The first day’s proceedings of the sporting troop are most notable. They “leave the civilised country” at Renfrew. How they get across the Clyde does not appear; but there are no doubt stepping-stones in all Highland streams. Having thus invaded the Lennox, they forthwith stalk its desolate moors from Loch Lomond to Loch Katrine, where as a touch of local colour the author is careful to point out that one must not use the word lakes. Nine or ten strong, the company is thrown out in skirmishing order, those who have guns marching in front behind the dogs, while the unarmed members are invited to bring up the rear “as simple spectators.” Scotland being such a proverbially hospitable country, they do not judge it necessary to provide themselves with leave or license, but their hotel-keeper for two or three shillings hires a bare-legged shepherd in “a short petticoat” to show them where the game lies. In spite of this liberality, towards the end of the day the bag amounts only to three or four head, including one hare, explained to be a rara avis hereabouts, and one fierce bull which has given a spice of danger to their sport. In the evening, however, the grouse begin to “rise,” spring up “every instant under their feet,” and nearly two dozen are brought down, enough to serve for supper. The question of lodging presents more difficulty, the Trossachs being an “absolutely desert” country without a village for six leagues round; but the whole party are comfortably accommodated in a fisherman’s hut, fifteen to twenty feet square, which must have been a tight fit for ten, even though there was no furniture beyond a table, two benches and a sheepskin. With genuine Scottish pride the fisherman refuses to accept a bawbee from his guests; though rather too much given to “bird’s eye tobacco” and “that abominable product of civilisation Scotch whisky,” he is a superior person, by his parents designed for the national church, but the honour of “wearing a surplice,” it is explained, had not seemed to him worth the frequent birching which makes the discipline of parish schools in the north.
Next day, for a change, the strangers give themselves up to the kindred sport of angling; and two of them undertake the Alpine ascent of one of the peaks above Loch Katrine, but, without a guide, come to sore grief, and have to be rescued by a search party led by those sagacious pointers in true Ben St. Bernard style. In such cases, our author points out “the superiority of the savage over the civilised man, at least in the desert.” Only to the Highland fisherman had it occurred that those luckless adventurers might want something to eat; but he, taught by experience, produces in the nick of time a bottle of whisky, a biscuit and a slice of bacon; and thus
the perishing hero’s life is saved to “dance a Scottish gigue”—O M. Laurie, M. Laurie, O!
The dancing comes through a luxurious experience of Highland high-life, when this band of youths fall in with an old schoolfellow, a Scottish nobleman who bears what seems the exotic title of Lord Camember, but his family name is that well-known aristocratic one of Orton. He welcomes them to his castle, where his coming of age is being celebrated by crowds strangely enormous for such a “desert country,” who are entertained under tents “vast as cathedrals,” with splendid hospitality open to all comers, fountains flowing with beer, speeches, music, dancing, and fireworks. As bouquet of the festivities, he invites the strangers to a review of his stags, driven together “in full trot” till their gigantic antlers “gave the illusion of the marching forest in the Macbeth legend.” The drive past lasts more than an hour, in the course of which are enumerated 5947 horns, so that, allowing for absentees, the young lord estimates a round number of seven thousand as the stock of his deer forest. There could have been no such head of game in the district when Fitz-James galloped all the way from the Earn to Loch Katrine after one stag, losing it as well as his way. One can’t help feeling that our author’s excursion through the scenes of his story must have been an equally rapid one.
The Trossachs pass leads us to that lake that gets a fair-seeming name not from any saint, but from the Highland Caterans who once infested its banks; and it is hinted that “Ellen’s Isle” may have come to be christened through Scott’s mistaking the Gaelic word Eilean (island). There was, indeed, a certain Helen Stuart who played a grimly fierce part in defending this place of refuge, as related in the poem, but her exploit was performed against Cromwell’s soldiers. In sight of the “Silver Strand,” tourists are wont to take steamboat as far as Stronachlachar, and there cross by coach to the “bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.” They whose “free course” moves not by “such fixed cause,” might well hold on to the head of Loch Katrine, crossing to Loch Lomond over the wild heights of Glengyle; or they would not find it amiss to turn back to Aberfoyle, thence past Loch Ard and the Falls of Ledard, following the track round Ben Lomond on which Rob Roy led Osbaldistone and the Bailie out of his country. But one knows not how to direct strangers to that wild region vaguely outlined by the above-mentioned French author, where our generation may shoot grouse and bulls as they go, and find quarters in any convenient hut or castle, when the Trossachs hotel happens to have “not a bed for love or money.” His story, one fears, must be counted with the mediæval wonders of Loch Lomond, fish without fins, waves without wind, and such a floating island as still emerges after hot summers in Derwentwater.