Читать книгу Famous Persons and Places - N. P. Willis - Страница 13

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CALEDONIAN CANAL—DOGS—ENGLISH EXCLUSIVENESS—ENGLISH INSENSIBILITY OF FINE SCENERY—FLORA MACDONALD AND THE PRETENDER—HIGHLAND TRAVELLING.

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 the 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 constant 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 and 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 off to 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 neighbor, 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 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 William, 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 had 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 dispatched 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 serene 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.