Scotland, and some of the trees in this one are said to be eight
hundred years old.
[Illustration: Pomona drinking it in]
The last time we was out on the Rannoch Moor there was such a savage
and driving wind, and the rain came down in such torrents, that my
mackintosh was blown nearly off of me, and I was wet from my head to my
heels. But I would have stayed out hours longer if Jone had been
willing, and I never felt so sorry to leave these Grampian Hills, where
I would have been glad to have had my father feed his flocks, and where
I might have wandered away my childhood, barefooted over the heather,
singing Scotch songs and drinking in deep draughts of the pure mountain
air, instead of - but no matter.
To-morrow we leave the Highlands, but as we go to follow the shallop of
the "Lady of the Lake," I should not repine.
Letter Number Twenty-three
OBAN, SCOTLAND
It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world, when looking on the
map, to go across the country from Loch Rannoch over to Katrine and all
those celebrated parts, but we found we could not go that way, and so
we went back to Edinburgh and made a fresh start. We stopped one night
at the Royal Hotel, and there we found a letter from Mr. Poplington. We
had left him at Buxton, and he said he was not going to Scotland this
season, but would try to see us in London before we sailed.
He is a good man, and he wrote this letter on purpose to tell me that
he had had a letter from his friend, the clergyman in Somersetshire,
who had forbidden the young woman whose wash my tricycle had run into
to marry her lover because he was a Radical. This letter was in answer
to one Mr. Poplington wrote to him, in which he gave the minister my
reasons for thinking that the best way to convert the young man from
Radicalism was to let him marry the young woman, who would be sure to
bring him around to her way of thinking, whatever that might be.
I didn't care about the Radicalism. All I wanted was to get the two
married, and then it would not make the least difference to me what
their politics might be; if they lived properly and was sober and
industrious and kept on loving each other, I didn't believe it would
make much difference to them. It was a long letter that the clergyman
wrote, but the point of it was, that he had concluded to tell the young
woman that she might marry the fellow if she liked, and that she must
do her best to make him a good Conservative, which, of course, she
promised to do. When I read this I clapped my hands, for who could have
suspected that I should have the good luck to come to this country to
spend the summer and make two matches before I left it!
When we left Edinburgh to gradually wend our way to this place, which
is on the west coast of Scotland, the first town we stopped at was
Stirling, where the Scotch kings used to live. Of course we went to the
castle, which stands on the rocks high above the town; but before we
started to go there Jone inquired if the place was a ruin or not, and
when he was told it was not, and that soldiers lived there, he said it
was all right, and we went. He now says he must positively decline to
visit any more houses out of repair. He is tired of them; and since he
has got over his rheumatism he feels less like visiting ruins than he
ever did. I tell him the ruins are not any more likely to be damp than
a good many of the houses that people live in; but this didn't shake
him, and I suppose if we come to any more vine-covered and shattered
remnants of antiquity I shall be obliged to go over them by myself.
The castle is a great place, which I wouldn't have missed for the
world; but the spot that stirred my soul the most was in a little
garden, as high in the air as the top of a steeple, where we could look
out over the battlefield of Bannockburn. Besides this, we could see the
mountains of Ben-Lomond, Ben-Venue, Ben-A'an, Benledi, and ever so much
Scottish landscape spreading out for miles upon miles. There is a
little hole in the wall here called the Ladies' Look-Out, where the
ladies of the court could sit and see what was going on in the country
below without being seen themselves, but I stood up and took in
everything over the top of the wall.
I don't know whether I told you that the mountains of Scotland are
"Bens," and the mouths of rivers are "abers," and islands are
"inches." Walking about the streets of Stirling, and I didn't have time
to see half as much as I wanted to, I came to the shop of a "flesher."
I didn't know what it was until I looked into the window and saw that
it was a butcher shop.
I like a language just about as foreign as the Scotch is. There are a
good many words in it that people not Scotch don't understand, but that
gives a person the feeling that she is travelling abroad, which I want
to have when I am abroad. Then, on the other hand, there are not enough
of them to hinder a traveller from making herself understood.
