University of Virginia Library

133. LETTER CXXXIII.

We embarked early in the morning in the steamer
which goes across Scotland from sea to sea, by the
half-natural, half-artificial passage of the Caledonian
canal. One long glen, as the reader knows, extends
quite through this mountainous country, and in its
bosom lies a chain of the loveliest lakes, whose extremities
so nearly meet, that it seems as if a blow of a
spade should have run them together. Their different
elevations, however, made it an expensive work in
locks, and the canal altogether cost ten times the
original calculation.

I went on board with my London friend, who, from
our meeting so frequently, had now become my established
companion. The boat was crowded, yet more
with dogs than people; for every man, I think, had
his brace of terriers or his pointers, and every lady her
hound or poodle, and they were chained to every leg
of a sofa, chair, portmanteau, and fixture in the vessel.
It was like a floating kennel, and every passenger was
fully occupied in keeping the peace between his own
dog and his neighbor's. The same thing would have
been a much greater annoyance in any other country;
but in Scotland the dogs are all of beautiful and
thorough-bred races, and it is a pleasure to see them.
Half as many French pugs would have been insufferable.

We opened into Loch Ness immediately, and the
scenery was superb. The waters were like a mirror;
and the hills draped in mist, and rising one or two
thousand feet directly from the shore, and nothing to
break the wildness of the crags but the ruins of the
constantly occurring castles, perched like eyries upon
their summits. You might have had the same natural
scenery in America, but the ruins and the thousand

associations would have been wanting: and it is this,
much more than the mere beauty of hill or lake, which
makes the pleasure of travel. We ran close in to a
green cleft in the mountains on the southern shore, in
which stands one of the few old castles, still inhabited
by the chief of his clan — that of Fraser of Lovat, so
well-known in Scottish story. Our object was to visit
the Fall of Foyers, in sight of which it stands, and the
boat came to off the point, and gave us an hour for
the excursion. It was a pretty stroll up through the
woods, and we found a cascade very like the Turtmann
in Switzerland, but with no remarkable feature which
would make it interesting in description.

I was amused after breakfast with what has always
struck me on board English steamers — the gradual division
of the company into parties of congenial rank
or consequence. Not for conversation — for fellow-travellers
of a day seldom become acquainted — but, as
if it was a process of crystallization, the well-bred and
the half-bred, and the vulgar, each separating to his
natural neighbor, apparently from a mere fitness of
propinquity. This takes place sometimes, but rarely
and in a much less degree, on board an American
steamer. There are, of course, in England, as with
us, those who are presuming and impertinent, but an
instance of it has seldom fallen under my observation.
The English seem to have an instinct of each other's
position in life. A gentleman enters a crowd, looks
about him, makes up his mind at once from whom an
advance of civility would be agreeable or the contrary,
gets near the best set without seeming to notice them,
and if any chance accident brings on conversation
with his neighbors, you may be certain he is sure of
his man.

We had about a hundred persons on board (Miss
Inverarity, the singer, among others), and I could see
no one who seemed to notice or enjoy the lovely
scenery we were passing through. I made the remark
to my companion, who was an old stager in London
fashion, fifty, but still a beau, and he was compelled
to allow it, though piqued for the taste of his countrymen.
A baronet with his wife and sister sat in the
corner opposite us, and one lady slept on the other's
shoulder, and neither saw a feature of the scenery except
by an accidental glance in changing her position.
Yet it was more beautiful than most things I have
seen that are celebrated, and the ladies, as my friend
said, looked like “nice persons.”

I had taken up a book while we were passing the
locks at the junction of Loch Ness and Loch Oich,
and was reading aloud to my friend the interesting description
of Flora Macdonald's heroic devotion to
Prince Charles Edward. A very lady-like girl, who sat
next me, turned around as I laid down the book, and
informed me, with a look of pleased pride, that the
heroine was her grandmother. She was returning from
the first visit she had ever made to the Isle (I think of
Skye), of which the Macdonalds were the hereditary
lords, and in which the fugitive prince was concealed.
Her brother, an officer, just returned from India, had
accompanied her in her pilgrimage, and as he sat on
the other side of his sister he joined in the conversation,
and entered into the details of Flora's history
with great enthusiasm. The book belonged to the
boat, and my friend had brought it from below, and
the coincidence was certainly singular. The present
chief of the Macdonalds was on board, accompanying
his relatives back to their home in Sussex; and on arriving
at Fort Wiliam, where the boat stopped for
the night, the young lady invited us to take tea with
her at the inn; and for so improvised an acquaintance.
I have rarely made three friends more to my taste.

We had decided to leave the steamer at Fort William,
and cross through the heart of Scotland to Loch
Lomond. My companion was very fond of London
hours, and slept late, knowing that the cart — the only
conveyance to be had in that country — would wait our
time. I was lounging about the inn, and amusing
myself with listening to the Gaelic spoken by everybody
who belonged to the place, when the pleasant
family with whom we had passed the evening, drove
out of the yard (having brought their horses down in
the boat), intending to proceed by land to Glasgow.
We renewed our adieus, on my part with the sincerest
regret, and I strolled down the road and watched them
till they were out of sight, feeling that (selfish world
as it is) there are some things that look at least like
impulse and kindness — so like, that I can make out
of them a very passable happiness.

We mounted our cart at eleven o'clock, and with a
bright sun, a clear, vital air, a handsome and good-humored
callant for a driver, and the most renowned
of Scottish scenery before us, the day looked very
auspicious. I could not help smiling at the appearance
of my fashionable friend sitting, with his well-poised
hat and nicely-adjusted curls, upon the springless
cross-board of a most undisguised and unscrupulous
market-cart, yet in the highest good-humor with
himself and the world. The boy sat on the shafts,
and talked Gaelic to his horse; the mountains and the
lake, spread out before us, looked as if human eye had
never profaned their solitary beauty, and I enjoyed it
all the more, perhaps, that our conversation was of
London and its delights; and the racy scandal of the
distinguished people of that great Babel amused me
in the midst of that which is most unlike it — pure and
lovely nature. Everything is seen so much better by
contrast!

We crossed the head of Loch Linnhe, and kept
down its eastern bank, skirting the water by a winding
road directly under the wall of the mountains. We
were to dine at Ballyhulish, and just before reaching
it we passed the opening of a glen on the opposite
side of the lake, in which lay, in a green paradise shut
in by the loftiest rocks, one of the most enviable habitations
I have ever seen. I found on inquiry that it
was the house of a Highland chief, to whom Lord
Dalhousie and kindly given me a letter, but my lameness
and the presence of my companion induced me
to abandon the visit; and, hailing a fishing-boat, I
despatched my letters, which were sealed, across the
loch, and we kept on to the inn. We dined here;
and I just mention, for the information of scenery-hunters,
that the mountain opposite Ballyhulish sweeps
down to the lake with a curve which is even more exquisitely
graceful than that of Vesuvius in its far-famed
descent to Portici. That same inn of Ballyhulish, by
the way, stands in the midst of a scene, altogether,
that does not pass easily from the memory — a lonely
and sweet spot that would recur to one in a moment
of violent love or hate, when the heart shrinks from
the intercourse and observation of men.

We found the travellers' book, at the inn, full of
records of admiration, expressed in all degrees of doggerel.
People on the road write very bad poetry. I
found the names of one or two Americans, whom I
knew, and it was a pleasure to feel that my enjoyment
would be sympathized in. Our host had been a nobleman's
travelling valet, and he amused us with his descriptions
of our friends, every one of whom he perfectly
remembered. He had learned to use his eyes,
at least, and had made very shrewd guesses at the condition
and tempers of his visiters. His life, in that
lonely inn. must be in sufficient contrast with his former
vocation.

We had jolted sixteen miles behind our Highland
horse, but he came out fresh for the remaining twenty
of our day's journey, and with cushions of dried and
fragrant fern, gathered and put in by our considerate
landlord, we crossed the ferry and turned eastward into
the far-famed and much-boasted valley of Glencoe.
The description of it must lie over till my next letter.