The Great Canal.
The trip from Oban to Inverness, through the Caledonian Canal, with its alternating locks and lochs, and its mountain walls on either side, is one of the finest in the world in point of scenery. It was something of a surprise to us to find at Fort Augustus, half way up the canal, the Benedictine Order established in a magnificent group of buildings, which had been erected at a cost of four hundred thousand dollars, but we presently remembered that there had always been a Roman Catholic element in the Highlands, that this element had ardently supported the pretensions of Charles Edward Stuart to the British crown, and that Lord Lovat, the leading Roman Catholic nobleman of the region, had been executed for the treasonable part he took in that affair. In the Tower of London we had seen the block on which he was beheaded, with the print of the axe showing plainly in the wood. In 1876 the Lord Lovat of that time presented this splendid property to the Benedictines. Of Prince Charlie's career in this part of Scotland we shall have more to say in our next letter.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
Inverness and Memories of Flora Macdonald.
Perth, September 6, 1902.
Our farthest north on our European tour was Inverness, the capital of the Highlands, which we reached from Oban by way of the magnificent route through the Caledonian Canal, and which we left by way of the railroad that runs southwards through the battlefield of Culloden, where the Young Pretender was defeated, and the cause of the Stuarts finally overthrown in 1746. The town has twenty thousand people, is well built of substantial materials, a fresh-looking pink stone predominating, and is the cleanest city we have seen in Great Britain. It has a fine situation, its business portion occupying the more level ground on both sides of its broad, clear river, while handsome villas stretch along the terrace which rises above the valley. At a short distance from the town there rises, from the level plain on the riverside, a strikingly beautiful wooded hill, on the summit and sides of which the people of Inverness have made their cemetery, one of the loveliest of all the lovely cities of the dead.
