It is well to have in our mind the conception of a route: but without being utterly departed from—nay, without ceasing to control us within certain bounds—it admits of almost any degrees of deviation. We have known persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid to turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjecting themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity of purpose. They had "chalked out a route," and acted as if they had sworn a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless dominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, when there is nought to shackle them, and when the burden of their cares has been dropt, that for a while they may walk on air, and feel that they too have wings.
"A voice calls on me from the mountain depths,
And it must be obeyed."
The voice was our own—and yet though but a whisper from the heart, it seemed to come from the front of yon distant precipice—sweet and wild as an echo.
On rising at dawn in the shieling, why think, much less determine, where at night we are to lay down our head? Let this be our thought:
"Among the hills a hundred homes have I;
My table in the wilderness is spread;
In these lone spots one honest smile can buy
Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed."
If we obey any powers external to our own minds, let them be the powers of Nature—the rains, the winds, the atmosphere, sun moon, and stars. We must keep a look-out—
"To see the deep fermenting tempest brew'd,
In the grim evening sky;"
that next day we may cross the red rivers by bridges, not by fords; and if they roll along unbridged, that we may set our face to the mountain, and wind our way round his shoulder by sheep-tracks, unwet with the heather, till we behold some great strath, which we had not visited but for that storm, with its dark blue river streaked with golden light,—for its source is in a loch among the Eastern Range; and there, during the silent hours, heather, bracken, and greensward rejoiced in the trembling dews.
There is no such climate for all kinds of beauty and grandeur, as the climate of the Highlands. Here and there you meet with an old shepherd or herdsman, who has beguiled himself into a belief, in spite of many a night's unforeseen imprisonment in the mists, that he can presage its changes from fair to foul, and can tell the hour when the long-threatening thunder will begin to mutter. The weather-wise have often perished in their plaids. Yet among a thousand uncertain symptoms, there are a few certain, which the ranger will do well to study, and he will often exult on the mountain to feel that "knowledge is power." Many a glorious hour has been won from the tempest by him before whose instructed eye—beyond the gloom that wide around blackened all the purple heather—"far off its coming shone." Leagues of continuous magnificence have gradually unveiled themselves on either side to him, as he has slowly paced, midway between, along the banks of the River of Waterfalls; having been assured by the light struggling through the mist, that it would not be long till there was a break-up of all that ghastly dreariment, and that the sun would call on him to come forth from his cave of shelter, and behold in all its pride the Glen affronting the sea.
Some Tourists—as they call themselves—are provided with map and compass; and we hope they find them of avail in extremities, though we fear few such understand their use. No map can tell—except very vaguely—how the aspect of the localities, looked at on its lines, is likely to be affected by sun-rise, meridian, or sun-set. Yet, true it is, that every region has its own happy hours, which the fortunate often find unawares, and know them at once to be so the moment they lift up their eyes. At such times, while "our hearts rejoice in Nature's joy," we feel the presence of a spirit that brings out the essential character of the place, be it of beauty or of grandeur. Harmonious as music is then the composition of colours and of forms. It becomes a perfect picture in memory, more and more idealised by imagination, every moment the veil is withdrawn before it; its aerial lineaments never fade; yet they too, though their being be but in the soul, are mellowed by the touch, of time—and every glimpse of such a vision, the longer we live, and the more we suffer, seems suffused with a mournful light, as if seen through tears.