Dochfour, Ness, Oich, Lochy, are the names of these "great lakes" that make the chain. There is quality to their names, like Superior, Huron, Erie, Ontario. But the Scottish chain is sixty miles long and can be made from morning to evening, with enough of the day left to go through Loch Linnhe and so to Oban; as one should add, through the St. Lawrence and so to Quebec. Yet when one has passed from Inverness to Oban the mind is as full, it has come through as much contact, nay, more, as in the journey from Duluth to Quebec.
There are ruined castles by the way. Urquhart, looking very picturesque, especially if the mist is but half come down over the world and the purple of the distances is of that deep royal purple so characteristic of the water and mountain distances of this wild west country. Yet the sunny distances are as much a marvel of colour in their pale blue that has so much intensity, so much real vivacity. Purple one has learned to associate with distance; or, since some painter has shown us the truthful trick. But blue, this particular Scottish blue, I have never seen elsewhere. It is woven of mists and sunlight in equal proportions.
And so, Urquhart in its ruin, standing romantically on a fir clad promontory, is most alluring as the boat rounds it on its early way. I do not know anything of Urquhart. The name rather suggests the middle name carried by a once famous actress. Somehow I half believe that in that castle Charlotte Corday may have stabbed Marat. But then, facetious and unromantic, I wonder at the baths in Urquhart in the old days when skene dhus served in the place of daggers.
There are other romantic lures in the names which seem to have dropped so carelessly anywhere. Inverarigaig—which sounds more musical than it looks on the page—stands at the head of the pass through which The Prince came after that day at Culloden on his way to the West as wanderer. Far down the stretch of water rises Mealfourvournie, a rounded naked hill overlooking the ravine where once the church of Cilles Christ stood; and once, full of Mackenzies, was set on fire by the Macdonalds, and all the Mackenzies burned. The act is not singular among the clans. McLeod of Dare gives it to the Macdonalds and McLeods. And so one comes to believe the story of a traveler coming on a Highland cottage and asking if there were any Christians within, got back the reply,—"no, we're all Macdonalds." Surely Saint Columba was needed in later centuries than the Sixth.
The Falls of Foyers are across the lake, surrendered now to aluminum works. And yet Burns wrote of them
"Among the heathery hills and rugged woods
The roaring Foyers pours his moving floods."
Christopher North wrote a better, a prose poem, which sounds somewhat curiously in American ears. "What a world of waters now comes tumbling into the abyss! Niagara! hast thou a fiercer roar? Listen—and you think there are momentary pauses of thunder, filled up with goblin groans! All the military music-bands of the army of Britain would here be dumb as mutes—Trumpet, Cymbal and the Great Drum!"
Fort Augustus closes the end of the loch, and here the Benedictines, black-robed, move in somber file where once the red-coated soldiers marched.
Five locks raise the steamer fifty feet, into the Highlands. And while the boat is waiting the rise, here, as at any of the locks, there is entertainment. Fellow travelers get out to stretch their legs, and that is amusing enough, tolerantly considered. There are tea houses at every lock, many of them, sometimes charmingly rose-embowered like the houses along the Thames. There are pipers who march majestically up and down, swinging their sporrans, swaying their kilts; one is almost afraid to give a penny.
And I remember at one of these pausing places where the passengers remained on the boat, that a very pleasing gentleman who looked as George Washington may have looked on gala occasions did sing for my entertainment and that of my fellow passengers; except one fellow American who expressed her disapproval. Perhaps George Washington did not dress so gaily; it was just the hat. There was a black coat, white breeches, crimson waistcoat, blue stockings, silver buckled shoes, and a cocked hat. And this pleasing gentleman sang to a tune that was no tune but very cheering, about "the hat me faither wore." And he was so doing his best, which was very good indeed, that I was forced to get change for a sixpence—it cannot be ethical, and certainly is not fun to throw a little silver disk when six large coppers may be thrown. And the American female fellow passenger said, "Doesn't it seem as though he could get something nearer a man's job?" Yet he was such a pleasant person. And they're not common to be met on the highway.