On the High Road to the Highlands.
”... Here the bleak mount,
The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep;
Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields;
And river, now with bushy rocks o’erbrowed,
Now winding bright and full, with naked banks;
And seats and lawns, the abbey and the wood;
And cots and hamlets, and faint city spire.”
Coleridge.
At Cumbernauld, the people were pleased to see us once more, and quite a large crowd surrounded the Wanderer. On leaving the village we were boarded by a young clergyman and his wife, such pleasant enthusiastic sort of people that it does one good to look at and converse with.
Passed strings of caravans at Dennyloanhead, and exchanged smiles and good-morrows with them. Then on to the Stirling road, through an altogether charming country.
Through Windsor Newton, and the romantic village of Saint Ninian’s, near which is Bannockburn.
Then away and away to Stirling, and through it, intending to bivouac for the night at Bridge of Allan, but, Scot that I am, I could not pass that monument on Abbey Craig, to Scotland’s great deliverer; so here I lie on the grounds of a railway company, under the very shadow of this lovely wooded craig, and on the site of a memorable battle.
How beautiful the evening is! The sun, as the song says, “has gone down o’er the lofty Ben Lomond,” but it has left no “red clouds to preside o’er the scene.”
A purple haze is over all yonder range of lofty mountains, great banks of cloud are rising behind them. Up in the blue, a pale scimitar of a moon is shining, and peace, peace, peace, is over all the wild scene.
By-the-bye, at Saint Ninian’s to-day, we stabled at the “Scots wha hae,” and my horses had to walk through the house, in at the hall door and out at the back. (Travellers will do well to ask prices here before accepting accommodation.) But nothing now would surprise or startle those animals. I often wonder what they think of it all.
We were early on the road this morning of August 14th, feeling, and probably looking, as fresh as daisies. Too early to meet anything or anyone except farmers’ carts, with horses only half awake, and men nodding among the straw.