Away in the south-west we catch a glimpse of Glasgow, cloud-capped and grey; beyond it are the flats of Renfrew and the surrounding country, the monotony of which in a clear day is somewhat relieved by the blue tops of the Paisley and Kilmalcolm hills. Looking across the valley at our feet we can see the streams trickle like silver threads, and the sunbeams tremble and play in mingled gleams of green and yellow. Wonderful hills those old Campsie hills, with what might be called the Garden of Scotland at their base (for is not this the earliest part of Scotland, speaking from an agricultural point of view?) and the glory of God’s sunshine on their brows. Those in city pent, and those whose days are for the most part spent in the rush and crush of business could not enjoy an afternoon to more profit and pleasure than up here. From the summit of these hills, down past the eastern base of the Meikle Ben a little to the north of us, there is no carriage drive to the Fintry and Denny Road; but, for all that, the walk does not seem to be one of any great difficulty, whereas, on the other hand, the way would be beguiled by scenes of rarest beauty. We have made the stiff uphill walk or climb to this in a little less than an hour; but the bracing air, the scenery around us, far and near, and some pleasant seats on the soft turf have made us forget all fatigue.
We have to dip down a little on the other side before we begin the ascent of the Ben pure and simple. As we do so we lose sight of all human habitations, and for a mile or more not even a tree or shrub is to be seen except the heather. We have heard it said that a would-be suicide who was anxious to “lay hands on himself” by hanging up here was frustrated in a very simple fashion. He found it would be impossible to carry out his horrid purpose in this “heaven-kissing” locality unless he could manage to throw a coil over the horn of the moon, a blaeberry bush or a clump of heather being the nearest approach to a tree which could be found. We begin to wonder why there is such an extent of land lying waste, and our mind naturally turns to the poor crofter, or once more to the overcrowded dens in our large cities. We are ready to exclaim, “Why, here is sufficient land to sustain thousands of our population, and we have been quite ignorant of it,” but when we examine the soil we find that the crop it grows is sufficient for black cattle and sheep, but could not be easily cultivated for the support of man.
The summit of our hill is not at all difficult now to reach, although, as the “Gazetteer” tells us, it is 1870 feet high. But we may be said to have been climbing it ever since we left Milton. And now we see, what can only be seen when we are close to it, that it is really a hill of itself. To those who live a few miles to the south, our Ben appears only a large cairn on the highest point of the front part of the range. To those up here, or still farther to the north of this, it seems a considerable independent hill, and to those who live away to the east and south-east, in the Slamannan direction, it looks as if it could hold its head almost quite as high as Ben Ledi or Ben Venue. It is even said to be seen from a great distance in the Lanark direction, and forms a conspicuous landmark from the Firth of Forth.
We are here in the south-east corner of the parish of Fintry, close to the meeting point with Campsie and Kilsyth. We can see at a glance that it is a central summit of the Lennox hills, occupying such a position as to unite the Fintry, Campsie, and Kilsyth sections of those hills. On the north-east of it, there is what is called the Little Bin, some 1446 feet high, and on its south-west side the Bin burn runs away to the north and becomes a head stream of the river Carron.
Standing here, or rather stretching ourselves along the grateful turf, we are in the very centre of Stirlingshire, and at the source of a river which nowhere is very large, and yet, than which there is none in Scotland, and probably few in the whole island, whose banks have been the stage of so many memorable transactions. When the Roman empire was in all its glory, and had its eastern frontiers upon the Euphrates, the banks of the Carron were its boundaries on the north-west; for the Wall of Antoninus, which was raised to mark the limits of that mighty empire, stood in the neighbourhood of this river, and ran parallel to it for many miles. This last fact suggests one of the probable origins of the word Carron, for there are more than one. The meaning of the word has been a puzzle to the etymologists. “Even ministers they ha’e been kenn’d” to arrive at very different conclusions on this interesting subject. Some derive it from Caraon, which means “a winding river,” and “The bonny links of Carron Water” are poetically celebrated. This expresses one feature of the stream which, in former times, before it had forced a new channel to itself in some places, and been straightened by human industry in others, made almost as many serpentine links as the Forth itself.
In the valley below the river runs through the well-known Carron bog, and for 3½ miles flows in a slow serpentine course over one of the finest and most fertile tracks of natural meadow in Scotland. The Carron Company, whose works are at the other end of the river, and in summer utilise almost all its water, wished at one time to convert this bog into a great reservoir for their works, but the hay crop was found to be too valuable, the tract containing upwards of 1000 Scotch acres in one continued plain, bearing from 130 to 150 stones per acre, which is all the more valuable from the fact that the artificial crops are a little precarious from their elevated situation. From the adjoining heights as many as 20 or 30 different parties of people may be seen on it in the season making hay, and in the winter again the river is industriously led over its whole extent to fertilise it for the following crop.
On the other side of the road from the bog, a little to the west of it, and close to where the infant Endrick comes down from the Kippen hills, we have the old castle of Sir John de Grahame of Dundaff, who fell at the battle of Falkirk. For courage and military skill he was reckoned next to Wallace, and was commonly called by the great hero himself his “Right Hand.” The gravestone of Sir John in the churchyard of Falkirk has the following Latin motto, with a Scotch translation:—
Mente manuque potens, et vallae fidus Achates,
Conditur hic Grahmos, bello interfectus ab Anglis.
While some of Cromwell’s troops were stationed in Falkirk, an officer asked the parochial schoolmaster to translate the Latin. This he did in the following witty manner:—