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.