Our travellers halted for dinner at the General’s Hut, a small public-house nearly eighteen miles from Inverness.[592] Here, says Johnson, Wade had lodged “while he superintended the works upon the road.” I have seen it stated in a guide-book that on its site is built the Foyer’s Hotel, but this is a mistake. In the Map of the King’s Roads made by General Wade, dated 1746, “the General Hutt” (sic) is marked just where the road takes a sudden bend to the south, a short distance after which it passes the church of Burlassig. Dr. Garnett, who travelled through the Highlands at the end of the century, says that “the present public-house, which is still called the General’s Hut, is very near the place where Wade had a small house, which was afterwards used as an inn. It commands a delightful view up the lake.” The change of site must have been made, it would seem, between his visit and Johnson’s. The old inn was on the north-east or Inverness side of the church, whereas the Foyers Hotel is a little distance beyond it to the south-west. It is a pity that the ambition of landlords has not allowed the old name to remain. It was the only thing I found wanting in this comfortable hotel. Sir Walter Scott was surprised that “when these roads were made there was no care taken for inns. The King’s House and the General’s Hut are miserable places,” he adds, “but the project and plans were purely military.”[593] Johnson, however, was not dissatisfied with his entertainment. “We found,” he says, “the house not ill-stocked with provisions. We had eggs and bacon, and mutton, with wine, rum, and whisky. I had water.” The little church hard by Boswell describes as “the meanest parish kirk I ever saw. It is a shame it should be on a high road.” It might have been pleaded, perhaps, as an alleviation of its disgrace, that the high road had come to it and that it had not come to the high road. His reproach seems to have had some effect, for it has been removed to another place. The ruins, however, still remain. A middle-aged woman who dwells in the neighbourhood told me that “there was an old man living when she first came, who said he did not mind when it was a church, but his father did.”
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE
& RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & CIE. PARIS.
FOYERS
THE FALLS OF FOYERS.
While Boswell mentions the mean kirk, with his indifference to natural objects he passes over in silence the celebrated Falls of Fiers or Foyers. He does not even mention the bridge over the river, or the rocks which on three sides of it rise to a great height. Here Johnson’s imagination was deeply impressed, for he describes them as “exhibiting a kind of dreadful magnificence; standing like the barriers of nature placed to keep different orders of being in perpetual separation.” Dismounting from their horses, “we clambered,” he writes, “over very rugged crags, till we came at last to a place where we could overlook the river, and saw a channel torn, as it seems, through black piles of stone, by which the stream is obstructed and broken, till it comes to a very steep descent, of such dreadful depth, that we were naturally inclined to turn aside our eyes. But we visited the place at an unseasonable time, and found it divested of its dignity and terror. Nature never gives everything at once. A long continuance of dry weather, which made the rest of the way easy and delightful, deprived us of the pleasure expected from the Falls of Fiers.” This same month Mason, the poet, was complaining that the cascades at Lodore had been “reduced by the dry season to a scanty rill, which took away more than half the beauties of the scene.”[594]
INVERMORISTON.