From Fort Augustus on there are memories of the Risings, chiefly of Prince Charlie, in the glorious before, in the tragic aftermath. He came hither as conqueror, that mere stripling, belted and plaided as a Royal Stewart, and retook his kingdom. The coat skirts of Johnny Cope you can still see in retreat to Inverness, if you look well. From Gairlochy the way leads to Glenfinnan where he raised his Standard, and the Castle of Lochiel, ruined because of him. And hither he came, after Culloden. At Fort Augustus the head of Roderick Mackenzie was presented to the Butcher as that of Prince Charles, and near Gairlochy, and near Lochiel—"beware of the day"—is the "cage" of Cluny MacPherson where he harboured during those days of red pursuit. And the thirty thousand pounds are yet to be paid for betrayal.
INVERGARRY CASTLE.
Loch Oich, littlest and highest, with wooded islands and heavily wooded shores, larches and delicate silver birches, is the exquisite bit of the way. And here stands Invergarry Castle, which saw Prince Charles when first he came gallant from the West and Moidart, and saw him when last he came defeated to the West.
Laggan Avenue runs between Loch Oich and Loch Lochy, a narrow waterway with soft fir-trees lining the way in a most formal fashion; it has a peculiar magic when the mist has shut out the rounded hills of the higher background.
Banavie—to move according to the schedule—is at the top of the locks, three miles of them, Neptune's staircase, leading down to Fort William and to the sea. The railroad is the swifter way and breaks the journey, and passes the ruins of Inverlochy. It is a place to which French and Spanish merchants came in far days of the Seven Hundreds. But better, a place where Montrose won a victory.
Here took place (1645) the battle between the Marquis of Montrose and the Marquis of Argyle, and so splendidly that Montrose and Charles thought the kingdom was coming back to its own. Montrose had started through the Great Glen for Inverness, but hearing that the Campbells were massing at Inverlochy, he turned back, and gave battle. The victory was so tremendously with the royal Montrose that he wrote a letter to Charles, then negotiating with the parliamentarians, and Charles believed so that he broke off the parleying—
"Give me leave, after I have reduced this country, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to Your Majesty, as David's general to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.'"
In five years, the two were both beheaded, one at Whitehall in London, the other at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, the Marquis sixteen months later than the King. "To carry honour and fidelity to the grave."
At Inverlochy looks down the mountain of them all, Ben Nevis, taller than Ben Muich Dhui, taller than Snowdon or Helvellyn. And from its vantage point, the Observatory Tower, one may look over all the territory in many directions whither one proposes to go; the routes can be planned from this top of Scotland. As Sir Archibald Geikie mapped it in his glorified geography—