Letter XXIII.
The Scottish Lakes.
Glasgow, July 19, 1845.
I must not leave Scotland without writing you another letter.
On the 17th of this month I embarked at Newhaven, in the environs of
Edinburgh, on board the little steamer Prince Albert, for Stirling. On
our way we saw several samples of the Newhaven fishwives, a peculiar
race, distinguished by a costume of their own; fresh-colored women, who
walk the streets of Edinburgh with a large wicker-basket on their
shoulders, a short blue cloak of coarse cloth under the basket, short
blue petticoats, thick blue stockings, and a white cap. I was told that
they were the descendants of a little Flemish colony, which long ago
settled at Newhaven, and that they are celebrated for the readiness and
point of their jokes, which, like those of their sisters of
Billingsgate, are not always of the most delicate kind. Several of these
have been related to me, but on running them over in my mind, I find, to
my dismay, that none of them will look well on paper. The wit of the
Newhaven fishwives seems to me, however, like that of our western
boatmen, to consist mainly in the ready application of quaint sayings
already current among themselves.
It was a wet day, with occasional showers, and sometimes a sprinkling
of Scotch mist. I tried the cabin, but the air was too close. The
steamboats in this country have but one deck, and that deck has no
shelter, so I was content to stand in the rain for the sake of the air
and scenery. After passing an island or two, the Frith, which forms the
bay of Edinburgh, contracts into the river Forth. We swept by country
seats, one of which was pointed out as the residence of the late Dugald
Stewart, and another that of the Earl of Elgin, the plunderer of the
Parthenon; and castles, towers, and churches, some of them in ruins ever
since the time of John Knox, and hills half seen in the fog, until we
came opposite to the Ochil mountains, whose grand rocky buttresses
advanced from the haze almost to the river. Here, in the windings of the
Forth, our steamer went many times backward and forward, first towards
the mountains and then towards the level country to the south, in almost
parallel courses, like the track of a ploughman in a field. At length we
passed a ruined tower and some fragments of massy wall which once formed
a part of Cambus Kenneth Abbey, seated on the rich lands of the Forth,
for the monks, in Great Britain at least, seem always to have chosen for
the site of their monasteries, the banks of a stream which would supply
them with trout and salmon for Fridays. We were now in the presence of
the rocky hills of Stirling, with the town on its declivity, and the
ancient castle, the residence of the former kings of Scotland, on its
summit.
We went up through the little town to the castle, which is still kept
in perfect order, and the ramparts of which frown as grimly over the
surrounding country as they did centuries ago. No troops however are now
stationed here; a few old gunners alone remain, and Major somebody, I
forget his name, takes his dinners in the banqueting-room and sleeps in
the bed-chamber of the Stuarts. I wish I could communicate the
impression which this castle and the surrounding region made upon me,
with its vestiges of power and magnificence, and its present silence and
desertion. The passages to the dungeons where pined the victims of
state, in the very building where the court held its revels, lie open,
and the chapel in which princes and princesses were christened, and
worshiped, and were crowned and wed, is turned into an armory. From its
windows we were shown, within the inclosure of the castle, a green
knoll, grazed by cattle, where the disloyal nobles of Scotland were
beheaded. Close to the castle is a green field, intersected with paths,
which we were told was the tilting-ground, or place of tournaments, and
beside it rises a rock, where the ladies of the court sat to witness the
combats, and which is still called the Ladies' Rock. At the foot of the
hill, to the right of the castle, stretches what was once the royal
park; it is shorn of its trees, part is converted into a race-course,
part into a pasture for cows, and the old wall which marked its limits
is fallen down. Near it you see a cluster of grassy embankments of a
curious form, circles and octagons and parallelograms, which bear the
name of King James's Knot, and once formed a part of the royal-gardens,
where the sovereign used to divert himself with his courtiers. The cows
now have the spot to themselves, and have made their own paths and
alleys all over it. "Yonder, to the southwest of the castle," said a
sentinel who stood at the gate, "you see where a large field has been
lately ploughed, and beyond it another, which looks very green. That
green field is the spot where the battle of Bannockburn was fought, and
the armies of England were defeated by Bruce." I looked, and so fresh
and bright was the verdure, that it seemed to me as if the earth was
still fertilized with the blood of those who fell in that desperate
struggle for the crown of Scotland. Not far from this, the spot was
shown us where Wallace was defeated at the battle of Falkirk. This
region is now the scene of another and an unbloody warfare; the warfare
between the Free Church and the Government Church. Close to the church
of the establishment, at the foot of the rock of Stirling, the soldiers
of the Free Church have erected their place of worship, and the sound of
hammers from the unfinished interior could be heard almost up to the
castle.
We took places the same day in the coach for Callander, in the
Highlands. In a short time we came into a country of hillocks and
pastures brown and barren, half covered with ferns, the breckan of the
Scotch, where the broom flowered gaudily by the road-side, and harebells
now in bloom, in little companies, were swinging, heavy with the rain,
on their slender stems.
Crossing the Teith we found ourselves in Doune, a Highland village,
just before entering which we passed a throng of strapping lasses, who
had just finished their daily task at a manufactory on the Teith, and
were returning to their homes. Between Doune and Callander we passed the
woods of Cambus-More, full of broad beeches, which delight in the
tenacious mountain soil of this district. This was the seat of a friend
of the Scott family, and here Sir Walter in his youth passed several
summers, and became familiar with the scenes which he has so well
described in his Lady of the Lake. At Callander we halted for the night
among a crowd of tourists, Scotch, English, American, and German, more
numerous than the inn at which we stopped could hold. I went out into
the street to get a look at the place, but a genuine Scotch mist
covering me with water soon compelled me to return. I heard the people,
a well-limbed brawny race of men, with red hair and beards, talking to
each other in Gaelic, and saw through the fogs only a glimpse of the
sides of the mountains and crags which surrounded the village.
The next morning was uncommonly bright and clear, and we set out
early for the Trosachs. We now saw that the village of Callander lay
under a dark crag, on the banks of the Teith, winding pleasantly among
its alders, and overlooked by the grand summit of Benledi, which rises
to the height of three thousand feet. A short time brought us to the
stream
"Which, daughter of three mighty lakes,
From Vennachar in silver breaks,"
and we skirted the lake for nearly its whole length. Loch Vennachar
lies between hills of comparatively gentle declivity, pastured by
flocks, and tufted with patches of the prickly gorse and coarse ferns.
On its north bank lies Lanrick Mead, a little grassy level where Scott
makes the tribe of Clan Alpine assemble at the command of Roderick Dhu.
At a little distance from Vennachar lies Loch Achray, which we reached
by a road winding among shrubs and low trees, birches, and wild roses in
blossom, with which the air was fragrant. Crossing a little stone
bridge, which our driver told us was the Bridge of Turk, we were on the
edge of Loch Achray, a little sheet of water surrounded by wild rocky
hills, with here and there an interval of level grassy margin, or a
grove beside the water. Turning from Loch Achray we reached an inn with
a Gaelic name, which I have forgotten how to spell, and which if I were
to spell it, you could not pronounce. This was on the edge of the
Trosachs, and here we breakfasted.
It is the fashion, I believe, for all tourists to pass through the
Trosachs on foot. The mob of travellers, with whom I found myself on the
occasion--there were some twenty of them--did so, to a man; even the
ladies, who made about a third of the number, walked. The distance to
Loch Katrine is about a mile and a half, between lofty mountains, along
a glen filled with masses of rock, which seem to have been shaken by
some convulsion of nature from the high steeps on either side, and in
whose shelves and crevices time had planted a thick wood of the birch
and ash.
But I will not describe the Trosachs after Walter Scott. Head what he
says of them in the first canto of his poem. Loch Katrine, when we
reached it, was crisped into little waves, by a fresh wind from the
northwest, and a boat, with four brawny Highlanders, was waiting to
convey us to the head of the lake. We launched upon the dark deep water,
between craggy and shrubby steeps, the summits of which rose on every
side of us; and one of the rowers, an intelligent-looking man, took upon
himself the task of pointing out to us the places mentioned by the poet.
"There," said he, as we receded from the shore, "is the spot in the
Trosachs where Fitz James lost his gallant gray." He then repeated, in a
sort of recitation, dwelling strongly on the rhyme, the lines in the
Lady of the Lake which relate that incident. "Yonder is the island where
Douglass concealed his daughter. Under that broad oak, whose boughs
almost dip into the water, was the place where her skiff was moored. On
that rock, covered with heath, Fitz James stood and wound his bugle.
Near it, but out of sight, is the silver strand where the skiff received
him on board."
Further on, he pointed out, on the south side of the lake, half way
up among the rocks of the mountain, the place of the Goblin Cave, and
still beyond it
"The wild pass, where birches wave,
Of Beal-a-nam-bo."
On the north shore, the hills had a gentler slope, and on their
skirts, which spread into something like a meadow, we saw a solitary
dwelling. "In that," said he, "Rob Roy was born." In about two hours,
our strong-armed rowers had brought us to the head of the lake. Before
we reached it, we saw the dark crest of Ben Lomond, loftier than any of
the mountains around us, peering over the hills which formed the
southern rampart of Loch Katrine. We landed, and proceeded--the men on
foot and the women on ponies--through a wild craggy valley, overgrown
with low shrubs, to Inversnaid, on Loch Lomond, where a stream freshly
swollen by rains tumbled down a pretty cascade into the lake. As we
descended the steep bank, we saw a man and woman sitting on the grass
weaving baskets; the woman, as we passed, stopped her work to beg; and
the children, chubby and ruddy, came running after us with "Please give
me a penny to buy a scone."
At Iversnaid we embarked in a steamboat which took us to the northern
extremity of the lake, where it narrows into a channel like a river.
Here we stopped to wait the arrival of a coach, and, in the mean time,
the passengers had an hour to wander in the grassy valley of Glenfalloch,
closed in by high mountains. I heard the roar of mountain-streams, and
passing northward, found myself in sight of two torrents, one from the
east, and the other from the west side of the valley, throwing
themselves, foaming and white, from precipice to precipice, till their
waters, which were gathered in the summit of the mountains, reached the
meadows, and stole through the grass to mingle with those of the lake.
The coach at length arrived, and we were again taken on board the
steamer, and conveyed the whole length of Loch Lomond to its southern
extremity. We passed island after island, one of which showed among its
thick trees the remains of a fortress, erected in the days of feudal
warfare and robbery, and another was filled with deer. Towards the
southern end of the lake, the towering mountains, peak beyond peak,
which overlook the lake, subside into hills, between which the stream
called Leven-water flows out through a rich and fertile valley.
Coaches were waiting at Balloch, where we landed, to take us to
Dumbarton. Near the lake we passed a magnificent park, in the midst of
which stood a castle, a veritable castle, a spacious massive building of
stone, with a tower and battlements, on which a flag was flying. "It
belongs to a dry-goods merchant in Glasgow," said the captain of the
steamboat, who was in the coach with us; "and the flag is put up by his
boys. The merchants are getting finer seats than the nobility." I am
sorry to say that I have forgotten both the name of the merchant and
that of his castle. He was, as I was told, a liberal, as well as an
opulent man; had built a school-house in the neighborhood, and being of
the Free Church party, was then engaged in building a church.
Near Renton, on the banks of the Leven, I saw a little neighborhood,
embosomed in old trees. "There," said our captain, "Smollet was born." A
column has been erected to his memory in the town of Renton, which we
saw as we passed. The forked rock, on which stands Dumbarton Castle, was
now in sight overlooking the Clyde; we were whirled into the town, and
in a few minutes were on board a steamer which, as evening set in,
landed us at Glasgow.
I must reserve what I have to tell of Glasgow and Ayrshire for yet
another letter.