Moreover, in both Scotland and Japan, it was the bayonet against the sword. The men of mediæval mind in both countries wore and wielded blades and looked upon the use of firearms as something mean and cowardly. Believing, to the last, in the rush against uniformed men in ranks and in slashing with two-handed sword strokes (the Japanese swordsmen using a mat shield, where the Highlander employed a target), both Scot and Nipponese met failure against the triangular stabbing tools that ended feudalism. In Tokio, the bayonet monument on Kudan Hill tells a story. Here, history is told in steel.
What did more than anything else to open the Highlands and break up the very idea of a “hermit nation” was a system of roads which was carried out mainly during the sixteen years between 1726 and 1742, by the British field marshal, George Wade. Though born in Ireland (whence also came the great soldier and diplomatist, Wade, of China), he knew well the Gaels of both the island and the mainland. He spent two years studying the problems of the Highlands, economic and social. He had had long service with the army in the Belgic Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the Mediterranean Islands. During the Jacobite outbreak of 1715, he acted effectively as military governor. Having later again made a thorough study of the Highlands and their inhabitants, he was made commander-in-chief, in order to give effect to his own recommendations. He cut roads through the most important strategic places and lines of country. In the course of this engineering work he superintended the construction of no fewer than forty stone bridges. It is this road-making which constitutes his chief title to fame, as the old distich intimates:—
“Had you seen these roads before they were made,
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”
In a word, he made possible the pacification of the Highlands, by a system of hard-faced or “metalled” roads. Dr. Johnson, who saw the results of Wade’s peaceful campaign, when the work was fresh and the results novel, is unstinted in praise of Wade. In fact, it is quite probable that, except for these new highways, the great man’s “Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,” in 1773, would not, perhaps could not, have been taken.
The houses the Highlanders of a century ago lived in are described by Dr. Johnson. The construction of a hut, he tells us, is of loose stones, arranged for the most part with some tendency to circularity and placed where the wind cannot act upon it with violence, and where the water would run easily away, because it has no floor but the naked ground. The wall, which is commonly about six feet high, declines from the perpendicular a little inward. Some rafters are raised for a roof, which makes a strong and warm thatch, kept from flying off by ropes of twisted heather, of which the ends, reaching from the centre of the thatch to the top of the wall, are held firm by the weight of a large stone. No light is admitted, but at the entrance and through a hole in the thatch, which gives vent to the smoke. The hole is not directly over the fire, lest the rain should extinguish it, and the smoke therefore fills the place before it escapes.
THE SCOTCH BRIGADE MEMORIAL
Entering one of this better class of huts, Dr. Johnson found an old woman whose husband was eighty years old. She knew little English, but he had interpreters at hand. She had five children still at home and others who had gone away. One youth had gone to Inverness to buy meal—by which oatmeal is always meant. She was mistress of sixty goats and many kids were in the enclosure. She had also some poultry, a potato garden, and four shucks containing each twelve sheaves of barley. Huts in building and equipment are not more uniform than are palaces, and hers was divided into several apartments. She was boiling goat’s flesh in the kettle for the next meal. With true pastoral hospitality, she invited her guest to sit down and drink whiskey. Sweetening was obtained from honey. Probably the reason why marmalade is so much used by the modern Scots is because of old their ancestors used a great deal of honey, of which marmalade, usually made from oranges imported from Spain, takes the place.
Though the old lady’s kirk was four miles off—probably eight English miles—she went to worship every Sunday. She was glad to get some snuff, which is the luxury of a Highland cottage. In one village of three huts, Dr. Johnson found a chimney and a pane of glass.