Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

J >> John Wilson >> Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2




"Between the Falls and the Strath of Stratherrik," says the Book we were
about to quote, "a space of three or four miles, the river Foyers flows
through a series of low rocky hills clothed with birch. They present
various quiet glades and open spaces, where little patches of cultivated
ground are encircled by wooded hillocks, whose surface is pleasingly
diversified by nodding trees, bare rocks, empurpled heath, and bracken
bearing herbage." It was the excessive loveliness of some of the scenery
there that suggested to us the thought of going to look what kind of a
stream the Foyers was above the Fall. We went, and in the quiet of a
summer evening, found it

"Was even the gentlest of all gentle things."

But here is the promised description of it. "Before pursuing our way
westward, we would wish to direct the traveller's attention to a
sequestered spot of peculiar beauty on the river Foyers. This is a
secluded vale, called Killean, which, besides its natural
attractions--and these are many--is distinguished as one of the few
places where the old practice of resorting to the 'shieling' for summer
grazing of cattle is still observed. It is encompassed on all sides by
steep mountains; but at the north end there is a small lake, about a
mile and a half in length, and from one-third to half a mile in breadth.
The remainder of the bottom of the glen is a perfectly level tract, of
the same width with the lake, and about two miles and a half in length,
covered with the richest herbage, and traversed by a small meandering
river flowing through it into the lake. The surface of this flat is
bedecked with the little huts or bothies which afford temporary
accommodation to the herdsmen and others in charge of the cattle. This
portion of the glen is bordered on the west by continuous hills rising
abruptly in a uniformly steep acclivity, and passing above into a
perpendicular range of precipices, the whole covered with a scanty
verdure sprouted with heath. At a bend of the lake near its middle,
where it inclines from a northernly course towards the west, a
magnificent rounded precipice, which, like the continuous ranges, may be
about 1200 feet in height, rises immediately out of the water; and a few
narrow and inclined verdant stripes alone preserve it from exhibiting a
perfectly mural character. To this noble rock succeeds, along the rest
of the lake, a beautiful, lofty, and nearly vertical hill-side, clothed
with birch, intermingled with hanging mossy banks, shaded over with the
deeper-tinted bracken. The eastern side of the plain, and the adjoining
portion of the lake, are lined by mountains corresponding in height with
those opposed to them; but their lower extremities are, to a
considerable extent, strewed with broken fragments of rock, to which
succeeds an uninterrupted zone of birch and alder, which is again
overtopped in its turn by naked cliffs. An elevated terrace occupies the
remainder of this side of the lake; above the wooded face of which is
seen a sloping expanse of mingled heath and herbage. About half a mile
from the south end, Mr Fraser of Lovat, the proprietor, has erected a
shooting-lodge; viewed from which, or from either end, or from the top
of the platform on the north-east side of the lake, fancy could scarcely
picture a more attractive and fairy landscape than is unfolded by this
sequestered vale, to which Dr Johnson's description of the 'Happy
Valley' not inaptly applies. The milch cows, to the number of several
hundreds, are generally kept here from the beginning of June to the
middle of August, when they are replaced by the yeld cattle. The river
sweeps to the northward from Loch Killean through richly birch-clad
hills, which rise in swelling slopes from its banks. A large tarn which
immediately joins it from the east is crossed at its mouth by a rustic
bridge, from which a single footpath conducts across the brow of the
hill to Whitebridge, a small public-house or inn, four miles distant."

There is a loch of a very different character from Killean, almost as
little known (one view of it is given in the book), equal to anything in
the Highlands, only two miles distant from Loch Lochy, in the Great
Glen--Loch Arkaig. We first visited it many years since, having been
induced to do so by a passage in John Stoddart's "Remarks on the Local
Scenery and Manners of Scotland;" and it was then a very noble oak and
pine forest loch. The axe went to work and kept steadily at it; and a
great change was wrought; but it is still a grand scene, with a larger
infusion of beauty than it possessed of old. The scenery of the valley
separating it from Loch Lochy is very similar to that of the Trossachs;
through it there are two approaches to the loch, and the _Mile-Dubh_, or
the Dark Mile, according to our feeling, is more impressive than any
part of the approach to Loch Katrine. The woods and rocks are very
solemn, and yet very sweet; for though many old pines and oaks and ashes
are there, and the wall of rocks is immense, young trees prevail now on
many places, as well along the heights as among the knolls and hillocks
below, where alders and hawthorns are thick; almost everywhere the young
are intermingled with the old, and look cheerful under their protection,
without danger of being chilled by their shade. The loch, more or less
sylvan from end to end, shows on its nearer shores some magnificent
remains of the ancient forest, and makes a noble sweep like some great
river. There may be more, but we remember but one island--not large, but
wooded as it should be--the burying-place of the family of Lochiel. What
rest! It is a long journey from Loch Lochy to Kinloch Arkaig--and by the
silent waters we walked or sat all a summer's day. There was nothing
like a road that we observed, but the shores are easily travelled, and
there it is you may be almost sure of seeing some red-deer. They are no
better worth looking at from a window than Fallow--no offence to Fallow,
who are fine creatures; indeed, we had rather not see them so at all;
but on the shores or steeps of Loch Arkaig, with hardly a human
habitation within many, many miles, and these few rather known than seen
to be there, the huts of Highlanders contented to cultivate here and
there some spot that seems cultivatable, but probably is found not to
be so after some laborious years--there they are at home; and you, if
young, looking on them, feel at home too, and go bounding, like one of
themselves, over what, did you choose, were an evitable steep. Roe, too,
frequent the copses, but to be seen they must be started; grouse spring
up before you oftener than you might expect in a deer forest; but, to be
sure, it is a rough and shaggy one, though lovelier lines of verdure
never lay in the sunshine than we think we see now lying for miles along
the margin of that loch. The numerous mountains towards the head of the
loch are very lofty, and glens diverge in grand style into opposite and
distant regions. Glen Dessary, with its beautiful pastures, opens on the
loch, and leads to Loch Nevish on the coast of Knoidart--Glen Paean to
Oben-a-Cave on Loch Morer, Glen Canagorie into Glenfinnan and Loch
Shiel; and Glen Kingie to Glengarry and Loch Quoich. There is a choice!
We chose Glen Kingie, and after a long climb found a torrent that took
us down to Glengarry before sunset. It is a loch little known, and in
grandeur not equal to Loch Arkaig; but at the close of such a day's
journey, the mind, elevated by the long contemplation of the great
objects of nature, cannot fail to feel aright, whatever it may be, the
spirit of the scene, that seems to usher in the grateful hour of rest.
It is surpassing fair--and having lain all night long on its gentle
banks, sleeping or waking we know not, we have never remembered it since
but as the Land of Dreams.

Which is the dreariest, most desolate, and dismal of the Highland Lochs?
We should say Loch Ericht. It lies in a prodigious wilderness, with
which perhaps no man alive is conversant, and in which you may travel
for days without seeing even any symptoms of human life. We speak of the
regions comprehended between the Forest of Atholl and Ben-nevis, the
Moor of Rannoch and Glen Spean. There are many lochs--and Loch Ericht is
their griesly Queen. Herdsmen, shepherds, hunters, fowlers, anglers,
traverse its borders, but few have been far in the interior, and we
never knew anybody who had crossed it from south to north, from east to
west. We have ourselves seen more of it, perhaps, than any other
Lowlander; and had traversed many of its vast glens and moors, before we
found our way to the southern solitude of Loch Ericht. We came into the
western gloom of Ben Auler from Loch Ouchan, and up and down for hours
dismal but not dangerous precipices that opened out into what might
almost be called passes--but we had frequently to go back, for they were
blind--contrived to clamber to the edge of one of the mountains that
rose from the water a few miles down the loch. All was vast, shapeless,
savage, black, and wrathfully grim; for it was one of those days that
keep frowning and lowering, yet will not thunder; such as one conceives
of on the eve of an earthquake. At first the sight was dreadful, but
there was no reason for dread; imagination remains not longer than she
chooses the slave of her own eyes, and we soon began to enjoy the gloom,
and to feel how congenial it was in nature with the character of all
those lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together in
solitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. And
they were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a great
distance, with the pitchy water, still as if frozen, covering their
feet.

Loch Ericht is many miles long--nearly twenty; but there is a loch among
the Grampians not more than two miles round, if so much, which is
sublimer far--Loch Aven. You come upon the sight of it at once, a short
way down from the summit of Cairngorm, and then it is some two thousand
feet below you, itself being as many above the level of the sea. But to
come upon it so as to feel best its transcendent grandeur, you should
approach it up Glenaven--and from as far down as Inch-Rouran, which is
about half-way between Loch Aven and Tomantoul. Between Inch-Rouran and
Tomantoul the glen is wild, but it is inhabited; above that house there
is but one other; and for about a dozen miles--we have heard it called
far more--there is utter solitude. But never was there a solitude at
once so wild, so solemn, so serene, so sweet! The glen is narrow; but on
one side there are openings into several wider glens, that show you
mighty coves as you pass on; on the other side the mountains are without
a break, and the only variation with them is from smooth to shaggy, from
dark to bright; but their prevailing character is that of pastoral or of
forest peace. The mountains that show the coves belong to the bases of
Ben-Aven and Ben-y-buird. The heads of those giants are not seen--but it
sublimes the long glen to know that it belongs to their dominion, and
that it is leading us on to an elevation that ere long will be on a
level with the roots of their topmost cliffs. The Aven is so clear--on
account of the nature of its channel--that you see the fishes hanging in
every pool; and 'tis not possible to imagine how beautiful in such
transparencies are the reflections of its green ferny banks. For miles
they are composed of knolls, seldom interspersed with rocks, and there
cease to be any trees. But ever and anon we walk for a while on a level
floor, and the voice of the stream is mute. Hitherto sheep have been
noticed on the hill, but not many, and red and black cattle grazing on
the lower pastures; but they disappear, and we find ourselves all at
once in a desert. So it is felt to be, coming so suddenly with its black
heather on that greenest grass; but 'tis such a desert as the red-deer
love. We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears to
be Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till we
again see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still in the
glen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different mountains,
for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly arise, forming
themselves more and more regularly into circular order, as we near; and
now we have sight of the whole magnificence; yet vast as it is, we know
not yet how vast; it grows as we gaze, till in a while we feel that
sublimer it may not be; and then so quiet in all its horrid grandeur we
feel too that it is beautiful, and think of the Maker.

This is Loch Aven. How different the whole region round from that
enclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than melancholy
moors--huge hollows hating their own gloom that keeps them
herbless--disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without any
sign of life--cliffs that frown back the sunshine--and mountains, as if
they were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mere
imagination--or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call a
desert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances of
outward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring faith,
the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have chosen to make
them emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem to lie in a region as
happy as it is high; for the bases of the mountains are all such as the
soul has chosen to make sublime--the colouring of the mountains all
such, as the soul has chosen to make beautiful; and the whole region,
thus imbued with a power to inspire elevation and delight, is felt to be
indeed one of the very noblest in nature.

We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our "Remarks on the
Character of the Scenery of the Highlands;" and we feel that the
sketches we have drawn of its component qualities--occasionally filled
up with some details--must be very imperfect indeed without
comprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms that
stretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do not
think we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we have
sailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its sounds,
and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches, yet they
contain such an endless variety of all the fairest and greatest objects
of nature, that we feel it would be far beyond our powers to give
anything like an adequate idea of the beauty and the grandeur that for
ever kept unfolding themselves around our summer voyagings in calm or
storm. Who can say that he knows a thousandth part of the wonders of
"the marine" between the Mull of Cantire and Cape Wrath? He may have
gathered many an extensive shore--threaded many a mazy multitude of
isles--sailed up many a spacious bay--and cast anchor at the head of
many a haven land-locked so as no more to seem to belong to the sea--yet
other voyagers shall speak to him of innumerable sights which he has
never witnessed; and they who are most conversant with those coasts,
best know how much they have left and must leave for ever unexplored.

Look now only at the Linnhe Loch--how it gladdens Argyll! Without it and
the Sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morvern! Eclipsed the
splendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin, and as the waves
roll in light, you will see how the mountains are beautified by the sea.
There is a majestic rolling onwards there that belongs to no
land-loch--only to the world of waves. There is no nobler image of
ordered power than the tide, whether in flow or in ebb; and on all now
it is felt to be beneficent, coming and going daily, to enrich and
adorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the Amethyst bound away "at
her own sweet will," accordant with yours, till she reach the distant
and long-desired loch.

"Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar,
Comes in among these mountains from the main,
'Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan's rocky cape
And Ardmore's shingly beach of hissing spray;
And while his thunders bid the sound of Mull
Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays
Hill-shelter'd from the wrath that foams along
The mad mid-channel,--All as quiet they
As little separate worlds of summer dreams,--
And by storm-loving birds attended up
The mountain-hollow, white in their career
As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles
Of craggy Carnich, and green Oronsay
Drench'd in that sea-horn shower o'er tree-tops driven,
And ivied stones of what was once a tower,
Now hardly known from rocks--and gathering might
In the long reach between Dungallan caves
And point of Arderinis ever fair
With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait
Into another ampler inland sea;
Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,--
And potent is she, though so meek the Eve,--
Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean
Insensibly into a solemn calm,--
And all along that ancient burial-ground
(Its kirk is gone), that seemeth now to lend
Its own eternal quiet to the waves,
Restless no more, into a perfect peace
Lulling and lull'd at last, while drop the airs
Away as they were dead, the first-risen star
Beholds that lovely Archipelago,
All shadow'd there as in a spiritual world,
Where time's mutations shall come never more!"

These lines describe but one of innumerable lochs that owe their
greatest charm to the sea. It is indeed one of those on which nature has
lavished all her infinite varieties of loveliness; but Loch Leven is
scarcely less fair, and perhaps grander; and there is matchless
magnificence above Loch Etive. All round about Ballahulish and Inverco
the scenery of Loch Leven is the sweetest ever seen overshadowed by
such mountains; the deeper their gloom, the brighter its lustre; in all
weathers it wears a cheerful smile; and often while tip among the rocks
the tall trees are tossing in the storm, the heart of the woods beneath
is calm, and the vivid fields they shelter look as if they still enjoyed
the sun. Nor closes the beauty there, but even animates the entrance
into that dreadful glen--Glencoe. All the way up its river, Loch Leven
would be fair, were it only for her hanging woods. But though the glen
narrows, it still continues broad, and there are green plains between
her waters and the mountains, on which stately trees stand single, and
there is ample room for groves. The returning tide tells us, should we
forget it, that this is no inland loch, for it hurries away back to the
sea, not turbulent, but fast as a river in flood. The river Leven is one
of the finest in the Highlands, and there is no other such series of
waterfalls, all seen at once, one above the other, along an immense
vista; and all the way up to the furthest there are noble assemblages of
rocks--nowhere any want of wood--and in places, trees that seem to have
belonged to some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems to
lead into another region, and it does so; for we have gone that way,
past some small lochs, across a wide wilderness, with mountains on all
sides, and descended on Loch Treag,

"A loch whom there are none to praise,
And very few to love,"

but overflowing in our memory with all pleasantest images of pastoral
contentment and peace.

Loch Etive, between the ferries of Connel and Bunawe, has been seen by
almost all who have visited the Highlands--but very imperfectly; to know
what it is, you must row or sail up it, for the banks on both sides are
often richly wooded, assume many fine forms, and are frequently well
embayed, while the expanse of water is sufficiently wide to allow you
from its centre to command a view of many of the distant heights. But
above Bunawe it is not like the same loch. For a couple of miles it is
not wide, and it is so darkened by enormous shadows that it looks even
less like a strait than a gulf--huge overhanging rocks on both sides
ascending high, and yet felt to belong but to the bases of mountains
that sloping far back have their summits among clouds of their own in
another region of the sky. Yet are they not all horrid; for nowhere else
is there such lofty heather--it seems a wild sort of brushwood; tall
trees flourish, single or in groves, chiefly birches, with now and then
an oak--and they are in their youth or their prime--and even the
prodigious trunks, some of which have been dead for centuries, are not
all dead, but shoot from their knotted rind symptoms of life
inextinguishable by time and tempest. Out of this gulf we emerge into
the Upper Loch, and its amplitude sustains the majesty of the mountains,
all of the highest order, and seen from their feet to their crests.
Cruachan wears the crown, and reigns over them all--king at once of Loch
Etive and of Loch Awe. But Buachaille Etive, though afar off, is still a
giant, and in some lights comes forwards, bringing with him the Black
Mount and its dependents, so that they all seem to belong to this most
magnificent of all Highland lochs. "I know not," says Macculloch, "that
Loch Etive could bear an ornament without an infringement on that aspect
of solitary vastness which it presents throughout. Nor is there one. The
rocks and bays on the shore, which might elsewhere attract attention,
are here swallowed up in the enormous dimensions of the surrounding
mountains, and the wide and ample expanse of the lake. A solitary house,
here fearfully solitary, situated far up in Glen Etive, is only visible
when at the upper extremity; and if there be a tree, as there are in a
few places on the shore, it is unseen; extinguished as if it were a
humble mountain flower, by the universal magnitude around." This is
finely felt and expressed; but even on the shores of Loch Etive there is
much of the beautiful; Ardmatty smiles with its meadows, and woods, and
bay, and sylvan stream; other sunny nooks repose among the grey granite
masses; the colouring of the banks and braes is often bright; several
houses or huts become visible no long way up the glen; and though that
long hollow--half a day's journey--till you reach the wild road between
Inveruran and King's House--lies in gloom, yet the hillsides are
cheerful, and you delight in the greensward, wide and rock-broken,
should you ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran or Glencoe. But
to feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk up it till it ceases
to be a glen. When in the middle of the moor, you see far off a
solitary dwelling indeed--perhaps the loneliest house in all the
Highlands--and the solitude is made profounder, as you pass by, by the
voice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm, bridged by two or three
stems of trees, along which the red-deer might fear to venture--but we
have seen them and the deer-hounds glide over it, followed by other
fearless feet, when far and wide the Forest of Dalness was echoing to
the hunter's horn.

We have now brought our Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands to a
close, and would fain have said a few words on the character and life of
the people; but are precluded from even touching on that most
interesting subject. It is impossible that the minds of travellers
through those wonderful regions, can be so occupied with the
contemplation of mere inanimate nature, as not to give many a thought to
their inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without such
thoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren wildernesses,
in which the heart would languish, and imagination itself recoil; but
they cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as are many extensive
tracts, and therefore at times felt to be too dreary even for moods that
for a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell of human life,
yet symptoms and traces of human life are noticeable to the instructed
eye almost everywhere, and in them often lies the spell that charms us,
even while we think that we are wholly delivered up to the influence of
"dead insensate things." None will visit the Highlands without having
some knowledge of their history; and the changes that have long been
taking place in the condition of the people will be affectingly
recognised wherever they go, in spite even of what might have appeared
the insuperable barriers of nature.

"Time and Tide
Have washed away, like weeds upon the sands,
Crowds of the olden life's memorials;
And 'mid the mountains you as well might seek
For the lone site of fancy's filmy dreams.
Towers have decay'd and moulder'd from the cliffs,
Or their green age, or grey, has help'd to build
New dwellings sending up their household smoke
From treeless places once inhabited
But by the secret sylvans. On the moors
The pillar-stone, reared to perpetuate
The fame of some great battle, or the power
Of storied necromancer in the wild,
Among the wide change on the heather-bloom
By power more wondrous wrought than his, its name
Has lost, or fallen itself has disappear'd;
No broken fragment suffer'd to impede
The glancing ploughshare. All the ancient woods
Are thinn'd and let in floods of daylight now,
Then dark and dern as when the Druids lived.
Narrow'd is now the red-deer's forest reign;
The royal race of eagles is extinct.
But other changes than on moor and cliff
Have tamed the aspect of the wilderness;
The simple system of primeval life,
Simple but stately, hath been broken down;
The clans are scatter'd, and the chieftain's power
Is dead, or dying--but a name--though yet
It sometimes stirs the desert; to the winds
The tall plumes wave no more--the tartan green
With fiery streaks among the heather-bells
Now glows unfrequent; and the echoes mourn
The silence of the music that of old
Kept war-thoughts stern amid the calm of peace.
Yet to far battle plains still Morven sends
Her heroes, and still glittering in the sun,
Or blood-dimm'd, her dread line of bayonets
Marches with loud shouts straight to victory.
A soften'd radiance now floats o'er her glens;
No rare sight now upon her sea-arm lochs
The sail oft-veering up the solitude;
And from afar the noise of life is brought
Within the thunders of her cataracts.
These will flow on for ever; and the crests,
Gold-tipt by rising and by setting suns,
Of her old mountains inaccessible
Glance down their scorn for ever on the toils
That load with harvests now the humbler hills,
Now shorn of all their heather bloom, and green
Or yellow as the gleam of lowland fields.
And bold hearts in broad bosoms still are there,
Living and dying peacefully; the huts
Abodes are still of high-soul'd poverty;
And underneath their lintels beauty stoops
Her silken-snooded head, when singing goes
The maiden to her father at his work
Among the woods, or joins the scanty line
Of barley-reapers on their narrow ridge,
In some small field among the pastoral braes.
Still fragments dim of ancient poetry
In melancholy music down the glens
Go floating; and from shieling roof'd with boughs,
And turf-wall'd, high up in some lonely place
Where flocks of sheep are nibbling the sweet grass
Of mid-summer, and browsing on the plants
On the cliff mosses a few goats are seen
Among their kids, you hear sweet melodies
Attuned to some traditionary tale,
By young wife sitting all alone, aware
From shadow on the mountain horologe
Of the glad hour that brings her husband home
Before the gloaming, from the far-off moor
Where the black cattle feed; there all alone
She sits and sings, except that on her knees
Sleeps the sweet offspring of their faithful loves."

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