one has the far-spread prospect masterly laid out by Sir Archibald Geikie:—
“While no sound falls upon his ear, save now and then a fitful moaning of the wind among the snow-rifts of the dark precipice below, let him try to analyse some of the chief elements of the landscape. It is easy to recognise the more marked heights and hollows. To the south, away down Loch Linnhe, he can see the hills of Mull and the Paps of Jura closing the horizon. Westward, Loch Eil seems to lie at his feet, winding up into the lonely mountains, yet filled twice a day with the tides of the salt sea. Far over the hills, beyond the head of the loch, he looks across Arisaig, and can see the cliffs of the Isle of Eigg and the dark peaks of Rum, with the Atlantic gleaming below them. Farther to the north-west the blue range of the Coolin Hills rises along the sky-line, and then, sweeping over all the intermediate ground, through Arisaig and Knoydart and the Clanranald country, mountain rises beyond mountain, ridge beyond ridge, cut through by dark glens, and varied here and there with the sheen of lake and tarn. Northward runs the mysterious straight line of the Great Glen, with its chain of lochs. Thence to east and south the same billowy sea of mountain-tops stretches out as far as eye can follow it—the hills and glens of Lochaber, the wide green strath of Spean, the grey corries of Glen Treig and Glen Nevis, the distant sweep of the moors and mountains of Brae Lyon and the Perthshire Highlands, the spires of Glencoe, and thence round again to the blue waters of Loch Linnhe.”
Hitherto the drenched tourist has been too ready to hasten away towards drier Saxondom by steamboat or rail from the end of the Caledonian Canal, ignorant what choice spots may hereabouts be lingered among, such as that “Dark Mile,” which some have found better worth seeing than the Trossachs, and Glen Nevis that, opening as a lush valley, mounts by rushing falls into recesses of wild magnificence. Now the West Highland Railway takes one on through Glenfinnan and the Lochiel country, where Charles Edward raised that last standard of rebellion, against the prudent judgment of the Cameron chief whose loyal pride yet followed it to Culloden, and where a tall column records how a later Cameron fell as gallantly in the service of the established dynasty. Thus we come to Arisaig on the west coast, and to Mallaig opposite Skye, in which a book that draws to its end must not venture to enter upon the most gloomily grand aspects of Highland scenery. All this, like the country above the Moray Firth, comes under the head of “counsels of perfection”; but every conscientious Highland tour takes in Inverness, on the round made by the Highland Railway and the Caledonian Canal, the most perfunctory minimum being the Trossachs trip, which might be extended to pass by Oban and the Clyde.
CHAPTER X
GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE
AT the junction of salt and fresh water navigation, beside Fort-William, the tourist begins a new stage of his journey, if in haste, speeding by the West Highland Railway through beautiful glens and over bleak and bare moorlands to come on the Clyde at Helensburgh. The older pilgrimage is by steamer down Loch Linnhe to Oban, past Ballachulish, where, if the Saxon can get his tongue round its name, he may land to visit “dreary dark Glencoe,” whose grimly sublime seclusion seems in keeping with its tragic memories and with its legendary fame as birthplace of Ossian.
Oban, “Charing Cross of the Highlands,” which Cockneys sometimes confuse with Holborn, and which in thick weather may rather suggest the Tilbury Docks, had in Dr. Johnson’s day one “tolerable inn,” now multiplied into a forest of hostelries, “a huddlement of upstart houses,” above which the shell of an unhatched Hydropathic looks down on darker ruins of the “Land of Lorne.” Here the not impecunious traveller might tarry long to visit the islands around or the lochs and falls inland. Turning his back on the cloudy Atlantic, he may take the Caledonian Railway by Loch Awe, Loch Tay and Loch Earn, and thus be wafted to Perth, Edinburgh, or Glasgow, while at Tyndrum it is open to him to make a cut across to the West Highland Line. But his most beaten path is still a watery one, on to the Crinan Canal, and through it to Ardrishaig, where he enters on the safe and luxurious navigation of the Clyde.