he iron road from Aberdeen to Inverness must follow somewhat the road which gallant Mary took on her way to punish Huntley. There is a bleak stern look about this country as a whole, but here and there stand castles, or lie low the ruins of castles, in many a chosen place of beauty; for harsh as were these lords, and devastating as were their deeds, life must have had its moments of wonder and of delight. If Malcolm Canmore destroyed Inverness before the Twelve Hundreds, and the fat Georges destroyed Inverugie late in the Seventeen Hundreds, and all through the centuries that stretched between strong men built strongholds and stronger men took them and made mock of them, still there must have been gentleness and beauty. There were women, other than Lady Macbeth; there were young men and maidens noble or common; and I suppose the glamour of romance, the reality or the illusion of love, was invented before peace and commerce became the occupations of men.

Peterhead

One brief journey I made along the bleak coast up to the town of Peterhead, which looks nearest to Norroway across the foam, and has a most uncompromising aspect. Peterhead is a penal town to-day; and it is one of a string of fishing villages, picturesque as fishing villages are, except to the nose, "that despised poet of the senses"; and not picturesque to the people, who lack the colour of fisherfolk in Brittany. But I wished to see with mine own eyes the ruins of Inverugie.

It is one of the castles belonging to the Lords Marischal. It came to them in a curious way of forfeiture, an abbot dispossessed or some such thing, like Dunnottar, but without the appeal to Rome. And one of the stones of the castle carried the promise, and the threat—

"As lang's this stane stands on this croft
The name o' Keith shall be abaft,
But when this stane begins to fa'
The name o' Keith shall wear awa'."

The last Lord Marischal came hither, late, late, in the Seventeen Hundreds. He had seen a century move through strife to peace. In person he had taken part in the Rising of the Fifteen, a young man, but still hereditary Lord Marischal, and loyal to the Stewart cause. He had taken no part in the Rising of the Forty Five; he was not "out" on that dark night. But the sweeping revenge of those English times made the Keiths attaint and—the stone dropped from its croft. The Lord Marischal and his brother made the continent their refuge, Paris in particular, although the activities of the proposed restoration took their Lordships to Madrid and Rome and Berlin and St. Petersburg.

The younger brother, James, was made a Field Marshal by Catherine of Russia, and that amorous termagant making love to him in the natural course of proximity, he discreetly fled, became Field Marshal for Frederick the Great, and not marrying—whatever the romance of the Swedish lady—he fell at the battle of Hochkirch in 1758, and lies buried in the Garison Kirche of Berlin. A statue stands in the Hochkirch kirche, and in 1868 the King of Prussia presented a replica to Peterhead. And even so late as 1889, the Kaiser, remembering the Great King's Field Marshal, named one of the Silesian war units, the Keith regiment.

There is no statue to the Lord Marischal—MarÉschal d'Ecosse, always he signed himself. He was the friend of the wittiest and wisest and wickedest men of his time, of David Hume, and Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Frederick the Great. Neither did he marry. Dying at the age of ninety-two, he was buried in Potsdam. There is no statue to him, there or here. And Inverugie lies in low ruins.

Hither he came, when attaint was lifted, late in those tottering years. He drove out to the castle, remembering all it had meant, the long splendid records of the Earls Marischal, and how the King, James III and VIII—Banquo saw him also—

"And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass
Which shows me many more."

James, not pretending but claiming, landed at Peterhead, lodged at Inverugie, summoned the loyal and they came. The Standard was lifted for a moment, and then fell.

Breaking into tears the old Lord Marischal realized all, an epoch closed, a Scotland no longer requiring a Marischal. He left Inverugie, even this ruin.

All this Northeast territory, no larger than a county in Dakota, bears these scars of the past.

At Elgin there are the ruins of a cathedral; ruined, not by the English but by the Wolf of Badenoch, because my Lord Bishop had given a judgment which did not please my Lord of Badenoch. And the Wolf, his fangs drawn, was compelled to stand barefooted three days before the great west gate.

At Canossa! Lands and seas and centuries divide—but there is slight difference.

A scant mile or two to the north of Elgin lies the ruined Spynie Castle of the Lord Bishop, a great place for strength, with massive keep—and fallen. "A mighty fortress is our God." Cathedrals, castles, bishops and lords, all pass away.

Cawdor

As we neared one of the last of the Northern stations, we turned to each other and asked, "How far is't called to Forres?" And suddenly all was night and witch dance and omen and foretelling. For it is here in the palace that Banquo's ghost appeared and foretold all that history we have been meeting as we came northward. And next is the town of Nairn, which has become something of a city since Boswell found it "a miserable place"; it is still long and narrow, stretching to the sea with its fisherfolk cottages and bonneted women like the fisher wives of Brittany; and stretching to the Highlands at the other end, as King James said.

It was here that Wordsworth heard

"Yon solitary Highland lass,
Reaping and singing by herself; ...
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago....
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more."

But one leaves the train with a curious feeling. Of course one may be a little tired. Arm chair travel and arm chair tragedy have their advantages. But—Nairn is the nearest point to the blasted heath.

"Where's the place?
Upon the heath,
There to meet Macbeth."

It is not entirely necessary that one should make Nairn and walk out to The Heath. Any of these northern silent Scottish blasted heaths will serve. It is as though the witches had made their mysterious incantations anywhere, everywhere. And if Shakespeare was in Scotland in 1589—as I like to think he was—it is doubtful if he saw The Heath. Johnson told Hannah More, so she reports, that when he and Boswell stopped for a night at a spot where the Weird Sisters appeared to Macbeth, they could not sleep the night for thinking of it. Next day they found it was not The Heath. This one is, in all faith, apocryphal. Still, if you come hither toward evening, when

"Good things of day begin to droop and drowse"

it is fearsome enough. Such heaths demand their legend.

"The thane of Cawdor lives
A prosperous gentleman."

Not so prosperous now as when he lived in the life. Shakespeare took liberties with the Thane. He immortalized him into Macbeth! And Cawdor Castle, out from Nairn a few paces on the burn of Cawdor, might have been the very home of Macbeth. It is pleasant, flowery, lovely. But also, it is stern and looks like a castle for tragedy. But not for mystery. I did not hear a bird of prey, as some travelers report—

"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements."

There are iron girded doors and secret apartments; not for Macbeth, but for Lovat. This Lord of the Last Rising lived secretly for many months in Cawdor while the Prince was moving restlessly to and fro in the Islands. But the Prince was only twenty-five, and Lord Lovat was over eighty. I like to think he was as young and keen to adventure as the Prince. And I do not like to think of that beheading in the Tower—

"I must become a borrower of the night."

Inverness

The four chief cities of Scotland are arranged like a diamond for excursion and for history. Always Scotland, unlike Gaul, has been divided into four parts. Places of pilgrimage were Scone, Dundee, Paisley, Melrose. Places for the quartering of Montrose were Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Stirling. And now four places are rivals; in trade somewhat, but Glasgow leads in beauty, but Edinburgh, after all, is unique in dignity, but Aberdeen is unbending; in the picturesque there remains Inverness.

The city deserves its honours. (William Black has painted it in "Wild Eelin.") It has a life of its own. For when I first came to Inverness there was a cattle fair on, and sheep from all over the kingdom, from Shropshire and from the Cheviots, came to be judged in Inverness; and men came with them who looked very modern and capable and worldly and commercial. It was all like a county fair of Iowa, only more dignified, with no touch of sideshow. And, of course, there is the Highland gathering in September, which has become too much like the sideshow, too much a show, to attract the groundlings, and not a gathering of the clans. Still—if one must take Scotland in a gulp—this is a very good chance at Highland colour and sound and remnants of valour.

The town itself is full of pictures. It does not announce itself. There is a close-built part, looking like a French provincial town, with gabled houses, and down on the banks of the Ness the women spread their clothes to dry as they do on a French river bank. There is a new cathedral, very new, with an angel at the font we remembered William Winter had liked, so we paid it respectful attention. There is a park on the Ness to the west, where many islands and many bridges form a spot of beauty.

And there is Tomnahurich—The Hill of the Fairies—a sudden steep hill-mound, where Inverness carries its dead—like the Indians who carried them to Indian mounds high above the rivers of the American West. The dark yews make it even more solemn; one wonders if the fairies dare play in these shades. But it is a sweetly solemn place, and we decided to care not what Invernessians lay buried here if we might sit on its convenient park benches and look at far rolling Scotland and think of fairies and of Thomas the Rimer, who, it seems, came hither all the way from Ercildoune from Melrose to heap this mound for his burial! The errant Scots!

There remains no stone of Macbeth's Castle to which the gentle Duncan came—"And when goes hence?" The county buildings—and a jail!—stand on its site, a most modern pile. Malcolm razed that castle after he had returned from England, and after Birnam wood had come to Dunsinane. It was builded again; Inverness was a vantage point. Perhaps that one was burned by the Lord of the Isles who afterward came to repentance and to Holyrood. And builded again so that Huntley could defy Mary, and she could take the castle and order it razed. And builded again so that Cromwell could destroy it. And builded again as one of the five fortresses whereby he sought to hold Scotland "Protected." And destroyed at the Restoration which sought to destroy all the Protectorate had built. But builded again so it might be destroyed by Prince Charles Edward. No, I scarce think there is even the dust of the castle of Macbeth left in Inverness, or incorporated into modern Fort George. The "knock, knock, knock," which the porter heard at the gate, has battered down a score of ominous strongholds.

But still

"The castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses."

For all the north of Scotland, away from the east winds, is pleasant and lovely, with the mean climate that of London, and possible in winter and summer.

In the grounds there stands a statue of Flora Macdonald looking out to the West, and carrying the legend—

"On hills that are by right his ain
He roams a lanely stranger."

Could legend be better chosen to compress and carry all that story of loyalty and courage and devotion?

And so we moved out to Culloden.

It was on a gray wind-swept afternoon that we made our pilgrimage. There was no sense of rain. It was a hard sky. It spread leaden to the world.

We chose to walk the six mile stretch. Not with comfort or any show of splendour, not even with a one-horse carriage, would we approach Culloden.

The road leads over lonely Drumossie moor through a plantation of firs, to a wild and naked spot—where all that was Scotland and nothing else was burned out of the world by the withering fire of Cumberland, and the remnant that would not save itself but fought to the last was cut to pieces by his order.

I do not suppose that even on a hot sweet afternoon could any one with a drop of Scotch blood come hither and not feel in his face the rain and sleet of that seventeenth of April day, 1746. If one comes on that day the cairn is hung with flowers, white roses of course, for there are still Jacobites left in the world who have given to no other king their allegiance. "Pretender!" cried Lady Strange to one who had mis-spoken in her presence, "Pretender and be dawmned to ye!"

No, it was not the Pass of ThermopylÆ, nor a Pickett's charge. Nor was it even war.

Nevertheless it was one of the brave moments in human history. If hopeless and even meaningless, does not bravery give it meaning? The Highlanders—they were the last Jacobites left, as the army of the Butcher, Cumberland, George Second's fat son swept northward and stopped for their larder to be well-filled before they went on—had had only a biscuit, the day before! They were five thousand to the English ten thousand.

At eleven in the morning the Highlanders moved forward, the pipers playing brave music, and they recked not that the English had the chosen ground; theirs was not even a forlorn hope. Not if the Macdonalds, sulky because they were on the left when since Bannockburn they had been on the right, had fired a shot would the end have been different.

On the battlefield, looking at these mounds, the long trench of the dead, one realizes that Scotland lies buried here. M'Gillivray, M'Lean, M'Laughlin, Cameron, Mackintosh, Stuart of Appin—so many brave names.

"The lovely lass of Inverness,
Nae joy nor pleasure can she see,
For e'en and morn she cries, alas!
And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e—
"Drumossie muir, Drumossie day!
A waefu' day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear, and brothers three.
"Their winding sheet the bluidy clay—
Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman's e'e.
"Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord!
A bluidy man I trow thou be;
For mony a heart thou hast made sair
That ne'er did wrong to them or thee."

The small remnant that was left, and was not butchered by Cumberland, fled to the West. Sometimes one could wish Prince Charles had died at Culloden! and yet one would not spare the wanderings, or Flora Macdonald. Thousands of the men fled to America; thousands of Scots in America to-day can say, "My great grandfather fought at Culloden." Hundreds of Scots to-day are sent "home" from America to be educated. I have met in the magnificent Highlands of Montana, Scotchmen, true Highlanders, who had been sent to Edinburgh university that they might be Scots, even though they carried "American" blood in their veins.

When Boswell and Johnson came here in 1773, twenty-seven years after the Forty Five, they found that many of the Highlanders were going to America, leaving the lairds and the land. One M'Queen of Glenmorison was about to go.

"Dr. Johnson said he wished M'Queen laird of Glenmorison, and the laird to go to America. M'Queen very generously answered he should be sorry for it; for the laird could not shift for himself in America as he could do."

Small wonder that Prince Charles, knowing of this exodus, and believing life still held for him its chances, its glories, away from Rome and even if he was fifty-five, looked longingly over the sea, in 1776, thinking that he might lead these rebellious colonists, so many of them of his rebellious people, and reËstablish the House of Stewart in the New World. Surely Burr, coming with Blennerhasset, thirty years after, had something of the Stewart in him.

The Orkneys

Scotland is divided by a deep geologic cleft. Glenmore, the Great Glen, runs southwesterly from Inverness to Fort William and Oban, cutting the country into two parts. One is Scotland; the other is the West, the Highlands and the Islands. One is known, the other unknown. One has been prosperous, royal, noble; the other has been wild, independent, chief and clans holding together. To-day, if the East is strangely quiet, the West is strangely silent.

In the East you know things have happened; remnants remain, ruined castles testify; in the West it is as though they had not happened, those far historic things; castles are heaps of blackened or crumbled stone; or, if they stand, they stand like prehistoric remnants, and the clachans are emptied; the Risings, the migrations, the evictions, the extensions of deer forests and sheep pastures and grouse preserves, the poverty, yes, and the wandering spirit of the people leading them ever afar—where always they are Scottish down to the last drop, always looking toward Home, but ever leaving it empty of their presence.

It is a stranger land, though so lovingly familiar, than any I have ever been in. I have been in valleys of the Rockies which were not so lonely as glens in Scotland. When Hood wrote his sonnet on "Silence," beginning

"There is a silence where hath been no sound,"

He went on to a correction—

"But in the antique palaces where man hath been."

He missed the note of glens and valleys where man has been and is not.

From the Great Glen, a series of lochs lying in a geologic "fault," and connected more than a century ago by a series of locks, excursion may be had into remote places, so very remote even if they lie but a half dozen miles in the backward; the farther ones, to the Orkneys, to John o' Groat's, to Skye, the island of mist and of Prince Charlie and Dr. Johnson and Fiona McLeod, and vast numbers of places known to those who seek beauty only.

Three forts were built in the rebellious Seventeen Hundreds to hold this far country. The forts rather betray history. And they form convenient places of departure for those who would conquer the Highlands and the Islands for themselves.

Fort George, near Inverness, is still used as a depot for military stores and for soldiers. Fort Augustus has been surrendered to the Benedictines who are gradually developing here a great monastery which in these silences should rival the monasteries of old—if that may be. Fort William, most strategic of all, is also strategic for traveler's descent. Thus is the iron hand that succeeded the bloody hand at Culloden become rust.

To the men of old the Orkneys seemed at the back of beyond and a little farther. Yet, I cannot think how it has reduced the distance to a comprehensible length if farther ends of the world and endless waters have been reached; distance is three parts imagination in any event. As a man thinketh so is distance.

The run up the coast to Scrabster, the port of Thurso, is very much on the coast, with wild barren land on one side, and wild waste water on the other; with here and there a resting-place for the eye or mind, like Skibo Castle for our American Laird of Skibo, Dunrobin Castle for the magnificent Sutherlands, and on a branch line leading out to the sea the house of John o'Groat, perhaps the best known citizen above Land's End.

From Scrabster the Old Man of Hoy lifts his hoary head over the seas, and invites to Ultima Thule, if this be Ultima Thule. And I suppose that ever since Agricola came up this way the Old Man has sent forth his invitation. The Romans did not answer it, although Tacitus wrote about it; and it was left for much later folk to dispute the Picts and take the islands for themselves.

An archipelago of fifty-six islands lies scattered over the water, with only half of them inhabited, but not all the rest habitable; if, like Sancho Panza, you are looking for an island, you will not find the isle of heart's desire here. The scant inhabited twenty odd are not over filled with population; these islands are not hospitable to large numbers, not even of their own. They came to us through Margaret of Denmark, queen to James III, and were confirmed when Anne of Denmark came to be queen to James VI.

The sail over the Pentland Firth may be taken on a still day when the historic waters, as vexed as those of the Bermoothes, lie like glass. The rage of water, of any water, is not the frequent mood; but always it is the memorable. Blue above and blue below was the day of our going, twenty miles past high "continental" shores, like Dunnet's head, and between the outliers of the Orcadian group, at the end of a summer day that never ends in this North.

Yet I cannot think how I should ever again approach "Mainland" and the port of Kirkwall with such indifference to everything except the exquisite cool softness of this Northern air of mid-summer, with an indolent interest in the land ahead, hardly quickened into active interest which is the traveler's right, when we approached Scapa in the twilight.

I did remember that the Vikings were once here as kings. And when King Haakon of Norway was returning from the defeat at Largs in the west where his fleet suffered the blow repeated later against the Spanish armada, one ship was sucked down into a whirlpool near Stroma. And Haakon died here of a broken heart. All these seemed like old, far-off things that are not unhappy. Yet there was a suggestion of fate in the place; perhaps there always is in a Northern twilight. To approach Kirkwall after this, will always be to remember the Hampshire, going to its death in a water more dangerous than that of whirling Stroma, and Lord Kitchener going with it.

Kirkwall is a pleasant old town; or was, till war made it busy and new. It lies inland a mile or two across the isthmus, but no doubt stretching actively down to the south pier at Scapa during the years of the great war, when all the British fleet hovered about.

The town is gray, like all Scottish towns; nature does these things with perfect taste. And, in the midst, man has builded for his worship a church of red sandstone, the Cathedral of St. Magnus, older and in better condition than churches of Scotland more exposed to the change of faith; with a long dim interior that speaks the North, with massive Norman arches; one wonders how the reformed faith can conduct itself in this dim religious light.

But the Earl's Palace remains a thing of beauty. Earl Patrick builded it, the son of Robert who was half brother to Mary. If the palace had been built in Mary's day I should, in truth, have lamented that she did not come hither after the escape from Loch Leven, instead of going to defeat at Langside. Mary was valiant, and the stern North was, after all, in her blood.

But Patrick as "jarl" came a generation later, and he taxed the islands mercilessly to build this very beautiful palace. The roof is gone, but the beauty remains, oriel windows, fireplaces, and towers and turrets. No doubt when "the wind is blowing in turret and tree," Patrick's palace can be ruined enough. But on a day when the blue sky is sufficient vaulting, the palace is a place to dream in.

Over at Birsay, twenty miles across the Mainland—there are twenty mile stretches in this Mainland—there is another palace, built by Robert, himself, who was, incidentally, Abbot of Holyrood as well as Earl of the Orkneys. The motto-stone declares—

"Dominus Robertus Stuartus
Filius Jacobi Quinti Rex Scotorum
Hoc Opus Instruxit."

"Rex" said Robert, not "regis"; perhaps his Latin knew no better, but his spirit knew this was right. The nominative agreed with Robertus, not with Jacobi. Still, the ruler of the Orkneys was a supreme lord at this remove from king and counselors.

Here and there, but only here and there through the islands, lies traveler's lure. Motor boats make the run for tourist pleasure, and many of the "points of interest" can be seen from the waters; particularly the "brochs," the cairn-like towers of perhaps Pictish building; and the round tower of St. Magnus on Egilsay, which must date back very far, perhaps to the time when Columba came hither from Ireland and converted these people and gave them hints of Irish building.

There are remnants of life earlier than Columba, of faith earlier, though we know not the faith. The Circle of Bogar, old gray pillar-like stones, set in purple heather, are comparable with Stonehenge and Locmariaqueur. Scott found them equal; Scott who had such an admirable way of finding in Scotland the equal of the world. In "The Pirate" he describes these stones, indeed he describes these Orkneys in this accurate guide book which is still "up to date."

To the blood shed and violence of old days has succeeded the quiet pursuit of agriculture; and instead of the boats that used to sail to the New World, H. B. C. boats and those to the Plantations, and to Russia for the Northwest Passage, and to the Arctic for the Pole, are the quiet boats of the fisherfolk. Except—when war fleets ride at anchor.

The Caledonian Canal

The Great Glen itself is a necessary journey, even though no side trips be made. I must believe that every one who has ever taken it and written account, journeyed down this waterway in a Scotch mist; which, of course, is not a mist at all, but something finite and tangible.

I, myself, went my ways that way. And, of course, those who had come north the day before me, and those who came south the day after, came through magnificent clearness, and marvels of marvels, Ben Nevis cleared of mists to his very crest and beyond, shining splendid and majestic and out-topping all Scotland, against the brilliant cloud-swept northern sky! Frankly, I am always tempted to be suspicious when any one tells me he has traveled the Great Glen and seen it all.

The scenery on both sides is wild, desolate, mountainous, a daring of nature. There are sheer hillsides where all is revealed; again, there are wooded hills where the men of the Forty Five might be still lurking.

Dochfour, Ness, Oich, Lochy, are the names of these "great lakes" that make the chain. There is quality to their names, like Superior, Huron, Erie, Ontario. But the Scottish chain is sixty miles long and can be made from morning to evening, with enough of the day left to go through Loch Linnhe and so to Oban; as one should add, through the St. Lawrence and so to Quebec. Yet when one has passed from Inverness to Oban the mind is as full, it has come through as much contact, nay, more, as in the journey from Duluth to Quebec.

There are ruined castles by the way. Urquhart, looking very picturesque, especially if the mist is but half come down over the world and the purple of the distances is of that deep royal purple so characteristic of the water and mountain distances of this wild west country. Yet the sunny distances are as much a marvel of colour in their pale blue that has so much intensity, so much real vivacity. Purple one has learned to associate with distance; or, since some painter has shown us the truthful trick. But blue, this particular Scottish blue, I have never seen elsewhere. It is woven of mists and sunlight in equal proportions.

And so, Urquhart in its ruin, standing romantically on a fir clad promontory, is most alluring as the boat rounds it on its early way. I do not know anything of Urquhart. The name rather suggests the middle name carried by a once famous actress. Somehow I half believe that in that castle Charlotte Corday may have stabbed Marat. But then, facetious and unromantic, I wonder at the baths in Urquhart in the old days when skene dhus served in the place of daggers.

There are other romantic lures in the names which seem to have dropped so carelessly anywhere. Inverarigaig—which sounds more musical than it looks on the page—stands at the head of the pass through which The Prince came after that day at Culloden on his way to the West as wanderer. Far down the stretch of water rises Mealfourvournie, a rounded naked hill overlooking the ravine where once the church of Cilles Christ stood; and once, full of Mackenzies, was set on fire by the Macdonalds, and all the Mackenzies burned. The act is not singular among the clans. McLeod of Dare gives it to the Macdonalds and McLeods. And so one comes to believe the story of a traveler coming on a Highland cottage and asking if there were any Christians within, got back the reply,—"no, we're all Macdonalds." Surely Saint Columba was needed in later centuries than the Sixth.

The Falls of Foyers are across the lake, surrendered now to aluminum works. And yet Burns wrote of them

"Among the heathery hills and rugged woods
The roaring Foyers pours his moving floods."

Christopher North wrote a better, a prose poem, which sounds somewhat curiously in American ears. "What a world of waters now comes tumbling into the abyss! Niagara! hast thou a fiercer roar? Listen—and you think there are momentary pauses of thunder, filled up with goblin groans! All the military music-bands of the army of Britain would here be dumb as mutes—Trumpet, Cymbal and the Great Drum!"

Fort Augustus closes the end of the loch, and here the Benedictines, black-robed, move in somber file where once the red-coated soldiers marched.

Five locks raise the steamer fifty feet, into the Highlands. And while the boat is waiting the rise, here, as at any of the locks, there is entertainment. Fellow travelers get out to stretch their legs, and that is amusing enough, tolerantly considered. There are tea houses at every lock, many of them, sometimes charmingly rose-embowered like the houses along the Thames. There are pipers who march majestically up and down, swinging their sporrans, swaying their kilts; one is almost afraid to give a penny.

And I remember at one of these pausing places where the passengers remained on the boat, that a very pleasing gentleman who looked as George Washington may have looked on gala occasions did sing for my entertainment and that of my fellow passengers; except one fellow American who expressed her disapproval. Perhaps George Washington did not dress so gaily; it was just the hat. There was a black coat, white breeches, crimson waistcoat, blue stockings, silver buckled shoes, and a cocked hat. And this pleasing gentleman sang to a tune that was no tune but very cheering, about "the hat me faither wore." And he was so doing his best, which was very good indeed, that I was forced to get change for a sixpence—it cannot be ethical, and certainly is not fun to throw a little silver disk when six large coppers may be thrown. And the American female fellow passenger said, "Doesn't it seem as though he could get something nearer a man's job?" Yet he was such a pleasant person. And they're not common to be met on the highway.

From Fort Augustus on there are memories of the Risings, chiefly of Prince Charlie, in the glorious before, in the tragic aftermath. He came hither as conqueror, that mere stripling, belted and plaided as a Royal Stewart, and retook his kingdom. The coat skirts of Johnny Cope you can still see in retreat to Inverness, if you look well. From Gairlochy the way leads to Glenfinnan where he raised his Standard, and the Castle of Lochiel, ruined because of him. And hither he came, after Culloden. At Fort Augustus the head of Roderick Mackenzie was presented to the Butcher as that of Prince Charles, and near Gairlochy, and near Lochiel—"beware of the day"—is the "cage" of Cluny MacPherson where he harboured during those days of red pursuit. And the thirty thousand pounds are yet to be paid for betrayal.

Loch Oich, littlest and highest, with wooded islands and heavily wooded shores, larches and delicate silver birches, is the exquisite bit of the way. And here stands Invergarry Castle, which saw Prince Charles when first he came gallant from the West and Moidart, and saw him when last he came defeated to the West.

Laggan Avenue runs between Loch Oich and Loch Lochy, a narrow waterway with soft fir-trees lining the way in a most formal fashion; it has a peculiar magic when the mist has shut out the rounded hills of the higher background.

Banavie—to move according to the schedule—is at the top of the locks, three miles of them, Neptune's staircase, leading down to Fort William and to the sea. The railroad is the swifter way and breaks the journey, and passes the ruins of Inverlochy. It is a place to which French and Spanish merchants came in far days of the Seven Hundreds. But better, a place where Montrose won a victory.

Here took place (1645) the battle between the Marquis of Montrose and the Marquis of Argyle, and so splendidly that Montrose and Charles thought the kingdom was coming back to its own. Montrose had started through the Great Glen for Inverness, but hearing that the Campbells were massing at Inverlochy, he turned back, and gave battle. The victory was so tremendously with the royal Montrose that he wrote a letter to Charles, then negotiating with the parliamentarians, and Charles believed so that he broke off the parleying—

"Give me leave, after I have reduced this country, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to Your Majesty, as David's general to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.'"

In five years, the two were both beheaded, one at Whitehall in London, the other at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, the Marquis sixteen months later than the King. "To carry honour and fidelity to the grave."

At Inverlochy looks down the mountain of them all, Ben Nevis, taller than Ben Muich Dhui, taller than Snowdon or Helvellyn. And from its vantage point, the Observatory Tower, one may look over all the territory in many directions whither one proposes to go; the routes can be planned from this top of Scotland. As Sir Archibald Geikie mapped it in his glorified geography—

"While no sound falls upon his ears, save now and then a fitful moaning of the wind among the snow-rifts of the dark precipice below, let him try to analyze some of the chief elements of the landscape. It is easy to recognize the more marked heights and hollows. To the south, away down Loch Linnhe, he can see the hills of Mull and the Paps of Jura closing the horizon. Westward, Loch Eil seems to lie at his feet, winding up into the lonely mountains, yet filled twice a day with the tides of the salt sea. Far over the hills, beyond the head of the loch, he looks across Arisaig, and can see the cliffs of the Isle of Eigg and the dark peaks of Rum, with the Atlantic gleaming below them. Farther to the northwest the blue range of the Coolin Hills rises along the skyline, and then, sweeping over all the intermediate ground, through Arisaig and Knoydart and the Clanranald country mountain rises after mountain, ridge beyond ridge, cut through by dark glens, and varied here and there with the sheen of lake and tarn. Northward runs the mysterious straight line of the Great Glen, with its chain of locks. Then to east and south the same billowy sea of mountain tops stretches out as far as eye can follow it—the hills and glens of Lochaber, the wide green strath of Spean, the gray corries of Glen Treig and Glen Nevis, the distant sweep of the moors and mountains of Brae Lyon and the Perthshire Highlands, the spires of Glencoe, and thence again to the blue waters of Loch Linnhe."

This may not be "the roof of the world," but it is a very high gable.