Part 16

It was dark when our travellers reached “the wretched inn” at Fort Augustus. Happily it was not in it that they were to lodge, for the governor invited them to sleep in his house. Of the fort, the rebels had made a bonfire on April 15, 1746, the day before Culloden, “to celebrate the Duke of Cumberland’s birthday.”[595] It had since been rebuilt and greatly strengthened, “being surrounded by two trenches filled with water, and having draw-bridges, strong walls, and bastions.”[596] Nothing is left of it. Where rough soldiers once carried things with a high hand, now smooth priests rule. On the site of the old fortifications which bore the second name of the butcher duke has been raised a college and monastery dedicated to St. Benedict. Johnson long remembered the rest which he enjoyed in the governor’s hospitable home. Nearly four years later he recorded in his diary: “I passed the night in such sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not known since I slept at Fort Augustus.” The following year, writing to Boswell, he said, “The best night that I have had these twenty years was at Fort Augustus.” From this spot to the sea-shore opposite Skye they had about forty-four miles of highland paths to traverse. This part of their journey they were forced to divide very unequally, as Anoch, the only place where they could find entertainment, was scarcely a third of the way. [Sidenote: GLENMORISON.] Crossing the mountains by a road which had been made “with labour that might have broken the perseverance of a Roman legion,” early in the afternoon they came “through a wild country” to Glenmorison.[597] They did not, as the guide-book says, follow the course of the river Moriston from Invermoriston, but joined it some miles higher up, above the fine scenery and the wild tumble of water which are shown in the accompanying sketch. This fact I did not discover till too late. Anoch Johnson describes as “standing in a glen or valley pleasantly watered by a winding river. It consists of three huts, one of which is distinguished by a chimney.” It was in the house thus distinguished that they lodged. When I visited this spot last summer, we halted at a farmhouse hard by to rest our horses and take some lunch. We sat on the bank of a dried-up brook, beneath a row of witch-elms. A cuckoo was flying about, resting now and then on the garden wall. “Its two-fold shout” it scarcely uttered, thinking, perhaps, that as it was the month of June, it would be “heard, not regarded.” The wind rustled in the leaves, the river, blue beneath a blue sky, ran swiftly by, now under a shady bank, and now round a stony foreland, till it lost itself at last from our sight behind a bend. To the west rose lofty mountains; on the other side of the valley were sloping hills. We lunched on frothing milk, oat-cakes, scones, and butter; the sheep dogs playing around us, and with wistful gaze asking for their share of the feast. We lay on the ground and looked across the little ravine at an old hut that was “distinguished by a chimney.” This we all voted, and very likely with truth on our side, was the very place where our travellers had lodged. Talking of “far-off things,” of Johnson and the copy of Cocker’s Arithmetic which he gave to his landlord’s “gentle and pleasing daughter,” of her father’s library of odd volumes, and of the old hut and the old life, an hour slipped quickly and pleasantly by.

[Sidenote: ENGLISH SOLDIERS.]

As our travellers “passed on through the dreariness of solitude” on their way hither, they had come upon a party of soldiers working on the road, to whom they gave a couple of shillings to spend in drink. “With the true military impatience of coin in their pockets,” these men had followed them to the inn, “having marched at least six miles to find the first place where liquor could be bought.” There they made merry in the barn. “We went and paid them a visit,” writes Boswell; “Dr. Johnson saying, ‘Come, let’s go and give ’em another shilling a-piece.’ We did so, and he was saluted ‘My Lord’ by all of them.” Johnson avows that one cause of his generosity was regard to his and Boswell’s safety. “Having never been before in a place so wild and unfrequented, I was glad of their arrival, because I knew that we had made them friends; and to gain still more of their good-will, we went to them when they were carousing in the barn, and added something to our former gift.” The money was ill-bestowed. “The poor soldiers got too much liquor. Some of them fought and left blood upon the spot, and cursed whisky next morning.” Perhaps Johnson had them in his mind when, a few years later, he said, “Why, sir, a common soldier is usually a very gross man.” To the degradation of one of the English regiments which had been stationed in the Highlands, testimony is borne by Wolfe, who on his return from Scotland in 1753, wrote: “If I stay much longer with the regiment I shall be perfectly corrupt; the officers are loose and profligate, and the soldiers are very devils.”[598] Johnson soon found that he had no need of a guard. His host had indeed fought in the Highland army at Culloden, but he was a quiet honest fellow. The account which he gave of the campaign moved Boswell to tears. If he told them the following story which I have found in Henderson’s _History of the Rebellion_, he would have moved also Johnson to anger. [Sidenote: THE GRANTS OF GLENMORISON.] A party of the Grants of Glenmorison had joined the Pretender’s army at Edinburgh. The laird, who had remained loyal, came, after the battle of Culloden, “with about five hundred of his vassals to Inverness, whence they were sent into the country of the Macintoshes. Hereupon the Grants in the rebellion begged his intercession. He repaired to the Duke of Cumberland, and said, ‘Here are a number of men come in with their arms, who would have submitted to none in Britain but to me.’ ‘No!’ answered the duke; ‘I’ll let them know that they are my father’s subjects, and must likewise submit to me.’ So he gave orders to embark them with the other prisoners, and they were shipped off to Tilbury Fort.”[599] Smollett tells how great numbers of the miserable captives who were sent to London by sea, being crowded in the holds of the vessels, “perished in the most deplorable manner for want of necessaries, air, and exercise.”[600] If the Grants escaped this fate, very likely they were transported to America.

ANOCH TO GLENELG (SEPTEMBER 1).

It was a long and heavy journey that this day lay before our travellers, so that they rose in good time and started about eight o’clock. Boswell, who had awakened very early, had been a little scared by the thought that “their landlord, being about to emigrate, might murder them to get their money, and lay it upon the soldiers in the barn.” “When I got up,” he adds, “I found Dr. Johnson asleep in his miserable stye, as I may call it, with a coloured handkerchief round his head. With difficulty could I awaken him.” So miserable had their beds looked that “we had some difficulty,” writes Johnson, “in persuading ourselves to lie down in them. At last we ventured, and I slept very soundly in the vale of Glenmorison amidst the rocks and mountains.” The road which they were to follow is but little traversed at the present day, for tourists either keep to the south by the Caledonian Canal, or to the north by the railway to Strome Ferry. [Sidenote: THE HAPPY VALLEY.] They thereby miss, to use Boswell’s words, “a scene of as wild nature as one could see.” To this part of my tour I had long looked forward. It is many a year since I first formed the wish to visit that “narrow valley not very flowery, but sufficiently verdant,” where Johnson planned the history of his tour.

“I sat down on a bank (he says) such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air was soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me and on either side were high hills, which by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well I know not, for here I first conceived the thought of this narration.”

In a letter to Mrs. Thrale he describes the same scene, but makes no mention of the book which he had in mind.

“I sat down to take notes on a green bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of savage solitude, with mountains before me, and on either hand covered with heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected, but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion. If my mistress and master, and Queeney[601] had been there, we should have produced some reflections among us either poetical or philosophical, for though solitude be the nurse of woe,[602] conversation is often the parent of remarks and discoveries.”

My hopes of finding this classical rivulet were great. A kind correspondent, the Rev. Alexander Matheson, minister of Glen Shiel, had been told by some old people of the neighbourhood that they knew by tradition the exact spot. Though he had nearly twenty miles to come, he undertook to show me it. I arrived at the little inn at Clunie earlier than he had expected, and there meeting him found to my disappointment that I had passed the spot some six or seven miles. Both horses and travellers were too weary to retrace their steps. The tradition of the old people had on further investigation proved to be worthless. Like myself he had been at first misled by Boswell’s narrative, which places this happy valley at the western end of Glen Shiel. But on looking at Johnson’s account, aided too by his own knowledge of the locality, he had detected the error. The rivulet by which they had made their noonday halt must have been in Glen Clunie, near the eastern end of the loch, for Johnson describes how after their rest “they continued their journey along the side of a loch which at last ended in a river broad and shallow. Beyond it is a valley called Glen Shiel.” For my disappointment there was some consolation to be found. The long drought of nearly two months which had preceded my tour had dried up those rivulets which Johnson crossed, running, as he describes them, “with a clear, shallow stream over a hard, pebbly bottom.” The main river had still water in it; but we saw few indeed of “the streams rushing down the steep” which fed it. In that part of the narrow valley where he reposed we should have had only a choice of dried-up watercourses, had we tried to select the bank on which he sat. [Sidenote: YARROW UNVISITED.] For me Yarrow still remains unvisited. I have still to see

“Its silvery current flow With uncontrolled meanderings.”

Passing through Glen Clunie, which now boasts of a little inn where the traveller can find clean, if homely lodgings, they reached Glen Shiel. It is worth notice that though the word _Glen_ is in Johnson’s Dictionary, so unfamiliar was it at this time to English ears, that using it in the letter in which he describes this day’s journey, he adds, “so they call a valley.” In Glen Shiel, writes Boswell, they saw “where the battle was fought in 1719.” It was in the second and last of the Spanish invasions of our island that this fight took place. An armament of ten ships of war and transports, having on board 6,000 regular troops with arms for 12,000 men, had sailed from Cadiz under the command of the Duke of Ormond, in the hope of restoring the Stuarts to that throne which they had forfeited by their tyranny and their folly. The winds and waves fought for us, as they had fought long before in the time of the Great Armada. Two ships only succeeded in reaching the coast of Scotland. [Sidenote: EILAN DONAN CASTLE.] They landed their troops near Eilan Donan Castle on Loch Duich, the seat of the chief of the Mackenzies. Four years earlier the fighting men of this clan had gone off to join the forces of the Earl of Mar, and had taken part in the battle of Sheriffmuir. The grandfather of the present minister of the parish in which Eilan Donan stands, had known an aged parishioner, who had seen the clansmen dance on the leads of the castle the evening before they started on their expedition. There were among them four chieftains, each bearing the name of John, and known as “the four Johns of Scotland.” They all danced at Eilan Donan, and all fell at Sheriffmuir. [Sidenote: BATTLE OF GLEN SHIEL.] I was told also of a tradition which still exists among the people, that at Glen Shiel the clansmen had sent their women and children to wave flags on the hills as if they were a fresh body of men. Deceived by this appearance, the regular troops had at first retreated. The battle with the Spaniards was fought at a spot, where on both sides the mountains draw close, and the valley narrows to a ravine through which the river when swollen by the rains rushes foaming along in fine cascades. Along the right bank the rocks were so steep that till the present road was cut no passage was possible; on the left bank there was a narrow opening beneath a precipitous crag. A little above the uppermost of the waterfalls the country folks still point out “the black colonel’s grave”—some swarthy Spaniard, perhaps, who fell that day far from the cork-groves of Southern Spain. They tell too how the Spanish soldiers who surrendered themselves as prisoners of war first cast their arms into the deep pool below. A dreadful story has been recorded by an Englishman who lived for many years at Inverness. “He had been assured,” he writes, “by several officers who were in the battle, that some of the English soldiers who were dangerously wounded were left behind for three or four hours. When parties were sent to them with hurdles made to serve as litters, they were all found stabbed with dirks in twenty places.”[603] The story may not be true. If it is, the clansmen were as savage after Glen Shiel, as were the regular troops twenty-seven years later after Culloden.

[Sidenote: THE MOUNTAIN LIKE A CONE.]

In the warm sunshine of a day in June we sat on a bank above the dark pool beneath whose eddying waters some of the arms perhaps still lie. There was a gentle breeze, the larks were singing over our heads, the water was sparkling and splashing, the sides of the torrent were overhung with the mountain ash and were green with ferns, but below us and in front lay a scene of wild desolation. Far off to the west was the mountain which Boswell had pointed out to Johnson as being like a cone. “No, Sir,” said Johnson. “It would be called so in a book, and when a man comes to look at it, he sees it is not so. It is indeed pointed at the top; but one side of it is larger than the other.” Its Gaelic name, _Faochag_, which signifies _whelk_, shows that though Johnson’s objection may have been a proof of his “perceptive quickness,” yet Boswell’s description was quite accurate enough for two men out on a tour. We tried in vain to distinguish which among the mountains was “the considerable protuberance.” Perhaps the Johnson Club may not disdain to appoint a committee who shall be instructed to bid farewell for a time to the delights of Fleet Street and visit Glen Shiel, with full powers to come to a final decision in this important matter. A long drive down the steep pass brought us to the place which Boswell said was “a rich green valley, comparatively speaking.” [Sidenote: AUCHNASHEAL.] A little way beyond it lay the twenty huts which formed the village of Auchnasheal. “One of them,” says Johnson, “was built of loose stones, piled up with great thickness into a strong, though not solid wall. From this house we obtained some great pails of milk, and having brought bread with us were very liberally regaled.” The curious scene which they witnessed here is thus described by Boswell:—

“We sat down on a green turf-seat at the end of a house; they brought us out two wooden dishes of milk,[604] which we tasted. One of them was frothed like a syllabub. I saw a woman preparing it with such a stick as is used for chocolate, and in the same manner. We had a considerable circle about us, men, women, and children, all M’Craas, Lord Seaforth’s people. Not one of them could speak English. I observed to Dr. Johnson, it was much the same as being with a tribe of Indians. Johnson: ‘Yes, sir, but not so terrifying.’ I gave all who chose it snuff and tobacco. Governor Trapaud had made us buy a quantity at Fort Augustus, and put them up in small parcels. I also gave each person a piece of wheat bread, which they had never tasted before. I then gave a penny apiece to each child. I told Dr. Johnson of this: upon which he called to Joseph and our guides, for change for a shilling, and declared that he would distribute among the children. Upon this being announced in Erse, there was a great stir: not only did some children come running down from neighbouring huts, but I observed one black-haired man, who had been with us all along, had gone off, and returned, bringing a very young child. My fellow-traveller then ordered the children to be drawn up in a row, and he dealt about his copper, and made them and their parents all happy.”

“It was the best day the McCraas declared they had seen since the time of the old laird of Macleod.” He, no doubt, had made a halt in their valley on his way to or from Skye. The snuff and tobacco must have won their hearts more even than the money. “Nothing,” Johnson was told, “gratified the Highlanders so much.” Knox recorded a few years later that “any stranger who cannot take a pinch of snuff or give one is looked upon with an evil eye.”[605] So uncommon was wheaten bread even a quarter of a century later, that Dr. Garnett, after leaving Inverary, tasted none till he reached Inverness.[606] At present it can be had in most places, being brought by the steamers in large boxes from Glasgow, and transported inland in the country carts. The way in which the villagers had gathered round the travellers had startled even Johnson, stout-hearted though he was. “I believe,” he says, “they were without any evil intention, but they had a very savage wildness of aspect and manner.” My friend, the minister of Glen Shiel, pointed out to me that it was no doubt mere curiosity which brought them round him. Johnson was as strange a sight to them as they were to Johnson. An earlier traveller in the Hebrides has expressed this very well. “Every man and thing I met with,” he writes, “seemed a novelty. I thought myself entering upon a new scene of nature, but nature rough and unpolished. Men, manners, habits, buildings, everything different from our own; and if we thought them rude and barbarous, no doubt the people had the same opinion of what belonged to us, and the wonder was mutual.”[607]

[Sidenote: SHEEP INSTEAD OF MEN.]

Auchnasheal has been swept away; nothing of it is left but a few banks of earth and the foundations of the one stone house. The same fate has befallen it which befell that other village near Fort Augustus where Coleridge heard a Highland widow mourn over the desolation of the land:

“‘Within this space,’ she said, ‘how short a time back!—there lived a hundred and seventy-three persons, and now there is only a shepherd and an underling or two. Yes, Sir! One hundred and seventy-three Christian souls, man, woman, boy, girl, and babe, and in almost every home an old man by the fire-side, who would tell you of the troubles before our roads were made; and many a brave youth among them who loved the birthplace of his forefathers, yet would swing about his broad-sword, and want but a word to march off to the battles over sea; aye, Sir, and many a good lass who had a respect for herself. Well, but they are gone, and with them the bristled bear [barley] and the pink haver [oats], and the potato plot that looked as gay as any flower-garden with its blossoms! I sometimes fancy that the very birds are gone—all but the crows and the gleads [kites]. Well, and what then? Instead of us all, there is one shepherd man, and it may be a pair of small lads—and a many, many sheep! And do you think, Sir, that God allows of such proceedings?’”[608]

The desolation had already begun even at the time of our travellers’ visit. Their host of the evening before was following seventy of the dalesmen to America, whither they had been driven by a rack-renting landlord. “I asked him,” writes Johnson, “whether they would stay at home if they were well-treated. He answered with indignation, that no man willingly left his native country.”