THE COBBLER, OR BEN ARTHUR.
It is not known why several of our Scottish hills take their name from the Welsh Prince Arthur, of whom no other trace remains in the country, but it appears that they have been traditionally considered to be places of sovereignty. For example, it is said that that huge mountain at the opening of Glencroe, the naked rocky summit of which is thought to bear some resemblance to a shoemaker at work and bent to draw his thread, and which is therefore called the Cobbler, being at one time considered the most lofty and conspicuous mountain in the domain of the Campbells, had to be climbed by the heir of that chieftainship, who was obliged to seat himself on its loftiest peak, a task of some difficulty and danger, which, if neglected, his lands went to the next relative who was sufficiently adventurous to scale its heights. Though we may not have the bribe of a dukedom to entice us, nor any special need of paying a visit to a shoemaker, yet a climb to the top of this well-known but seldom scaled steep will live in our memories as a most pleasurable toil.
The best plan to adopt in order to “do” it, and return to the common level of Glasgow life in one day, is to take an early train and boat (Queen Street low level) to Tarbet on Loch Lomond; walk or coach it from that through the beautiful pass or valley by which King Haco and his grim, death-dealing warriors in the thirteenth century are understood to have dragged their boats after sailing up Loch Long. This they did with the view of devastating Loch Lomond side and its then populous islands, with a vengeance terrible in its results. Through this peaceful and dreamy glen also marched Robert the Bruce, Scotland’s great deliverer from England’s hated yoke, with his five hundred followers, when making his way to spend the winter in Cantyre. In passing through this cross valley you can see on the hillsides the striations of the glacial age over the watershed from Loch Lomond down into Loch Long.
Keep on the coach or coach road past Arrochar, across the Lyon at the head of Loch Long, a stream which divides Dumbartonshire and Argyllshire, till you come down to a point on the other side of the loch opposite Arrochar. Here—Ardgarton House not being far off, formerly belonging to Mr. Campbell of Armidale, but more lately to Mr. Macgregor, of the Royal Hotel, Edinburgh—there is a burn or mountain stream which rejoices in the name of the “Butter-milk Burn.”
Your course is up the left side of this burn till you come to a hollow place 500 or 600 feet up; cross the burn here, and, avoiding the soft ground as much as possible, keep to the right, and instead of making the old man’s acquaintance too hurriedly, take round to his north side, and you will find him more approachable and will get better on with him. The ascent, though stiff, is not difficult till you reach what may be called the foot of the Cobbler.
The likeness is preserved even in such a detail as this, but the whimsical effect of the figure is almost obliterated by the greatness of those rocks that tower high above, and are perched like the Semi of Eig on the utmost ridge of the mountain. Your first impression is that here “you get the air about you;” that, as a Lancashire man once said to the writer of this about Blackpool, making a slip, “There’s a deal of ozedone (ozone) about it.” We suggested that he probably meant zoedone, to which the answer came, “Yes, now you have got it.” You are on a mountain 2891 feet high, whose praises have been sung by the Queen, by M’Culloch, and Alexander Smith, and now that you have presumably made its acquaintance, you feel that your climb of two hours is well repaid, and that the half has not been told you.
Sitting on the summit so narrow and acute, which has been compared to the bridge of Al Sirat, the very razor’s blade over which the faithful are to walk into Paradise, sitting astride on this rocky saddle, you may have one foot in Loch Long and the other in Glencroe. The scene is magnificent, and you may long and calmly gaze at it without any fear that your horse will get restive or impatient under you. The cliffs themselves are at once picturesque and sublime, and, most of all, that square mass at the western extremity, which rises in a lofty and broad magnificence, 200 feet or more, like a gigantic tower rooted on the mountain’s brow. Alexander Smith speaks of this as “the Cobbler’s wife sitting a little way off, an ancient dame, to the full as withered in appearance as her husband and as difficult of access. They dwell in tolerable amity the twain, but when they do quarrel it is something tremendous. The whole country knows when a tiff is in progress. The sky darkens above them; the Cobbler frowns; his wife sulks in the mist. The wife’s conduct aggravates the Cobbler, who is naturally of a peppery temper, and he gives vent to a discontented growl. The wife spits back fire upon him. The row begins. They flash at one another in the savagest manner, scolding all the while in the grandest Billingsgate, while everybody listens to them for 20 miles around. Afterwards, however, peace seems to be restored somehow when everybody is asleep. And for the next six weeks they enjoy as bright and unclouded weather as husband and wife can expect in a world where all is imperfect.” Those huge masses of rock, grand in their style and powerful in their effect, give this an advantage over most of the mountain views of Scotland by the wonderful foregrounds which they disclose. Immediately to the right of it, for example, are Ben Irne and Ben Vane, both higher than it; and yet it is the Cobbler we know, and almost as if he had no rival.
But the surrounding and distant scenery is also very varied and splendid. East and north and west there is a perfect table-land of mountains, too numerous to mention here, and which can best be studied with a good map in hand. Conspicuous, however, are the giant heads of Nevis, Anachan, Ben Lui, Ben More, Lawers, Voirlich, Ledi, and Lomond. The view of Ben Lomond from this is specially grand. Looked at from its own loch it is a shapeless mass, but here, by displaying his ample peak, with precipices of 2000 feet or more, he shows what a fine fellow he really is. You can see the bright gleaming waters of Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, beyond which even Stirling shows a smoky front. To the south you have the long and sinuous extent of Loch Long winding brightly beneath your feet, and prolonged between its mountain boundaries till it reaches the Clyde and the sea. This loch reminded some of the Queen’s friends, on the occasion of her visit to it in 1848, of Switzerland and the Tyrol, “surrounded by grand hills all so green, and with such beautiful outlines, all so different from the eastern part of Scotland, the loch winding along most beautifully so as to seem closed at times.”
You can also see the glittering course of Loch Goil, Gareloch, and Loch Fyne, all adding to the variety and beauty of this great landscape map. And you cannot help feeling that the patriotic Scotchwoman was not far wrong who said that “Scotland would be as big as England any day if she were all rolled out flat like her.” You can see the Clyde at various points, with the Cumbraes, Arran, and even the distant Ailsa, and, according to some, several of the Western Islands, including Mull.
It is to those and similar points of the western coast that the traveller strains his eye from the Cobbler. He can see but dimly, but he feels the wild power that belongs to that broken and chaotic sea, and his heart goes out to the early Gaelic sires who fished in the firth, gave names to the summits, and spent their life amid that maze of rock and flood. It was their feet that made the mountain tracks where you and other tourists can safely climb to-day.
At your foot is Arrochar, at the opening of a woody glen formed by Anach, Voirlich, and Ben Tarbet, between which is seen Craigrostan, a rocky peak of Ben Lomond. At the upper end of the Loch (Long) is a glen, which, with its mountain, gets its name from fairies, a very general creation of Highland superstition. You have due south the wild and well-known Glencroe, which is only surpassed by Glencoe, its wild and savage grandeur being on too broad a scale for the pencil. It is some five or six miles in length, and the rocky ramparts through which it runs are in most part composed of micaceous schist, beautifully undulatory, and in many places embedded in quartz, and shining like silver. Some of the huge boulders display these characteristics to perfection. The narrow bed of the valley is occupied by a dashing torrent, and you see the road carried along its course as near as the tortuous bank and rocky fragments will permit. In some parts there are beautiful scenes in the bed of the river; here the water is rushing violently past some huge rock, or tumbling over it in cascades; and there it is heard only to growl in an inaccessible dungeon. One of those might pass for the grotto of a naiad. At one end the sunbeams admitted through different apertures may be seen to play on the waters; at the other a small cascade glitters in the gloom; while the sides are wrought into various odd forms by the whirlpools, and in one part a natural chair is scooped out of the rock.
But human habitations there are none! This part of the country does not seem to belong to the amiable nobleman who told his factor that he would rather see one human being on his estate than a hundred sheep. It was once the abode of quite a small colony, but it is now little better than a sheep walk, and hard work it must be even for the sheep to get a decent livelihood here. Speaking of sheep, there is quite close to you here a small burn called the Eagle’s Burn, which was until lately frequented by eagles of a large grey kind, which have been known to fly off more than a mile with a lamb in their talons. At the summit there is the famous “Rest and be Thankful,” the theme of Wordsworth’s lines—
Doubling and doubling with laborious walk,
Who that has gained at length the wished-for height,
This brief, this simple wayside call can slight,
And rest not thankful?
It is a most agreeable green seat for the tired traveller, who can not only rest his limbs, but feast his eyes as he looks back on the zigzag path he has climbed, and the treeless solitude through which the waters of the Croe wriggle in serpentine links. He can also indulge in the cheap luxury of gratitude to Captain Lascelles and the men of his regiment, who, according to the inscription on the stone erected to commemorate the formation of the road, made it, immediately after the rising in 1745. The Government at that time resolved to open up the country by means of good military roads, and put the matter into the hands of General Wade, who seems to have done his work well, and to the astonishment of the natives, who are represented in after times as saying—
Had you seen these roads before they were made
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.
We here came across a gamekeeper with the usual accompaniments of dog and gun. He had a dog-whistle at his buttonhole, and his pocket knife, which was a basket of tools in itself, he was using to empty and fill his pipe. Getting into conversation with him, he told us that he loved his gun as an old companion, and that he was so accustomed to the balance and hang of it that he never thought of aiming—he simply looked at the object, still or moving, threw the gun up from the hollow of his arm, and instantly pulled the trigger, staying not a moment to glance along the barrel.
The hilltops to the south of us, between Loch Goil and Loch Long, have been facetiously called the Duke of Argyll’s Bowling Green, either in irony or, more probably, as a delicate compliment to his lordship. All Western Scotsmen have a high opinion of the greatness of the Macallum More, and it may be that those who first applied the name meant to intimate by it that so powerful is the Duke, that what to ordinary mortals are stupendous hills are to him a mere “bowling green.”
It may be interesting to some who have taken part in recent political elections for Dumbartonshire to know that Arrochar House, on the opposite shore of the loch from the Cobbler, the residence of the last chief of the Macfarlans, was at one time in the possession of the laird of Novar. It was, however, rented by the Duke of Argyll, and until lately was a most acceptable shelter to the tourist. It is now a private residence. The land immediately to the north of you at one time belonged to “the wild Macfarlan’s plaided clan.” They were great depredators on the low country, and as their raids were often made at night, the moon came to be familiarly called “Macfarlan’s lantern.” Their place of assembling was Loch Sloy—“the Loch of the Lost”—near the foot of Voirlich, from which they took their war-cry of “Loch Sloy, Loch Sloy!” There once stood near to it a large plantation of firs, in which on one occasion the men of Athole hid to surprise the Macfarlan. But his son Duncan surrounded it and set fire to it, destroying the whole of the foe. The cruelty of the exploit gained for him the name of “Duncan the Black Son of Mischief,” or Donucha-dubb-na-Dunnaidh, which latter will give those who “haven’t the Gaelic” an idea of what a Gaelic name looks like when in full dress. But Duncan seems to have been a son of stratagem too, for we read that when once attacked by the Athole men he kept watch, a little way off from a river which they had to cross, took a remarkable coat of mail which belonged to his father and fixed it on a tree. The enemy supposed it to be Macfarlan himself, and their commander offered a reward to any who would shoot it, on which the archers let fly their arrows fast and furious, but futile. Duncan and his men when they had finished coolly picked them up, attacked them all unarmed while crossing the ford, and obtained an easy victory. This clan, which almost gained at one time a reputation equal to that of the Macgregors for wholesale disturbance and depredation in the lowland district, were declared in 1587 to be one of those clans for whom the chief was made responsible. In 1624 some of them were tried, convicted, and punished, and the rest removed to Aberdeenshire and Banffshire. The lands have passed out of their hands altogether; and the chiefs house, as already mentioned, is now a private residence.
Taking one more fond look of the grand panorama, we make the descent in time to catch either the Loch Long steamer or the evening one from Tarbet, and in course of time are transplanted from the land of mountain and flood to the prosaic life and work of the city.