Old Scotland! Noble old hills! Charming lakes, and enchanting valleys! How like the awakened memories of loved faces, they come back to us when we hear the word “Dumbarton”! What exciting tales of Baliol, of Wallace, of Bruce, of Queen Mary, of Cromwell, come again as we recall the sugar-loaf rock, on which the remnant of the old fortress stands! Those bright youths must have feasted on the associations connected with Dumbarton. As they peered from Wallace’s tower, handled Wallace’s sword, and gazed over the wide landscape, with the sites of battle-fields, castles, palaces, the home of Bruce, the cottage of Wallace, the beautiful valleys of the Clyde and Leven, the majestic Ben Lomond, and the crests of the Highlands, they grew in intellectual stature, and breathed a moral atmosphere as pure as the air that encircled the flagstaff at the summit. There is no education like the actual contact with the scenes connected with heroic self-sacrifice, to train young men for patriots and poets. No discipline is more necessary to the development of a broad and virtuous manhood among any class of young men, than studious travel in foreign countries. To young Bayard, lacking other culture than the few years at the district school, the few months at the academy, and the studious perusal of histories and poems, this experience was of vast importance. Its beneficial effects were seen throughout his life, and frequently show themselves in his editorials, poems, novels, and narratives.
At Dumbarton, Bayard had his first narrow escape, and he said that when he reached the ground, after daring to scale, for flowers, the precipice up which Wallace climbed with his followers for glory and fatherland, he was in such a tremor of terror, in view of his having so narrowly escaped death, that he could scarcely speak. The unusual strength of a little tuft of wild grass, growing in a crevice of the cliff, had saved him from being dashed to pieces. It must have given him a very vivid impression of the daring feats of those old Scotch warriors, who not only faced these perpendicular walls, but fearlessly encountered the foes at the top.
From Dumbarton, Bayard and his friends walked through the valley of the River Leven to Loch Lomond. All his letters and contributions to the newspapers speak of this walk as one of the most enjoyable of all his rambles. In his “Views Afoot,” with which every reader is or should be familiar, he mentions it as a glorious walk. The pastoral beauty of the fields, the clearness of the stream, the ivy-grown towers, the dense forests, the early home of Smollett, whose dashing pen astonished the kingdom in 1748, the summer parks of Scottish noblemen, the mild, soothing August sunshine, were a combination rarely found, and when found as rarely appreciated.
These young travellers had been diligent readers, and, when the steamer hurried them over the lake, the appearance of Ben Lomond and Ben Voirlich, of “Bull’s Rock,” and Rob Roy’s Cave, of Inversnaid and Glen Falloch, called up the shades of the Campbells, Macgregors, Malcolms, Rothesays, Macfarlanes, Macphersons; making each beach and rock along Loch Lomond a feature of romantic interest.
With youthful enthusiasm, Bayard clambered to the rugged top of Ben Lomond, having waded through deep morass and thorny thicket, to reach it, and, from that lookout, gazed around on the peaks of lesser mountains, down upon the sweet Lomond lake, away to the oceans on either side of Scotland, discerning the smoke over Glasgow, the dark plains of Ayr, and, but for a mist, the embattled towers of Stirling and Edinburgh. After a short stop, he descended with his old companions, and a new one (he was constantly finding new friends), along the slippery, stony slopes; and, after a dinner of oatmeal cakes and milk at a cottage near the base, trudged and waded on through that wild tract of woodland and swamp to Loch Katrine. There was the home of poetry. The great forests, through which the Clan-Alpine horns had echoed, the dense forest, through which the scarfs and bows did gleam in the old days of the Highland clans, had disappeared. The blossoming heather and bare rocks made a sorry substitute. But to Bayard, whose life was set to poetry, who had so often studied and declaimed of Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu, and who had often dreamed of the Ellen’s Isle, and the gathering clans, as Walter Scott described them, it must have been an enchanted spot. One may recite and analyze for half a century that poem, and may flatter himself that he has detected all its beauty, and understands all its historic references; but one hour on Loch Katrine is worth more than all that. There the reader lives the poem, and it is a part of his being ever more. Bayard felt compensated there for all the sufferings, by sea and by land, which he had experienced. He gazed fondly upon the glassy, land-locked water; he studied closely the features, manners, and songs of the Highland boatmen, those descendants of the old clans; he sketched, with the keenest interest, Ben Ann, Ben Venue, the gate of the Trosachs, and the curved lines of the sandy shore, and he awoke the echoes at the Goblin’s Gave and Beal-nam-bo. Rich experiences! In such does the youth develop fast into a cultured manhood.
From Loch Katrine, the party walked by way of Loch Vennachar, Coilantogle Ford, and Ben Ledi, to Doune,—the home of royalty during the sixteenth century, and whose old castle is still a majestic ruin. Thence through the plains to Stirling Castle, crowned and battle-honored, and looking down on the valleys of the Forth and Allan Water, and out upon the bloody fields of Bannockburn and Sheriff-muir. Having inspected the dungeons and halls of the castle, looked with horror upon the spot where royalty murdered a friend, and threw the body to the dogs; and after contemplating the grave of the girlish martyrs, they hastily took the shortest route to Glasgow, and thence to the home of Burns, where a great celebration, or memorial gathering, was to be held, to honor the memory of the “rustic bard,” on the banks of his own “Bonnie Doon.”