Kitabı oku: «The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan», sayfa 12
Chapter Twenty Two.
On the High Road to the Highlands
”… Here the bleak mount,
The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep;
Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields;
And river, now with bushy rocks o’erbrowed,
Now winding bright and full, with naked banks;
And seats and lawns, the abbey and the wood;
And cots and hamlets, and faint city spire.”
Coleridge.
At Cumbernauld, the people were pleased to see us once more, and quite a large crowd surrounded the Wanderer. On leaving the village we were boarded by a young clergyman and his wife, such pleasant enthusiastic sort of people that it does one good to look at and converse with.
Passed strings of caravans at Dennyloanhead, and exchanged smiles and good-morrows with them. Then on to the Stirling road, through an altogether charming country.
Through Windsor Newton, and the romantic village of Saint Ninian’s, near which is Bannockburn.
Then away and away to Stirling, and through it, intending to bivouac for the night at Bridge of Allan, but, Scot that I am, I could not pass that monument on Abbey Craig, to Scotland’s great deliverer; so here I lie on the grounds of a railway company, under the very shadow of this lovely wooded craig, and on the site of a memorable battle.
How beautiful the evening is! The sun, as the song says, “has gone down o’er the lofty Ben Lomond,” but it has left no “red clouds to preside o’er the scene.”
A purple haze is over all yonder range of lofty mountains, great banks of cloud are rising behind them. Up in the blue, a pale scimitar of a moon is shining, and peace, peace, peace, is over all the wild scene.
By-the-bye, at Saint Ninian’s to-day, we stabled at the “Scots wha hae,” and my horses had to walk through the house, in at the hall door and out at the back. (Travellers will do well to ask prices here before accepting accommodation.) But nothing now would surprise or startle those animals. I often wonder what they think of it all.
We were early on the road this morning of August 14th, feeling, and probably looking, as fresh as daisies. Too early to meet anything or anyone except farmers’ carts, with horses only half awake, and men nodding among the straw.
Bridge of Allan is a sweet wee town, by the banks of the river, embosomed in trees, quite a model modern watering-place.
We travel on through splendid avenues of trees, that meet overhead, making the road a leafy tunnel, but the morning sun is shimmering through the green canopy, and his beams falling upon our path make it a study in black and white.
The road is a rolling one, reminding us forcibly of Northumbrian banks and Durham braes.
The trains here seem strangely erratic, we meet them at every corner. They come popping out from and go popping into the most unlikely places, out from a wood, out of the face of a rock, or up out of the earth in a bare green meadow, disappearing almost instantly with an eldritch shriek into some other hole or glen or wood.
Through the city of Dunblane, with its Ruined cathedral, by narrow roads across country fifteen miles, till we reach Blackford, and as there are to be games here to-morrow, we get run into a fine open meadow behind Edmund’s Hotel, and bivouac for the night.
Both my coachman and my valet were Englishmen, and it would be something new for them, at all events.
The meadow into which I drove was very quiet and retired. The games were to be held in an adjoining rolling field, and from the roof of the Wanderer a very good view could be had of all the goings-on.
On looking at my notes, written on the evening before the Highland gathering, I find that it was my doggie friend Hurricane Bob who first suggested my stopping for the games.
“Did ever you see such a glorious meadow in your life?” he seemed to say, as he threw himself on his broad back and began tumbling on the sward. “Did you ever see greener grass,” he continued, “or more lovely white clover? You must stay here, master.”
“Well, I think I will stay, Bob,” I replied.
“What say you, Pea-blossom?” I continued, addressing my saucy bay mare.
“Stay?” replied Pea-blossom, tossing her head. “Certainly stay. You stopped a whole week at Chryston, and I thought I was going to be a lady for life.”
“And what say you, Corn-flower?” I continued, addressing my horse, who, by the way, is not quite so refined in his ideas as Pea-blossom.
“Which I’d stop anyw’eres,” said Corn-flower, taking an immense mouthful of clover, “where there be such feeding as this.”
Well, when both one’s horses, besides his Newfoundland dog and his servants, want to stay at a place for the night, compliance in the master becomes a kind of a virtue.
The Evening before the Games.
“Now rose
Sweet evening, solemn hour; the sun, declined,
Hung golden o’er this nether firmament,
Whose broad cerulean mirror, calmly bright,
Gave back his beamy image to the sky
With splendour undiminished.”
Mallet.
The village is all a-quiver to-night with the excitement of expectancy, and many an anxious eye is turned skywards.
“If the breeze holds from this direction,” says the landlord of the hotel, “it will be fine for certain.”
Poor fellow! little could he dream while he spoke of the dreadful accident that would befall him but a few hours after he thus talked so hopefully.
At sunset to-night a balloon-like cloud settles down on the peak of distant Ben Voirloch, and as this soon becomes tinged with red, the lofty hill has all the appearance of a burning mountain. But all the northwestern sky is now such a sight to see that only the genius of a Burns could describe it in words, while no brush of painter could do justice to it, now that the immortal Turner is no longer on earth.
There are leaden-grey clouds banked along near the horizon; behind these and afar off are cloud-streaks of gold, which – now that the sun is down – change slowly to crimson, then to grey and to bronze.
An hour after sunset these cloud-streaks are of a strange pale yellow colour, only one shade deeper than the sky-tint itself. Even while I am still gazing on it this last turns to a pale sea-green of indescribable beauty, and high up yonder rides a half-moon.
Deeper and deeper grows the yellow of the cloud-streaks till they assume a fiery orange colour; above this is the green of the empty sky, while higher still, betwixt this and the blue vault of heaven, in which the moon is sailing, is a misty blush of crimson.
But now all the distant mountain-tops get enveloped in clouds of leaden-grey, the night-air becomes chill; I close my notes and retire to my caravan, and soon I hope to be sleeping as soundly as my honest dog yonder.
Travelling about, as I constantly do, in all sorts of queer places and among all kinds of scenes, both in towns and in the country, it may not seem surprising that I am often the right man in the right place when an accident occurs. I am certain I have saved many lives by being on the spot when a medical man was wanted instantly.
I did retire to my caravan; but, instead of going to bed, all inviting though it looked, I began to read, and after an hour spent thus the beauty of the night lured me out again. “Happy thought!” I said to myself; “it must be nearly eleven o’clock; I shall go and see what sort of people are emptied out of the inns.”
But at the very moment I stood near the door of the hotel already mentioned, the innkeeper had been hurled from the topmost banisters of the stairs by a drunken farmer who had fallen from above on him.
The shrieks of women folks brought me to the spot.
“Oh! he is killed, he is killed!” they were screaming.
And there he lay on his back on the cold stones with which his head had come into fearful contact. On his back he was, still as death, to all appearance dead. With half-open eyes and dilated pupils, and pulseless. His injuries to the skull were terrible. Two medical men besides myself despaired of his life. But above him, a few steps up the stairs, and lying across them half asleep and unhurt, lay the doer of the deed. Oh! what a sermon against the insinuating horribleness of intoxicating drink did the whole scene present!
The Morning of the Games.
It is going to be a beautiful day, that is evident. White fleecy clouds are constantly driving over the sun on the wings of a south-east wind.
Bands of music have been coming from every direction all the morning. They bring volunteers, and they bring their clansmen and the heroes who will soon take part in the coming struggle.
Now Highland gatherings and games, such as I am describing, are very ancient institutions indeed in Scotland I have no reference book near me from which to discover how old they are. But in “the ’45” last century, as most of my readers are probably aware, a great gathering of the clans took place among the Highland hills, presumably to celebrate games, but in reality to draw the claymore of revolt and to fight for Royal Charlie. They will know also how sadly this rebellion ended on the blood-red field of Culloden Moor.
During the summer and autumn seasons nearly every country district in the north has its great Highland gathering; but the two chief ones are Braemar and Inverness. The latter is called the northern meeting, and has a park retained all the year round for it. At Braemar, the Queen and Royal family hardly ever fail to put in an appearance.
The clans, arrayed in all the pomp and panoply of their war-dress, in “the garb of old Gaul,” each wearing its own tartan, each headed by its own chieftain, come from almost every part of the north-eastern Highlands to Braemar with banners floating and bagpipes playing, a spirit-stirring sight to see.
The ground on which the games take place is entirely encircled by a rope fence, and near are the white tents of the officers in charge, the various refreshment-rooms, and the grand stand itself. The whole scene is enlivening in the extreme; the dense crowd of well-dressed people around the ropes, the stand filled tier on tier with royalty, youth, and beauty, the white canvas, the gaily-fluttering flags, the mixture of tartans, the picturesque dresses, the green grass, the cloud-like trees, and last, but not least, the wild and rugged mountains themselves – the effect of the whole is charming, and would need the pen of a Walter Scott to do justice to it.
But to return to the games about to begin before me. Crowds are already beginning to assemble and surround the ropes, and independent of the grand stand, there are on this ground several round green hills, which give lounging-room to hundreds, who thus, reclining at their ease, can view the sports going on beneath them.
I am lying at full length on the top of my caravan, a most delightful position, from which I can see everything. Far down the field a brass band is discoursing a fantasia on old Scottish airs. But the effect is somewhat marred, for this reason – on the grass behind the grand stand, with truly Scottish independence of feeling, half-a-dozen pipers are strutting about in full Highland dress, and with gay ribbons fluttering from their chanters, while their independence is more especially displayed in the fact that every piper is playing the tune that pleases himself best, so that upon the whole it must be confessed that at present the music is of a somewhat mixed character.
From the top of my caravan I call to my gentle Jehu John, alias my coachman, who comes from the shire of bonnie Berks.
“John,” I shout, “isn’t that heavenly music? Don’t you like it, John? Doesn’t it stir your blood?”
Now John would not offend my national feelings for all the world; so he replies, —
“It stirs the blood right enough, sir, but I can’t say as ’ow I likes it quite, sir. Dessay it’s an acquired taste, like olives is. Puts me in mind of a swarm o’ bees that’s got settled on a telegraph pole.”
But the games are now beginning. Brawny Scots, tall, wiry Highlanders, are already trying the weights of the great caber, the stones, and the hammers. So I get down off my caravan, and, making my way to the field, seat myself on a green knoll from which I can see and enjoy everything.
Throwing the Heavy Hammer. – This is nearly always the first game. The competitors, stripped to the waist, toe the line one after the other, and try their strength and skill, the judges after each throw being ready with the tape. Though an ordinary heavy hammer will suit any one for amateur practice, the real thing is a large ball fastened to the end of a long handle of hard, tough wood.
It is balanced aloft and swung about several times before it quits the hands of Hercules, and comet-like flies through the air with all the velocity and force that can be communicated to it.
Donald Dinnie, though he wants but two years of being fifty, is still the champion athlete and wrestler of the world. There is a good story told of Donald when exhibiting his prowess for the first time in America. The crowd it seems gave him a too limited ring. They did not know Donald then.
“Gang back a wee bit!” cried Donald.
The ring was widened.
“Gang back a wee yet?” he roared.
The crowd spread out. But when a third time Donald cried “Gang back!” they laughed in derision.
Then Donald’s Scotch blood got up. He swung the great hammer – it left his hands, and flew right over the heads of the onlookers, alighting in the field beyond.
No one in San Francisco would compete with Donald, so he got the records of other athletes, and at a public exhibition beat them all.
Throwing the light hammer is another game of the same kind.
Putting the Stone. – The stone, as an Irishman would say, is a heavy round iron ball. You plant the left foot firmly in advance of the right, then balancing the great stone or ball on the palm of the right hand on a level with the head for a few moments, you send it flying from you as far as possible. There is not only great strength required, but a good deal of “can,” or skill, which practice alone can give.
Tossing the Caber. – The caber is a small tree, perhaps a larch with the branches all off. You plant your foot against the thin end of it, while a man raises it right up – heavy end uppermost – and supports it in the air until you have bent down and raised it on your palms. The immense weight of it makes you stagger about to keep your balance, and you must toss it so that when the heavy end touches the ground, it shall fall right over and lie in a line towards you. This game requires great skill and strength, and it is seldom indeed that more than one man succeeds in tossing the caber fair and square.
There are heavy and light hammers, there are heavy and light putting-stones, but there is but one caber (at principal games), and at this game the mighty Donald Dinnie has no rival.
The jumping and vaulting approach more to the English style of games, and need not be here described; and the same may be said about the racing, with probably one exception – the sack race. The competitors have to don the sacks, which are then tied firmly round the neck, then at the given signal away they go, hopping, jumping, or running with little short steps. It is very amusing, owing to the many tumbles the runners get, and the nimble way they sometimes recover the equilibrium, though very often no sooner are they up than they are down again.
There usually follows this a mad kind of steeplechase three times round the course, which is everywhere impeded with obstructions, the favourite ones being soda-barrels with both ends knocked out. Through these the competitors have to crawl, if they be not long-legged and agile enough to vault right over them.
The dancing and the bagpipe-playing attract great attention, and with these the games usually conclude. At our sports to-day both are first-class.
The dancing commences with a sailor’s hornpipe in character, and right merrily several of the competitors foot it on the floor of wood that has been laid down on the grass for the purpose. Next comes the Highland fling, danced in Highland dress, to the wild “skirl” of the great Highland bagpipe. Then the reel of Tulloch to the same kind of music.
Here there are of course four Highlanders engaged at one time.
I hope, for the sake of dear auld Scotland, none of my readers will judge the music of the Highland bagpipes from the performances of the wretched specimens of ragged humanity sometimes seen in our streets. But on a lovely day like this, amidst scenery so sublime, it is really a pleasure to lie on the grass and listen to the stirring war march, the hearty strathspey or reel, the winning pibroch, or the sad wail of a lament for the dead.
Few who travel by train past the village or town of Auchterarder have the faintest notion what the place is like. “It is set on a hill,” that is all a train traveller can say, and it looks romantic enough.
But the country all round here, as seen by road, is more than romantic, it is wildly beautiful.
Here are some notes I took in my caravan just before coming to this town. My reason for giving them now will presently be seen.
“Just before coming to Auchterarder we cross over a hill, from which the view is singularly strange and lovely. Down beneath us is a wide strath or glen, rising on the other side with gentle slope far upwards to the horizon, with a bluff, bare, craggy mountain in the distance. But it is the arrangement and shape of the innumerable dark spruce and pinewoods that strike the beholder as more than curious. They look like regiments and armies in battle array – massed in corps d’armée down in the hollow, and arranged in battalions higher up; while along the ridge of yonder high hill they look like soldiers on march; on a rock they appear like a battery in position, and here, there, and everywhere between, e’en long lines of skirmishers, taking advantage of every shelter.”
It was not until Monday morning that I found out from the kindly Aberuthven farmer, in whose yard I had bivouacked over the Sunday, that I had really been describing in my notes a plan of the great battle of Waterloo. The woods have positively been planted to represent the armies in action.
Had not this farmer, whom we met at the village, invited us to his place, our bivouac over the Sunday would have been on the roadside, for at Aberuthven there was no accommodation for either horses or caravan.
But the hospitality and kindnesses I meet with everywhere are universal.
The morning of the 17th of August was grey and cloudy, but far from cold. Bidding kindly Farmer M – and his family good-bye, we went trotting off, and in a short time had crossed the beautiful Earn, and then began one of the longest and stiffest ascents we had ever experienced.
A stiff pull for miles with perspiring horses; but once up on the braeland above this wild and wonderful valley the view was indescribably fine. The vale is bounded by hills on every side, with the lofty Ben Voirloch far in the rear.
The Earn, broad, clear, and deep, goes winding through the level and fertile bottom of the valley, through fields where red and white cattle are grazing, through fields of dark-green turnips, and fields yellow with ripening barley. And yonder, as I live, is a railway train, but so far away, and so far beneath us, that it looks like a mere mechanical toy.
High up here summer still lingers. We are among hedgerows once more and wild roses; the banks beneath this are a sight. We have thistles of every shade of crimson, and the sward is covered with beds of bluebells and great patches of golden bird’s-foot trefoil; and look yonder is an old friend, the purple-blue geranium once more.
From the fifth milestone, the view that suddenly bursts upon our sight could hardly be surpassed for beauty in all broad Scotland. A mighty plain lies stretched out beneath us, bounded afar off by a chain of mountains, that are black in the foreground and light blue in the distance, while great cloud-banks throw their shadows over all.
But soon we are in a deep dark forest. And here I find the first blooming heath and heather, and with it we make the Wanderer look quite gay.
How sweetly sound is the sleep of the amateur gipsy! At Bankfoot, where we have been lying all night, is a cricket-ground. I was half awakened this morning (August 18th) at 5:30 by the linen manufactory hooter – and I hate a hooter. The sound made me think I was in Wales. I simply said to myself, “Oh! I am in South Wales somewhere. I wonder what I am doing in South Wales. I daresay it is all right.” Then I sank to sleep again, and did not wake till nearly seven.
The village should be a health resort.
Started by eight. A lovely morning, a mackerel sky, with patches of blue. Heather hills all around, some covered with dark waving pine forests.
But what shall I say about the scenery ’twixt Bankfoot and Dunkeld? It is everywhere so grandly beautiful that to attempt to describe it is like an insult to its majesty and romance.
Now suppose the reader were set down in the midst of one of the finest landscape gardens, in the sweetest month of summer, and asked to describe in a few words what he saw around him, would he not find it difficult even to make a commencement? That is precisely how I am now situated.
But to run through this part of the country without a word would be mean and cowardly in an author.
Here are the grandest hills close aboard of us that we have yet seen – among them Birnam; the most splendid woods and trees, forest and streams, lakes and torrents, houses and mansions, ferns and flowers and heather wild. Look where I will it is all a labyrinth, all one maze of wildest beauty, while the sweet sunshine and the gentle breeze sighing thro’ the overhanging boughs, combined with the historical reminiscences inseparable from the scenery, make my bewilderment pleasant and complete.
Yes! I confess to being of a poetic turn of mind, so make allowance, mon ami, but – go and see Dunkeld and its surroundings for yourself —
“Here Poesy might woke her heaven-taught lyre,
And look through nature with creative fire
The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides;
The woods, wild scattered, clothe their ample sides.
Th’ outstretching lake, embosomed ’mong the hills,
The eye with wonder and amazement fills.
The Tay meandering sweet in infant pride,
The Palace rising by its verdant side,
The lawns wood-fringed in nature’s native taste,
The hillocks dropt in nature’s careless haste;
The arches striding o’er the newborn stream,
The village glittering in the noontide beam.”
The above passage, from the poet Barns, refers to the village and scenery of Kumon, but it equally well describes the surroundings of Dunkeld.
Pitlochrie is our anchorage to-night.
The little town, when I first approached it, seemed, though picturesque and lovely in the extreme, almost too civilised for my gipsy ideas of comfort; the people had too much of the summer-lodging caste about them; there were loudly dressed females and male mashers, so I felt inclined to fly through it and away as I had done through Perth.
But the offer of a quiet level meadow at the other end of this village of villas, surrounded by hills pine-clad to their summits, and hills covered with heather, the maiden-blush of the heather just appearing on it, tempted me, and here I lie.
Met many delightful people, and still more delightful, happy children.
The wandering tourist would do well to make his headquarters here for at least a week. There is so much to be seen all around. It is indeed the centre of the land of romance and beauty.
Started next day through the Pass of Killiecrankie. Who has not heard of the wild wooded grandeur of this wonderful pass, or of the battle where the might of Claverhouse was hurled to the ground, and the hero himself slain?
It was a sad climb for our horses, but the pass is fearfully, awesomely grand. One cannot but shudder as he stands on the brink of the wooded chasm, over which the mounted troopers were hurled by the fierce-fighting Highlanders.
Just after leaving the pass, on the right is a meadow, in the centre of which is a stone, supposed by most tourists to mark the spot where the great Claverhouse fell. It is not so, but a preaching stone, where outdoor service was held in days of yore.
Behold up yonder, high above it on the hillside, the granite gables of “Ard House” peeping out above the trees. Near here was Claverhouse slain, shot while his horse was stooping to drink some water.
Made our midday halt in front of Bridge of Tilt Hotel. Were visited by many good people. Brakes laden with tourists pass and repass here all day long, for the scenery around here is far famed; splendid forests and wild rugged mountains, lochs and waterfalls – everything Highland.
A wretched kilted piper strutted round the Wanderer after dinner, playing pibrochs. I like the bagpipes and I love the Highland garb, but when the former is wheezy and shrieking, when the latter is muddy and ragged, and the musician himself pimply-faced and asthmatical, it takes away all the romance.
I saw this miserable piper afterwards dancing and shrieking. He was doing this because an ostler belaboured his bare legs with a gig whip.
I was glad to hear the real Highland bagpipes soon after. The wild music came floating on the autumn air from somewhere in the pine forest, and I could not help thinking of McGregor Simpson’s grand old song, the March of the Cameron Men —
“I hear the pibroch sounding, sounding,
Deep o’er the mountains and glen,
While light springing footsteps are trampling the heath -
’Tis the march of the Cameron men.”
The day is fiercely hot, but a breeze is blowing and the roads are good.
On leaving Blair Athol the way continues good for a time; we catch a glimpse of the Duke’s whitewashed castle on the right, among the trees and wood.
But we soon leave trees behind us, though on the left we still have the river. It is swirling musically round its bed of boulders now; in winter I can fancy how it will foam, and rage, and rush along with an impetuosity that no power could resist!
We are now leaving civilisation behind us – villas, trees, cultivated fields, and even houses – worth the name – will for a time be conspicuous only by their absence.
Some miles on, the road begins to get bad and rough and hilly, rougher by far than the roads in the Wolds of York or among the banks of Northumberland. It gets worse and worse, so rough now that it looks as if a drag-harrow had been taken over it.
We are soon among the Grampians, but the horses are wet and tired. Even Pea-blossom, hardy though she be, is dripping as if she had swum across a river, while poor Corn-flower is a mass of foam, and panting like a steam engine.
We were told we ought to go past the Highland hamlet of Struan. We find now, on enquiring at a wayside sheiling, that Struan is out of our way, and that it consists of but one small inn and a hut or two, where accommodation could hardly be found for man or beast.
So we go on over the mountains.
About a mile above Struan, we stop to let the horses breathe, and to gaze around us on the wild and desolate scene. Nothing visible but mountains and moorland, heath, heather, and rocks, the only trees being stunted silver birches.
Close beside the narrow road, so close indeed that a swerve to one side, of a foot or two, would hurl the Wanderer over the rock, is the roaring river Garry. Its bed is a chaos of boulders, with only here and there a deep brown pool, where great bubbles float and patches of frothy foam, and where now and then a great fish leaps up. The stream is a madly rushing torrent, leaping and bounding from crag to crag, and from precipice to precipice, with a noise like distant thunder.
We see an occasional small covey of whirring grouse. We see one wriggling snake, and a lizard on a heather stem, and we hear at a distance the melancholy scream of the mountain whaup or curlew, – a prolonged series of shrill whistling sounds, ending in a broken shriek – but there are no other signs of life visible or audible.
Yes, though, for here comes a carriage, and we have to go closer still – most dangerously close – to the cliff edge, to give it room to pass.
The horses are still panting, and presently up comes a Glasgow merchant and his little boy in Highland dress.
He tells us he is a Glasgow merchant. Anybody would tell anyone anything in this desolate place; it is a pleasure to hear even your own voice, and you are glad of any excuse to talk.
He says, —
“We are hurrying off to catch the train at Blair Athol.”
But he does not appear to be in much of a hurry, for he stays and talks, and I invite him and his child up into the saloon, where we exchange Highland experiences for quite a long time.
Then he says, —
“Well, I must positively be off, because, you know, I am hurrying to catch a train.”
I laugh.
So does the Glasgow merchant.
Then we shake hands and part.
