We started the other day for the top of Dunmyat, the nearest and most picturesque peak of the Ochil range. If you have not been on its summit there is a treat in store for you. We take the train from Queen Street to Stirling, thence by car to Causewayhead, the most fitting place from which to begin the pedestrian part of our journey. Taking the road through the village, up the hill, and keeping to the right, past the Wallace Monument, we soon find ourselves at the Parish Church of Logie. We look into the churchyard a little further on, where we admire the most simple and modest epitaph it was ever our lot to read, over the grave of General Sir James A. Alexander, lately deceased, “He tried to do his duty.” Keeping up past the gardener’s house, by a very pleasant sylvan road, half-grown with grass and self-sown ash and other trees, we come to the road to Sheriff Muir, about a mile up. We might have reached this point from the Bridge of Allan (or the Bridge, as it is locally called), via St. Ann’s Road, but consider that we have come unquestionably the most picturesque route. Keeping to the right for a quarter of a mile, we find a gate which admits us to the moor. Following an easterly north-easterly direction, now through what will be in autumn a red sea of heather, and now through what is already a diminutive forest of brackens, over hill and dale, too numerous to mention, meeting occasionally a sheep or two feeding on the grass (which seems more fresh and green the higher we go) and apparently wondering how ever we came there, we reach the summit of Dunmyat, after a most pleasant walk of two hours from the time we left Causewayhead.

It stands 1375 feet above the sea level, immediately behind another high hill, which breaks almost sheer down in stupendous rocky cliffs into the plain between Blairlogie and Menstrie, at Warrock Glen, a great resort for picnics, where the famous strawberries and cream of the district are in much request. It is a lovely day, and every little rocky spur and crevice is seen with such distinctness that one could imagine only yards instead of miles of space intervening. And, to those who have time to explore them, how many lovely glens and other natural beauties are here to be met with! Then, taking a further look, what a magnificent panorama is here spread for us! Though not so high as either the King’s Seat, near Dollar, or Bencleugh, near Tillicoultry, yet from its peculiar position it commands a prospect which for united gorgeousness and extent is probably not surpassed by any in Britain. We have under our eye at one time a circular space of a hundred miles in diameter, comprising nearly one-third of the surface of Scotland and probably two-thirds of its wealth. On the north the rugged Grampians rise ridge behind ridge. There they all are, the Bens rising one over the other in tumbled confusion—the real Highland hills, peaks, and wild valleys, stormy summits, and dark, dismal clefts, dimly stretching away to the regions of the setting sun. Nearer hand are the well-wooded plains of Perthshire, a part of which is concealed by the spurs and branches of the Ochils themselves. On the west you can distinguish the summits of Ben More, Ben Ledi, and Ben Lomond, and other smaller hills. On the south we have the vast and fertile region extending from the Campsie Hills to the Lammermoor chain, including Edinburgh, Arthur’s Seat, the Bass Rock, and the Pentland Hills. The Devon, rendered classic by Scott, a peculiarly winding river, after having made a complete circuit of the Ochil range, is seen to fall into the Forth at Cambus, almost directly opposite the spot where it rises, on the opposite side of the hill. The Forth is seen immediately below in all its serpentine contortions, and yet clear, luminous, and tranquil as a mirror, enshrined in the centre of a richly-cultivated country. It will give you some idea of its wonderful windings to know that it is 7 miles by road to Alloa and 21 miles by water.

The Forth can here be traced almost from its source in the vicinity of Loch Ard, the country of Rob Roy, to where it joins the German Ocean; and the windings in its upper part, with the islets, capes, and peninsulas which they form, are seen to more advantage here than from Stirling Castle, and the lower part of the Firth is specked with little vessels, and perhaps a steamboat, which give life and interest to the scene. There may be a feeling of disappointment in looking over to Stirling Castle, that it hardly answers to expectation in the way of nobility of outline. But there still remains the Royal palace with its quadrangle quaint and bizarre, adorned, as we know it to be, with the grotesque statues attributed to the taste of James V., the “Gudeman of Ballengeich.” The Carse of Stirling, 60 miles in length and from 10 to 15 in breadth, with decayed and modern mansions, snug farm houses, hamlets, towns and villages, cornfields and meadows, float indistinctly on the view, till all seem lost in aerial tints. Immediately in front of us is the Wallace Monument, a lofty tower of baronial architecture, 220 feet high, crowning the Abbey Craig, which of itself is about 400 feet high, near the base of which Wallace concealed the principal part of his forces before the battle of Stirling in 1297, which proved so disastrous to the English. If we are not mistaken the genesis of the tower was as follows:—A monument to Wallace had been long talked about. In 1818 a gentleman offered £1000 to erect a monument to the hero on Arthur’s Seat or Salisbury Crags. Some people have the idea that all the good things should go to Edinburgh. However, after dragging out a miserable existence for years, this project fell through. In 1856 a bitter attack on the memory of Wallace appeared in the North British Review. Mr. Brown, the managing proprietor of the Glasgow Daily Bulletin, replied with such telling effect that a committee was immediately formed for the erection of a national monument. Glasgow Green was proposed, but it was finally arranged that it should be built on the Abbey Craig, Stirling, which has the advantage of overlooking the scene of the memorable battle of Stirling Bridge. It is one of the finest sites in the country, and one wonders now how any other place was proposed, as from its commanding situation it can be seen for miles around, and from the top of it you have one of the finest views in the country. The eye can behold the scene of six battles, viz.:—Cambuskenneth, where the battle was fought between the Scots and the Picts; the battle of Stirling Bridge; the plains of Bannockburn; the battle of Sauchie Burn, when King James III. was cruelly murdered in the miller’s cottage; also where the Duke of Argyll fought the Earl of Mar and the Jacobite clans in 1715. A little farther south is Cambuskenneth Abbey and Bannockburn, redolent of Bruce and fighting in the past, and carpets and tartans in the present.

Between the Abbey Craig and the foot of Dunmyat we have the mansion-house of Airthrey, with its pretty wooded policies and its artificial lakes. To the immediate north of Dunmyat is Sheriffmuir, called so, no doubt, from having been one of those plains or moors on which the wapinschaws, a feat of arms of the Middle Ages, took place under the inspection of the Sheriffs. It was the scene of a very sanguinary though indecisive battle during the Rebellion of 1715, on the same day on which the Pretender’s army surrendered at Preston. Both armies claimed the victory, and hence the well-known sarcastic lines—

It was in connection with this battle that we heard of a Highlander who had lost at it his “faither and twa brithers, and a gude black belt that was mair worth than them a’.” Half a mile north of the base of Dunmyat there is a very fine well, which issues from more than sixty springs, and bears the name of the Holy Well, and is said to have been anciently an object of superstitious veneration and crowded resort on the part of Roman Catholics. And this reminds us that over yonder, across the wonderful valley that separates this range of hills from its nearest neighbour, are the Touch Hills, and that there, amid the sweet air of May, early in the morning of the first Sunday of the month, crowds used to assemble to drink the water of St. Corbet’s spring, and believed that by so doing they would secure health for another year. Old persons were alive about half a century ago who remembered having in their young days joined the health-seekers on these occasions.

Dunmyat, like the rest of the Ochils, is a rich field to the geologist and mineralogist. But for this it must be examined where it abuts on the highway. Its general character, however, is that of a great igneous mound developing itself in felspar and porphyry, and occasionally in fine pentagonal columns of basaltic greystone. It is penetrated by large workable veins of barytes.

Having once more feasted our eyes on the fair prospect, and recalled to mind those and other historical associations, we proceed to descend on the east side towards the beautifully wooded glen of Menstrie. This can be done in less than half the time we took to reach the summit from Logie. It is as well to proceed for the first 50 or 60 feet with caution, for the freshness and abundance of the grass is apt to conceal the steepness of the hill at that part. Crossing a cart track which leads to a shepherd’s house up the glen of Menstrie, the only house that is visible looking northward from the summit, and keeping to the right, we soon reach the first house of the village, which is styled by the natives “Windsor Castle.” From its elaborate coat of arms, it seems to have belonged to some noble family, but, miserabile dictu, it is now tenanted by quite a host of the great unwashed. A popular rhyme assumes some spirit of fairyland to have formerly loved Menstrie for its rural beauty, but to have been driven away from it by the introduction of its manufacturing mills, and represents the phantom as sometimes saying pathetically at dead of night—

But we make for the train, which is just at hand, feeling that we could willingly take the same journey at least once a year, and in another hour we are at Queen Street.