One could easily see how well adapted was such a dress to a rough campaign in a mountainous country. One scarcely wondered why, when fighting in hilly regions, the Highlander was usually the superior of the average infantryman. Nevertheless, some comical chapters in eighteenth-century American history come into mind. When we remembered that modern footgear was strange to men who had been used to the ancient brogues and to whom the proverb “as easy as an old shoe” was a novelty, the story is quite credible that, in the repulse by the French of the attack made by the British army under Abercrombie at Ticonderoga, in 1758, when the Highlanders were forced to retreat from Fort Carillon, there were thousands of shoes left stuck in the mud when the British ran to their boats.
We could see at a glance that Inverness was the centre of traffic and travel during the summer months, when tourists made the northeast and west of cool Scotland very lively for a few weeks. We looked in at the Town Hall, near which stands the old town cross. At the foot of this is the lozenge-shaped stone, called the “Stone of the Tubs,” reverenced as the palladium of Inverness. It was anciently useful from its having served as a resting-place for women carrying water from the river.
It is a sight for a stranger in the Highlands to see the washerwomen in their fullest muscular activity on summer days, when they renovate the linen of the tourists. Why men should want to pay money to see the Salome and other dances popular in Christian countries is a mystery to some of us, when among the laundry-women the limits of cuticular exposure are reached. They leap in frenzy upon the masses of linen in the suds which fill the deep tubs, but the results justify the use of these primitive washing-machines.
Curiously enough, this part of Scotland is not wholly free from earthquakes, for which the geologists give reasons. In the seismic disturbances of 1816, the spire of the old jail, one hundred and fifty feet high, was curiously twisted. Now this spire serves as a belfry for the town clock. Westward from the Ness is the higher ground, called the “Hill of the Fairies,” where lies the beautiful city of the dead—one of the most attractively situated cemeteries in the whole of Britain. On the athletic grounds near the town, at the end of September, are held the Scottish games and athletic contests, the most important in the country. Four bridges span the river. Altogether, our impressions of the town were very pleasing.
But Inverness has a history also. It is believed to have been one of those primitive strongholds—in this case, of the Picts—which were so often to be found at the junction of waters. To this place came St. Columba, in the year 565. Here, too, was the castle of Macbeth, in which he murdered Duncan, which stood until it was demolished by Malcolm Canmore, who built on its site a larger one. William the Lion, in 1214, granted the town a charter, by which it became a royal burgh. Of the Dominican abbey, founded in 1233, nothing remains. The town was burned in 1411, by Donald of the Isles, and when fifteen years later, James I held a parliament in the castle, Scottish statecraft was still in a primitive stage of evolution, for three of the northern chieftains summoned to the council were executed for daring to assert their independence. In 1652, Queen Mary was denied admittance into the castle, but she remembered the slight and caused the governor to be hanged afterwards. Cromwell came hither also and built a great fort. In Inverness gathered the Jacobites who followed both the Old and the Young Pretender. Inverness has had its ups and downs, and, as a Western orator once declared of his district, has, besides raising much ham, raised also much more of what General Sherman named as the synonym for war.
To come to Inverness without visiting Culloden would be like going to Rome without seeing St. Peters; for at Culloden, where was fought one of the decisive battles of the world, the death-blow was given to Scottish feudalism. There the clan system was knocked to pieces. Then, also, for the benefit and blessing of the whole world, the Highlanders were scattered over the earth, to do what they certainly have done well—a goodly share of the world’s work.
Now for Culloden! We—that is, four men of us—hired a horse, driver, and carriage, and rode out to the desolate moor, which is usually called “Culloden” by strangers and “Drummossie Moor” by the natives. It is a tableland lying six miles northeast of Inverness and not far from the Moray Firth. As we approached it, we could discern the sunken lines of the trenches, in which about eighteen hundred of the clansmen, killed in battle, were buried. In 1881, these trenches of the different clans were marked by rough memorial stones giving the clan names. At one part of the field was a stream of water, to which the poor wounded wretches crawled to slake that horrible thirst which comes so quickly to a soldier who has lost blood and whose veins are drying up.
On one side was a cairn of stones about twenty feet high, reared to mark the battle, in the front of which is set a tablet giving the historical facts and date. But what touched us most deeply, as Americans, was a colossal wreath of flowers and greenery hung near the top. This token, though faded and its purple ribbons stained by three months of summer rain and storm, told of “hands beyond sea” and hearts that were saddened at the name of Culloden. I asked who had hung that wreath upon the cairn and was told that it had been sent by Scotsmen in America, whose ancestors had fallen in that awful battle of April 16, 1746, in which the hopes of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” were shattered and those of the House of Stuart to reattain power came to an end. I understood that such a floral tribute was offered annually.
THE CAIRN AT CULLODEN