "Hill of the Fairies." Nicely wooded, it rose to an elevation of about 200 feet above the sea, and, the summit being comparatively level and clear from trees, we had a good view of Inverness and its surroundings. This hill was used as the Cemetery, and many people had been buried, both on the top and along the sides of the serpentine walk leading up to it, their remains resting there peacefully until the resurrection, "when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible." We considered it an ideal place for the burial of the dead, and quite a number of people were walking up and down the paths leading under the trees, many of them stopping on their way to view the graves where their friends had been buried.

In the evening we attended service in the cathedral, a large modern structure, with two towers, each of which required a spire forty feet high to complete the original design. Massive columns of Aberdeen granite had been erected in the interior to support the roof of polished oak, adorned with carved devices, some of which had not yet been completed. The Communion-table, or altar, made in Italy and presented to the cathedral by a wealthy layman, stood beneath a suspended crucifix, and was further adorned with a cross, two candlesticks, and two vases containing flowers. The service, of a High-Church character, was fully choral, assisted by a robed choir and a good organ. The sermon was preached by the Rev. Provost Powell, who took for his text Romans xiv. 7: "For none liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself." He gave us a clever oration, but whether extempore or otherwise we could not tell, as from where we sat we could not see the preacher. There was not a large congregation, probably owing to the fact that the people in the North are opposed to innovations, and look upon crosses and candlesticks on the Communion-table as imitations of the Roman Catholic ritual, to which the Presbyterians could never be reconciled. The people generally seemed much prejudiced against this form of service, for in the town early in the morning, before we knew this building was the cathedral, we asked a man what kind of a place of worship it was, and he replied, in a tone that implied it was a place to be avoided, that he did not know, but it was "next to th' Catholics." Our landlady spoke of it in exactly the same way.

SECOND WEEK'S JOURNEY

_Monday, September 25th._

We rose early, but were not in very good trim for walking, for a mild attack of diarrhoea yesterday had become intensified during the night, and still continued. After breakfast we went to the post office for our "poste restante" letters, and after replying to them resumed our march. Culloden Muir, the site of the great battle in 1746, in which the Scottish Clans under Prince Charlie suffered so severely at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland, is only six miles away from Inverness, and we had originally planned to visit it, but as that journey would have taken us farther from the Caledonian Canal, the line of which we were now anxious to follow, we gave up the idea of going to Culloden. We were, moreover, in no humour for digressions since we had not yet recovered from the effects of our long walk on Saturday, and our bodily ailments were still heavy upon us. As we crossed the suspension-bridge, in close proximity to the castle, we purchased a few prints of the town and the neighbourhood through which we were about to pass.

Inverness is built in a delightful situation, skirting the Ness, which here takes the form of a beautiful, shallow river moving peacefully forward to its great receptacle, Loch Ness, a few miles away; but, although the country near the town is comparatively level, it is surrounded by mountain scenery of the most charming description. Our route lay along the north-western side of the Caledonian Canal in the direction of Fort Augustus, and we again passed the Tomnahurich Hill. Near this we saw a large building which we were surprised to learn was a lunatic asylum--an institution we did not expect to find here, for we had only heard of one madman in the three counties of Scotland through which we had passed. We concluded it must have been built for persons from farther south.

The diarrhoea still continued to trouble us, so we asked the advice of a gentleman we met on the road, and he recommended us to call at the next farmhouse, which, fortunately, happened to be only a short distance away, and to "take a quart of milk each, as hot as you can drink it." So away we walked to the farm, which we found standing a short distance from our road, and, after explaining our troubles and wishes to the farmer, were invited into the house, where the mistress quickly provided us with the hot milk, which luckily proved to be a safe and simple remedy. The farmer and his wife were as pleased with our company as we were with theirs, and were just the sort of people that tourists like to meet. We had a long talk with them about the crops, the markets, our long walk, and, last but not least, the weather. Speaking of diarrhoea, the farmer informed us that the water of Inverness often affected strangers in that way, and that it had even been known to produce dysentery.

After regaining our road, we had a lovely walk that day; the scenery and the weather were both very fine, and, about a mile farther on, we had a glorious view over Loch Ness, beside which our walk led us, through a delightful country studded with mansions amidst some of nature's most beautiful scenery. Presently we met a party of men, consisting of two soldiers and three civilians, engaged in cutting branches from the trees that were likely to interfere with the working of the telegraph, which passed along the side of the road. It consisted of a single wire, and had only just been erected, for we noticed each post bore the Government mark and the date 1871. We asked the men if they knew of a good remedy for our complaint, and one of the soldiers, who had seen service abroad, recommended "a spoonful of sweet oil and cinnamon mixed with it." Our former remedy had proved to be efficacious, so we had no need to try this, but we give the information here for the benefit of all whom it may concern.

We were certainly in for the best day's march we had yet experienced, if not for distance, certainly for beauty of route; and if we had had the gift of poetry--which only affected us occasionally--we should have had here food for poems sufficient to fill the side of a newspaper. Mountain rills, gushing rivulets, and murmuring waters! Here they were in abundance, rolling down the rocky mountains from unknown heights, and lending an additional charm to the landscape! Is it necessary to dilate on such beauties?--for if words were conjured in the most delicate and exquisite language imaginable, the glories of Loch Ness and its surroundings are, after all, things to be seen before they can be fully appreciated. The loch is over twenty miles long, and averages about a mile broad; while a strange fact is that its water never freezes. Scientific men, we were told, attributed this to the action of earthquakes in distant parts of the world, their vibrations affecting the surface of the water here; while others, apparently of the more commonsense type, attribute it to the extreme depth of the water in the loch itself, for in the centre it is said to exceed 260 yards.

As we loitered along--for we were very lazy--we decided to have a picnic amongst the large stones on the shore of the loch, so we selected a suitable position, and broke into the provisions we carried in our bags as a reserve for emergencies. We were filling our water-boiling apparatus from the loch, when we saw a steamboat approaching from the direction of Glasgow. It presented quite a picture as it passed us, in the sunshine, with its flags flying and its passengers crowded on the deck, enjoying the fine scenery, and looking for Inverness, where their trip on the boat, like the Caledonian Canal itself, would doubtless end. There was music on board, of which we got the full benefit, as the sound was wafted towards us across the water, to echo and re-echo amongst the hills and adjoining woods; and we could hear the strains of the music long after the boat was cut off from our vision by the branches of the trees which partially surrounded us.

We were, in reality, having a holiday compared with our exertions on Saturday, and, as we were practically on the sick-list, considered ourselves fully entitled to it. We thought we had travelled quite far enough for invalids when, at fourteen miles from Inverness, and in the light of a lovely sunset, we reached Drumnadrochit, a village on the side of the loch.

Is it to be wondered at that we succumbed to the seductions of the famous inn there, as distinguished men had done before us, as the records of the inn both in prose and poetry plainly showed? One poetical Irishman had written a rhyme of four verses each ending with the word Drumnadrochit, one of which we thought formed a sufficient invitation and excuse for our calling there; it read:

Stop, traveller! with well-pack'd bag,
And hasten to unlock it;
You'll ne'er regret it, though you lag
A day at Drumnadrochit.

One of the best advertisements of this hotel and Drumnadrochit generally appeared in a letter written by Shirley Brooks to _Punch_ in 1860, in which he wrote:

The inn whence these lines are dated faces a scene which, happily, is
not too often to be observed in this planet. I say happily, sir,
because we are all properly well aware that this world is a vale of
tears, in which it is our duty to mortify ourselves and make
everybody else as uncomfortable as possible. If there were many
places like Drumnadrochit, persons would be in fearful danger of
forgetting that they ought to be miserable.

But who would have thought that a quiet and sedate-looking Quaker like John Bright, the famous M.P. for Birmingham, could have been moved by the spirit to write a verse of poetry--such an unusual thing for a member of the Society of Friends! Here it is:

In the Highland glens 'tis far too oft observed,
That man is chased away and game preserved;
Glen Urquhart is to me a lovelier glen--
Here deer and grouse have not supplanted men.

But was the position reversed when Mr. Bright visited it? and did the men supplant the deer and grouse then?

Glen Urquhart was one of the places we had to pass on the following day, but as we had no designs on the deer and grouse, since our sporting proclivities did not lie in that direction, we thought that we might be safely trusted to leave the game undisturbed.

(_Distance walked fourteen miles_.)

_Tuesday, September 26th._

We set out from Drumnadrochit early in the morning, and, leaving Glen Urquhart to the right, after walking about two miles turned aside to view Urquhart Castle, a ruin occupying a commanding position on the side of Loch Ness and immediately opposite the entrance to the glen. The castle was besieged by Edward I when he was trying to subdue Scotland, and a melancholy story was told of that period. The Scots, who were defending the castle, were "in extremis," as their provisions were exhausted and they knew that when they surrendered they would all be slain. The Governor, however, was anxious to save his wife, who was shortly to become a mother, so he bade her clothe herself in rags and drove her from the gate as though she were a beggar who had been shut up in the castle and whom they had driven away because their provisions were running short. The ruse succeeded, for the English, believing her story, let her go; after the garrison saw that she was safe they sallied forth to meet their fate, and were all killed.

The approach to the ruins from the road is by upwards of a hundred rough hardwood steps, and the castle must have been a well-nigh impregnable stronghold in former times, protected as it was on three sides by the water of the loch and by a moat on the fourth, the position of the drawbridge being still clearly denned.

Beneath the solitary tower is a dismal dungeon, and we wondered what horrors had been enacted within its time-worn and gloomy walls! Once a grim fortress, its ruins had now been mellowed by the hand of time, and looked quite inviting amidst their picturesque surroundings. To them might fitly be applied the words: "Time has made beautiful that which at first was only terrible."

Whilst we were amongst the ruins, a steamboat which had called at Drumnadrochit passed close alongside the castle, and we waved our handkerchiefs to those on board, our silent salutations being returned by some of the passengers. We afterwards learned we had been recognised by a gentleman who had met us on the previous day.

About ten miles from Drumnadrochit we reached Invermoriston, and visited a church which was almost filled with monuments to the memory of the Grant family, the lairds of Glenmoriston. Among them was the tombstone of the son of a former innkeeper, with the following inscription, which reminded us of our own mortality:

Remember, Friend, when this you see,
As I am now so you must be;
As you are now so once was I.
Remember, Friend, that you must die.

There was also another tombstone, apparently that of his mother, inscribed:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JEAN SCOTT, THE AMIABLE WIFE OF WILLIAM
FALL, INVERMORISTON, INNKEEPER, WHO DIED ON THE 13TH DAY OF
APRIL 1837 AGED 68 YEARS.

and on this appeared the following epitaph:

Weep not for me, O friends,
But weep and mourn
For your own sins.

We then went to visit the remarkable waterfall of Glenmoriston, where the water after rushing down the rocks for some distance entered a crevice in a projecting rock below, evidently worn in the course of ages by the falls themselves. Here the water suddenly disappeared, to reappear as suddenly some distance below, where, as if furious at its short imprisonment, it came out splashing, dashing, and boiling in fantastic beauty amongst the rocks over which it pursued its downward course. We descended a few paces along a footpath leading to a small but ancient building, probably at one time a summer house, in the centre of which a very old millstone had done duty as a table. Here we were fairly in the whirl of waters, and had a splendid view of the falls and of the spray which rose to a considerable height. There was no doubt that we saw this lovely waterfall under the best possible conditions, and it was some recompense to us when we thought that the heavy rainfall through which we had passed had contributed to this result. The thistle may overshadow many more beautiful falls than the falls of Glenmoriston, but we claim a share of praise for this lively little waterfall as viewed by us in full force from this shady retreat.

After refreshing ourselves at the inn, we started on our next stage of ten miles to Fort Augustus, the loneliness of our journey through its beauties of scenery being enlivened by occasionally watching the pranks of the squirrels and gazing at the many burns that flowed down the mountain slopes. Before reaching Fort Augustus we had a splendid view as we looked backward over Loch Ness, dotted here and there with several ships tacking and retacking, their white sails gleaming in the sunshine. It had been a calm and lovely day; the sun was sinking in the west as we entered Fort Augustus, but we had only time enough for a superficial survey, for we had to proceed farther, and, however important the Fort might have been in 1729 when General Wade constructed his famous military road, or when the Duke of Cumberland made it his headquarters while he dealt severely with the adherents of Prince Charlie, shooting ruthlessly, laying waste on every side, and driving women and children into the moors only to die, it looked very insignificant that night. The Highland Clans never looked favourably on the construction of these military roads, and would doubtless have preferred the mountain tracks to remain as they were, for by using the Fort as a base these roads became a weapon to be used against them; their only eulogy was said to have been written by an Irish officer:

Had you but seen these roads before they were made,
You would lift up your eyes, and bless General Wade.

My brother said he must have been a real Irishman, with the eye of faith, to see roads _before they were made_!

Fort Augustus stands at the extremity of Loch Ness, at the point where its surplus waters are lowered by means of locks to swell those of Loch Oich, so as to make both lochs navigable for the purposes of the Caledonian Canal. We noticed some corn-stacks here that were thatched with broom, and some small houses that were roofed with what looked like clods of earth, so we concluded that the district must be a very poor one.

As darkness was now coming on, we were anxious to find lodgings for the night, and, hearing that there was an inn at a place called Invergarry, seven and a half miles from Fort Augustus, we were obliged to go there. The moon was just beginning to relieve the darkness when we reached Invergarry, and, seeing a servant removing some linen from a clothes-line in a small garden, we asked the way to the inn; she pointed to a building opposite, and said we had "better go in at that door." We entered as directed at the side door, and found ourselves in a rather large inn with a passage through it from end to end. We saw what we supposed to be the master and the mistress snugly ensconced in a room, and asked the master if we could obtain lodgings for the night. He said "yes," but we heard the mistress, who had not seen us, mutter something we could not hear distinctly. My brother said he was sure he heard the words "Shepherd's room." The landlord then conducted us into a room at the end of the long dark passage, in which, we found several shepherds drinking and conversing with each other in Gaelic. One of them said to us "Good night," and as we returned his salutation they all retired from the room. We were now able to look about us, and found the room contained two tables, four forms, and at least two beds ranged lengthways along one side. Presently a servant came in and began to make one of the beds, and then another servant came who, we thought, eyed us rather closely, as we were holding our faces down to conceal the laughter which we could scarcely restrain. When she had made the other bed my brother asked if both the beds were for us. The servant said she couldn't tell, but "Missis says they are both to be made." We had evidently been taken for shepherds, and at first we were inclined to feel angry, for no one came to ask us if we required anything to eat or drink. We could have done with a good supper, but fortunately we had replenished our bags at Fort Augustus, so we were in no danger of being starved. We scribbled in our diaries by the feeble light of the candle which the servants had left on one of the tables, and as no one turned up to claim the second bed we occupied both. There was no lock or fastening on the door, but we barricaded it securely with two of the forms--and it was perhaps as well that we did so, for some one tried to open it after we were in bed--and we slept that night not on feathers, but on chaff with which the beds or mattresses were stuffed.

(_Distance walked twenty-seven miles_.)

_Wednesday, September 27th._

"The sleep of a labouring man is sweet," and so was ours on the primitive beds of the shepherds. But the sounds in the rear of the hotel awoke us very early in the morning, and, as there was every appearance of the weather continuing fine, we decided to walk some distance before breakfast. We asked one of the servants how much we had to pay, and she returned with an account amounting to the astounding sum of sixpence! Just fancy, ye Highland tourists! ye who have felt the keen grip of many an hotel-keeper there--just fancy, if ye can, two of us staying a night at a large hotel in the Highlands of Scotland for sixpence!

We followed the servant to a small room at the front of the hotel, where a lady was seated, to whom the money had to be paid; the surprised and disappointed look on her face as we handed her a sovereign in payment of our account was rich in the extreme, amply repaying us for any annoyance we might have experienced the night before. What made the matter more aggravating to the lady was that she had not sufficient change, and had to go upstairs and waken some unwilling money-changer there! Then the change had to be counted as she reluctantly handed it to us and made a forlorn effort to recover some of the coins. "Won't you stay for breakfast?" she asked; but we were not to be persuaded, for although we were hungry enough, we were of an unforgiving spirit that morning, and, relying upon getting breakfast elsewhere, we thanked her and went on our way rejoicing!

About a mile farther on we reached the ruins of Glengarry Castle, which stand in the private grounds of the owner, but locks and bolts prevented us from seeing the interior. This castle remains more complete than many others and still retains its quadrangular appearance, much as it was when Prince Charlie slept there during his flight after Culloden, and, although not built on any great elevation, it looks well in its wooded environs and well-kept grounds. A story was told of the last Lord Glengarry who, in 1820, travelled 600 miles to be present at the Coronation of King George IV. He was dressed on that magnificent and solemn occasion in the full costume of a Highland chief, including, as a matter of course, a brace of pistols. A lady who was at the reception happened to see one of the pistols in his clothing, and, being greatly alarmed, set up a loud shriek, crying, "Oh Lord! Oh Lord! there's a man with a pistol," and alarming the whole assembly. As she insisted on Glengarry being arrested, he was immediately surrounded, and the Garter King of Arms came forward and begged him to give up the much-dreaded pistols; but he refused, as they were not loaded, and pleaded that they formed an essential part of his national garb. At length, however, after much persuasion, he gave them up.

Glengarry wrote a letter to the editor of _The Times_, in which he said: "I have worn my dress continually at Court, and was never so insulted before. Pistols, sir, are as essential to the Highland courtier's dress as a sword is to English, French, or German; and those used by me on such occasions as unstained with powder as any courtier's sword, with blood. It is only grossest ignorance of Highland character and costume which imagined that the assassin lurked under their bold and manly form."

Glengarry, who, it was said, never properly recovered from the effects of this insult, died in 1828.

After about another mile we came to a monument near the side of the road, on the top of which were sculptured the figures of seven human heads held up by a hand clasping a dagger. On each of the four sides of the base there was an inscription in one of four different languages--English, French, Latin, and Gaelic--as follows:

As a memorial to the ample and summary vengeance which in the swift
course of Feudal justice inflicted by the orders of the Lord
MacDonnell and Aross overtook the perpetrators of the foul murder of
the Keppoch family, a branch of the powerful and illustrious Clan of
which his Lordship was the Chief, this Monument is erected by Colonel
MacDonnell of Glengarry XVII Mac-Minc-Alaister his successor and
Representative in the year of our Lord 1812. The heads of the seven
murderers were presented at the feet of the noble chief in Glengarry
Castle after having been washed in this spring and ever since that
event which took place early in the sixteenth century it has been
known by the name "Tobar-nan-Ceann" or the Well of the Heads.

The monument was practically built over the well, an arched passage leading down to the water, where we found a drinking-utensil placed for any one who desired a drink. We were glad to have one ourselves, but perhaps some visitors might be of such refined and delicate taste that they would not care to drink the water after reading the horrible history recorded above.

It appeared that Macdonald of Keppoch, the owner of the estate, had two sons whom he sent to France to be educated, and while they were there he died, leaving the management of his estate to seven kinsmen until the return of his sons from France; when they came back, they were murdered by the seven executors of their father's will. The Bard of Keppoch urged Glengarry to take vengeance on the murderers, and this monument was erected to commemorate the ample and summary vengeance inflicted about 1661.

Leaving this memorial of "ample and summary vengeance," we crossed the Loggan Bridge and gained the opposite bank of the Caledonian Canal. The country we now passed through was very lonely and mountainous, and in one place we came to a large plantation of hazel loaded with nuts. We reflected that there were scarcely any inhabitants to eat them, as the persons we met did not average more than a dozen in twenty miles, and on one occasion only six all told; so we turned into nut-gatherers ourselves, spurred on by the fact that we had had no breakfast and our appetites were becoming sharpened, with small prospect of being appeased in that lonely neighbourhood.

A little farther on, however, we met a man with two dogs, who told us he was the shepherd, and, in reply to our anxious inquiry, informed us that we could get plenty to eat at his house, which we should find a little farther on the road. This was good news, for we had walked eight miles since leaving Invergarry. When we reached the shepherd's house, which had formerly been an inn, we found the mistress both civil and obliging, and she did her best to provide for our hungry requirements. The house was evidently a very old one, and we wondered what queer people had sat in that ingle-nook and what strange stories they had told there. The fireplace was of huge dimensions; hanging above it was a single-and a double-barrelled gun, while some old crockery and ancient glass bottles adorned various parts of the kitchen--evidently family heirlooms, which no doubt had been handed down from one generation to another--and a very old bed reposed in the chimney corner.

The mistress provided us with a splendid breakfast, upon which we inflicted "ample and summary vengeance," for those words were still ringing in our minds and ears and had already become by-words as we travelled along. The "best tea-pot," which looked as if it had not been used for ages, was brought from its hiding-place; and, amongst other good things, we were treated by way of dessert to some ripe blackberries, which the mistress called brambleberries and which she told us she had gathered herself. It was half-past ten o'clock when we left the shepherd's house, and shortly afterwards we had a view of the snow-covered summit of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain. We had a lonely walk alongside Loch Lochy, which is ten miles in length; but in about six miles General Wade's road, which we followed, branched off to the left. About four miles from the junction we reached Spean Bridge, over which we crossed the river of that name, which brings along the waters of sundry lochs as well as others from the valley of Glen Roy. This Glen forms an almost hidden paradise beloved of geologists, as along the sides of the valley are the famous "Parallel Roads" belonging to the Glacial Period. We replenished our stock of provisions, which we had rather neglected, at Spean Bridge, and treated ourselves to another little picnic in the lonely country beyond. It was dark before we reached Fort William, where we found comfortable lodgings at the house of Mrs. MacPherson opposite the Ben Nevis Hotel, and retired with the intention of ascending Ben Nevis the following day.

(_Distance walked twenty-five and a half miles_.)

_Thursday, September 28th._