And so I did not hesitate to go with Hamerton to Glencoe, lovely and lonely and most terrible glen. There is such a thing as being haunted, the dead do cry for revenge, the evil that men do does live after them.
It is a wide valley, yet closed in by great granite precipices, for safe guarding against betrayal. The first section of the strath is calm enough, human, green, habitable, with Loch Leven, a branch of Loch Etive, sparkling in the sun. The second wide opening is terrible as massacre, not green, very stern, and wild as Scottish nature, human or not, can become. Even the little clachan of the Macdonalds seems not to welcome the world except on suspicion. And that murder, that assassination (February 14, 1692) when William was king—William who might have been "great" except for Boyne and Glencoe—still fills the memory.
Hamerton painted the picture—"In the vastness of the valley, over the dim, silver stream that flowed away into its infinite distance, brooded a heavy cloud, stained with a crimson hue, as if the innocent blood shed there rose from the earth even yet, to bear witness against the assassins who gave the name of Glen Coe such power over the hearts of men. For so long as history shall be read, and treachery hated, that name, Glen Coe, shall thrill mankind with undiminished horror! The story is a century old now (1859). The human race has heard it talked of for over a hundred years. But the tale is as fresh in its fearful interest as the latest murder in the newspapers."
Yet, a half century still later, I have heard those who declared Glencoe lovely and not terrible. No doubt the generation does not read history and does not feel story.
We did not go on to the King's House, built in the days of King William, when roads were being driven through the Highlands in order that they might be held to a doubtful Stewart sovereignty. For we had read how Hamerton thought it more than enough to drink a glass here, and we doubted not he had read of the trials of Dorothy Wordsworth, sheets that must be dried for hours before the beds could be made, the one egg for breakfast, and—could we have found that china cup that Dorothy forgot? Rather, we chose to return down the lake side for another look at the red roofs of the home of Lord Strathcona, that wizard of the nineteenth century, who had left Scotland with only his wits and returned from America with his millions and a title.
Iona
There is no pilgrimage which can be taken to any shrine excelling pilgrimage to Iona. And all the pilgrim way is lined with memory and paved with beauty.
On almost every promontory stand ruined castles, not so frequent as the watch towers on the Mediterranean heights, and therefore not so monotonous. One knows that each of these, as of those, has had its history, and here one ponders that history, perhaps tries to remember it, or, tries to evoke it. Dunolly which we visited in the day's drift from Oban stood up on the right with the city still in view. But it is when the Firth opens into the Sound that the glory of the water-world of the West comes on you.
The Sound of Mull is, so Sir Walter has said, "the most striking water of the Hebrides." It is very lovely in this shell-pink light of early morning, it could not have looked lovelier when Sir Walter estimated it. The hills begin to stand boldly forth, for the gray mists of the morning are rising. It is to be a fine day, which here because of its exception means a brilliant sun-stricken day, and all things clear as geography. But, at least once, one should see things one wishes always to keep as material for remembrance and for imagination, not in the mist dimly, but face to face like this. Or, as the Maid of Lorn in Ardtornish, when she was led
"To where a turret's airy head
Slender and steep and battled round,
O'erlooked, dark Mull! thy mighty Sound.
Where thwarting tides, with mingled roar
Part thy swarth hills from Morven's shore."