Lest I or mine should sell these stones or sticks.”
Discovering, as we do, many evidences of French taste and importation, not only at Stirling, but throughout Scotland, besides noting so many points of contact between Scottish and French history, we can hardly wonder why Scottish people feel so much at home in the United States and why Americans and Scotchmen get along so well together. American taste in dress and household matters is certainly not English, nor were our ideas on the subjects of art and decoration inherited from our British ancestors. Our historic record and vocabulary, with the tendency of Americans to-day to go to Paris rather than London for their garments, the cultivation of their tastes, and for many of their ideas, show that the United States, like Scotland, has been mightily influenced by French taste. We, Scots and Yankees, are alike debtors to the land in which feudalism, chivalry, and Gothic art, and not a few canons of taste and things of beauty, reached their highest development.
CHAPTER XI
OBAN AND GLENCOE—CHAPTERS IN HISTORY
Oban is the heart’s delight for a tourist, provided he does not arrive when the hotels are overcrowded. If one can get a room upon the high ridge overlooking the shining waters, he will have a view that is inspiring.
One can reach Oban either by the Caledonian Railway, by way of Stirling and Callander, or on the water through the Crinan Canal. This is an artificial highway, nine miles long, which was cut to avoid the much longer passage of seventy miles round the Mull of Cantyre, when going from Glasgow to Inverness. This shorter canal was excavated toward the end of the eighteenth century, but its life has not been without those accidents which we, from digging the Panama Canal, have learned are inevitable. In 1859, after a heavy rain, one of the three reservoirs which supply the canal, the highest being eight hundred feet above the canal, burst. The torrent of water rushing down the mountain-slope washed away part of the bank and filled the canal with earth and stones for upwards of a mile. Nevertheless, both the Crinan and Caledonian Canals pay well, and from the surplus earnings are kept in good order.
At Oban, sheltered and with a delightful climate, we look out upon the pretty little island of Kerrera, an old fortress of the MacDougalls, which now serves for use as well as beauty. It not only screens the town from the Atlantic gales, but virtually converts the bay into a land-locked harbor.
Instead of the little village and fishing-station, which Dr. Johnson looked upon in 1773, Oban is now a bustling town, which is very lively and crowded in summer, withal the paradise of the tourist and shopper. Here any pater familias, with loose change in his pocket, when travelling with his wife and daughters, is apt to be, on entering one of those splendid shops, as wax in their loving hands. Silks, plaids, gay woollens, delightful things of all sorts in dry goods—which ladies especially can so well appreciate—are here in luxurious abundance, and at prices that do not seem to soar too high. As for tartans, one can study in color and pattern not only a whole encyclopædia of the heraldry of the clans, but may be shown combinations of checks and stripes, wrought into tartans never known in dream, use, or history, by any Highland clan. Nevertheless these unhistorical and expensive plaids are delightful to look at and will make “cunning” sashes and “lovely” dress goods.
Not the least of our pleasant memories of Oban are associated with those wonderful products of the loom. Whether coming from the splendid machinery of the great mills, built with the aid of capital and thus reaching the highest perfection of craftsmanship joined to the last refinement of invention and experiment, or simply the handwork of the crofters in the distant isles, these tartans show a wonderful evolution of national art. From many women and girls on the islands far out at sea, without much of human society and whose dumb friends are but dogs, cattle, and sheep, come reminders of their industry and taste that are touching to both one’s imagination and sympathies. Let us hope that not too much of the profits of this cottage industry goes into the hands of those who control the trade. Let the worker be the first partaker of the fruits of his toil.
In going up by water through Scotland’s great glen and canal, at our leisure, we shall stop at the places worth seeing. Moreover, the twenty-eight locks forming “Neptune’s Staircase” will enable us to alternate pedestrianism with life on deck. First, after a ride of an hour and a half, we come to the town called Ballaculish. It has an imposing situation at the entrance of Loch Leven, and is not far away from the wild glen, which has left, in its name and associations, such a black spot on the page of Scotland’s annals during the reign of William III.
With our Boston and Buffalo friends, we chatted over British politics in the past, reopening leaves of history, as we steamed to Ballaculish, or progressed on our way on wheels to Glencoe. Except shops and hotels, and the old slate quarries, by which the roofs of the world are covered,—since the quarries send many million roofing slates abroad every year,—there is little to see in this town on the loch.