My thoughts, too, are 'sloping' in a westerly direction. I am on a personally-conducted tour—my brain is in command, and I am the spectator.
If only I can forget that those letters have to be answered, and if no other miserable wretch comes to sing touching refrains outside in the rain, my brain and I shall thoroughly enjoy each other's company; whilst the firelight sheds its dim radiance over glimpses of the metamorphised past and the indeterminable future, till all is so blended together that I cannot tell whether these things have been or are to be.
I see long stretches of Rannoch moor as Stevenson saw it, 'where the mists rise and die away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moorfowl and the peewees crying upon it, and far over to the east a herd of deer moving like dots. Much of it is red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there are quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons.'
Northward over the moor ponderous Ben Alder lifts his bleak and barren top in massive strength above lonely Loch Ericht, whilst beyond the loch, Schehallion's slender summit, deep blue in the evening sky, tells of that fierce day when the body of the dead Graham lay on the hillside and the sun went down on a lost cause.
Southward are the peaks of the Black Mount and the peaceful hills that feed the upper waters of Glen Lyon; then Buchaille Etive and all those wild, rocky mountains further west, dominating wild Glencoe, stir the memory with the story of how Campbell of Glen Lyon betrayed and murdered the whole of the M'Ians with treachery as black as the cliffs of the Aonach Dubh and as cruel as the winter winds that sweep mercilessly across the corries and pinnacles of Bidean nam Bian, the peak of the storms. Or in imagination I follow Alan Breck with Davie Balfour as they flee by the sea-loch that separates Appin from Mamore up and across to the great moor, toiling and resting, but ever onward, till amongst the labyrinth of glens in the heart of the forest of Ben Alder they found Cluny Macpherson. Yes, Rannoch moor is wild and desolate; and could the grey blocks of stone or the bare slabs of granite that lie amongst the brown heather speak, surely there would be many more tales of bygone adventures to listen to and wonder over.
From Rannoch my mind wanders across the stretches of blue water, past stormy Ardnamurchan to the island of Mull. I am on the summit of Ben More; below lies a ridge smothered in snow and ice. I am trying all I can with words of sweet persuasion to entice my companion, Colin Phillip, down what is obviously the shortest route to the next peak, A Chioch. But he says it is impossible, he will not trust himself on that slope of snow and ice. Now my thoughts fly to the shores of Loch Earn. I am listening to one, a geologist, who expounds to me the marvels of the prehistoric glacier; he also, with words of sweet persuasion, is trying to make me believe that Loch Morar was excavated by a glacier. Those wonderful geological truths, how simple, how all-sufficient they are to explain to the uninitiated the why and wherefore of the ancient mountains; but put not your trust in them; they suffer by the process of evolution, and are changed. Without doubt, in those days Phillip believed that I was totally ignorant of mountaineering; whilst now, perhaps, that geologist thinks that I am equally ignorant of the truth. Whether it is the truth about Loch Morar that I mean, or about that geologist's statement, or about my own, I really don't know.
In imagination I am hurried on; I see myself, footsore and weary, wandering through Ardgour and Moidart, or across from Invercannich through Affric's wild glens down to Shiel House, by the western sea; now I am glissading down Beinn Alligin, or hacking my way through a cornice, apparently hundreds of feet high, on Aonach Mor, my companion Travers meanwhile slowly freezing on the brink of an absolutely perpendicular ice slope, the daylight waning, and our retreat cut off. Then comes a glimpse of the platform at Kingshouse station. I am addressing winged words to Colin Phillip, and he is engaged in a contentious refutation of my argument. The subject is not at all interesting—only the comparative usefulness of painting and photography as a means for reproducing mountain form; but the result is most disgraceful, for presently we are seen sitting at different ends of the platform waiting for the train, and thinking—well, it doesn't matter what we thought. Was it yesterday, or when, that all these things happened? Still it cannot be so very long ago that Phillip climbed Sgurr Alasdair, the finest peak of the Coolin in Skye. Would that on that occasion, just below the summit, I had possessed a camera, for then could I have shown Phillip that photography at least was capable of very faithfully reproducing his manly and superior form, as he was seen approaching the cairn, even though it might be useless in giving us the true proportions of inferior mountains. Neither do I think that I should be overstepping the bounds of prudence should I assert that Colin Phillip has a marked dislike for stone walls. I have hopes, however, that some day a happy combination of the despised camera—the stone wall and Phillip—may yield interesting results. Little did Phillip think, that evening at Kingshouse, that a time would come when the maligned camera would turn—turn its eye on Phillip and on that stone wall—and wink with malicious pleasure.
But in spite of winged words, weary feet, and endless eggs and bacon, these were fine times—from Sutherland to the Galloway Highlands, from Mull to the mountains on Deeside, Colin Phillip and I have wandered in fair weather and in foul.
We have waxed enthusiastic over the Cairngorm mountains. We have watched the last light of day fade far away over the Atlantic behind the islands of the west; and although we may have disagreed in many things, yet we have always acknowledged that for wild beauty, for colour, for atmospheric effects and lonely grandeur, we know of no country that is equal to the Highlands of Scotland.
But a younger century has arrived, and