Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her

by William Elliot Griffis

The long inland waterway, of which the “Caledonian Canal” is the main portion, unites the waters of the German Ocean, at Moray Firth, with those of the Atlantic, which wash the shores of the Island of Mull. Considered as one highway, this trough, which forms also the eastern boundary of “the Highlands,” was made in part by nature and in part by art. In easy and safe passage, it saves the shipmasters about four hundred miles of coasting voyage around the north of Great Britain, through the stormy Pentland Firth which divides Caithness from the Orkney Islands. The total length of the canal proper is about sixty miles; the part made by man’s work covering twenty-two miles. A chain of fresh-water lakes, four in number, on various levels, stretching along the line of the great glen of Scotland, has been united by water ladders, up which ships are lifted and by which time is saved.

The route of the canal was surveyed in 1773 by James Watt, the famous engineer, better known in the annals of steam. Following an Act of Parliament in 1803, the canal, constructed under the supervision of Thomas Telford, was opened to navigation in 1822. There are twenty-eight locks, each having the standard dimension of one hundred and sixty feet length, so that steamers of comfortable length can go through. It was on one of these, the Fusileer, that we travelled from Oban to Inverness, on another we moved in reverse order, and great were these days. One was sunny and warm. The other was so cloudy and cold that a grate fire at the hotel at Fort William felt thoroughly delightful.

On the second of these inland voyages we were on the steamer Gondolier. From Oban we cross Loch Linnhe, which forms the southern end of the great canal, and call at Ardgour. At the head of the loch we stop at Fort William, formerly called “the Key of the Highlands.” It is now a town consisting chiefly of a long, narrow street, full of hotels. The fort was originally erected in 1655 by Cromwell’s General Monk and called “Kilmallie.” Under the reign of King William, in 1690, General Hugh McKay enlarged the work and named it after the Dutch king, the town being called “Maryburgh,” in honor of the queen. It was to this place that the perpetrators of the massacre at Glencoe came to divide their spoil.

In 1715 and again in 1746, the followers of “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” the Jacobites, besieged the place, but unsuccessfully. No remnants of the fort, which was dismantled in 1860, now remain, for in 1890 the ruins were wholly removed to provide room for the iron rails and railway station; for, since the hills come down close together, there is not much level real-estate room. It illustrates the sadness of things to find here great distilleries which are large enough to mar the landscape.

The town produced a poet, and near the railway station is an obelisk to the memory of Ewen MacLachlin, who wrote verses in Gaelic. Four miles away is Ben Nevis, 4406 feet high, the loftiest mountain in the British Islands. Later, at Inverness, I met a Scottish artist who had painted the mountain from many points of view, but he seemed more impressed with its ugliness and shaggy character than with its beauty. In fact, in comparing the artistic work of this painter with that of Mr. Robert Allan, who transfers to canvas the ideal loveliness of the ocean,—both Scottish and both masterly,—we recalled that inimitable passage of Ruskin, contrasting the form and functions of the mountains and the sea, which furnishes so illuminating a commentary on the passage written by an ancient admirer of nature and its Creator,—“Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep.”

We noted, in our summer travels, not a few men of the easel. A mile and a half from the town is the grand old ruin of Inverlochie, to which many landscape painters resort. Other places of interest are the site of the battlefield of 1645 and the castle of Lord Abinger, built in the Scottish baronial style.

Yet at all these attractions we did not much more than glance, despite the importunities of local guides, who sounded their praises unremittingly. The reason for which we stopped for a day or two in this mountain stronghold was not to study military fortification, or to see the town, which, apart from its summer life, has little allurement for the tourist who values time. We were there to see the Highland games, for this day in August was the date set for “the gathering of the clans” of the shire. They came not for battle as in the old times, but for the Lochaber Highland games, such as the hammer-throwing, putting the stone, pole-vaulting, leaping, and jumping; besides the various Scottish dances, such as prancing and stepping over swords and the Highland fling.

Heavy rain came down in the early part of the morning, and during the whole day there was a drizzle, making the air heavy with dampness and the ground meadows miry. We supposed of course that there would be no exhibition.

Vain thought! What does a Highlander care about moisture? To him rain is but an old friend, whom he would no more think of speaking against than of reviling his mother. Indeed, it is his native element. So in the afternoon, our lady, donning her mackintosh, which she had just purchased at Oban, and I with umbrella and overcoat splashed over the fields to the hillside and meadows, where thousands of people were gathered together. There may have been other umbrellas in use, but they were not conspicuous, and certainly not numerous. Some of the athletic performances were admirable and the achievements of manly strength were worthy of the applause which they so generously received.

Yet an alien, one not of the heather, cannot be rapturous in honest praise of the dances, at least those which were prolonged to the full and apparently appropriate time, and which the spectators seemed greatly to enjoy. It was something, no doubt, to behold an able-bodied man in a dress that quite equalled that of the peacock, jumping about among the crossed lines of naked steel without getting his toes cut off. There was undoubtedly some grace also in the way he curved his arms above his head. Doubtless the very swish of his kilts and the sight of his bare and hairy legs filled some bosoms with emotions of envy, accompanied, as they were, with what seemed blood-curdling cries, the relics of old savagery. Probably my education had been neglected, for I should not wish to attend these exhibitions too frequently, unless paid handsomely for the labor incurred.