W.H.J. Boot R.B.A. delt

C.O. Murray sculpt

On the Wharfe—Bolton Abbey.

The Wharfe, from Bolton Abbey.—A few signed Artist’s Proofs of this Etching on India paper can be obtained, price £1 1s. each, on application to the Publishers,

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited, Ludgate Hill, London.

THE
Rivers of Great Britain

DESCRIPTIVE HISTORICAL PICTORIAL

RIVERS OF THE EAST COAST

CASSELL & COMPANY Limited
LONDON PARIS NEW YORK & MELBOURNE
1889

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

We are indebted for the use of Photographs on pages [1], [4], [8], [9], [12], [15], [17], [21], [24], [25], [29], [32], [33], [40], [45], [48], [57], [65], [71], [76], [77], [100], [108], and [109], to Messrs. J. Valentine and Sons, Dundee; on pages [12], [13], [16], [20], [28], [44], [60], [69], [93], [125], [245], [329], and [334], to Messrs. G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen; on pages [53], [73], [74], [92], [96], [105], [193], [205], [217], [250], [300], [316], [317], and [324], to Messrs. Poulton and Son, Lee; on pages [80] and [89], to Mr. T. Scott, Birmingham; on pages [79] and [88], to Mr. T. Foster, Coldstream; on page [85], to Mr. W. Green, Berwick-on-Tweed; on pages [82], [137], and [189], to Mr. H. Piper, Gateshead; on pages [116], [140], [141], [145], [148], [152], [153], and [204], to Mr. J. P. Gibson, Hexham; on pages [120] and [124], to Mr. J. Worsnop, Rothbury; on page [121], to Rev. G. Smith, Bedlington; on pages [145], [200], [208], [209], [211], [213], and [308], to Mr. E. Yeoman, Barnard Castle; on page [150], to Mr. C. C. Hodges, Hexham; on pages [154] and [155], to Messrs. O. M. Lairs and Son, Newcastle-on-Tyne; on pages [181], [184], [189], [265], [269], [277], and [296], to Messrs. Frith and Co., Reigate; on page [212], to Mr. J. W. Cooper, Darlington; on page [224], to Mr. F. Pearson, Basford; on pages [228], [248], [252], [253], [262], [272], [273], [276], [284], and [292], to Mr. R. Keene, Derby; on pages [263] and [264], to Mr. J. W. Hilder, Matlock Bath; on page [288], to Messrs. Allen and Sons, Nottingham; on page [304], to Mr. M. Shuttleworth, Ilkley; on page [336], to Mr. G. A. Nicholls, Stamford; on pages [340] and [341], to Mr. A. Hendrey, Godmanchester; on page [345], to Messrs. Hills and Saunders, Cambridge; on page [353], to Mr. W. W. Gladwin, Maldon; on page [360], to Mr. Gill, Colchester; on pages [350], [357], [360], [361], [364], and [370], to Mr. Payne Jennings, Ashtead.

BEN MACDHUI.

THE HIGHLAND DEE.

The Source: Larig and Garchary Burns—In the Heart of the Cairngorm Mountains—Ben Macdhui and Braeriach—“A Fery Falgar Place”—A Highland Legend—The Linn of Dee—Byron’s Narrow Escape—The Floods of 1829—Lochnagar and Mary Duff—Influence of the Dee on Byron—Braemar and the Rising of ’15—Corriemulzie and its Linn—Balmoral—The “Birks” of Abergeldie—Their Transplantation by Burns—What is Collimankie?—Ballater: The Slaying of “Brave Brackley”—Craigendarroch—The Reel of Tullich and the Origin Thereof—The Legend of St. Nathdan—Mythological Parallels—The Muich—Morven: The Centre of Highland Song and Legend—Birse—Lunphanan Wood—The Battle of Corrichie—Queen Mary and Sir John Gordon—At Aberdeen.

Among the streams that meet together in the wild south-west of Aberdeenshire to form the Dee, it is not easy to decide which is chief, or where is the fountain, far up the dark mountain-side, where this parent rill has birth. Dismissing minor pretenders, we can at once state that the original is either the Larig or the Garchary Burn. The first is more in the main line of the river, whilst it has also more water; the second rises higher up, and has a longer course before it reaches the meeting-place. Popularly, the source of the stream is a place about the beginning of the Larig, called the Wells of Dee. Here Nature has built a reservoir perfect in every part. The water escapes from this fountain-head in considerable volume, so that it forms a quite satisfactory source, which we may well adopt. Here, then, our journey commences among

“The grizzly cliffs that guard

The infant rills of Highland Dee.”

We are in the very heart of the Cairngorm Mountains, confronted on every side by all that is most savage and grand in nature—frowning precipices, mist-covered heights, sullen black lochs, an almost total absence of vegetation, an almost unbroken solitude. Here rise Ben Macdhui, Braeriach, and Cairntoul, whose streams, running down—often hurled down—their weather-beaten sides, rapidly increase the volume of our river. Braeriach fronts Ben Macdhui on the other side of the infant Dee. It presents to the view a huge line of precipices, dark and sombre, save when the hand of Winter, powdering them with snow, changes them to masses of glittering white. Even at a good distance away you hear the splash and dash of innumerable waterfalls, caused by the burns leaping the cliffs. If you venture to wander among those wilds you must know your ground well, for however bright the day may be one hour, the next you may be shrouded in mist, or drenched with rain, or battered by hail. The mist, indeed, is rarely absent. You see it clinging round the heights and moving restlessly up and down the hillside like some uneasy and malignant spirit. As you walk you are startled at a huge figure striding along. It requires an effort to recognise a mist-picture of yourself—a sort of Scotch Spectre of the Brocken.

It was of these wild regions that an old Highlander once remarked to Hill Burton that it was “a fery fulgar place, and not fit for a young shentleman to go to at all.” Let us not scorn the ingenuous native; Virgil has said, in the Eclogues (much more elegantly, ’tis true), very much the same thing about very much the same kind of scenery. All our way by Dee will not be among views like this. Indeed, at the mouth are scenes of rich fertility. It is on the fat meadows near Aberdeen that a portion of those innumerable flocks and droves are raised which have so great a reputation in the London market. These are the two extremes, but between them there is every variety of Highland scenery. He who has seen the banks of Dee has seen, as in an epitome or abridgment, all that the north of Scotland has to show. In the midst of variety one thing is constant, whatever landscape you may be passing through: you always have the great hill masses on the horizon. Thus the Dee is a typical Highland river. Even with the sternest parts soft touches are interwoven. Thus take the Lui, which, rising in Ben Macdhui, falls into the Dee at an early point of its course. The lower part of Glen Lui is remarkable for its gentle beauty. The grass is smooth as a lawn, the water of the burn which moves gently along is transparently clear, the regular slope is covered with weeping birches. The perfect solitude of this sweet valley has its own charm, though it be the charm of melancholy. Higher up, nearer Ben Macdhui, in Glen Lui Beg, the scenery is wilder, and the water dashes down more swiftly, as if it longed to be away from its wild source. We must go with it, and bid farewell to Ben Macdhui and the sources of Dee. And for farewell, here is a mountain legend.

THE HIGHLAND DEE.

At some time or other a band of robbers who infested this region had acquired a great store of gold. One of their number, named Mackenzie, proved that there is not honour among thieves. He robbed his companions and then hid the twice-cursed pelf in a remote and well-nigh inaccessible spot far up the slope of Ben Macdhui. The work of concealment took him the best part of a short summer night, for the sun rose precisely as he finished. He noticed that as its first beam fell over the ridge to the east, it marked a long burnished line of light over the ground where the treasure lay. This seemed to him to distinguish the spot beyond the possibility of error. Before his death he confided to his sons the secret of his hidden treasure. They were poor and greedy. The rest of their lives was devoted summer after summer to the hunt; but the grim mountain kept its secret well. Often the morning mist mocked their efforts, yet they succeeded no better when, on the anniversary of the burial, the sun rose in a sky of unclouded blue. One by one, prematurely aged, they passed away, till the last died a madman, revealing in his ravings the secret and the ruin of their lives. And still, somewhere on that mountain-side, the gold hoard lies concealed.

For some time after we leave the Wells of Dee, we are still in the midst of gloom. Dark black rocks rising on either side to a great height still shut us in, whilst the stillness is only broken by the roar of the wind, the rush of the water, or the (occasional) scream of the eagle; but when we get to the Linn of Dee, near Inverary, we may fairly consider ourselves back among our kind; nay, we are within the very uncharmed circle of the tourist, whereat we may rejoice or grieve as is our liking. This linn is caused by the river rushing through a narrow channel in the rocks over into a pool very deep, and (according to local tradition) unfathomable. Some hardy spirits have jumped across the channel, but if you try, and miss, you will never come out alive. Then your epitaph will be written in a guide-book paragraph, somewhat after the fashion of the lines in Baedeker telling the horrible end of that unfortunate officer who fell into the bear-pit at Berne. Lord Byron, when a boy, had a narrow escape here. “Some heather caught in his lame foot, and he fell. Already he was rolling downwards, when the attendant luckily caught hold of him, and was but just in time to save him from being killed.”

LINN OF DEE. / LINN OF CORRIEMULZIE.

The great floods of 1829—those floods of which Sir Thomas Dick Lauder is the chronicler—wrought sad havoc here. A bridge spanned the stream at a height of thirty feet. The river, rising three feet higher, swept it away. We must turn to the annals of Strathspey to test the full havoc of the flood fiend, yet it wrought no mean ruin here. I pick out one or two cases. Near Inverey the rising water attacked six houses, destroying each in turn until all the inhabitants were huddled round the hearthstone of the last. Here the water burst in, forcing the poor people to take refuge on a knoll, where, without shelter, and in mortal terror for their lives, they crouched shivering through the night. There is a waterfall on the Quoich, near where it joins the larger river. This was spanned by a bridge so firmly bound to the rocks as to be (it was hoped) immovable. The flood struck it, and it was torn away, with tons of the adjacent rocks. It seemed, indeed, to those who lived through that terrible time, as if the very structure of the earth was breaking in pieces. The days were black with the ever-falling sheets of heavy rain; the nights were vivid with the ever-flashing lightning; whilst day and night alike the wind roared with demoniacal fury. The waters hidden in the bowels of hills and rocks burst forth, leaving great fissures and scars, which remain as a monument of the Titanic forces at work. Shocks of earthquake happened again and again. “I felt the earth hobblin’ under me,” said a peasant graphically. Many thought the end of all things was at hand. Yet it was in less sensational ravages that the flood wrought its most cruel havoc. The poor man’s cottage left a hopeless ruin, the fertile field left a sandy waste—such were the most lamentable signs of its power. Human effort was powerless against it. What could be done with a flood which rose, as was noted at Ballater, not less than one foot in ten minutes? The ravages made have long ago been repaired. At Linn of Dee there is now a handsome white granite bridge, which was opened by the Queen as long ago as the year 1857.

LOCHNAGAR.

It is odd that the poet of this essentially Highland river should be an English bard; for if we turn to see what our literature has to say of the Dee, we must turn to Byron. Yet Byron was, as he says, “half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one.” If his ancestors on the father’s side “came over” (as he delighted to recall) with the Conqueror, he was not less proud to remember that his mother was of one of the best families of the “Gay Gordons,” and that for over three centuries her people had possessed Gight. He went to Aberdeen in 1790, when but two years old; here he stayed till 1798, and during that time he visited again and again most of the finest spots on the Dee. Those mighty hills, those clear, flowing streams, were the earliest things he remembered, and he never failed to acknowledge how deep was the impression they made on him. “From this period I date my love of mountainous countries.” Near the end of his life he sings, in “The Island”—

“The infant rapture still survived the boy,

And Lochnagar with Ida look’d o’er Troy.”

His mention of Lochnagar—“dark Lochnagar”—reminds us how peculiarly his name is connected with that Deeside mountain of which he is the laureate. Here, too, sprang the strange child-love of the precocious boy for Mary Duff, with whose beauty the beauty of the country where he came to know her was indissolubly linked in his mind. The scenes in Greece, he says, carried him back to Morven (his own “Morven of snow”), and many a dark hill in that classic land made him “think of the rocks that o’ershadow Colbeen;” whilst the very mention of “Auld Lang Syne” brings to his mind the river Dee and

“Scotland one and all,

Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams.”

In Moore’s biography there are needlessly ingenious arguments to prove that it was not the Dee scenery that made Byron a poet. Of course not. Poeta nascitur non fit, to quote the old Latin saying, which puts the matter much more pithily than Moore. But scenery and early impressions determine the course of a poet’s genius as surely as the nature of the ground determines the course of the stream. How much Celtic magic there is in all Byron’s verses—the love of the wild and terrible and impressive in scenery, as in life! Byron’s poetry is before all romantic, and so is Deeside scenery. In his revolt against conventionalities, and even (it must be said) against the proprieties and decencies, we can clearly trace a true Celtic revolt against the dull, hard, prosaic facts of life. Can it be said that if Byron had passed his early years among the Lincolnshire fens or the muddy flats of Essex, “Don Juan” or “Childe Harold” would have been what they are—if, indeed, they had ever existed?

Moore under-estimated the influence of such scenes on Byron because he under-estimated the scenes themselves. “A small bleak valley, not at all worthy of being associated with the memory of a poet,” says he. At this the local historian, good Mr. James Brown, who, having first driven a coach till he knew every inch of a large stretch of the country, then wrote an excellent Deeside guide, waxes very wroth. “It is really to be wished that Mr. Thomas Moore would not write upon subjects which he knows nothing about. Deeside a small bleak valley! Who ever heard tell of such nonsense!” Moore, however, did after his kind. He who sang the “sweet vale of Avoca” cared little for “dark Lochnagar.” Indeed, there are some northern folk very much of Moore’s opinion. Does not the old proverb tell us that

“A mile of Don’s worth two of Dee,

Except for salmon, stone, and tree”?

But it is for those who love the stone and tree, the wild forests, the wilder hills, that Dee has its surpassing attraction. It adds a fine charm to the enthusiast’s enjoyment of such scenery to know it is not everyone who can appreciate it.

But we turn now to interest of another kind, for at Castleton of Braemar we touch successive strata of historical events. There is Craig-Koynoch, where Kenneth II., too old for hunting himself, used to watch his dogs as they chased some noble stag, whilst his ears drank in the music of horn and hound. Here, too, in the old castle of Braemar, of which but a few remains are left, Malcolm Canmore, last of Scotland’s Celtic kings, had a hunting seat in the midst of the mighty forest of which we still see the remains. There are still great herds of deer to be hunted, though the wolves and wild boars have long since vanished. Here, too, were the great possessions of the Mar family. It was to this place that John Erskine, thirty-ninth Earl of Mar, summoned the Highland clans under pretence of a great hunting party in Braemar forest, and began the rebellion of 1715. The standard was formally set up on the 6th of September, when the gilt ball which ornamented the top fell down, much to the consternation of the superstitious Celts.

A famous Jacobite song gives us the names of the leaders and the clans:—

“I saw our chief come up the glen

Wi’ Drummond and Glengarry,

Macgregor, Murray, Rollo, Keith,

Panmure and gallant Harry;

Macdonald’s men, Clan Ronald’s men,

Mackenzie’s men, Macgillivray’s men,

Strathallan’s men, the Lowlan’ men,

O’Callander and Airly.”

The hunting party, it should be noted, was not all a pretence. It took place on a magnificent scale, as Taylor the Water Poet, who was there (how or why it would take too long to explain), tells us. After he lost sight of the old castle, he was twelve days before he saw either house, or cornfield, or habitation for any creature but deer, wild horses, wolves, and such-like creatures. Taylor goes on to describe how a great body of beaters, setting out at early morning, drove the deer, “their heads making a show like a wood,” to the place where the hunters shot them down. As we all know, the ’15 was a disastrous failure—less terrible, it is true, but less glorious, than the ’45. Mar turned out to be neither statesman nor soldier (“Oh for one hour of Dundee!” said the old officer at Sheriffmuir). He escaped with the Pretender to France, his vast estates were forfeited, and for a time there was no Earldom of Mar. His poor followers suffered more than their lord. All the houses in Braemar were burnt, save one at Corriemulzie. It was only the seclusion of that narrow glen, so beautiful with its birch-trees and its linn, that saved the lonely habitation. There are memories of the ’45 about the district too. For instance, a little way down the river from Castleton is Craig Clunie, where Farquharson of Invercauld lay hid for ten months after Culloden, safe in the devotion of his clan, though his enemies were hunting for him far and near.

BRAEMAR.

Ten miles or so below Castleton, we come upon another royal residence, which we all know as Balmoral, the Highland home of Queen Victoria. This place is now one of the most famous spots in Britain, and though its celebrity is of recent date, yet it has an old history of its own. As far back as 1451 it was royal property. In 1592 James V. gave it to the then Earl of Huntly. In 1652, on the downfall of the family, it came into the possession of the Earl of Moray. Enough of these dull details, which are best left in the congenial seclusion of the charter chest. In 1852 the Crown again—and let us hope finally—acquired Balmoral.

VIEW FROM THE OLD BRIDGE, INVERCAULD, BRAEMAR.

If anyone wonders why the Queen is so fond of her Highland home, it must be because the questioner has never seen it, since of all the dwelling-places of men it is surely the most desirable. It stands on a slight eminence near the Dee, which winds round it in a great bend. Swiftly the beautifully clear water rolls past. The low ground, richly fertile, is green in summer-time with various leafage. Behind the castle rises the graceful height of Craig-na-gow-an, clothed with the slender birch-tree. The cairn on the top, to the memory of Albert the Good, reminds us of the great sorrow of Victoria’s life. The castle lies at the foot of the hill, protected from the wild winter winds. In both near and remote distance we have the ever-beautiful background of the everlasting hills, immovable, and yet ever changing in place and appearance with each change of light and shade. Ben Macdhui in one direction is most prominent, dark Lochnagar in another. The scenery is “wild, and yet not desolate,” as the Queen simply, yet truly, puts it. Its varied aspects give, from one point of view or another, examples of all Deeside views. The castle itself is built of very fine granite. It has a noble appearance, yet the architecture is of the simplest baronial Scotch style. It has all the traditional comfort of our island dwellings. It is, in a word, a genuine English home amidst the finest Highland scenery. What combination could be more attractive?

Two miles farther down is Abergeldie, of which the castle is occupied by the Prince of Wales when in these parts. Between the two is Crathie Kirk, where the royal household and their visitors worship in simple Presbyterian fashion in the autumn months. Abergeldie has an old reputation for its birks. There used to be a quaint old song in two verses which told their praise. In the first verse an ardent wooer entreats one of those innumerable “bonnie lassies” of Scotch popular poetry to hie thither under his escort. She is to have all sorts of fine things—

“Ye sall get a gown o’ silk

And coat o’ collimankie.”

What on earth is collimankie? asks the reader. In truth I cannot tell, and I fear to look up the word in Jamieson lest it turn out to be something commonplace. The second verse is the young lady’s reply. It is deliciously arch and simple:—

“Na, kind sir, I dare nae gang,

My minny will be angry.

Sair, sair wad she flyte,

Wad she flyte, wad she flyte,

Sair, sair, wad she flyte,

And sair wad she ban me!”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” and the probability is that she went after all. At any rate, the picture is perfect. You almost see the peasant girl mincing her words, biting her finger, with a blush on her young face. And what has become of this song, then? Why, Burns laid violent hands on the birks, and transferred them to Aberfeldy; which, thenceforth, was glorified with a most shady grove; in poetry, that is, for in fact there was not a single birk in the place for long afterwards, if, indeed, there is one even now; and, as far as my recollection goes, there is not. But we have still something to relate regarding those famous birks. It seems that the juice of the trees is carefully extracted, and the skilled natives, “by a curious process, ferment the same and make wine of it—which wine is very pleasant to taste, and thought by some to be little inferior to the wine of Champagne and other outlandish countries.” So far the local chronicler. We can only toss off a goblet (in imagination) of this extraordinary vin du pays to the prosperity of the birks ere the bend of the Dee hides them from our view.

Ballater is the next important place we come to. It is the terminus of the Deeside Extension Railway, and what is for us at present much more important, the centre of the most interesting part of Deeside. One mile south of it is an almost vanished ruin, the scene of a terrible tragedy, the memory of which—though it happened three centuries ago—is still preserved by a poem of a very different sort from the simple peasant idyll just quoted. One of the old tragic ballads which with such profound yet unconscious insight deal with the stormier human passions, tells the story of how Farquharson of Inverey slew, in shameful fashion, Gordon, Baron of Brackley. With what pithy expression the first two lines place you in the very heart of the subject!

“Inverey came down Deeside whistlin’ and playin’,

He was at brave Brackley’s yetts ere it was dawin’.”

And then comes the proud, insolent challenge of the murderer—

“Are ye sleepin’, Baronne, or are ye waukin’?

There’s sharp swords at your yett will gar your blood spin.”

Gordon is brave, but he will not go forth almost alone against so many to meet certain death till his fair, but false, young wife taunts him bitterly with his cowardice. Then he gets ready, though he knows how certain is his doom.

“An’ he stooped low, and said, as he kissed his proud dame,

‘There’s a Gordon rides out that will never ride hame.’”

There is a narrow glen near by which popular tradition still points out as the spot where they “pierced bonny Brackley wi’ mony a woun’.” The ballad closes in darkness and sadness, but one is glad to learn from contemporary history that the Earl of Huntly made a foray and avenged the death of his kinsman.

Hereby is the hill of Craigendarroch, which we cannot pause to climb, though from it we have a grand view a long way down the Dee Valley. Tullich I can only mention. Have you ever seen, by-the-bye, that extraordinary Highland tarantula called the reel of Tullich? It is perhaps the wildest, maddest dance ever invented. The legend of its origin is this:—One tempestuous Sabbath, about a century and a half ago, the congregation at the parish kirk there were without a minister. The manse was some way off, the roads were rough, and the parson got it into his head that nobody would be at church that day, so he need not go either. The people got tired of waiting; they began to stamp with their feet, then hidden bottles were produced, and then they danced and shouted till at last the whole thing degenerated into a wild orgie, during which the wind roared round the kirk and the sleet beat on the windows in vain. Then they invented and danced the reel of Tullich. Before the year was out all were dead, and by the dance alone are they now remembered. It is worth while quoting this strange story, for it is an example of the rare Presbyterian legend. A place on the river called the King’s Pool reminds one of a Catholic myth. St. Nathdan, who once lived here, did penance for some sin by locking a heavy iron chain round his waist. He then threw the key into this pool, saying he should know he was forgiven when he found it again. Long afterwards he went a pilgrimage to Rome, and on the Italian coast some fishermen, in return for his blessing, gave him a fish. Need I add that in the belly he found the key?

BALMORAL. / THE CASTLE.

The legends which hang like the mist round every rock and ruin have a weird fascination, but I must stop repeating them, or there will be room for nothing else. I cannot help noting, however, that there is a Deeside version of nearly every ancient myth. Thus one story tells how a Macdonald was suckled by a wolf quite after the fashion of Romulus. Another is of a giant injured by an individual calling himself Mysel, so that when the stupid monster was asked who hurt him, he could only say “Mysel” (myself). This is almost exactly the tale of the giant in the “Odyssey.” But more curious than all is a reproduction of the famous apple legend, with Malcolm Canmore for Geisler and one called Hardy for William Tell. The resemblance is exact even down to the two additional arrows; but I can scarcely go so far as the old Deeside lady, who affirmed that since Malcolm Canmore flourished about the time of the Norman Conquest, and William Tell was contemporary with Robert Bruce, the Swiss legend was borrowed from the Scotch!

ABERGELDIE CASTLE.

It is difficult to get away from a neighbourhood like Ballater, where there is so much worth seeing. The Muich here, running from the south, falls into the Dee. About five miles up is the Linn of Muich—linns and waterfalls are the peculiar glory of Deeside, I need scarcely say. A great mass of water finds here but one narrow outlet, over which it foams and struggles, and then falls fifty feet with a great splash into a deep pool. The heights of the precipice are clothed with old fir-trees, which also stick out of the crevasses of the rocks. The Muich rises away up at the foot of Lochnagar in Loch Muich, which means, they say, the Lake of Sorrow—so gloomy and sombre is that far-off recess in the hill. To the west of Lochnagar are the Loch and Glen of Callater—wild enough, too; and beyond is the Breakneck Waterfall, which is positively the last fall I shall mention. A stream makes a bold dart over a precipice. It seems like a thread of silver in the sunlight. Down it falls, with a thundering sound on the rock, scattering its spray around in a perpetual shower. A British admiral, some few years ago, slipped over a precipice near here. His hammer (he was specimen hunting) stuck in a crack, and there he held on for two awful days, and still more awful nights. The whole neighbourhood hunted for him, and at last, the black speck being seen on the cliff, he was rescued. Not a man of the rescuers would accept a farthing for what he had done. The Highlander has his faults, but there is always something of the gentleman about him.

BALLATER.

Nearly due north of Ballater is Morven—the Morven of Byron, and (perhaps) of Ossian, though there are other places and districts in Scotland bearing the name. Morven is the centre of Highland song and legend. But if it is enchanted, it is also uncertain, ground, and must here be left untraced. We are still forty-three miles from Aberdeen; so we glide through Aboyne and Glentanner, leaving the beautiful castle of the one, and the equally, though differently, beautiful valley of the other, unvisited. Then in many a devious turn we wind round the northern boundary of the parish of Birse. “As auld as the hills o’ Birse,” says a local proverb, which shows that even in this land of hills the district is considered hilly. Here are some of their names: Torquhandallachy, Lamawhillis, Carmaferg, Lamahip, Duchery, Craigmahandle, Gannoch, Creaganducy. Grand words those, if you can give them their proper sound. Otherwise leave them “unhonoured and unsung,” and unpronounced. The local chronicler is much perplexed by another somewhat inelegant Aberdeenshire witticism—“Gang to Birse and bottle skate.” With absolute logical correctness he proves that in that inland and hilly parish there are no skate; and that, if there were, to bottle them would be contrary to the principles and practice of any recorded system of fish-curing. We shall not discuss with him this dark saying.

On the other side of the Dee is Lunphanan parish, in the “wood” of which Macbeth—according to Wyntoun, though not according to Shakespeare—met his death. His “cairn” is still to be seen on a bare hill in this district, though another tradition tells us that his dust mingles with the dust of “gracious Duncan” in the sacred soil of Iona. The Dee, now leaving its native county, flows for a few miles through the Mearns or Kincardineshire. It returns to Aberdeenshire in the parish of Drumoak, forming for the remaining fourteen miles of its course the boundary between the two counties.

ABERDEEN.

It is here we come across the most interesting historical memory connected with Deeside, for it is a memory of Queen Mary. On the south side of the Hill of Fare there is a hollow, where the battle of Corrichie was fought in 1562. I do not wish to enter into the history of that troubled time. Suffice it to say that the Earl of Huntly, chief of the Gordons, and head of the Catholics, was intriguing to secure the power which Murray was determined he should not have. The Queen was with Murray, though her heart, they said, was with the Gordons. Anyhow, she dashed northward gaily enough on a horse that would have thrown an ordinary rider. Murray’s diplomacy forced the Gordons into a position of open hostility, and his superior generalship easily secured him the victory at Corrichie. The old Earl of Huntly was taken, it seemed, unhurt, but he suddenly fell down dead—heart-broken at the ruin of himself and his house, said some; crushed by the weight of his armour, said others. They took the body to the Tolbooth in Aberdeen. Knox tells us that the Countess had consulted a witch before the fight, and was comforted by the assurance that her husband would lie unwounded that night in the Tolbooth. The remains, embalmed in some rude fashion, were carried to Edinburgh; for a strange ceremony yet remained ere the Gordon lands were divided among the victors. A Parliament in due time met in Holyrood, and the dead man was brought before his peers to answer for his treasons. A mere formality, perhaps, but an awfully gruesome one. His attainder, and that of his family, together with the forfeiture of his lands, was then pronounced. The battle was a great triumph for the Protestant lords; even the sneering, sceptical Maitland, says Knox, with one of those direct, forcible touches of his, “remembered that there was a God in heaven.” There was one who looked on the matter with other eyes. “The Queen took no pleasure in the victory, and gloomed at the messenger who told of it.” Indeed, there was a tragedy within this tragedy. Among the prisoners taken at Corrichie was Sir John Gordon, Huntly’s second son, “a comely young gentleman,” wild and daring, and, though then an outlaw, one who had ventured to hope for the Queen’s hand. It was whispered that she was not unfavourable to him; some ventured to say “she loved him entirely.” For such a man there was but one fate possible, and that was death. He was executed in the market-place of Aberdeen. Murray looked on at the death of his foe with that inscrutable calm which he preserved in victory and defeat—at his own death, as well as at the death of others. The Queen, too, was forced to be there. Before the axe fell, Gordon professed his unalterable devotion to her. Her presence, he said, was a solace to him, though she had brought him to destruction. The sight was too fearful for Mary, who, in a deadly swoon, was carried to her chamber. Even in her strange life-story there is nothing more terrible. Fotheringay itself is not so tragic. The last four miles of our well-nigh eighty miles’ journey are, as noted, on the border of Aberdeen and Kincardine. Here the river enjoys a peaceful old age, after the wild turmoil of its youth. The water, still beautifully clear, moves placidly along amidst rich meadows; the near hills are low, with soft rounded summits. The dwellings of men give a cheerfulness to the scene. It is the very perfection of pastoral landscape. And then, at last, we come to Aberdeen and the sea. But on the wonders of that famous town I cannot here enter. Suffice it to say that our record of the Highland Dee is finished.

Francis Watt.

BRIDGE OF TAY, KENMORE.

THE TAY.

The Tiber and the Tay—History and Legend—Perthshire and the Tay—The Moor of Rannoch—Blair—Pitlochrie—Killin—Kenmore—The Lyon—The “Rock of Weem”—The “Birks” of Aberfeldy—Dunkeld and Birnam—Invertuthil—The Loch of Clunie—The Isla—Strathmore—Dunsinane Hill—Scone and the Ruthvens—Perth—The Views from Moncrieffe and Kinnoull—Strathearn and the Carse of Gowrie—Dundee—The Tay Bridge, New and Old—View from the “Law”—“Men of Blood” and Men of Business.

“Behold the Tiber!” said the conquering Roman, when from one of the many ’vantage-grounds commanding the noble stream that sweeps past Perth, the Imperial eagles first saw as fair a scene as they had yet reached in their flight. The ardent lovers of the river—meaning all who know its banks well—have ever since felt, with Scott, half flattered by the traditional compliment, half scornful of the comparison of the puny and “drumlie” Roman stream with the broad, clear, and brimming Tay—the dusty Campus Martius with the green “Inches” of Perth—the featureless and desolate Campagna with the glorious stretch of hill and plain, water and woodland, overlooked from Kinnoull Hill or the “Wicks of Baiglie.”

It is true that when this pioneer of countless hosts of Southern invaders and sightseers came hither, to admire and covet, the Tay flowed through a savage and shaggy land. There might have been a handful of the skin or wicker-work wigwams of the “dwellers in the forest” on the site of Perth, or at Forteviot or Abernethy, afterwards the capitals of the Picts, and a sprinkling of Caledonian coracles on the neighbouring waters. But if Perthshire and the Tay had a history before the coming of Agricola and the building of the lines of Roman roads and stations that converged upon their great camp, dedicated to Mars, near the meeting-place of this prince of Scottish streams with the tributary waters of the Almond and the Earn, it is utterly lost in the mists of antiquity.

History of the most stirring kind the Tay has known enough of since. Every glen and hillside is thronged with memories and legends of the days of romance, which, in Perthshire and on the banks of the Tay, came to an end only about a century ago, when some of the Jacobite lairds were still in exile for being “out” in the ’45, and had not utterly given up hope of the “lost cause.” Every old castle and little township has played its part in the strange, eventful drama of the national history; and by their record, not less than by its position, Perthshire can lay claim to be the heart, and the Tay to be the heart’s blood, of the northern kingdom.

Perthshire is the Tay, almost as truly as Egypt is the Nile. It is the case that some of the head-waters of this many-fountained stream rise in other counties—that its furthest, if not its most important, source is in the desolate Moor of Rannoch—“a world before chaos,” crudely compounded of bog and rock, where Loch Lydoch trails its black and sinuous length out of Argyllshire into Perth; that, further north, Loch Ericht, straight as a sword-blade, thrusts its sharper end miles deep into the mountains of Laggan, in Inverness-shire, hiding, as tradition tells us, the ruins of submerged fields and houses under its gleaming surface; and that the Isla draws from Forfarshire that portion of its waters which murmurs under the haunted old walls of Airlie and Glamis. True, also, a choice and lovely portion of Perthshire—many deem it the choicest and loveliest of all—drains through the Trossachs to the Forth; and that the Tay itself, after it has ceased to be a river, and has become an arm of the sea, overpasses the bounds of the “central county,” and meets the ocean between the Braes of Angus and the hills of Fife—between the clustering spires and chimneys of busy Dundee and the crumbling towers that watch over the secluded dignity of St. Andrews.

All this notwithstanding, the periphery of Perthshire may roughly be said to embrace all the wealth of beauty reflected in the Tay, and all the wealth of memories that mingles with its flowing current. And richly endowed is this prince of highland and lowland streams, both with beauty and associations.

The centre of the basin of the Tay is somewhere in Glenalmond, between the sweet woodland shades of the “burn-brae” of Lynedoch, under which “Bessie Bell and Mary Gray” rest, with their lover at their feet, and the bare and stilly place where “sleeps Ossian in the Narrow Glen,” and where murmurs along

“But one meek streamlet, only one,

The Song of Battles, and the breath

Of stormy war and violent death;”

while above, on the summits of the hills, the grey stones and cairns still keep watch, and, interpreted by tradition, point out to us the place where Fingal once held sway in the very heart of Perthshire and of the Caledonian Forest.

THE TAY.

Of the ancient woods that are supposed once to have clothed the country, remains may yet, perhaps, be seen in those glorious sylvan demesnes that surround Taymouth in Breadalbane and Blair in Athole; Dupplin, and Drummond Castle, in Strathearn, and Rossie Priory in the Carse of Gowrie; Scone Palace and Dunkeld, Moncrieffe and Kinnoull, overlooking the central and lower reaches of the Tay. Traces of them may also be found in the Woods of Methven, that once gave friendly shelter to Wallace, and in those ragged and giant pines that thinly dot the hillsides in Rannoch and Glenlyon, over which Bruce was once chased by the Lord of the Isles and the English invaders.

But a new forest has grown up within a century, to shade once more the waters of the Tay. Whatever may have been the case in Macbeth’s or Shakespeare’s time, “great Birnam Wood” can no longer be seen from “high Dunsinane Hill” for the growth of trees—the “moving grove”—that has risen up between. The Bruar Water and its falls are now shaded from the sun and the northern blasts, as Burns longed to see them, by “lofty firs and fragrant birks,” as well as by their craggy cliffs; and not content with thus fulfilling the poet’s wish, the Lords of Athole, from the “Planting Duke” downward, have been nobly ambitious of clothing their once bare hills with forest to the summits. Beside the pillars of ruined Dunkeld Cathedral—almost as worthy of reverence as they—stand the two “Parent Larches,” the first trees of their kind introduced into Scotland. Planted only a century and a half ago, millions of their seed and kin have now overrun Perthshire and the Highlands, proving themselves thoroughly at home in the soil and air of the Tay.

“BIRKS” OF ABERFELDY. / ABERFELDY, FROM THE WEST.

In the bleak Moor of Rannoch—the “furthest Thule” of Perthshire and of the more northern Tay sources—there are great blank spaces where the heather itself will scarce grow. There are only grey rock and black marsh—“bogs of Styx and waters of Cocytus,” with scarce a sign of human habitation or even of animal life. But the logs of oak found embedded in the peat, and the hoary fir trunks that still keep a stubborn stand by Loch Lydoch and the banks of the Guar and the Ericht, show that even in this dreary region a great forest once waved. The “Black Wood of Rannoch” still clothes the southern side of the fine loch of the name; and here, indeed, the Scots fir is to be seen in all its pride and strength, rising above the beautiful growth of oak and birch coppice, and of heather of almost arboreal proportions. Escaping from Loch Rannoch, the Tummel roars down its rocky bed under the piny slopes and crags of Dunalastair, with a halt by the way in Loch Tummel, where, from the “Queen’s View,” looking back, a magnificent prospect is had of the lovely lake embosomed in woods and hills, dominated by the lofty shape of Schiehallion, with the lonely Black Mount and the more distant Grampians closing the background. Further down, opposite Faskally, the Garry joins it, mingling the streams of Athole with the waters of Rannoch. Before the meeting, the Garry, leaving its parent lake high up near the borders of Inverness, has tumbled in white foam through leagues of the “Struan country,” between banks thinly sprinkled with birchwood and edging great tracts of moorland. Then the Erichdie, the Bruar, and the Tilt bring down their contributions from remote mountain corries visited only by the deer-stalker, through deep wild glens, gloriously wooded at their lower extremity. Where the Tilt runs into the Garry stands Blair, the Highland seat of the ducal family of Athole.

BRIDGE OF GARRY.

The date when “Blair in Athole” was first occupied as a stronghold of a powerful Highland chieftain is not told in the eventful annals of the Castle. Strategic considerations, from the points of view of war and of the chase, no doubt determined the selection of the site, inside the rugged jaws of the Pass of Killiecrankie, and on a shelf commanding the routes leading across the Grampians from the basin of the Tay to the valleys of the Spey and the Dee. The choice thus made in ruder days is thoroughly pleasing in these “piping times of peace,” when the line of the Highland Railway threads its way through the narrow defile, and keeping the main valley of the Garry, skirts the miles of woodland, opening at intervals to afford peeps of the plain, massive white front of the Castle and the broad spaces of its surrounding parks. The way through Glentilt, traversed by the clans to join the Stuart standard at Blair or on the Braes of Mar, is free now only to the deer and the gillies.

Without going back to the Athole lines of the Comyns and the Stewarts, or to the joyous hunting scenes in which Queen Mary and other of the old line of Scottish Sovereigns bore a part, Blair has been a centre of historical and social interest ever since it became the chief seat of the Murrays. Montrose assembled the Royalist clans here, and set out upon the campaign which began with the defeat of the Covenanters at Tibbermore and the capture of Perth, and ended at Philiphaugh, where, in one day, the fruits of six brilliant victories were lost. Another darling of cavalier legend, Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, lies buried in the old church near by. In the year of the Revolution he had relieved Blair Castle, where the clansmen of Athole had held out for the Jacobite cause against their titular chief, and having enticed General Mackay through the Pass, he rushed down upon him with all his force from the slopes of the Hill of Urrard, utterly routing and sweeping back the enemy through the narrow gorge of the Garry, and himself falling, shot through the heart, at the moment the Sassenachs turned to run.

Notable events happened here also in the “’15” and in the “’45;” and, to come to the recent memories which are cherished with pride in Blair-Athole, Queen Victoria has paid repeated visits to the locality, and was entranced by the magnificent prospects of wood and stream, rugged mountain and fertile strath, that are unfolded from the top of the Hill of Tulloch, and from other points of view in this beautiful district. It is a kind of “holy ground” to fervid Jacobites, one or two of whom are supposed still to linger in Perthshire, if extinct elsewhere. It is also a favourite resort of the increasing host of pilgrims in search of Highland sport and scenery, who invade Athole through the Pass of Killiecrankie, and gaze, with a delight in which there is no longer any tempering of fear of consequences, upon the lofty and impending banks, pine-clad to their summits, and the wilderness of rock and boulder below, through which the Garry glooms and flashes in alternate pool and fall.

Pitlochrie is a charming place to halt at before, or after, clearing this “gateway of the Highlands.” The Tummel has now joined the Garry, and under the latter name the united streams have but a short way to go before they fall, at Ballinluig, into the stream which, from the place where it issues from Loch Tay, takes the name of the Tay. Were we to seek it still nearer to its sources, we should find ourselves in a district which, before the railway came to disturb its solitude, was as lone and wild as the lochans of the Black Mount or those corries of Ben Alder and Ben-y-Gloe whence the Tummel, the Ericht, and Tilt draw their springs. The line from Oban breaks into Perthshire and the basin of the Tay at Tyndrum, near the head of Strathfillan, not far from the scene of Bruce’s defeat at the hands of the Lord of Lorn. Following, from near the base of Ben Lui, the infant Tay—here, however, bearing the names successively of the Fillan and the Dochart—the way leads past the sites of ruined castles and chapels, by cairns yet haunted by memories of the bloody feuds of former days, and wells to which legend still assigns wonderful healing virtues. On the left are bare mountain sides stretching away northward towards the hills that enclose the head of Glen Lochay and Glen Lyon; and to the right the range of alpine heights that culminate in Ben More and impend over Loch Dochart, its old castle, and its “floating island.” St. Fillan lived and laboured in Strathfillan; Fingal is said to be buried in Glen Dochart; a hundred traditions cling to the rocks and waters here, and in Glen Ogle, and in the Glen of the Lochay, which, pouring over its pretty “linn,” joins the Dochart just before the united stream falls into the head of Loch Tay.

Where the waters meet at Killin, a rich feast is spread for the eye of the lover of Highland scenery. Killin, with its wonderful mingling of wild mountain outlines, and the gentle, infinitely varied charms of the lake and running streams and wooded shores, is a painter’s paradise.

Fifteen miles of the finest salmon-angling water in Scotland, overhung on the north by the vast bulk of Ben Lawers, and bountifully fringed by birch and other wood, separates Killin from Kenmore, at the lower end of the great Loch, whence issues, under its proper name, the Tay. The ruins on the little island near the outlet are those of the Priory erected by King Alexander I. beside the remains of his Queen, Sibylla, daughter of Henry I. of England—a quiet retreat for centuries of the company of nuns from whom the Fair at the neighbouring Kenmore takes the name of the “Holy Women’s Market.” Kenmore is as lovely in its own way as Killin; but here it is no longer wild Highland landscape, but Nature half-submissive to the embellishing hand of man. It is

“A piece of England ramparted around

With strength of Highland Ben and heather brae;”

and in the centre of the scene, set among ample lawns and magnificent walks and avenues, backed by the high, dark curtain of Drummond Hill, and looking towards the pine-clad heights opposite, stands Taymouth Castle, the princely seat of the Breadalbane family. Famous even among their sept for their politic ability and acquisitiveness, the Campbells, Lords of Glenorchy, who became Lords of Breadalbane, are said to have chosen this site, at the eastern limit of their vast possessions, with the hope of “birzing yont” into richer lands further down the Tay. To this day, the Breadalbane estates extend for a hundred miles westward of Taymouth, to the Atlantic Ocean.

Behind Drummond Hill is Glen Lyon, and a vista of its mountains—Schiehallion lording it over the minor heights—opens up at the Vale of Appin, where the Lyon falls into the Tay. A long journey this tributary makes, among savage and solitary hills, and past haunts of Ossian’s heroes and of the “Wolf of Badenoch,” before it reaches the sylvan beauties assembled round Glenlyon House and Sir Donald Currie’s Castle of Garth. But the most venerable of all the objects on the banks of the Lyon—not excluding the reputed birthplace of Pontius Pilate—is the “Old Yew of Fortingal,” perhaps “the oldest authentic specimen of vegetation in Europe.”

BIRNAM, FROM BIRNAM HILL. / DUNSINANE HILL.

On nothing quite so venerable as this does the next outstanding eminence by the Tay—the “Rock of Weem”—look down. But Castle Menzies, for four centuries the home of the Menzies of that ilk, lies surrounded by fine woods at its base; further off is the site of the old Abbey of Dull; and beyond the Bridge of Tay—first place of assembly of the gallant “Black Watch,” or 42nd Highlanders—are the Falls of Moness and the “Birks” of Aberfeldy. Mountain ash and pine have to some extent replaced the hazels and birches about which Burns so sweetly sings; but tourists come in larger flocks every season to Urlar Burn and to the pretty village near by. Grandtully Woods, and the old Castle of the Stewarts, which has been said to resemble more closely than any other baronial seat the picture drawn by Scott of Tully-veolan, attract many admiring eyes. Balleichan recalls memories of “Sir James the Rose;” and all down Strathtay, before and after the junction with the Tummel—at Logierait and Kinnaird, Dowally and Dalguise—the enchantments of a romantic past and of superb scenery combine to induce the traveller to linger over every mile of the valley.

Dunkeld and Birnam are ahead, however, and the temptations to delay must be foregone. There is no nook of Scotland more gloriously apparelled and richly endowed. Grand forests stretch for miles around, clothing the river-banks, filling the glens, and crowning to their crests Birnam Hill, Newtyle, Craig Vinean, Craig-y-Barns, and other heights that gather round the old cathedral town. Through the centre of the scene the Tay sweeps in smooth and spacious curves and long, bright-rippled reaches. All this loveliness is concentrated around the Palace and Cathedral of Dunkeld. Opposite is Birnam, and, a little above the line of arches of the fine bridge, the “mossy Braan,” coming from Loch Freuchie and “lone Amulree,” tumbles through the romantic dell of the Rumbling Bridge and the “Hermitage,” and over its upper and lower Falls, before entering the Tay.

SCONE PALACE, PERTH.

A single gnarled and wide-branched oak represents all that remains of the original Birnam Wood. The glory of the ancient Cathedral has also departed, or undergone a change. For some fifteen hundred years, it is reckoned, there has been a Christian house on this spot; and at as early a date Dunkeld (“Dun-Caledon”) had a royal residence, probably on the site of the “dun” or fort on the “King’s Seat.” St. Columba is thought to have founded the church, and to have preached here to the natives of “Atholl, Caledon, and Angus;” and he is said to have found burial at Dunkeld. Adamnan and Crinan were among its Culdee abbots; and in the long line of its Roman Catholic bishops, whose diocese extended over the greater part of the basin of the Tay, Gawin Douglas, the poet and translator of the “Æneid,” is not the only eminent name. Very stately without and beautiful within, the edifice of the Cathedral Church must have looked in its prime, before the Lords of the Congregation sent word to “purge the kyrk of all kynd of monuments of idolatrye,” but to “tak guid heid that neither the windocks nor dooris be onywise hurt or broken”—a saving clause to which the zealous Reforming mob paid scant attention.

The main portion of the Cathedral—the nave—has long been roofless, but the tower, in which the “Cameronian Regiment” of 1689 offered their brilliant and successful resistance to the victors of Killiecrankie, and stemmed the Highland tide rushing down on the Lowlands, still stands, and the choir has been restored and is used as the parish church. Within the walls, the “Wolf of Badenoch,” Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan—that type of a savage and ruthless Highland chieftain—is buried; here also are the vaults of the Athole family, and a monument recording the deeds of the “Black Watch.” Without, the beautiful lawns, gardens, and woods of Dunkeld Palace, one of the seats of the Duke of Athole, surround the Cathedral ruins, and come down to the river’s edge. Fine villa residences are ranged along the hillside, and the town of Dunkeld offers every evidence of prosperity.

At Dunkeld, the Tay takes a long sweep eastward, until at the meeting with the Isla at Meikleour it forms a great elbow and resumes its southward flow. The Murthly estate, which belongs to the owner of Grandtully, occupies the south bank of the river along this portion of its course. From the earliest times royalty, like romance and poetry, has had the good taste to frequent these scenes. The wraiths of Neil Gow, the famous fiddler, and of the Highland caterans hanged in the “eerie hollow” of the Stare Dam, dispute with the ghost of Macbeth the honour of being the familiar spirits of Birnam Hill, once again magnificently clothed with wood. In Auchtergaven is the birthplace of Robert Nicol, the “Peasant Poet;” and here also stood the “Auld House of Nairne,” which recalls the name of Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne, the laureate of Jacobite song, and which, like her ancestral home in Strathearn—the “Auld House of Gask”—gave shelter to Prince Charlie. At the Royal Castle of Kinclaven, now a neglected ruin, many a Scottish Sovereign, from the time of Malcolm Ceanmohr and Queen Margaret, had solaced themselves after the chase or battle, before it was captured and recaptured, rebuilt and demolished, in the days of Wallace and Bruce.

The northern bank of the Tay is equally rich in scenic beauty and historical associations. Between the grounds of Delvine and Meikleour, and opposite the “Bloody Inches”—believed to preserve the memory of the spot where Redner Lodbrog, the Norse viking and skald, was beaten back to his ships—the important Roman station of Tulina, now Invertuthil, is supposed to have stood. Meikleour the Marchioness of Lansdowne has inherited from her ancestors the Mercers, descendants of a warlike Provost of Perth in the fourteenth century. The village is one of the quaintest and most charming of Scottish hamlets; and the great “beech hedge,” ninety feet high, is among the many arboricultural marvels in the valley of the Tay. Hidden from sight among hills and woods, like many other lakes and famous sites of this district, is the Loch of Clunie, with its island castle, the hunting seat of kings and place of rest and retirement of bishops in the old days. The Lunan drains from it into the Isla; but to trace the Isla would be to write pages of description and history concerning Glenardle and Glenshee, Stormont and Strathmore, the slopes of the Sidlaws and the passes through the Grampians into Braemar. We should have to give some idea of the beauties collected about Bridge of Cally, Craighall, and Blairgowrie on the Ericht; to visit the “Reekie Linn,” the “Slugs of Auchrannie,” and Lintrathen on the Isla; to seek the sites, mythical or otherwise, of Agricola’s victory over Galgacus and of Macbeth’s defeat by Macduff near Dunsinane Hill; and to speak of what makes Glamis and Airlie and Inverqueich, Alyth and Meigle and Coupar, and the rest of the country lying along the borders of Perth and Angus, memorable and attractive. It would even lead us as far as Forfar and its loch and castles, and the rival little burgh of Kirriemuir—the “Thrums” of recent delightful sketches of old-world Scottish “wabster” and kirk life in Angus—and detain us to the end of the chapter.

We resume, instead, the line of the Tay below Meikleour and Kinclaven, and beyond the “Coble o’ Cargill,” replaced by the more prosaic bridge carrying the railway line from Perth to Aberdeen. This is the heart of Strathmore—the “great valley.” Ballathy, Stobhall, Muckersy, and Stanley maintain the repute of the Tay for noble prospects of hill, wood, and stream. Stobhall was the seat of the Drummond family—still a power in Perthshire—before they removed to Drummond Castle on the Earn; and near by, at the Campsie Linn, beside an ancient cell of the monks of Coupar-Angus Abbey, is the waterfall over which—teste the author of the “Fair Maid of Perth”—Conacher, the refugee from the battle on the North Inch, flung himself to hide his shame. Macbeth’s Castle, on Dunsinane Hill, and the field of Luncarty—where, nine centuries ago, the peasant ancestor of the Hays of Tweeddale, Errol, and Kinnoull is said to have turned the battle for the Scots against the Danes with his plough-yoke—might detain us. But now, close ahead, the explorer of Tayside views, fringing the right bank of the river for miles opposite the mouth of the Almond, and extending to the environs of the Royal City of Perth, the woods of Scone—

“Towers and battlements he sees,

Bosomed high on tufted trees.”

This is Scone Palace, the magnificent mansion of the Earls of Mansfield, standing almost on the site of the ancient Abbey and royal residence of Scone. Modern Scone and all its surroundings are stately and spacious, but the relics of its early grandeur have disappeared from the landscape, and almost the only memorials of the days when it was the meeting-place of parliaments and councils, the crowning-place of kings, “the Windsor of Scotland,” are the mound of the “Motehill,” the sycamore tree planted by Queen Mary, and the cross which marks the place where stood the old “City of Scone.” In its neighbourhood was fought the last battle that decided the supremacy of the Scots over the Picts and the amalgamation of the two nations in one. On the Motehill, Kenneth Macalpine proclaimed the “Macalpine Laws.” Hither, according to tradition, the “Stone of Destiny” was brought, more than a thousand years ago, from the old capital of the Dalriadic Scots in the west—from Dunstaffnage or Beregonium—and the Sovereigns of Scotland continued to be crowned on it until it was carried off to England, as the trophy of conquest, by Edward I. It forms part of the Coronation Chair at Westminster; and patriotic Scots declare that the prophecy bound up in the fateful stone is still being fulfilled, and that where it is, the Sovereigns of a Scottish house rule the land. Though the Coronation Stone was taken away, kings continued to be crowned here. Robert the Bruce was enthroned, and received the homage of his vassals, at Scone; and—to make a wide leap in history—Charles II. was crowned King of Scotland at the spot where his ancestors had been anointed and installed, before he set out on the unlucky expedition which ended at Worcester. Similar preparations were made for the coronation of the Old Pretender; but on the very eve of the event dissensions among his followers, and the approach of Argyll’s army, caused him to take flight back to the Continent, leaving his adherents to their fate—an inglorious end to “an auld sang!”

PERTH, FROM THE WEST.

Before Kenneth Macalpine’s day, Scone was a place where councils of the Early Church met; and nearly eight centuries ago a monastery was founded there, and richly endowed by Alexander I., in gratitude for his escape from an attempt made by insurgent “men of Moray and the Mearns” to capture him at Invergowrie Castle, or “Hurley Hawkin,” where two burns meet near the Church of Liff. The Abbots and the Abbey of Scone played a prominent part in the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland; and we find the patronage and lands of the High Church of St. Giles, in Edinburgh, bestowed upon it, on account of the expenses incurred by the monks at the funeral of Robert II. and coronation of Robert III., when the prelates and nobles encamped on the fields between the Abbey and the Tay trampled down the standing corn, besides eating and drinking their victuals, and also, as the deed of gift runs, “because, at similar times of unction and coronation, through the many and frequent great gatherings of the people, the monastery has sustained great damage in their buildings, and been burdened with heavy expenses.” All cares and burdens came to an end in 1559, when the Reforming mob, having destroyed the Blackfriars’ and other religious houses in the “City of St. Johnstoun,” stormed out of Perth, and burned the Abbey of Scone. Its lands, after remaining a brief time in the hands of the unfortunate House of Gowrie, fell to the branch of the Murrays that became illustrious in law, statecraft, and literature, in the person of William, first Earl of Mansfield. The Abbey site is a clump of trees; and the “Royal City of Scone,” expelled outside the park gates, has nothing to represent it but the prosaic village of New Scone.

TAY STREET, PERTH.

The Ruthvens have no longer part or lot in this district, where they once lorded it over the stout citizens of Perth, and dared to put their Sovereigns in thrall. Their old home of Ruthven, or Huntingtower Castle, is opposite Scone, and not far from the junction of the Almond with the Tay, where, if we could believe tradition, stood the original Perth—Rath-Inveralmon—until it was visited by one of the many floods that have vexed its burghers, and was removed a mile or two downward to its present site, more close to the shelter of Moncrieffe and Kinnoull Hills and the tide-water of the Tay. All around are historical scenes—among them Methven and Tibbermore, made memorable by stirring passages in the careers of Wallace, Bruce, and Montrose. But at few spots has more history been made, or contrived, than at the Castle of the Ruthvens. Four or five generations of its lords made themselves illustrious or notorious in the annals of the “troublous times” that preceded the Union of the Crowns. Above all, they were zealous, not to say unscrupulous, partisans of the Reformation. It was the third lord who rose from a sick-bed, and, clad in armour, and “haggard and terrific” in visage, took a foremost share in the murder of David Rizzio. His son, the fourth Lord Ruthven, grandfather of the “great Marquis” of Montrose, had a hand in the same bloody business, and he it was who conducted Mary to Lochleven, and extorted from her the renouncement of her right to rule.

The year after this same fourth lord had been made first Earl of Gowrie was enacted the “Raid of Ruthven.” The young King James was invited to visit Huntingtower Castle, on his way from Athole to Edinburgh, and was there detained by force by the Gowrie faction, whose professed object was to preserve him from evil counsel and wicked favourites. Here, when he wept, he was bluntly told, “Better bairns greet than bearded men.” He never forgave the affront, and as soon as he got the power in his hands the ruin of the Ruthvens was decreed. Lingering at Dundee to plot, Gowrie was captured and beheaded, and this event, in the time of the second and last earl, led to the still more mysterious and tragic episode of the “Gowrie Conspiracy,” which gave the Stuarts the desired opportunity to “root out the whole name and race.” Every reader of Scottish history remembers the strange story—how, in the autumn of 1600, the King was summoned by the Master of Ruthven, at early morning, while buckhunting at Falkland, to ride to Perth to see a “pot of gold” discovered there; how, by his own tale, he found in the turret chamber to which he was led, not a treasure but an armed man, and a portrait on the wall, covered by a curtain, which, being drawn aside, revealed the features of the slain earl; how James shrieked for help, and his attendants, bursting in from the courtyard, found him struggling in the hands of Gowrie and his brother, both of whom were instantly despatched. But the scene of this was not Ruthven Castle, but old Gowrie House, the town residence of the doomed family, which stood on the site of the present County Buildings of Perth, close by the Tay; and the episode belongs to the annals of the “good city of Sanct Johnstoun.”

Thanks to the civil and religious broils of former days, and to the spirit of modern improvement, nearly all the antiquities of Perth—the relics of days when it was the seat of the Court, the centre of trade and religious life, and the great “objective” of warlike operations and political intrigue—have disappeared from the face of the earth. Of its Castle, which stood near the north end of what is now the Skinnergate, not a trace now remains; of its ancient walls, besieged and breached so often in the wars between Scots and English, scarcely a vestige. Four monasteries, and numerous other religious houses, once existed here; and according to information that reached Erasmus, their inmates led a specially delicate and lazy life. All disappeared—monks and monasteries together—at the Reformation, and the “rascall multitude,” who had perhaps seen too much of their cowled and cloistered neighbours to cherish a deep respect for them, showed little scruple in spoiling “the monuments of idolatry,” and in making free with the meat and drink with which buttery and cellar were found well stored, and bore in triumph through the streets the great dinner-pot of the Blackfriars, thus spreading abroad the last savour of the mediæval religious life of Perth. Blackfriars Wynd and Street indicate the position of this Dominican convent, and King James VI.’s Hospital serves to mark the site of the only Carthusian foundation that existed in Scotland. In the former, James I. was done to death, and in the latter, richly endowed by him, the murdered poet-king was buried. The dark tale—the portents and warnings vouchsafed to the victim, the midnight clash of arms and flare of torches in the Monastery gardens, while James was gaily chatting with the Queen and her ladies before retiring to rest; the heroism of Catherine Douglas, who thrust her arm through the staple of the door as a bar against the traitors; the temporary escape of the king into the vault below the floor; his discovery, the savage struggle before he was despatched, and the terrible revenge that was wreaked by the widowed Joanna—is as familiar as the Gowrie tragedy itself.

The Church of St. John is still a venerable and venerated object in Perth; although it also has suffered from the hard usage of time and the Reformers, and its roof now covers, in place of the numerous shrines and chapels of Roman Catholic days, three Presbyterian places of worship. It was in St. John’s that Knox preached his iconoclastic sermon; and many other conspicuous events in the civil and religious history of Scotland—and more particularly during the long struggle between Protestantism and Papacy, and between Episcopacy and the Covenant—were transacted within a stone-throw of its time-worn walls. Fourteen Scottish Parliaments, and a still larger number of Councils of Churchmen, are reckoned to have met in Perth previous to the Reformation. Here schism and martyrdom had begun a century and a half before Knox. Girdings and gibings at priestly ways crept even into the “Miracle Plays” annually performed on Corpus Christi Day; and the town and country around were “more infested with heresy than any other part of the nation.” Cardinal Beaton watched from the Spey Tower while example was made of heretics by hanging and drowning them “for the encouragement of others:” to such good effect that in a few years the monasteries were in ashes, and the Lords of the Congregation, assembled at Perth, had proclaimed their resolution to spend goods and lives in the cause of the “true worship of God, the public welfare of the nation, and the common liberty,” in token whereof the burghers set out on their southward march with ropes—“St. Johnston’s ribands”—about their necks. Mary Queen of Scots and her son had small reason to remember with pleasure their visits to Perth; and after the Gowrie incident King James did all in his power to humiliate the town. It was here that the Assemblies of the Kirk and Parliaments, or Conventions of Estates, alternately proclaimed and disowned the authority of the bishops; the town was the centre of fighting in the long battle between Prelacy and Presbytery. Perth loyally entertained Charles I., and thirteen brethren of the Craft of Glovers—fateful number!—danced the sword-dance before him; and soon after, these selfsame swords were girded to oppose the King at Duns. Montrose captured and pillaged the town, after defeating the Covenanting troops outside at Tibbermore; the young Charles II. lodged in the Gowrie House, and after vainly attempting to run away from the ministers and their long prayers and exhortations, signed the Solemn League and Covenant, and professed, as King of Scots, penitence for the sins and follies of himself and his House. Then came Cromwell and his Ironsides, and built a citadel on the South Inch and a pier on the Tay with the stones of the ruined convents; and Claverhouse, Mar, and Prince Charlie have helped since then to “make history” at Perth and in its neighbourhood.

ON THE FIRTH OF TAY.

For nearly a century and a half the annals have been comparatively peaceful and prosaic; even inundation and plague do not trouble the townsmen as of yore. The Tay no longer makes trysts with its tributaries to meet “at the bonny cross of St. Johnstoun.” Except in rare times of spate, it sweeps smoothly and sedately under the arches of the bridge, and past the green “Inches,” with their spreading trees and spacious walks—the fields of pastime and of strife since long before the memorable battle of the North Inch, when the blade of Hal o’ the Wynd, fighting “for his own hand,” turned the scale in favour of the champions of Clan Chattan—to meet tide-water and commerce below the town. It is the benefactor and the crowning ornament of Perth, which has considerably grown and beautified itself of recent years, not the least of its sources of wealth being the amenities and romantic associations of the ancient city, and the glorious scenery of the Tay, of which it may be described as at once the gateway and the centre.

THE NEW TAY VIADUCT, FROM THE SOUTH.

Within short walking distance of Perth are the Hills of Kinnoull and Moncrieffe. Tay, after leaving the town, turns sharply to the left between these two grand wooded heights—each of them rising over 700 feet above the river—and pursues its way, widening as it goes, between the rich low expanse of the Carse of Gowrie and the opposing shores of Fife. It were hard to decide which of these sentinel hills commands the more magnificent prospect. Each view might challenge comparison with any scene outside of the basin of the Tay for extent and for the mingling of all the elements of beauty in Highland and Lowland scenery. Yet, close as they stand to each other and to Perth, distinctly different panoramas, in foreground and in perspective, are unfolded from the summits of the two heights. They offer companion pictures, and not merely landscapes in duplicate, of the Tay from its sources in the distant blue ranges of the Grampians to the sea.

The top of Moncrieffe—or Moredun—beside the foundations of the old Pict fort or dun, is the right station whence to survey Strathearn—a valley that rivals that of the Tay itself in the place it holds in the national history and in the affections of the lovers of scenic beauty. Directly below the steep pine-covered crest of Moredun runs the winding Earn, separating the park and woods of Moncrieffe from the pleasant watering-place of Bridge of Earn. Near the confluence with the Tay is Abernethy, its “Round Tower” coeval, perhaps, with the introduction of Christianity to this part of the Tay, and its Castle Law on which, says tradition, Nechtan and other Pictish kings held their state during the two centuries and a half when this decayed little burgh was the capital of the land. Beyond, in the same direction, are the waters of the Firth; Mugdrum Island, long and low; Newburgh, and Norman Law, the Norsemen’s look-out, rising on one side above old Ballenbriech Castle and the Fife shores, and on the other commanding the “Howe o’ Fife” and the Loch of Lindores. Beside the venerable ruins of Lindores Abbey, close to Newburgh and the Firth, are buried the murdered “heir of Scotland,” David, Duke of Rothesay, and James of Douglas—the “grey monk of Lindores”—the last of the ambitious race of the Black Douglases. In the same vicinity, in a glen or pass of the Ochils, stood another grim memorial of feudal or pre-feudal times, “Cross Macduff,” now represented only by its pedestal, where the taker of life, if he could “count kin,” within nine degrees, with the Thane of Fife, the head of Clan Macduff, could find refuge, and proffer the “blood-penny” in atonement.

Over against Moredun are the crests of the Lomonds and the green, smooth, wavy lines of the Ochils; and through Glenfarg to its foot comes the new main line of railway to the North by the Forth Bridge. Right opposite, behind Pitkeathly Wells, Kilgraston, the old kirk and “rocking stone” of Dron, and the ruins of Balmanno Castle, are the “Wicks of Baiglie,” whence Scott asserted that the Romans and he could descry the site of Perth. But the eye is carried irresistibly westward along the skirts of the hills and the broad and teeming valley below, towards the Highland mountains that surround the sources of the Earn. Near at hand are Forteviot and its Holyhill—a Scoto-Pictish capital before Perth; Dunning and other villages and hamlets lying along the hill-foots, proud to this day of the memories of the martyrs for “Crown and Covenant,” their sufferings at the hands of Montrose and Mar, and the former prosperity of their weaving crafts; and standing on rich flats by the waterside, or in picturesque glens running up into the Ochils, many a mansion and castle of the fighting and grasping Jacobite lairds of Strathearn, ill neighbours of yore to the Whiggish villagers. Over against the “Birks o’ Invermay” lies Dupplin Castle (now the seat of Lord Kinnoull), with its loch, its grand woods, and the site of its battlefield, so disastrous to the Scots; and opposite Lord Rollo’s park of Duncrub is Gask, still a home of the Oliphants, though the “Auld House” has disappeared. Further west, the Ruthven water comes down through Gleneagles and the lovely wooded “Den” of Kincardine, past the old castle and the single long street of Auchterarder, famous in ecclesiastical history. The Machany flows by Culdees and Strathallan Castles, and not far from Tullibardine, cradle of the noble House of Athole, and burying-place of the great race of Montrose. At Innerpeffray, where the old line of Roman roads and stations crossed the Earn, comes in the Pow, flowing by the ruins of Inchaffray Abbey and the woods of Balgowan and Abercairney; and further on, around Crieff, and thence upwards by Comrie and St. Fillan’s, to Loch Earn, lies one of the most glorious districts, not alone of Earnside, but of Scotland. Drummond and Monzie Castles, Ochtertyre and Dunira, Lawers and Aberuchil, are among its grandly wooded demesnes; Glenturret, Glen Lednoch, and Glen Artney contribute each their charms of crag and waterfall, bosky dell and lone hillside, and there are innumerable remains of former days in the form of standing or ruined chapel and castle, and the sites of ancient feud and battle. Little of all this can, of course, be descried from the top of Moncrieffe Hill; but Ben Chonzie, and the Braes of Doune, and the Forest of Glen Artney, and behind them the shapely head of Ben Voirlich and other mountains that mirror themselves in Loch Earn or guard Glen Ogle and Lochearnhead, are full in view.

The abrupt front of Kinnoull Hill, on the other hand, commands more directly the lower course of the Tay and its estuary, widening out between the level expanse of the Carse of Gowrie, thickly sprinkled with farms and mansions, and the opposing shores of Fife, onward to where it is closed by the smoke of Dundee and the line of the Tay Bridge. From the pathway below the tower crowning the hill, one looks down—one almost fancies he might leap down—upon the woods and sward surrounding Kinfauns Castle, the residence of the family of Gray. Visible, too, from Kinnoull, or sheltering under the folds of the “Braes o’ the Carse,” which rise from the flat champaign to the heights of the Sidlaws, are innumerable sites and scenes, equally rich in beauty and in memories of days when Gowrie was busier making history than in raising grain. Among them are St. Madoes’ Church and its sculptured Runic stones; Errol and Megginch, ancient heritages of the Hays; Kilspindie, where Wallace spent his schooldays, when he “in Gowrie dwelt, and had gude living there,” and the seat, later, of Archibald of Douglas—“Auld Graysteel;” Fingask, the home of the stout old Jacobite family of Murray Thriepland and of the “Lass o’ Gowrie” of Scottish song; Kinnaird and Rossie Priory, the earlier and later possessions of the noble House of Kinnaird, champions in these parts, for generations, of the cause of Reform.

DUNDEE, FROM BROUGHTY FERRY.

From Rossie Hill, or from the battlements of the fine old baronial tower of Castle Huntly, a nearer view can be had of the beautiful cultivated Carse and its surroundings of firth and hills; or from near the remains of the ancient Church of Invergowrie and the boundary line of the shires of Perth and Stirling you can look across the widest part of the great tidal stream—three miles of shining water or sandbank—to another famous old ivy-clad ruin, Balmerino Abbey, on the opposite and bolder shore of Fife. But as Kinnoull commands the grandest view of the upper part of the Firth of Tay, so Balgay Hill and Dundee Law are the stations to take up for a survey of its lower reaches and its meeting with the North Sea. Round the bases of these eminences the northern coast of the estuary curves outward, leaving a comparatively narrow platform on which, for a space of three miles or more, are grouped the forest of chimneys, spires, and masts of the city and harbour of Dundee. The passage between the sea front of esplanade and docks, and Newport and the line of handsome villas surmounting the rocky bank on the other side, is reduced to less than two miles; and still bending and narrowing, as the Fife shore, in turn, approaches, as if to meet Angus and seal the mouth of the Tay, the waters of the Firth measure only a mile across from Broughty Castle to Ferryport-on-Craig, where, skirted on either hand by broad stretches of sand and “links,” they finally open, trumpet-shaped, to meet the German Ocean. Directly under the Law, from Magdalen Point to St. Fort, where begin the narrows and the busier part of Dundee, the line of arches of the new Tay Bridge spans the Firth. The width from bank to bank is 3,440 yards—a little under two miles—including the curve which the long double file of piers makes in approaching the Dundee side. Slight as the structure looks, when first seen from the Law or the river, and compared with the wide expanse of water over which it is carried, it conveys, on more attentive view, an impression of security as well as gracefulness; it is not only a triumph of engineering skill, but a beautiful object in a striking and noble picture.

DUNDEE.

Far other are the impressions produced by the appearance, above the water level, and running for part of the way alongside its successor, of the foundations of the first Tay Bridge. This ill-fated undertaking had only been eighteen months open for traffic, when, on a wild night at the close of 1879, the whole of the central portion collapsed and fell into the raging Firth, carrying along with it a train, with its freight of seventy or eighty passengers, which was crossing at the time. Not a soul survived to tell the circumstances of the catastrophe—the most dramatic and one of the most disastrous in the annals of railway accidents in this country. But subsequent inquiry left no doubt that, in the original scheme of the structure, sufficient allowance had not been made for the tremendous pressure put upon it by the currents of air scouring through this funnel of the Firth; and that much of the work, both in the brick foundations and steel superstructure, had been “scamped” and left without proper inspection, so that the first occasion of maximum strain—a passing train, while a tempest was at its height—brought the inevitable result.

Dundonians love to survey their city and its surroundings from the “Law.” The spectacle is one they may well be proud of. Marvellous has been the change here since Dundee consisted of only four straggling streets, meeting at the central “place” of the “Market Gait,” and a congeries of narrow lanes running from these down to the harbour, consisting, as the local historian tells us, of rude jetties added to the natural haven opening between the headlands of the Chapel Craig and the Castle Rock. Even then, however—four centuries ago and more—it had an interesting history; even then the energy of its burgesses and its favourable position at the mouth of the Tay enabled it to carry on a brisk trade with the ports of Holland and the Baltic. Already its Castle, near the head of the Seagate, had suffered sieges; its Constables, the Scrymgeours, were the standard-bearers of Scotland in the national war, and the town disputed with Perth which was the more ancient and honourable. Its situation at the foot and on the slope of the fine acclivity facing the sun and the Tay, got for it from its Lowland and Highland neighbours its name of “Bonny Dundee” and the “pleasant town.” It has vastly increased its trade and importance since; but it has also increased its amenities; and even the casual eye overlooking it can see, by the handsome spires and towers rising beside the forest of masts and factory stalks that stretch along the shore, and by the open spaces—Albert Square, and the Baxter and Balgay Parks—that the town is mindful of art and air and beauty, as well as of business. The castles—the early building on the Castle Hill, and the later fortalice of the Constables at Dudhope—have disappeared to the foundations. But the fine old square tower of St. Mary’s, in the Nethergate, is still a handsome and conspicuous landmark of Dundee, spite of all the competition of its modern buildings. Although it can hardly be part of the original structure erected by David, Earl of Huntingdon—the hero of the “Talisman”—in gratitude for his escape from manifold perils while serving under Richard Cœur-de-Lion in Palestine, it is a venerable and stately object, and the Dundonians have had this their chief antiquity carefully restored.

That Dundee has not more remnants left of its early consequence is due to the march of modern improvement, and to the hard knocks it suffered in times of civil war and invasion. After Pinkie, the English troops seized upon the Castle of Broughty Craig—which, like the Tower of St. Mary’s, has been restored, and now guards the entrance to the Firth, with the pleasant backing of marine villa residences and stretches of links and sands much frequented by the good folks of the burgh—and Broughty besieged Dundee, and Dundee Broughty, for two or three years before the intruders were expelled. A hundred years later Montrose and his Irish and Highland kernes swooped suddenly down upon it from the upper valley of the Tay, and plundered and sacked the Covenanting place, the leader looking on from the “Corbie Hill,” while the followers burned, slew, and wasted in the streets below. The townsmen magnanimously forgot this when, a few years later, the “Great Marquis” was brought into it, a captive in the hands of his enemies; and “though Dundee,” says Wishart, “had suffered more by his army than any other within the kingdom, yet were they so far from insulting him, that the whole town testified very great sorrow for his woful condition.” Next year—1651—Dundee had again to endure sack and capture, at the hands of General Monk, when the garrison was put to the sword, the town burned, and, as Carlyle says, “there was once more a grim scene of flames, blood, and rage and despair transacted upon this earth.” Claverhouse is close by the town, and John Graham—that other “evil genius of the Covenant”—was Constable of Dudhope, and took his title from “Bonny Dundee.”

The “bloody Mackenzie” was another of its sons or neighbours; Camperdown House, the home of the valiant Admiral Duncan, is behind Balgay and the busy suburb of Lochee. But, if it has reared many “men of blood,” Dundee has been still more prolific in historians and poets, reformers and inventors, of whom Boece and Wedderburn, Halyburton and Carmichael, are representative names. Yet longer is the list of its merchant princes, and its munificent patrons of art and benefactors of the town, of whom the Baxter family are types. They have made of Dundee a great and busy centre of maritime commerce, and placed it first among the trading places of the kingdom in the importation and manufacture of jute; and they have not forgotten generous aid in endowing the town with public parks, museums, libraries, educational institutions, and other resources of civilisation, such as few seats of industry of its size can boast.

Dundee has spread over the green slopes and orchard grounds below the Law; but it has only increased the circumference of its fine environment of land and sea. Westward, the view extends over the fertile Carse, and range on range of the Grampians, amid which may be descried Ben Lomond and Schiehallion, and many a Highland peak besides. Behind the Law, the eye rises from the rich valley of the Dichty, flowing by Strathmartine and Claverhouse towards the sea at Monifieth Sands, to the Hill of Auchterhouse, Craig Owl, and other extensions of the Sidlaws, with glimpses of the heads of the loftier hills of Strathmore peeping over their shoulders; and, ridge behind ridge, these uplands subside as they stretch eastward, past many a storied and beautiful scene, towards Arbroath and the sea. Southward, beyond the Firth and the bridge, the rocky northern shores and hilly backbone of Fife are spread out like a map; and behind Newport and Tayport and the waste expanse of Tents Moor shimmer the waters of St. Andrew’s Bay and the Eden Estuary, and rise the grey, weather-beaten towers of St. Rule’s Cathedral and of Cardinal Beaton’s Castle, beside the green links and white sand of St. Andrews.

John Geddie.

BROUGHTY FERRY CASTLE.

BEN AND LOCH LOMOND.

THE FORTH.

Comparative—Poetry, Romance, and History—Loch Ard and Flora McIvor—The “Clachan of Aberfoyle”—Lake of Menteith—The Trossachs and Loch Katrine—Ellen and Helen—Loch Achray—Ben Ledi—The View from Stirling Castle—Stirling Town—Bannockburn—The Ochils and the Devon Valley—Alloa—Clackmannan—Kincardine-on-Forth—Tulliallan Castle—Culross: Abbey and Burgh—The “Standard Stone”—Torryburn—Rosyth Castle—“St. Margaret’s Hope”—Dunfermline: Tower, Palace, and Abbey—The New Forth Bridge—Inch Garvie and its Castle—Inverkeithing Bay—Donibristle House—Aberdour—Inchcolm, Cramond, Inchkeith, and May Islands—The Bass Rock—Kirkcaldy Bay—Edinburgh—Leith—Seton—Aberlady—Round to North Berwick—Tantallon Castle.

Other Scottish streams may dispute with the Forth the prize of beauty, and excel it in length of course and in wealth of commerce. There is none that can contend with it for the palm of historic interest. Nature herself has marked out its valley as the scene of the strife and of the reconciliation of races and creeds. Half the important events in Scottish annals have taken place on or near the banks of the river, and of the Firth—around Doune, and Stirling, and Edinburgh, and Dunfermline; under the shadow of the Campsie and the Ochil Hills; along the margins of the Teith and Allan, Devon and Esk; by the folds of the Forth, or by the shores of Fife and the Lothians. Its course forms no inapt emblem and epitome of the fortunes of Scotland and of the Scottish nation. Drawn from the strength of the hills, and cradled amid scenes of wild and solitary beauty, its deep, dark, winding waters flow through the “Debatable Land” of Roman and Caledonian, of Pict and Scot, of Saxon and Gael. The fords and bridges which Highlander and Lowlander, Whig and Jacobite, have crossed so often on raid or for reprisal, have become bonds of union. The fertile carse-lands wave with the richer harvests for the blood shed in the battles of national independence, and in many a feud now ended and forgotten. The Forth, that “bridled the wild Highlandman,” has become the symbol of peace and the highway of intercourse between South and North.

Poetry and Romance, as well as History, have made the Forth their favourite haunt. The genius of Scottish Romance, or of Scottish History, could nowhere find a prouder seat than Ben Lomond. At its feet are the waters of Loch Lomond, losing themselves to the north among the enclosing folds of the hills, and broadening out southwards to embrace their beautiful islands; while beyond, like a map, lie the mountains of the West, from Skye to Kintyre, touched here and there with gleams of loch and sea, and with blurs of smoke from factory stalk or steamer. From the other flank of the mountain issues the infant Forth. Ben Lomond presides over all its devious wanderings, from the source to the sea. It looks directly down upon “Rob Roy’s country;” and close at hand, and within the basin of the Forth, are Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. The towers of Stirling, and even the “reek” of Edinburgh, may be descried on a clear day. Following the broad valley of the Forth, the eye can take in the sites to which cling most closely the heroic or pathetic memories of “the days of other years;” and over the whole glorious landscape Walter Scott has thrown the glamour of his genius.

Romance works with a charm more powerful than that of History itself in attracting visitors to the head-waters of the Forth and Teith, and in enhancing the marvellous natural beauties of their lake and mountain scenery. True, few except stout pedestrians and ardent anglers follow up the Duchray Water, past ivied Duchray Castle, to the corries that seam the base of Ben Lomond. But the path from Inversnaid, that skirts Loch Chon and the more famous and more beautiful northern head-stream of the Forth that issues from it, is not so unfrequented. Further down, Loch Ard opens again, and yet again, a lovely mirror in which are reflected the changeful outlines and rich colours of its girdling hills and woods. Oak coppice, interspersed with the shining trunks of the birch and the dark green of the pines, climbs over every knoll, and clings to every crag, and even covers the little island on the lake, where Duke Robert of Albany hoped to find a refuge from his enemies. Above copse-wood and lake rise the brown slopes and grey precipices of Ben Vogrieh and of Craigmore; while the conical head and broad flanks of Ben Lomond shoulder themselves into view, and close the top of the glen.

But the enchantment of Loch Ard would not be complete did not the form of Flora McIvor yet haunt the Linn of Ledeart, in the guise of the Highland Muse, as when first she startled and threw a spell over Edward Waverley; and did not her voice—wild and plaintive as the legends of the land and the genius of its race—mingle, as of yore, with the murmur of the stream. The pass by the lake-side still seems to have the commanding figure of Helen MacGregor presiding over it, and eyeing menacingly Saxon intrusion into this refuge of a proscribed clan. The “Clachan of Aberfoyle,” now unexceptionable as a place of travellers’ entertainment, can never be disassociated from the memorable experiences of a night’s quarters at “Jeanie MacAlpine’s.” At the “Fords of Frew,” we think, more than of anything else, of Rob Roy slipping the belt-buckle in midstream, and of the moving and mysterious night interview on the neighbouring moor between Francis Osbaldistone and Di Vernon.

THE FORTH.

The “Clachan” is now all spick and span; but its surroundings are the same. The brawling waters tumble in white foam from Loch Ard, and, mixing with the Duchray, pour their deep sombre current—the Avondhu, or “Black River”—on past Gartmore to wind in labyrinthine folds through the level mosslands towards Stirling. And the natives of the Upper Forth, while they have forgotten the real history of their district, will show you, chained to the tree in front of the inn windows, the veritable “coulter” with which Bailie Nicol Jarvie did such credit to his Highland blood, and the selfsame oak-stump from which he hung suspended over the lake; nor have they wholly lost faith in the Fairy People—the Daoine Shi, or “Men of Peace”—with whom these hills and valleys have from time immemorial been favoured haunts.

From Aberfoyle, the direct road to Stirling, leaving the Forth, winds round the margin of the Lake of Menteith, overlooked by the outposts of the Grampians, and overlooking the rich beauty of a plain which rises on its southern side behind Bucklyvie and Kippen, to the lower heights and smoother outlines of the Campsie and Fintry Hills. Here, in the heart of Menteith, we are in the country of “the Graemes,” and many legends of the great House of Montrose linger about this, as about other spots in the basin of the Forth. But the Lake of Menteith has still earlier and prouder memories. The Comyns and the Stewarts—the old lords of Menteith—wielded almost regal power from their island-castle of Talla; and within bowshot is the larger isle of Inchmahone, where part of the ancient Priory still stands in the shadow of its planes and orchard trees. Mary Stuart spent part of her childhood in the “Isle of Rest”—perhaps the quietest and sweetest period of her troubled life—when it was thought wise, after the battle of Pinkie, to remove the young Queen of Scots to a place of safety.

“ELLEN’S ISLE.”

The Trossachs and Loch Katrine can be reached in a couple of hours, on foot, from Aberfoyle. More even than the Upper Forth and the banks of Lochs Ard and Menteith, these scenes at the head-waters of the Teith, immortalised in “The Lady of the Lake,” are the abodes of the spirit of Highland romance and the shrines of tourist pilgrimage. Once this “fastness of the North” was the impregnable retreat of the proscribed clan of the MacGregors, whence they issued to harry the shores of Loch Lomond with fire and sword, and levy black-mail and empty byres in the Lennox. A century and a half ago it was still thought unsafe for peaceably disposed folk to approach the district, and in the memory of men still alive it had hardly acquired more than local fame for its beauty.

Walter Scott and his metrical and prose romances have changed all that. A stream of tourists flows steadily through the passes all the summer and autumn, and more fitfully at other seasons; and steamers, stage-coaches, and hotels have strangely altered the aspect of this “Scottish Lake Country.” But the “everlasting hills” look down on it unchanged. The crest of Ben Lomond still dominates the western end of Loch Katrine, girt in by hillsides, or opening into glens as stern and almost as solitary as when they echoed back the slogan of Roderick Dhu. Round the lower extremity of the lake the mountains take closer rank and more varied forms; and the broken and impending precipices, the winding and opening waters, the wooded shores and islands, fringed with grey rock or “silver strand,” seem, as when Fitz-James first set his foot here, an “enchanted land” over which Ben Venue and Ben An stand sentinels:—

“High on the south huge Ben Venue

Down on the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurled,

The fragments of an earlier world;

A wildering forest feathered o’er

His ruined sides and summit hoar;

While on the north through middle air

Ben An lifts up his forehead bare.”

THE TROSSACHS AND BEN VENUE.

On the cloven side of Ben Venue is the “Coir-nan-Uriskin”—the Goblin’s Cave or Hollow—deserted of its unearthly denizens since it has become an object of interest to the tourist. “Ellen’s Isle,” clad with wood to the water’s edge, seems to shelter in the shadow of the northern shore. Cromwell’s men, clambering up the pass, found that the women and children of the clan had sought refuge here; and one bold soldier swam out to the island to bring away a boat. Hardly had he touched ground when a woman—Helen Stuart—drew a dagger from below her apron and slew him. A minstrel’s music has slightly changed the name and wholly changed the associations, and the spot is dedicated to another Ellen and to the gentler fancies, not the rude facts, of the days of old.

From the “Silver Strand” opposite Ellen’s Isle you wind for a couple of miles through the “bristled territory” of the Trossachs before you reach Loch Achray, and “the copse-wood grey that waves and weeps” above the second of the chain of lakes. Ben An and Ben Venue hold the place of sentries to left and to right, and seem to have tumbled down into the narrow pass huge fragments from their splintered sides, to block the way against intruders into this old sanctuary of the Gael. In vain; their very efforts have but added to the wild impressiveness of the scene, and to the crowds that come to wonder and admire. It would be “to gild refinèd gold” to describe the beauties of the Trossachs—the scene where Nature seems to have tried to produce, within the narrowest compass, the most bewildering effects by mingling her materials of rock and foliage and falling waters. Their praises have been sung in words that linger in every memory.

Toilsome indeed must the path have been to trace when the wandering James V. came hither in pursuit of game. But a fine road now threads the depths of the ravine, and skirting Loch Achray, and passing the Trossachs Hotel and Church, brings us to Brig of Turk and the opening of “lone Glenfinlas,” the haunt of Highland deer and of Highland legend. Every green nook and cranny, every glimpse of copse-wood and tumbling water, moss-grown hut and lichened rock, is a temptation to linger by the way. But Duncraggan must be passed; then Lanrick Mead, at the west end of Loch Vennachar, the meeting-place of the Clan Alpine, summoned by the “Fiery Cross;” and by-and-bye the sounding torrent of Carchonzie, where the Vennachar “breaks in silver” from its lake, and near it Coilantogle Ford, the scene of the deadly strife between James Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu. By this time the form of Ben Ledi—the “Hill of God,” the high altar of the old Druidical worship—has lifted itself up mightily upon the left, and, furthest outpost in this direction of the higher Grampians, keeps watch over the “mouldering lines” of the Roman encampment on Bochastle, the Pass of Leny, and the modern village of Callander. It looks across to Ben Voirlich and the heathy solitudes of Uam-Var, where the “noble stag” was first started upon the eventful Chase, and abroad on a prospect which may compare, for richness, variety, and extent, with that from Ben Lomond.

Not less magnificent in its own way, and far more accessible, is the view from the bridge of Callander, where the most impressive features of the scene are Ben Ledi itself, the high crag that forms the background of the village, and the deeply wooded flanks of the pass, down which foam the waters of the Leny, coming from the “Braes of Balquhidder” and Loch Lubnaig, to hold romantic tryst here with the stream from Loch Vennachar, and between them to form the Teith. But we must downward with the Teith towards Stirling, only glancing at a few of the scenes on its banks—at the wooded glen of the Keltie, embosoming the far-famed Falls of Bracklinn; at Cambusmore, where Scott began his “Lady of the Lake;” and above all at the “bannered towers of Doune,” its huge feudal walls rising above the Teith—walls saturated from dungeon to turret with memories of grim or pathetic events in the histories of the Stewarts of Menteith and Moray, and in the lives of Mary Stuart of Montrose, and of Charles Edward. Murdoch, Duke of Albany, is thought to have built Doune, and may have planted its “Dool Tree.” When Murdoch was executed, along with his sons and adherents, on the “Heading Hill” at Stirling, it was on a spot where his eyes might fall upon the strong new castle upon which he had built his hopes of safety.

At Stirling Castle it will be convenient to take our next stand, and see “the mazy Forth unravelled.” No baronial castle on the Rhine or Danube is more romantically and commandingly placed than these “towers of Snowdoun,” or surveys a fairer scene. One can imagine the time—but yesterday in the geologist’s record—when the broad valley of the river was filled with the sea, back to the roots of the Grampians, and when Stirling Rock, with its neighbour bluffs, the Abbey Craig and Craigforth, rose as islands or peninsulas over the waters, each with its slope towards the east and its front to the west. The sea has long receded, and Stirling now dominates the green and level floor of its fertile carse. Through the middle of the landscape meanders the Forth, in immense loops and folds—“a foiled circuitous wanderer”—

“Forgetting the bright speed he had

In his high mountain cradle,”

and using, as it would seem, every circumvolution and chance of tarrying or turning back, to avoid meeting with the Teith, the Allan, and the Bannock, at the base of Stirling Rock. From where the stream debouches from the hills into Flanders Moss, to where it meets the tide-water at Stirling Bridge, there is said to be a fall of only eighteen feet in some eighteen miles, measured “as the crow flies”—a distance increased fourfold by following the intricate gyres of the dark still waters. Below the Bridge, to which vessels are able to come up from the sea, the river still continues to double and turn as far as Alloa, in those “links o’ Forth,” each of which, according to the old rhyme, is “worth an Earldom in the North.”

Flat and tame as are the immediate banks of the river, draining through ancient mosses, now turned for the most part into rich corn-bearing land, goodly sites are close at hand in the plain, on the slopes of the enclosing hills, or in the tributary valleys—among them Cardross, and Blair-Drummond, and Keir, all famous in the annals of Scottish law, agriculture, and literature; and Airth and Airthrey Castles, which carry the mind from the doughty deeds of Sir John the Graeme to those of Sir Ralph Abercromby. Of what lies within the valley of the Teith we have seen something. But the banks of Allan Water, behind the favourite Spa of Bridge of Allan and its embosoming woods and hills, are almost as well worth exploring; for they lead, to mention but a few of their attractions, to Dunblane and its beautiful old Cathedral, to Sheriffmuir, and to the Roman Camp at Ardoch.

The tide of Scottish history long flowed towards and around Stirling Castle. The time when it was not a place of strength and of strife is lost in the mists of antiquity. Early, too, it became the seat of kings; and the Castle, and the little burgh upon the slope behind, have witnessed many a stirring sight. Scottish Parliaments were held here, or in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, whose ruined tower rises, on a “link of Forth,” opposite what is now the railway station. Sovereigns were born and baptised, were wedded and buried, held joyous jousts, and committed foul deeds of blood and shame, on Stirling Rock or under its shadow.

OLD BRIDGE OF FORTH, STIRLING.

The buildings on the highest platform of the Rock—still a fortified and garrisoned place—surround the “Upper Square.” What is the Armoury was the Chapel, erected on the site of an older Chapel Royal, by the “Scottish Solomon,” to celebrate, with pomp till then unheard of, the baptism of Prince Henry. Opposite is the Palace of James V., its front still embossed with the remains of rich carvings and uncouth sculpture. The Parliament House, built by James III. (now put to barrack purposes), and the building within which James II. stained his name and race with blood, by stabbing to the heart the Earl of Douglas, complete a group of buildings upon which have been indelibly impressed the character and the fate of the Sovereigns of the House of Stuart. The visitor to Stirling Castle can view Highlands and Lowlands from “Queen Mary’s Lookout;” and then, for change of sympathy and impression, inspect the pulpit and communion-table of John Knox; or, if his faith be great, the dungeon where Roderick Dhu drew his latest breath. The windy hollow between the Castle and the “Gowling Hills,” he is told, is Ballengeich, of which that hero of ballad adventure, James V., was “Gudeman.” The most distant of these braes was the “Mote” or “Heading Hill,” the old place of execution, where many a noble and guilty head has fallen—the Albany faction and the murderers of James I. among the number. Below the Castle, on the other side, are the King’s Garden and King’s Park, the scenes of the sports and diversions in the olden time, where James II. held tournaments, and James IV. delighted in his “Table Round.”

STIRLING, FROM ABBEY CRAIG.

Nor are the history and aspect of the town of Stirling unworthy of its noble station. It, also, is crammed with memories and antiquities—from the square tower of the West Church, grouping so well with the buildings on the Castle, and surmounting the hall where Knox preached and the infant James VI. was crowned, down to the burial-place of the murdered James III., under the tower of Cambuskenneth and close by the winding Forth.

But the historical fame and interest of Stirling rest perhaps more upon the bloody and decisive battles fought in its neighbourhood, than upon anything else. From the Castle ramparts one can look down upon Stirling Bridge, Bannockburn, and Sauchie; and Falkirk, Kilsyth, Sheriffmuir, and other stricken fields, reaching from the ’45 back to Pictish and Roman times, are not far off. In memory of the Struggle for Independence, but especially of William Wallace, the presentment of a feudal tower, surmounted by a mural crown, rises to a height of over 200 feet on the summit of the Abbey Craig, the most commanding site, next to Stirling Rock itself, in the valley. The Bridges—the old and the new—lie midway between these two bold bluffs. But the former venerable edifice, though it could also tell its strange stories of civil broil, and, among others, of how an Archbishop was hung on its parapet three centuries ago, is by no means the structure where the “Protector of Scotland,” watching the passage of the Forth (probably from the slopes of the Abbey Craig), taught so terrible a lesson to Cressingham and the English invaders. This, by all accounts, was a wooden structure placed half a mile above the moss-grown buttresses of the present Old Bridge of Stirling.

The fame of the battle fought at Stirling Bridge in 1297, and of the other fight, so disastrous to the Scottish cause, that took place a year later at Falkirk, has been quite obscured by the Bruce’s great victory at Bannockburn. One never thinks of Stirling without remembering that near by is the field where was decided, for three centuries, and indeed for all time, the history and fortunes of Scotland. The banks of the Bannock are now peaceful enough, and the people of the village of that name, and of the neighbouring hamlet of St. Ninians, lying still nearer Stirling and the battle-ground, are occupied with nothing more warlike than the weaving of tartans. The slough in which the English chivalry sank, and were overpowered, is now drained and cultivated land. But a fragment of the “Bore Stone,” where Bruce set up his standard, is still preserved; and the “Gillies’ Hill,” behind, commemorates the opportune appearance of the camp-followers of the Scottish army, when they hoisted their blankets on their tent-poles,

“And like a bannered host afar

Bore down on England’s wearied war,”

putting a finish to the rout of Edward II.’s troops.

Leaving Stirling and Bannockburn and all their memories behind us, we can now embark upon the Forth, and follow its broadening stream towards the open sea. The fat carse-lands are still on either hand, rimmed in on one side by the furrowed flanks of Dunmyatt and the Ochils, and bounded on the other by the Campsie Fells, crowned, far off, by Earl’s Seat; while beyond, on a clear day such as we have bespoken for our readers, the Bens grouped around the sources of the Forth and Teith lift themselves into view, fronted effectively by the towers of Stirling and the Abbey Craig. As we face now east, now west, now north, now south, on our devious way, these objects shift place bewilderingly, and more and more the “foot-hills” of the Ochils come down to take their place and give a bolder character to the foreground scenery of the Forth.

ALLOA PIER.

Very beautiful, at all seasons and in all lights, is this historic range, with its wonderful variety of form and play of shadows. As tales of wild Highland foray and stieve Lowland endurance are mingled in its annals, so the pastoral and mountainous combine in this its southern aspect; and the result is harmony. From the summit of Ben Clench, the highest of the Ochils, and from other coigns of ’vantage, you can gaze down into peaceful, secluded glens, familiar only to the sheep and the curlew, or into busy valleys lined by thriving villages and factory stalks, from which arises the smoke of the bleaching, spinning, and other manufacturing industries that have long had a home in the heart of these hills. Or you can look abroad and take in at one sweeping glance the whole breadth of the country from Glasgow to Dundee—from the Lammermoors and the North Sea to Ben Nevis and the hills of Arran.

But the greatest of the glens of the Ochils is that followed by the “clear-winding Devon,” over many a rocky scaur and past many a busy mill-wheel, on its way to join the Forth at Cambus. It would take a volume to do justice to the beauties, wild and soft, of the Devon Valley, and to the associations, warlike and peaceful, that have gathered around its noted places; to attempt to describe Crook o’ Devon and Rumbling Bridge, the “Devil’s Mill” and the “Cauldron Linn,” and Dollar and Alva Glens; to collect the memories that cluster about Tillycoultry and Alva, and Menstry and Tullibody; to dwell upon the attractions of its excellent trouting streams; or to peer among the shadows that appropriately shroud the ruins of Castle Campbell—the “Castle of Gloom”—overlooking the “Burn of Sorrow,” harried in revenge against Argyll for the burning of the “Bonnie House o’ Airlie.”

SALMON-FISHING NEAR STIRLING.

Unless one has a few days to spare that cannot well be better spent than in exploring Glen Devon and the nooks of the Ochils, he can only glance at the charming wooded valley and blue inviting heights as he follows the windings of the Forth, past the flat green “inches” of Tullibody and Alloa, under the North British Railway Bridge crossing the river between these two islands, to the busy town of Alloa.

CULROSS, FROM THE PIER. / CULROSS ABBEY.

More than Alloa itself, with its fame for the brewing of ale, and signs of active shipping and manufacturing trade, the eye will be attracted by Alloa Tower and Park, now the seat of the Earl of Mar and Kellie; for here once ruled the old line of the Erskines, Earls of Mar; here Queen Mary paid repeated visits, sailing up the Forth to meet Darnley, under the conduct of Bothwell as High Admiral; and here her son, King James, spent part of his boyhood, under the eye of the Regent Mar and the strict disciplinary rod of George Buchanan.

Below Alloa the river straightens and widens, taking more and more the character of an estuary. One should not miss noting the scattered houses of the old town of Clackmannan, scrambling up the slope to its church and the ancient tower of the Bruces. Clackmannan is the place which Aytoun’s recluse thought of selecting for rural retirement, because, “though he had often heard of it, he had never heard of anybody who had been there.” It is more out of the world than ever, now that county business has flitted to Alloa. Its visage is not, however, so forlorn as that of Kincardine-on-Forth, the pier of which we now approach; for Kincardine has plainly seen better days, and has little expectation of seeing their return. It was once a busy shipbuilding and shipowning port; and close by was distilled the famous Kilbagie whisky, by which the tinkler in the “Jolly Beggars” swore. Now there is no Kilbagie, and no shipping business to speak of; and Kincardine is a “dead-and-alive” place, and more dead than alive. There are many places like it all along the shores of the Forth—places favoured by special times and special circumstances of trade, which has since drifted or been drawn elsewhere.

The massive grey ruins of Tulliallan Castle are in the woods close behind Kincardine. This also was once a stronghold of the Bruces—in fact, it is “Bruce Country” all the way along this northern shore of the Forth, until we come to the last constriction of the estuary, over which the great railway bridge is being thrown at Queensferry. The spidery red limbs of this new giant bestriding the sea begin to come in sight after passing Kincardine Ferry and rounding Longannet Point. For now, especially when the broad mudbanks of the foreshore are covered at high water, the river takes a truly spacious expansion; the salt water begins to assert dominion over the fresh, and the line of the southern bank retires to the distance of three or four miles. It is no great loss; for Grangemouth and Bo’ness are little other than ports for the shipment of coal and pig-iron. The Carron Works show like pillars of fire by night and pillars of smoke by day, hiding Falkirk and Camelon and other spots of historic note. Further east the low shore-line is backed by a monotonous ridge that shuts us out from sight of the valley of which Linlithgow, with its loch and royal palace, is the centre; and even the woods of Kinneil, and the knowledge that along this crest, starting on the shore near the old Roman station of Carriden, run the remains of “Grime’s Dyke”—the Wall of Antonine—fail to make the southern side a joy to the eye. There is metal more attractive near at hand, within the sweep of the Bay of Culross.

Culross—Koo’ross, as the name sounds familiarly to the ears of those who know it—cherishes a fond tradition that Turner the painter, who visited Sir Robert Preston at the Abbey in the beginning of the century, compared its bay with that of Naples, rather to the disadvantage of the latter. Local partiality is doubtless the father of the legend. Yet there are wonderful charms embraced by the curve of coast facing the south and the Firth, betwixt “Dunimarle and Duniquarle,” with Preston Island and its ruined buildings in the string of the arc; the grey and white walls and red roofs of the little royal burgh, following the sinuosity of the shore, or struggling up the wooded slopes; the “corniced” roads and “hanging gardens” behind; crowning the near foreground, the Norman tower of the Abbey Church, the ruins of the ancient monastery, and the stately façade of the mansion of Culross Abbey (the design, it is said, of Inigo Jones); and behind, the forest, moorland, and cultivated tracts, rising towards the wavy green lines, fading into blue in the distance, of the Ochils and of the Cleish and Saline Hills. With the fresh light of morning or the soft colours of evening upon the waters and upon the hills, the scene may well be deemed lovely. Circumscribed as is the space, and few and insignificant as are the remaining actors, Culross and its vicinity have been the theatre of famous events, and have reared many men prominent in the civil and religious history of the country. Here St. Serf, the Apostle of Fife, is supposed to have been born, and to have died. Here St. Thenew, daughter of “King Lot of Lothian,” landed from the rotten shallop in which she had been cast adrift at Aberlady, far down the coast, and gave birth to the more famous St. Kentigern, or Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow. From Culross downward, both shores of the Firth, and the islands in its midst, are strewn with the memorials and traditions of the early Culdee missionaries, whose humble cells later became the sites of the wealthier and more imposing religious houses of Catholic times. Besides St. Serf and St. Mungo, Fillan, Palladius, Adamnan, Adrian, Monans, and Columba himself, set their imprint upon these curving coasts and solitary islets; and Inverkeithing, Dysart, and Pittenweem; Abercorn, Inchcolm, Inchkeith, the May, and the Bass, are among the places sanctified by memories of the Early Church.

It was not till 1217 that the Monastery of Culross, of which only some fragments remain, was founded by Malcolm, Earl of Fife. At the Reformation the Abbey lands passed chiefly into the hands of the Colvilles of Culross, and this family, with the Erskines, the Cochranes, the Prestons, and the Bruces, have since successively had “the guidin’ o’t” in the burgh and the surrounding district. So far from the ecclesiastical eminence of Culross terminating with St. Serf, it has continued almost down to our own day; for the town, and the district back from it—at Carnock, and eastward along the hill-skirts to Hill of Beath and beyond—have witnessed the keenest struggles between Conformity and Schism—have been special scenes of the labours of Bishop Blackadder and Bishop Leighton the “Saintly;” of John Row, and of John Blackadder the Covenanter, who held his Conventicles under the wakeful and vengeful eye of Dalzell of Binns—him with the “vowed beard,” whose hill-top for “glowering owre” Fife is on the opposite side of the Firth; and in later times, of Boston, of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, of Gillespie, and of other founders of the “Relief Church.”

Culrossians might adopt the Bruce motto, “Fuimus,” to describe their industrial as well as their religious past. More than once the burgh has been a spot favoured by trade, as well as by history. The celebrated Sir George Bruce, of Carnock, made its fortunes, as well as his own, by coal-mining and salt-making in the days of James I. of England. Remains, in the shape of a heap of stones, uncovered at low water, are seen of the “Moat”—an “unfellowed and unmatchable work; a darke, light, pleasant, profitable hell,” as John Taylor, the “Water Poet” described it in the early years of the seventeenth century—constructed to work the minerals lying under the bed of the sea. But Culross’s prosperity did not come to an end with them. Throughout Scotland its “girdles”—iron plates for baking the oaten bread of the “Land o’ Cakes”—were also “unfellowed and unmatchable” for many a day. The first of note among the ancestors of the Earl of Rosebery was of the honest guild of the girdlesmiths of the burgh. A “Cu’ross girdle” will soon only be found in an archæological museum; their glory is departing, their use will soon be forgotten.

DUNFERMLINE.

A lingering look may be cast in the direction of the “Standard Stone,” at Bordie, where Duncan and Macbeth withstood the Danes; and of the Castlehill, or Dunimarle, near by, which lays claim to be the scene of the murder of Lady Macduff and her “pretty chickens” by the Usurper—a claim, however, disputed by the “Thane’s Castle,” near East Wemyss, by Rhives, and by other sites in the East of Fife. To this famous Whig shire we eventually come at Torryburn, for thus far, since leaving Stirling, we have been skirting on the left the shores of Clackmannan and of a sporadic fragment of Perthshire projected upon the Forth. In its scenic, social, and historic characteristics, however, the whole ground, from where the river begins to broaden, is “Fifish,” and, from Dunmyatt to the “East Neuk,” bears the traces, in place-names, legends, and ancient remains, of old Pictish possession, and of Norse, Saxon, and Highland incursions; of Culdee settlement and of Roman intrusion; and of all the later strife, in Kirk and State, in which Fife has “borne the gree.” Neighbours have been ready to observe that the joint effects of geographical isolation and outside pressure are quite as deeply marked in the character, habits, and ways of the inhabitants; and that, besides occupying a separate “Kingdom,” they are in many respects a “peculiar people.”

FORTH BRIDGE, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.

Charlestown and Limekilns, after Culross, are but upstart villages, built by the Earls of Elgin as shipping-places for the coal, lime, and ironstone upon their Broomhall Estate. Before us, a prominent object by the shore, is the stark grey keep of Rosyth Castle. And now we are fairly in “St. Margaret’s Hope,” and under the shelter of the high ground projecting from the Fife shore, which narrows, by a full half, the width of the Firth, and forms, with Inch Garvie island as a stepping-stone in mid-channel, the natural abutment whence the Forth Bridge makes its flying leap to the southern bank. From the lee of this rocky ridge Queen Mary, having rested at Rosyth, set sail for the other shore, after her escape from Loch Leven Castle. On the beach here Sir Patrick Spens may have paced when the “braid letter” was put into his hands, sending him on the luckless voyage to bring back the “Maiden of Norway,” while not far off

“The King sat in Dunfermline tower,

Drinking the blood-red wine.”

But most famous of the events in the annals of the “Hope”—and one of the epoch-making accidents in the history of Scotland—was the landing, in 1069, of Edgar Atheling and his sisters in this safe harbourage, after grievous tossings by storms and ill-fortune. The then royal residence of Dunfermline is four miles distant, the road leading past Pitreavie, where, six centuries later, Cromwell, descending from the Ferry Hill, so terribly mauled the Scottish army. Tradition points out a stone where the weary Saxon Princess Margaret rested, on a way which became so familiar to her. For she found favour in the sight of King Malcolm Canmore, and made many journeys, by the haven and the ferry that bear her name, to Edinburgh, and to pilgrim shrines in the south. It might almost be said that civilisation, and the English speech, and the Roman hierarchy and influence, landed on the Scottish shores with Saint Margaret; and the whole district around the “Queen’s Ferry” is redolent with memories of her to this day.

“Dunfermline Tower,” or rather the foundations of what is considered the first royal seat there, are within the grounds of Pittencrieff, on the high bank overlooking the Lyne burn. Farther up, and more adjacent to the modern town, is the Palace, built in later times, and still showing a stately front, sixty feet in height, rising above the ancient trees and overlooking the beautiful Glen. Beyond these walls, and the crypt-like chambers which served as kitchen and other offices, little of the Palace remains. The mullioned windows are pointed out of the rooms in which Charles I. and his sister Elizabeth, the “Winter Queen” of Bohemia, were born, and where Charles II. signed the “Solemn League and Covenant;” but within, as without, they only look into “empty air.”

The Palace communicated by underground passages with the Abbey, founded and dedicated to the Holy Trinity by Malcolm Canmore and Margaret in 1072, and enlarged and beautified by the munificence and piety of their successors. Beyond fragments of the walls, nearly all that remains of the monastic buildings is the Frater Hall, with the delicate Gothic tracery of its west window. But close behind is the Abbey Church, surrounded by its graves, its rookery, and the old houses of the town; and it still ranks as one of the proudest and best-preserved specimens of Anglo-Norman church architecture in Scotland. Rich and quaint are the carvings on its doorways, and dim and mysterious is the light that falls through its illuminated windows as you tread your way between the massive old pillars, and literally over the dust of kings and princes, to the spacious and lightsome New Abbey Church. This portion of the Abbey structure was rebuilt seventy years ago, and in the course of the operations the workmen came upon the tomb and remains of Robert the Bruce—recognisable, among other evidences, by the gigantic stature and by the breast-bone, from which a piece had been sawn to reach the heart that Douglas sought to carry to the Holy Land. The tomb of Malcolm and Margaret is at the east end, and without the present limits of the church; and within, besides “The Bruce,” there are buried a score of Scottish Sovereigns and princes, including David I., the builder of monasteries, and the “Sair Saunt for the Crown,” and Alexander III., whose fatal mischance near Kinghorn was the beginning of the national troubles.

One may range far before finding a group of buildings so intrinsically beautiful, so historically interesting, and so fitly set amid their surroundings. For Dunfermline has many things else, old and new, to attract the visitor—from the “Oratory Cave” of Queen Margaret, to its handsome municipal buildings and Free Library and Baths, the gifts of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. It is a “live place,” and not one existing merely on the memories of its past; for it has extensive and growing industries in coal and linen. But it will always be more the “City of Kings” than the seat of trade.

From the old Bartizan Tower of the Abbey Church, one can survey a dozen shires, and—contrast as strange as the light and shadow in the churches below—a glimpse is caught, beyond North Queensferry Point, of the limbs of the New Forth Bridge. This gigantic work represents the second undertaking adopted by the North British Railway and the supporting companies for shortening the journey to the North by throwing a bridge over the narrows at Queensferry. The first plan of a suspension bridge was abandoned, after the catastrophe that befell the structure on the Tay; and the design (by Sir John Fowler and Mr. Baker) now on the point of completion is that of a cantilever bridge, founded on three sets of piers—at the edge of the deep-water channels on the north and south sides, and on Inch Garvie island in the middle—united, over the fairways of navigation, by central girders. The whole space spanned is over a mile and a half, but fully a third of this distance is occupied by the viaduct approaches to what may be termed the bridge proper, supported at a height of 165 feet above mean sea-level upon a series of stone piers. At this elevation the line is carried across the Firth, which reaches from 30 to 35 fathoms in depth in the channels between Inch Garvie and the north and south shores. Except the supporting bases of stone, the whole central structure is of steel, wrought and fitted in the works on the southern side; and it is estimated that not less than 50,000 tons of metal have been used in the work.

From the three main piers, columned “towers of steel” rise to a height of 630 feet above high-water mark, that on Inch Garvie being wider than the two others. They are formed of tubes of ¾-inch steel, 12 feet in diameter at the base, inclining inwards and towards each other, and united by cross members, in the shape of the letter “X,” for purposes of strength; and from these the intricate bracket-work of upper and lower members, with their connecting struts and ties, stretch out over the Firth, and approach each other near enough to be united by the two 350-feet lattice girders over the fairways. The two great centre spans are each 1,700 feet in width, and the half-spans that join them to the great north and south viaduct piers are 680 feet each. All the strains are concentrated upon the bases of the cantilever piers, and the whole structure gives a remarkable impression of combined lightness and strength, as well as of colossal size. From 3,000 to 4,500 men have been employed for several years upon the Bridge, of which it may almost be said that half of the work is under water and out of sight. Its estimated cost is between two and three millions sterling, and, connected with it, new lines are being constructed, by which passengers and goods will henceforth be carried by the shortest available route from south to north, in despite of the obstacles interposed by the Forth, the Ochils, and the Tay.

SHORE STREET, LEITH.

Of all the objects dwarfed and changed by the Bridge, Inch Garvie and its Castle have perhaps suffered most. Built long ago to protect the upper waters against the pirates that infested the Outer Firth, it has often since played a part in schemes of national defence. “Roy of Aldivalloch” held Inch Garvie with twenty musketeers against Monk’s troops, at the time of Cromwell’s invasion; and it was afterwards manned to repel Paul Jones. Now, looking down upon it from the summit of the great pier, it seems as if a good-sized stone would crush, like a toy, the queer admixture of old and new buildings huddled upon it. From this great height, both expanses of the Firth, with their bounding shores, lie spread below like a map.

The southern shore, now become once more rich in interest and beauty, has complacently drawn nearer hand. Looking westward, and withdrawing the eyes from the fine amphitheatre of hills that enclose the upper course of the Forth, Blackness Castle—one of the four royal fortalices specially mentioned in the Treaty of Union, and the scene of many stirring events in the national annals: Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton being the others—is full in sight, upon its peninsula. Nearer are the woods of Abercorn, whose history goes back to Roman times, and earlier; closer still, the magnificent colonnaded front, the sea-terraces, the deer-parks, and the stately lime avenues of Hopetoun House, the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun; and almost below, and on the hither side of Port Edgar Harbour, the ancient town of South Queensferry. The last few years have made “a mighty difference” in many ways to the little burgh, but have not materially altered the somewhat grimy features of its main street, which runs eastward, at the base of the hill, towards the Bridge, the “Hawes Brae,” and the “Hawes Inn,” where, it will be remembered, Jonathan Oldbuck and his young friend Lovel descended from the Edinburgh Diligence, and cemented acquaintance over a magnum of port, and where, also, adventures first began to overtake the hero of “Kidnapped.”

EDINBURGH, FROM THE FIFE SHORE.

Turning eastward, this southern shore is prolonged in the wooded knolls of the Dalmeny estate, and round the projecting point, and on the very sea-marge, is the old, but now renovated, Castle of Barnbougle, once the seat of the Mowbrays. Behind it is Dalmeny House, with beautiful sward and woodland extending as far as Cramond, where Lord Rosebery keeps a boat to ferry the public across the Almond water into Midlothian.

These latter objects, as has been said, are out of sight from the Bridge, but on the northern side one sees well into the deep inlet of Inverkeithing Bay, where the old royal burgh, dating from before William the Lion’s time, lies stranded in mud. It is still proud of having witnessed the last assembly of the Culdees, and the first movement of Scottish “Voluntaryism,” and boasts also of containing the “palace” of Queen Annabella Drummond, and the birthplace of Admiral Greig, of the Russian service. For miles the domain of Donibristle follows the advancing and retiring points of the Fife shore, which, now that the outer Firth opens up, recedes away northward as well as eastward. Within the half-circle of Dalgety Bay are the ruins of old Dalgety Church, and what remains of Donibristle House. The estate belongs to the Earl of Moray, the owner of Doune and of many broad lands in the north. The mansion was accidentally burned thirty years ago; but destined for longer remembrance is its burning, not accidental, three centuries since, when took place the tragedy of “the Bonnie Earl o’ Moray.” The “Bonnie Earl”—son-in-law of the famous Regent Moray—was in 1591 slain, as he was escaping from the blazing building, by Gordon of Buckie and other retainers of Lord Huntly, with the connivance, as was suspected, of James VI. The ballad-writers have their explanation, for

“The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray,

He was the Queen’s love.”

An Earl and Regent Moray of an earlier stem—Randolph, the companion of the Bruce and of the Black Douglas—had his home at Aberdour, the next indentation in this singularly beautiful coast. The line had soon to give place to the Douglases, Earls of Morton, who have ruled here for some five centuries, though their old castle, overlooking the lovely bay, with its projecting bluffs and shining sands, now a favourite resort for bathers and summer visitors, has been long untenanted. The wily and unscrupulous Regent Morton came hither to amuse himself with gardening, in the intervals when, from choice or compulsion, he was not in the thick of political intrigue. Edinburgh was always in view from Aberdour, and nature and simple country pursuits could not hold him long. Through the high beech groves and hanging woods, one of the most charming of walks leads for three miles to Burntisland. But the charm is no longer what it was, for the new railway line running athwart the slope has played havoc with the trees.

Outside Aberdour, and partly shielding the bay, is Inchcolm Island. It would need a volume to do justice to the islands of the Forth. Some we have already glanced at. “St. Colme’s Inch,” where, as Shakespeare tells us, the routed Norsemen were fain to crave permission of the Thane of Cawdor to bury their dead, is the most famous of them all—except perhaps the Bass. The square tower and mouldering walls of its Abbey, rising close to the narrow isthmus where the isle is almost cut in two by the sea, are still prominent objects in the view. The Monastery was founded in 1123, by King Alexander I., in gratitude for his miraculous rescue from shipwreck, and entertainment here by a hermit who followed the rule of St. Columba. It once owned rich possessions in half a dozen shires, granted in part by a Lord Alan Mortimer of Aberdour, whose body the monks flung overboard in a storm while crossing to the island, thus giving a name to the inner channel of “Mortimer’s Deep.” Invaders, pirates, and rebels, as well as the hand of time, have since sorely visited the island, but still portions of the old buildings stand, and are even habitable.

Cramond Island, almost opposite Inchcolm, hugs the other shore, and there is a road across the sands to its little farmhouse at low tide; while in the mid-channel there are many rocky islets, some of them the chosen resorts of cormorants and other sea birds. Further down, half-way between Leith Pier and Kirkcaldy Bay, Inchkeith stretches its length for nearly a mile across the Firth. Inchkeith, also, has harboured anchorites and stood sieges; and there are many curious legends connected with its coves and caves. But its most prominent feature is now the white lighthouse perched upon its highest crest; and barely visible to the eye are the powerful batteries that sweep, on the one side, Leith Roads, and on the other side the North Channel, between the island and Pettycur Point, where also great guns are mounted for the defence of the Forth. Then a long way farther out, at the very entrance to the Firth, and visible only in clear weather and easterly wind, runs the long rock wall of the May Island. In other days the May was a great resort of pilgrims, who held it a merit to reach a place so difficult of access, and barren women especially found a blessing in drinking from the well that had refreshed St. Fillan and St. Adrian. There was a religious house here connected with the Priory of Pittenweem on the adjacent Fife coast, but the monks found it by-and-bye most convenient to reside on shore. Though the light of faith has gone out, another light—a guide to the commerce entering the Firth—has been kept burning upon the May for two centuries and a half. Now its only residents are the lighthouse-men and their families, and its only regular visitors are myriads of sea-fowl.

The Carr Rock and Fidra Island lights mark, with the May, the entrance to the Firth; and scattered along the East Lothian coast, from Fidra eastwards, are numerous little islands, “salt and bare.” But none of them have the fame or the aspect of the “Bass.” This huge mass of rock, heaved up by some convulsion of nature, like North Berwick Law and other great bluffs on shore, presents seawards its precipitous cliff, rising sheer to a height of 400 feet, while towards the land it shows a green slope descending steeply to the landing-place and the remains of its old prison castle. The crevices of the rocks are filled with the nests of the solan-goose and other sea-fowl, and the air around is alive with their cries and the sweep of their wings. But otherwise it is impossible to imagine a spot with the aspect of grim isolation more thoroughly impressed upon it. St. Baldred is said to have lived and died on the Bass Rock; but it came most conspicuously forward in history when it was made the prison of the Covenanters, charged with no other offence than that of following their consciences against the will of the King; and afterwards, when its Jacobite garrison held out for years after every other place in the kingdom had submitted to William of Orange.

But on the way from Inchcolm to the Bass, what a marvellous series of noble land and sea pieces, of famous or hallowed sites, we have passed! It were hard to say whether scenic beauty and historical associations cluster more closely upon the shores of the Firth, or upon the surrounding amphitheatre of hills. In the profile of the hills of Fife, the broad-shouldered Lomonds, with their double or triple heads, overtop all—the East Lomond looking down upon the ruins of the old royal hunting seat of Falkland, the scene of Rothesay’s cruel pangs, and the western heights upon Loch Leven and the Island Castle, whence Mary made her romantic escape. More in the foreground are Dunearn, crowded by the remains of a Pictish fort, and the steep, rugged front of the Binn of Burntisland, overhanging the town of that name. Rossend Castle—a favourite residence of the Queen of Scots, where took place the incident that cost the enamoured French poet Chastelard his life—fronts the sea at the west end of Burntisland harbour; and to the east, behind a beautiful sweep of sand and “links,” rises the cliff at which an evil fate overtook Alexander III. and Scotland.

PORTOBELLO.

Beyond Pettycur, and the high ground of Grange, once the home of that famous champion, Kirkcaldy of Grange, the wide curve of Kirkcaldy Bay opens up. The old burgh of Kinghorn is at one extremity, and the still more ancient town of Dysart at the other; and the middle foreground is largely occupied by the houses and shipping of the “Lang Toun.” The very names of Kirkcaldy (“Kirk of the Culdees”) and of Dysart (“Desertum”) point to the antiquity and the sanctity of the origin of places that to this day are strongly “Churchy.” The grotesque folk-tale relates that the devil was “buried in Kirkcaldy,” and that his complaint that “his taes were cauld” led the good-natured inhabitants to build house to house, until now the town, with the villages connected, stretches some four miles in a straight line. The story may have had its origin in some of the apostolic doings of St. Serf, who had for a time his “desert” in one of the caves in the red cliffs at Dysart; or else in some magic feat of the wizard Michael Scott—the friend of Dante and Boccaccio—whose weird tower of Balwearie is an uncanny neighbour of the “Lang Toun.” The ruins, close by the shore, of Seafield Tower and of Ravenscraig Castle—the latter the home of the line of “high St. Clair,” and of the “lovely Rosabelle”—are now strangely backed by floor-cloth factories.

KIRKCALDY, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.