practice. The Established Church did not, however, adopt this narrow point of view, it opened its arms and took in Peter. When he assumed the duties of his new office, Peter, for the first time in his life of hardship and sacrifice, had an assured income sufficient for the slender needs to which he had habituated himself. It is not surprising, but greatly to his credit that, having been starved out of one Church and warmly welcomed by another, he should have chosen as the text of his inaugural sermon, “And Peter stood with them, and warmed himself.” 1 'St. John xviii. 18. CHAPTER VII HOLIDAYING IN SCOTLAND IN THE SEVENTIES Nay seek them not, the old beloved haunts; Against whose prow the spray in sprinkling fonts Find not the yellow sands that like a topaz lay Sun shimmering; nor tread the ribboned line Old Time had beat Through waving bracken, gold-gowned woodbine. For you they would but speak some scattered names, KATHERINE MANN, "Ode to the Olden Days," No city, even London or Paris, approaches the city of Glasgow in its relation to surroundings of natural beauty. On every side save one, near and far, there stretch systems of hills, valleys, rivers and lochs, and in the farther but still no great distance there is the incomparable archipelago of the West Highlands. The one side upon which scenery is deficient is the eastern side between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and between Hamilton and Kirkintilloch. The broad belt of iron and coal forming the mineral reserve from which Scotland has drawn the means of her industrial development and the deposits of millstone grit from which fireclay is manufactured occupies this region, whose importance lies underground rather than on the surface. In every other direction within a few minutes' walk of the municipal boundaries natural beauty of great variety abounds. The city lies on the carboniferous limestone series. In the north there are the Campsie Hills, a mass of stratified trap separated by a great "fault" from the sandstone and conglomerate of the South Hill. Within the Campsie Hills are Ballagan Glen and the cleft of jagged trap known as the Whangie. Farther north than the igneous rocks there lies the For descriptions of the geology of the Clyde Valley, see the writings of two old friends of mine, Prof. John Young, Geology of the Clyde Valley and Physical Geography, and Dugald Bell, Among the Rocks round Glasgow, Glasgow, 1881. a Lower Old Red Sandstone embracing the upper valley of the Forth and its tributary streams; and westwards and north-westwards there lie the schists and slates of the Lower Silurian rising to the round head and shoulders of Ben Lomond, and scooped out in the deep depressions of Loch Lomond, the Gare Loch, Loch Long and Loch Goil. A good walker in a single day can march across the deposits of the most distant geological ages. The roads throughout the region are excellent, but many of the finest points from which the landscape may be observed can be reached only by bypaths on foot. It is thus, or used to be, practice of Glasgow youths to take long walks, especially on Saturday afternoons, sometimes taking the railway to the outskirts of the city, and then plunging into the scenery. Even before the "Access to Mountains Act" was passed through the persistence of Mr. Bryce (afterwards Lord Bryce), who was himself an ardent walker and climber, the proprietors in the neighbourhood of Glasgow were not intolerant of peaceful pedestrians, especially in proportion as their estates were distant from the city and therefore less frequented by numbers. As for myself, I was accustomed to develop the walk into something like an expedition, During the whole of the decade of which I am speaking and during the succeeding decade it was my habit, when I felt inclined or had opportunity, to start from Glasgow about five o'clock on Friday afternoon, walk for a good part of the summer night, put up somewhere in the country, walk part of the next day and return by train to Glasgow in the evening. On such an occasion I walked from Glasgow to Callander via Strathblane, Aberfoyle, and the Lake of Menteith. About midnight, the sky became overcast and the darkness so intense that it was impossible to see the road. The night was absolutely still, there was no sound but my own footfall. I had walked at a good pace, and become rather thirsty. I listened for the trickle of water from some stream where I might refresh myself. On such night journeys I carried a candle, a means of illumination not so heavy as a pocket lantern, for impedimenta had to be cut down to the lowest limit. At last I heard a trickle in a field on the roadside. I went to it, found what I wanted and returned to the road, extinguishing my candle. As I did so, I heard a footfall warily making its way on the other side of the road. I called out that there was no need to be frightened, and a cheerful answer came from the darkness. From the voice I deduced a young man, and although we could not see one another we found we were going in the same direction. We were at the time somewhere between Water of Endrick and Flanders Moss. The young man turned out to be an engineer who was going to visit his parents in the village of Gartmore. I had not intended to go by this village, but to keep to the main road to Aberfoyle, where I expected to arrive about two o'clock in the morning, and to find accommodation in the well-known hostelry where Bailie Nicol Jarvie set the Highlander's kilt on fire with a red-hot "coulter." When we came to the point where the road to Gartmore branches off, my unseen friend persuaded me to go with him to Gartmore and to accept his hospitality. We arrived at the village about one o'clock. His parents, worthy folk, expected him and received me with cordiality. Gartmore is perhaps the steepest village in Scotland. The village street is simply an uncovered slope of Old Red Sandstone. Gartmore House, the only feature of the place, is the ancestral home of my good friend Cunninghame Graham, most delicious of essayists and one of the bravest and quaintest of men. At that time Cunninghame Graham was acting as cowboy on the pampas of South America. In the forenoon I walked to Aberfoyle, and then over the hills through the pass of Aberfoyle past the sombre woods and waters of the Lake of Menteith to Callander. It is best on the whole to walk alone; companionship can be easily had if it is wanted, and when it has ceased to be companionship it can be shed. A journey undertaken with another is like marriage, it must, unless there is positive rupture, which is disagreeable, continue to the end. I did not, however, always walk alone. On two long excursions I had a congenial friend. We left Glasgow one afternoon by train to Killin. There we dined, and then about eight o'clock on a fine summer evening we set off to tramp over the shoulder of Ben Lawers into Glen Lyon. It is alleged that Killin should properly be Kil-Fin, for in the village there is a stone which tradition says marks the burialplace of Fingal, the hero of the verse of Ossian: Fingal shall be clothed with fame, a beam of light to other times; for he went forth, with echoing steel, to save the weak in arms.1 For some miles the road passes along the shore of Loch Tay, and then at Edramuckie we climbed up on the moor, traversed the high pass and dropped down to Glen Lyon sometime after midnight, for we took our journey in leisurely fashion. Indeed, the dawn was almost breaking when we roused up the minister of Ard, who was a cousin of my companion, and quartered ourselves upon him. Glen Lyon is the longest and in many ways the finest glen in Scotland. The mountains which tower above it are from 2000 to 4000 feet high. In its upper reaches it is very narrow, but in many places it becomes a broad valley. There is one loch in the upper part of it, and there are evidences of former lochs at various parts of its course. The lower glen towards Fortingal is justly celebrated for its extreme beauty. There are legends that at one time the glen was occupied by a large population, but there is no record of this having been the case within historical times. The glen stretches from the highlands of Appin in Argyllshire almost to the exit from the Highlands to the Lowlands of Scotland. There are passes at both ends of it. Thus, like all such regions, it must have been the scene of conflicts between Highland and Lowland tribes from remote ages. Fingal is described in a Gaelic couplet 1 as having had twelve castles in the glen, and there are traditions of many battles having been fought in it. A ruin was pointed out to us as the site of a monastery, but I have been unable to find any confirmation of this attribution. It is probable that the glen may have been denuded of its population at a very early period, for one of the numerous names which have been attached to it in past times is the Deserted Glen.2 When we had rested we walked on to Fortingal, where we saw the famous yew-tree which is reputed to be a thousand years old. This corner of Perthshire is the south-eastern limit of the ancient Caledonian Forest, and there still remain in some parts of it many trees of great age. At Taymouth Castle, near Kenmore, there used to be a herd of the white cattle, early denizens of the forest. In the afternoon we walked to Aberfeldy, and then went by train to Glasgow, having been absent only twenty-four hours. The most extensive of these early journeys was a walk of fiftyfour miles in less than eighteen hours, from Dunoon on the Clyde to Connel Ferry on Loch Etive. This famous tramp was accomplished with my friend of the Glen Lyon pilgrimage. We left Dunoon at ten o'clock in the forenoon, and walked by Loch Eck to St. Catherine's on Loch Fyne, where we ferried across to Inverary. In the afternoon we traversed the moor to Port Sonachan, where we dined sumptuously in the excellent hotel, then ferried across Loch Awe and started on our long tramp to Taynuilt. This night walk was wonderful; when we 1 Quoted in The Statistical Account of Perthshire (Edinburgh, 1842), p. 530. One of the dark shadows of Scottish history lies over Glen Lyon, for it was Captain Campbell of Glen Lyon who was the instrument by which the massacre of Glencoe was carried out. See H. G. Graham in Scottish History and Life, edited by James Paton (Glasgow, 1902), p. 130. Now James R. MacColl, President of the Lorraine Manufacturing Co., Pawtucket, Rhode Island, U.S.A. |