Glencoe is well known to the lovers of the picturesque as one of the very grandest scenes in Scotland. We have seen some of the sublimest scenes in Switzerland and in Norway, but none of them, not Chamouni nor the Romsdale Valley have obliterated the memory or lessened the admiration of that awful glen which we have often thought of as a softened Sinai—a smaller but scarcely gentler similitude of the Mount that might be touched. There are, of course, many diversities. Through the valley of Glencoe winds a stream called the Cona—a name of perfect music, soft as Italian, and which seems the very echo of the pathetic and perpetual wail of a lonely river. No such stream laves the foot of Sinai's savage hill. Then there lies below one of the boldest hills of the pass, a lovely little sheet of water, being the Cona dispread into a small lake looking up with childlike, trustful, untrembling, eye to the lowering summits above, and here and there a fine verdure creeps up the precipices and green pastures, and still waters encompass hills on which Aaron might have waited for death, or Moses ascended to meet God. But the mural aspect of many of the precipices, the rounded shape of some of the mountains contrasted with the sharp razor-like ridges of others, the deep and horrid clefts and ravines which yawn here and there, the extent, dreariness, solitude, and grandeur of the mountain range above—the summits you see, but scarcely see behind their nearer brethren, as though retiring like proud and lonely spirits into their own inaccessible hermitages, the appearance of convulsion and tearing in pieces and rending in twain, and unappeasable unreconciliation which insulates as it were, and lifts on end the whole region are those of Horeb, as we have seen it in picture or in dream, and the beholder might, on a cloudy and dark day, or on an evening which has set all the hills on fire, become awestruck and silent, as if waiting for another Avatar of the Ancient One on the thundersplit and shaggy peaks. In other moods, and when seen from a distance while sailing from Fort-William, its mountains have suggested the image of the last survivors of the giants on the eve of their defeat by Jove, collected together into one grim knot of mortal defiance with grim-scathed faces, and brows riven by lightning, retorting hatred and scorn on their triumphant foes. And when you plunge into its recesses and see far up among its cliffy rocks spots of snow unmelted amid the blaze of June, the cataracts, which after rain, descend from its sides in thousands; its solitary and gloomy aspect which the sunshine of summer is not entirely able to remove, and which assumes a darker hue and deepens into dread sublimity, when the thunder cloud stoops his wing over the valley, and the lightning runs among the quaking rocks, you feel inclined to call Glencoe, in comparison with the other glens of Scotland, the "Only One," the secluded, self-involved, solemn, silent valley. Green covers the lower parts of the hills, but it seems the green of the grave, its sounds are in league with silence, its light is the ally of darkness. The feeling, however, finally produced is not so much terror as pensiveness, and if the valley be, as it has been called, the valley of the Shadow of Death, it is death without his sting—the everlasting slumber there; but the ghastliness and the horror fled. Yet at times there passes over the mind as you pass this lonely valley, the recollection of what occurred 200 years ago, and a whisper seems to pierce your ear, "Here! blood basely shed by treachery stained the spotless snow. These austere cliffs, where now soars and screams the eagle, once listened to the shriek of murdered men, women, and children; and on this spot where peaceful tourists now walk admiring the unparalleled grandeur, and feeling the spirit of the very solitary place bathing them in quiet reverie and dream-like bliss was transacted a scene of cruelty and cold-blooded murder which all ages shall arise and call accursed!"
As the clime is, so the heart of man. The Macdonalds were worthy of their savage scenery, and more savage weather. True children of the mist were they, strong, fearless, living principally on plunder, at feud with the adjacent Campbells to which clan Breadalbane belonged, and often had the blood of the race of Dermid smoked on their swords. MacIan, their chieftain, was a noble specimen of the Highland character. He was a man of distinguished courage and sagacity, of a venerable and majestic appearance, was stately in bearing, and moved among his neighbouring chieftains like a demigod. He had fought at Killiecrankie and was a marked man by Government. He had had a meeting with Breadalbane on the subject of the proclamation and their mutual differences, but they had come to a rupture, and MacIan went away with the impression that Breadalbane would do him an injury if he could. And yet, with a strange inconsistency amounting almost to infatuation, he delayed taking the oath, and thereby securing his own safety, till the appointed period was nearly expired. In vain is the net set in the sight of any bird. But Stair had set the net before the eyes of Macdonald, and had openly expressed a hope that he would fall into it, and still the old man lingered.
A few days, however, before the first of January, Colonel Hill is sitting in his room at Fort-William when some strangers claim an audience. There enter several Highlanders, all clad in the Macdonald tartan—one towering in stature over the rest, and of a dignified bearing—all armed, but all in an attitude of submission. They are MacIan and the leaders of his tribe, who have come at the eleventh hour to swear the oath of allegiance to King William. The Colonel, a scholar and a gentlemen, is glad and yet grieved to see them; for, alas! being a military and not a civil officer, he has no power to receive their oaths. He tells them so, and the old chieftain at first remonstrates, and at last, in his agony, weeps—perhaps his first tears since infancy, like the waters of the Cona, breaking over the channels of their rocky bed! The tears of a brave patriarch are the most affecting of all tears; and Colonel Hill, moved to the heart, writes out a letter to Sir Colin Campbell, Sheriff of Argyleshire, requesting him, although legally too late, to stretch a point and receive the submission of the chief; and with this letter in his Sporranmollach, away he hied in haste from Fort-William to Inverary. The road lay within a mile of his dwelling, but such was his speed that he did not even turn aside to salute his family. The roads were horrible; the very elements seemed to have joined in the conspiracy against the doomed Macdonalds; a heavy snow-storm had fallen, and in spite of all the efforts he could make, he reached Inverary too late—the first of January was past. Worse still, he found the Sheriff absent, and had to wait three days for his return. He told him his story, and he being a sensible and a humane man, after a little hesitation, moved by the old man's tears, and the letter of Colonel Hill, consented to administer to him the oath, and sent off at the same time a message to the Privy Council relating the facts of the case, and explaining all the reasons of his conduct. He also wrote to Colonel Hill, requesting him to take care that his soldiers should not molest the Macdonalds till the pleasure of the Privy Council in the matter was made known.
GEO. GILFILLAN.
(To be Continued.)
THE HIGHLAND CEILIDH.
BY ALASTAIR OG.
[CONTINUED.]