“I hear the pibroch sounding, sounding,
Deep o’er the mountains and glen,
While light springing footsteps are trampling the heath -
’Tis the march of the Cameron men.”
The day is fiercely hot, but a breeze is blowing and the roads are good.
On leaving Blair Athol the way continues good for a time; we catch a glimpse of the Duke’s whitewashed castle on the right, among the trees and wood.
But we soon leave trees behind us, though on the left we still have the river. It is swirling musically round its bed of boulders now; in winter I can fancy how it will foam, and rage, and rush along with an impetuosity that no power could resist!
We are now leaving civilisation behind us—villas, trees, cultivated fields, and even houses—worth the name—will for a time be conspicuous only by their absence.
Some miles on, the road begins to get bad and rough and hilly, rougher by far than the roads in the Wolds of York or among the banks of Northumberland. It gets worse and worse, so rough now that it looks as if a drag-harrow had been taken over it.
We are soon among the Grampians, but the horses are wet and tired. Even Pea-blossom, hardy though she be, is dripping as if she had swum across a river, while poor Corn-flower is a mass of foam, and panting like a steam engine.
We were told we ought to go past the Highland hamlet of Struan. We find now, on enquiring at a wayside sheiling, that Struan is out of our way, and that it consists of but one small inn and a hut or two, where accommodation could hardly be found for man or beast.
So we go on over the mountains.
About a mile above Struan, we stop to let the horses breathe, and to gaze around us on the wild and desolate scene. Nothing visible but mountains and moorland, heath, heather, and rocks, the only trees being stunted silver birches.