Near It You See A
Cluster Of Grassy Embankments Of A Curious Form, Circles And Octagons And
Parallelograms, Which Bear The Name Of King James's Knot, And Once Formed
A Part Of The Royal-Gardens, Where The Sovereign Used To Divert Himself
With His Courtiers.
The cows now have the spot to themselves, and have
made their own paths and alleys all over it.
"Yonder, to the southwest of
the castle," said a sentinel who stood at the gate, "you see where a large
field has been lately ploughed, and beyond it another, which looks very
green. That green field is the spot where the battle of Bannockburn was
fought, and the armies of England were defeated by Bruce." I looked, and
so fresh and bright was the verdure, that it seemed to me as if the earth
was still fertilized with the blood of those who fell in that desperate
struggle for the crown of Scotland. Not far from this, the spot was shown
us where Wallace was defeated at the battle of Falkirk. This region is now
the scene of another and an unbloody warfare; the warfare between the Free
Church and the Government Church. Close to the church of the
establishment, at the foot of the rock of Stirling, the soldiers of the
Free Church have erected their place of worship, and the sound of hammers
from the unfinished interior could be heard almost up to the castle.
We took places the same day in the coach for Callander, in the Highlands.
In a short time we came into a country of hillocks and pastures brown and
barren, half covered with ferns, the breckan of the Scotch, where the
broom flowered gaudily by the road-side, and harebells now in bloom, in
little companies, were swinging, heavy with the rain, on their slender
stems.
Crossing the Teith we found ourselves in Doune, a Highland village, just
before entering which we passed a throng of strapping lasses, who had just
finished their daily task at a manufactory on the Teith, and were
returning to their homes. Between Doune and Callander we passed the woods
of Cambus-More, full of broad beeches, which delight in the tenacious
mountain soil of this district. This was the seat of a friend of the Scott
family, and here Sir Walter in his youth passed several summers, and
became familiar with the scenes which he has so well described in his Lady
of the Lake. At Callander we halted for the night among a crowd of
tourists, Scotch, English, American, and German, more numerous than the
inn at which we stopped could hold. I went out into the street to get a
look at the place, but a genuine Scotch mist covering me with water soon
compelled me to return. I heard the people, a well-limbed brawny race of
men, with red hair and beards, talking to each other in Gaelic, and saw
through the fogs only a glimpse of the sides of the mountains and crags
which surrounded the village.
The next morning was uncommonly bright and clear, and we set out early for
the Trosachs. We now saw that the village of Callander lay under a dark
crag, on the banks of the Teith, winding pleasantly among its alders, and
overlooked by the grand summit of Benledi, which rises to the height of
three thousand feet. A short time brought us to the stream
"Which, daughter of three mighty lakes,
From Vennachar in silver breaks,"
and we skirted the lake for nearly its whole length. Loch Vennachar lies
between hills of comparatively gentle declivity, pastured by flocks, and
tufted with patches of the prickly gorse and coarse ferns. On its north
bank lies Lanrick Mead, a little grassy level where Scott makes the tribe
of Clan Alpine assemble at the command of Roderick Dhu. At a little
distance from Vennachar lies Loch Achray, which we reached by a road
winding among shrubs and low trees, birches, and wild roses in blossom,
with which the air was fragrant. Crossing a little stone bridge, which our
driver told us was the Bridge of Turk, we were on the edge of Loch Achray,
a little sheet of water surrounded by wild rocky hills, with here and
there an interval of level grassy margin, or a grove beside the water.
Turning from Loch Achray we reached an inn with a Gaelic name, which I
have forgotten how to spell, and which if I were to spell it, you could
not pronounce. This was on the edge of the Trosachs, and here we
breakfasted.
It is the fashion, I believe, for all tourists to pass through the
Trosachs on foot. The mob of travellers, with whom I found myself on the
occasion - there were some twenty of them - did so, to a man; even the
ladies, who made about a third of the number, walked. The distance to Loch
Katrine is about a mile and a half, between lofty mountains, along a glen
filled with masses of rock, which seem to have been shaken by some
convulsion of nature from the high steeps on either side, and in whose
shelves and crevices time had planted a thick wood of the birch and ash.
But I will not describe the Trosachs after Walter Scott. Head what he says
of them in the first canto of his poem. Loch Katrine, when we reached it,
was crisped into little waves, by a fresh wind from the northwest, and a
boat, with four brawny Highlanders, was waiting to convey us to the head
of the lake. We launched upon the dark deep water, between craggy and
shrubby steeps, the summits of which rose on every side of us; and one of
the rowers, an intelligent-looking man, took upon himself the task of
pointing out to us the places mentioned by the poet. "There," said he, as
we receded from the shore, "is the spot in the Trosachs where Fitz James
lost his gallant gray." He then repeated, in a sort of recitation,
dwelling strongly on the rhyme, the lines in the Lady of the Lake which
relate that incident.
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